Please don’t say she’s dead.Nate didn’t think he could take hearing that.
“She’s what, Sarah?” Kole prompted, his hand cupping the emotional woman’s cheek. “Baby, talk to me.”
“Gracie’s missing,” Jake answered for her.
“Missing?” Nate and Kole both spoke in unison. Nate’s stomach fell to his feet.
“What’s going on?” Gabe asked as he and the others made their way over to them.
“What do you mean, she’s missing?” Nate directed his question to Jake.
“Who’s missing?” Matt asked, trying to catch up on the conversation.
“I took Gracie home the day your team left.” Sarah was speaking to Kole, but everyone around her listened closely. Especially Nate.
“I stayed with her for a while, to make sure she was okay. After a few hours, she convinced me she was fine and just needed some time to process everything. So, I left and…” Sarah’s face crumbled, and Kole took her into his arms.
“Shhh. It’s okay, baby.” He rubbed her back. “We’ll find her. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Hating the look on Jake’s face, Nate asked, “What do we know?”
“Like Sarah said, she took Gracie home Monday after she learned about Craig Wyatt’s death. Security cameras in the parking lot at Gracie’s apartment complex show her leaving again about fifteen minutes after Sarah left. We followed her using traffic cam footage, which led us back to our office.”
“She went back to work?”
Sarah lifted her head from Kole’s chest to answer Nate’s question. “She went back to R.I.S.C., but I didn’t see her. I was in my office from the time I got back to the firm until I left at six. If I’d just seen her.” Her eyes lifted to Kole’s “If I’d known she was there, then maybe—”
“No, Sarah.” Kole shook his head. “Don’t do that to yourself.”
“Office security shows her entering at two thirty-three,” Jake continued. “She stayed for almost two hours while the guy from the phone company fixed our intercom system, then drove back home. That’s the last time anyone saw her.”
“That explains why she went back to work,” Gabe mused. “She must have forgotten to call and cancel the appointment.”
“Did you check out the guy the phone company sent?” Nate asked desperately. “Maybe he…did something to her.” Christ, he hated to even go there. The idea that Gracie had been hurt in any way gutted him.
“He’s clean,” Jake broke through Nate’s thoughts. “Cameras show him leaving alone. His boss, along with traffic cams and computer records, confirm he went straight from our office to another job on the other side of the city. That company backed up his claim, as well. He’s not involved.”
Still holding his fiancée close, Kole asked Jake, “When did you first realize she was missing?”
“When she didn’t show up for work on Tuesday. I called her, but there was no answer. I went down and talked to Sarah, but she hadn’t heard from Gracie since leaving her apartment the day before.”
“I went over to her place to check on her,” Sarah spoke up.
“And?” Nate prompted, feeling like he was going to implode.
“Her apartment had been broken into.” Sarah swiped at a new tear. “The whole place was trashed.”
Sonofabitch.
The others cursed under their breaths, but Nate forced himself to remain focused. He needed to find out all he could.
“What did you do then?”
“I called Jake. He told me to get back into my car and wait for him there.”
“You did good, baby.” Kole kissed the top of Sarah’s head. “That was the exact right thing to do.”
Nate looked at Jake. “What did you find at her apartment?”
