Elijah shook his head. “I just can’t, Paul.”
Paul sighed heavily, the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Okay, well, I gotta go make this call. Let me know if you think of anything, and I’ll call you as soon as I get back.”
“Thanks for calling me first,” Elijah said, feeling the familiar dread in his gut.
“No problem.” Paul was about to hang up when he thought of something. “Hey, one last thing. The kid said something else, let me grab my pad, one second.” The line was muffled as Paul rooted in his pocket for his pad. Elijah waited patiently, grateful that his friend trusted him so implicitly. Once the formalities had been gone through, and his own ass secured, Paul had really pulled through for him. And Elijah was grateful.
“Here it is.” Paul came back to the cell. “Kid said that she freaked out when he gave her room number six. Does it mean anything to you?”
Elijah thought about for a moment, but the number meant nothing to him. “No. Did she stay in that room?” Elijah asked, his brows furrowing in confusion.
“No, she stayed in room twelve. Said she freaked over another number too, but he couldn’t remember which one. Look, I’ve got to go. Call me if you think of anything. I’d really like to find Delores and help her, buddy.”
“Thanks, Paul. She needs all the help she can get right now,” Elijah agreed.
Paul hung up. Elijah placed his cell phone down on the kitchen counter and picked up his coffee mug. He stared out into his unruly backyard and shook his head. He felt helpless to this whole thing, and the more he dug the more complicated things seemed to get. Instead of peeling back the layers, he only seemed to be adding to them.
Elijah strode into his lounge and settled himself back at the table where he’d fallen asleep last night. He’d made a lot of notes, but there was something that didn’t connect everything together. No matter how he tried to connect those dots, they wouldn’t. He added the new information to his notes, having no clue why she would freak out over the room number six, but be okay with number twelve. But he also knew that it would be important even to Delores’s fractured mind.
The woman was an enigma to him, and he often wondered if that was one of the things that made him desire her so much. He could never work out what was going on in her head. She lived in the here and now, because her own words dictated that she did so. She’d told him, on more than one occasion, that she didn’t know where her head would be from one day to the next. She’d looked him in the eye and told him that she had watched her life drift by for so many years, thinking that she could never be happy, that perhaps she wasn’t worthy of happiness, but now, after meeting Elijah, she knew that she did.
And not only did she believe she deserved it, she wanted it, fiercely.
And then she’d started to fall apart. Day by day, her mind was crumbling around her, and he’d been powerless to stop it.
Elijah finished off his coffee in four mouthfuls and put down the mug, feeling alert but no better off than he had been five minutes ago. He knew that deep down he should be relieved. She was alive, or at least she had been two days ago. But that wasn’t something to take lightly, because the dread that had been building in his gut since he’d driven away from her house had told him that something bad had happened to her.
But now she’d been seen.
She was alive.
So why, he wondered, had Michael Stanton played the cloak and dagger card? Why name him and produce the notes that he and Delores had shared? Surely that would only embarrass him and his family, knowing that his wife was cheating on him.
None of it made any sense. The more Elijah thought about it, the more confused he became. Elijah leaned forwards, his elbows resting on the table as he stared at the facts in front of him, the loose strands of Delores slipping through his fingers like sand.
Whatever had happened to her, he was partly to blame. He knew this. And it was a lot of where his guilt came from. He’d tried to help her. He’d wanted to help her more than anything else in the world. He’d fallen in love with her after all. So deeply in love with her that he wasn’t sure where she began and he ended. But his own jealousy had been an issue.
He loved Delores with everything he had. With everything he was. He was a better man when he was with her. He was more of a man when he was with her. But he’d also discovered a different man inside of himself. One that he’d never known before. A man who, just like his father, could be obsessive. One that was jealous, to the point of being almost as bad as Michael Stanton when it came to his obsession with Delores.
Had that driven her away? He wondered.
Had Delores run away, not to just get away from her husband, but to get away from Elijah too?
It was unsettling to think, that love could bring out both the man and the monster.
Chapter Twenty-One
Elijah
Elijah was met by Paul outside the station.
Paul had taken a short flight back to town, instead of driving for a full day. The two men briefly shook hands, which was much more formal than was usual for them. But then, this situation was more formal than either man had needed to work in before. The case was being closed on Delores, under her husband’s wishes, and Paul had no choice but to comply.
There was nothing to suggest that any harm had come to Delores, and all facts led to Delores being alive and well. Until further evidence was provided proving otherwise, the case was closed. At least as far as her husband was concerned.
“Any new leads?” Elijah asked as the two men walked through the busy police station.
Paul shook his head. “No, but I kept the feelers out for her, just in case.”
