"There's something else I have to ask you, Zara." I keep my voice low. "A barmaid I trust phoned me yesterday. She told me she saw Amber going into a strip club three weeks before she disappeared. The club is owned by a man named Kozlov. Have you ever heard Amber mention him?"
Zara's brow furrows. She takes a breath, thinks about it properly, then shakes her head slowly.
"No. I've never heard the name." She pauses, twisting a loose thread on her sleeve between her fingers. "And Amber wouldn't have gone there willingly. There’s no way. She knows she’d get photographed. She barely even drinks anymore."
I suspected as much.
"That's what I needed to know."
She looks up, and her eyes have gone glassy. "Is he the one who has her?"
"I don't know. I don't know anything yet." I take her hand in mine. "I'm following the lead, but it’s too early to tell where it will go."
She nods, jaw set, and squeezes my fingers. "Find her, Lisa."
"I'm trying. I promise, I’m trying." I give her a tight smile. "As long as you're safe," I tell her, and I mean it. "But if anything changes, if you feel like you're in danger or need my help for any reason at all, you call me."
Zara nods and squeezes my hand before walking me back down the hallway. Her hand finds Ben's the second she steps into the living room, and it closes around hers like he hasn't relaxed the entire time she's been out of his sight.
Arms folded, Beau is leaning against the kitchen counter, waiting.
"What am I supposed to put in my case file?" I ask, wanting him to sweat for a little longer.
He considers this for a moment, his expression unreadable. "Write that Zara Reeves has now moved in with her boyfriend following the break-in at her apartment and that while the burglary is unsolved, you're convinced it's unconnected to her sister's case."
The confidence in his voice is unsettling.
"You seem very sure about that."
He looks me dead in the eye, and my knees wobble a little at the authority in his deep voice. "Because I am."
"Why?"
Beau looks at me, and for a second, I think he's going to give me a straight answer, like he’s scared him off, or that he knows who the guy is and will make his life hell if he bothers Zara again, but no. Instead, the cocky smirk makes another appearance as he pushes away from the countertop.
"Because I'm good at my job."
There's nowhere to go with that. I look at him for a long moment, at his brothers arranged around the room with their nothing-to-see-here expressions, and at Zara tucked against Ben's side like she's been there for years, and I decide I'm done.
"Right. Thanks for the coffee I wasn't offered."
"Anytime, Detective." His mouth tugs at the corner like he's enjoying himself.
I hug Zara at the door. She hugs me back, harder than she did when I first walked in, and whispers, "Thank you for coming all this way."
Ben shakes my hand, then I'm out on the porch with the smell of pine and woodsmoke in my hair as the door closes behind me.
I pause at the top of the steps and take another long look at the destroyed yard. The paw prints. The splintered railing. The dark stains on the boards under my feet. None of it makes sense, and I don't think it's going to any time soon.
Behind me, the door opens.
Beau steps out without a word. He sits down on the top step, stretches his legs out in front of him with one ankle crossed over the other, then pats the spot beside him and waits.
I should keep walking, get in my car and drive back down that mountain and put all of this behind me until tomorrow.
Instead, drawn to him like a magnet, I sit down next to him.
The step is narrow enough that our thighs touch. He doesn't shift away, and neither do I. We sit like that for a while, looking at the wrecked yard and the line of trees beyond. The wind moves through the pines. Somewhere down the slope, a bird I can't name is making the same three notes, over and over.
