Zane grimaced at that. She knew the feeling. It sucked they still lived in a world where some people were invisible and didn’t seem to matter. She considered telling him about the blood-drained body in the landfill but checked herself. That piece of info was too valuable to let go of right now.
“Something tells me the twins at the club tonight fit your profile, too. Girls that wouldn’t be missed.”
“That’s my thought,” she said. “Christine will look into it once she gets them IDed.”
“What brought you to the club tonight?” he asked.
She shrugged and sipped her Diet Coke. “A rumor. Some street kids suggested the three girls might have been in there the night they disappeared.”
“Not much to go on.”
“I’ve made do with less.”
Zane gestured at the remaining few fries on her plate. She nodded, watching as he devoured them.
“You ever notice how food from someone else’s plate always seems to taste better than the stuff on yours?” he asked.
“Really? Huh.” She considered that. “Maybe next time, you’ll let me try something from your plate, so I can see what I think.”
That charming smile curved his sensual mouth again, his expression suggesting he was still hungry even after everything he’d already eaten. She wasn’t sure if it was food he was hungry for, though.
“Is that your way of saying you’d like there to be a next time?” he asked.
She hadn’t been thinking anything like that.Are you sure?a little voice scoffed. Regardless, she didn’t bother to respond to the subtle nudge.
“So, is the LA field office so overloaded with missing persons cases they’ve started sending agents out completely on their own?” He picked up his tea, gazing at her over the rim of the cup. “Or is there something I’m missing?”
Alyssa hesitated. How could she explain she had nothing to do with the LA field office and that all the agents in her division worked alone until they had something concrete enough to justify calling in for backup? That’s how things worked when there were only eight agents covering these kinds of cases for the entire United States.
But Zane was regarding her expectantly, so it wasn’t like she could completely ignore the question. Especially since she blew off his barely disguised dinner invite.
“Just a matter of too much work and not enough people to do it,” she said.
Zane regarded her thoughtfully, his right hand coming up to rub the slight scruff covering his jawline as his gaze drifted from her eyes, down her neck, then centered on her chest for a while. Okay, he was seriously gawking at her boobs. She’d expected him to look at some point, because, hello…men and boobs! But she had to admit, she hadn’t thought he’d choose this moment to do it.
“What were you planning to do with those men who were kidnapping those girls?” he asked, lifting his gaze to hers again.
“I was planning to follow them, hoping they’d lead me back to the other three missing girls,” she said, knowing even as she said the words that her answer wouldn’t be well received.
His eyes narrowed. “You were going to let them kidnap the girls?”
She didn’t need to hear him say the words out loud to make her feel like crap. She already had that covered. “It’s not a scheme I’m proud of, but I need to do something to find those three missing girls—maybe even find out something about the other people who’ve disappeared. I was going to stay right on their tail.”
“And if you’d lost them in this charming LA traffic?” he asked in a flat tone. “Then you’d have five missing girls, not three.”
“Like I said, it wasn’t my preferred plan. Trust me, I know what it’s like to get grabbed by a bunch of lowlifes.” She also knew what it was like to be afraid for her life, terrified those lowlifes were going to kill her. She shook off the memory. “But those girls have been missing since December. I had to do something or accept that the next time I saw them would be in a morgue in a condition no one should have to deal with.”
Alyssa silently cursed herself for letting him get to her. Since when did she lose her cool so easily? And when the hell did she start allowing personal history to slip into a conversation she was having with a man she’d met a few hours ago? Especially a man she had no reason to trust.
She was still trying to breathe through the anger bubbling up inside her when Zane leaned forward and rested his right hand on top of her left. His was much bigger than hers. Warm and strong, too. Alyssa almost shook off the contact, but then his gaze caught hers and she stopped herself. Those eyes of his made it damn near impossible to think.
“I’m sorry I second-guessed you,” he said. “I’ve had people do that a few times and never thought much of it. You were in an impossible situation. If you stopped those guys and had them arrested, Stefan would have hired some fancy lawyers to get them out within a few hours. They’d never tell you anything about those other girls, and worse, Stefan would know the FBI was looking at him. It was a no-win. You had to act on your feet and make the call. You did what you had to do. I get it.”
Alyssa had no idea why she cared what a SWAT cop from Dallas thought, but for whatever reason, she did. “Thanks.”
Amy chose that moment to stop by the table with the checks. Zane pulled his hand away from hers, giving Alyssa a chance to get her bearings back. By the time she did, she realized he’d grabbed her bill and was slipping a couple twenties into the cheap plastic folder to cover everything.
“You don’t need to do that,” she said, reaching across the table.
