Then one morning he showed up at her house to pick her up for school, but it was empty.
Not just quiet—empty.
Completely empty.
No furniture. No pictures. No dishes in the sink or curtains covering the windows. Just a patch of dead grass where her car, which her father had just bought her for her sixteenth birthday, used to sit and a mailbox hanging open like someone had slammed it shut too fast.
He had gone to the police to file a missing persons report, but they said families move all the time and there was nothing they could do about it. That didn’t stop him from searching, however. He called her friends, her cousins, who were just as shocked as he was that the entire family was gone, and even visited her pastor, who said he’d pray for the family but that he had no answers for him. The only answer he ever got was that they were gone, and no one knew why they had left or where they had gone. Her extended family couldn’t even get a hold of them. It was like the entire family had just… vanished.
And now?
Now she was there at the casino? The same casino where he had a job?
What the hell?
His phone rang. Blaze. He swiped the screen to answer it, his heart pounding so hard he thought it would pound right out of his chest.
“What did you find?”
“Well, that’s just it,” Blaze said. “There was nothing to find. At least nothing after her sophomore year.”
He felt his brow furrow. “Come again?”
“Just what I said. I found nothing. There is no Julia Moretti anywhere after the year you gave me. At least not yours. There’s also no Vincent or Carmela.”
“What are you talking about? There has to be. I grew up with the girl, for crying out loud.”
“Be that as it may, she doesn’t exist now. Not in any records from the past fifteen years. I found an old yearbook photo and ran it through facial rec, allowing for the passing of years and her getting older, and came up empty. There’s no DMV, no voter registration, no credit history, nada. And before you worry and ask, there’s no death certificate anywhere either. She’s not dead, just gone.”
“Jesus.”
“Elvis, I don’t know what to tell you. If you actually saw her, then someone scrubbed her clean. Witness Protection maybe? Some deep cover shit? No, that wouldn’t explain her family’s disappearance. WIT-SEC, definitely. Unless, of course, her family was big-time criminals. I don’t know, to be honest, but it’s all I can come up with at the moment. I’ll keep digging though.”
He sighed, running a hand over his face. “Thanks, Blaze. I appreciate it.”
He ended the call, whispering another “Thanks,” even though it felt like saying thank you for a knife in the gut. He struggled to think of some reason her family would have gone into Witness Protection back then, but nothing came to mind—no major news story, no scandal, nothing. Still, he was a kid back then and didn’t really pay attention to the news, so doubted he’d even really know. However, it made no sense.
His hands felt icy, and he had no idea when that had happened.
“Elvis?”
He turned, noticing Hawk leaning against a wall a few feet away, watching him with those stormy gray eyes that always came across as unreadable. He held a quiet patience that made him a damn excellent tracker, never pushing, always watching. “Briefing’s in five. We need to scoot.”
Elvis gave a curt nod. “Yeah. Right behind you.”
But his head wasn’t in the meeting. It was barely in the casino.
When he entered the small room, sharp suits and tighter smiles huddled around the conference table. Levi and his team stood off to one side, going over tactics with the casino surveillance team. Hawk crossed the room to join them, and Elvis knew he should do the same thing, getting zeroed in on the task ahead, taking notes and preparing for his role in the night’s activities. Yeah. That’s what he should have been doing.
However, as soon as he stepped into the room, he saw her, and then he saw nothing else.
She stood there, talking with the hotel team like she belonged and always had, like she wasn’t a ghost chewing at the edges of his memory. She was in a sleek navy blouse and black slacks, with a tablet in hand like it was her lifeline. Her hair was longer than he remembered, darker even, because she had definitely been a blonde. She seemed more mature, but then again, the last time he saw her she was only sixteen. There was no hesitation in her movements, and no flicker of recognition in her gaze as it passed over him.
But he knew.
God help him, he knew.
She stood across the room, casually reviewing something with the head of hotel security, nodding, her mouth moving with practiced confidence. There was no doubt she knew what she was talking about, but why was she even there? What was her role, and why hadn’t Levi listed her involvement in the night’s security?
