“Oh, stop, Tommy. I haven’t gotten that far. You’re going to spoil it for me.” Helen Russell’s laugh didn’t reach her eyes as she slapped her husband’s arm. There’d been years Callen remembered when that hadn’t been the case, but their monthly family book club—and time—had started bringing the smile he remembered back. Cieron was the only one who didn’t show, didn’t call, didn’t seem to want anything to do with the family.
Leaving Callen to shoulder the weight alone.
“I’m just teasing.” His dad leaned in and planted a kiss on his mom’s forehead. “The killer is—”
“Utter one more syllable and you’re sleeping on the couch tonight.” Turned out, his mother’s “mom voice,” as she liked to call it, was just as effective on a doting husband, shutting Tommy Russell up in an instant.
Callen couldn’t stop the laugh from charging up his throat. Moments like this had made more of an appearance over the past few months. Where he’d gotten glimpses of life before Lauren had gone missing. More were on the horizon each week he checked in, but they would never outshine the darkness as long as his sister’s case remained open. Until then, he’d protect the ones left with everything he had.
“How’s your week, honey? Anything exciting going on in Zion?” His mother clapped both hands together, her lipsticked mouth parting. “Oh, that reminds me, did Maeve get ahold of you? I keep forgetting to ask.”
“Maeve?” Callen didn’t understand. His hand gripped the sides of the phone until his case protested. “What are you talking about? You’ve been talking with Maeve?”
“Well, we’ve stayed in touch since you broke up. I told you that. She calls every couple of weeks to check on us, and she sent us that framed photo of you, Cieron and Lauren for Christmas last year. You know, the one on the bookcase.
“Last time I talked to her, she was headed to Zion. I told her to call you.”
“You’ve stayed in touch with my ex.” The words made sense as they left his mouth, but Callen couldn’t wrap his head around the meaning. His next exhale faltered. He remembered the photo. It’d been taken the same year he’d gifted Lauren, Maeve and his mom the Tasers. Maeve had been the one to take it. For once, all three Russell children in the same house, and his mom had wanted an updated photo to replace the one of them as teens almost two decades prior, but he hadn’t thought much about how it’d shown up on the bookcase. “For a year.”
“You say that like she stopped existing after you broke up with her.” The mom voice was back, directed at him, and Callen couldn’t stop every nerve ending in his body screaming for him to hang up before he dug his own grave. “Do I have to remind you, Maeve has been part of this family since she was seventeen years old? She isn’t just Lauren’s best friend. She’s like another daughter to me. She was going to be my daughter after you got married, and she’s done nothing but try to make things right since Lauren disappeared. If it weren’t for her, your father and I wouldn’t be able to laugh with you today.”
Tommy Russell lost the playfulness in his expression. “She made a mistake, boy. We know that, she knows that. But we’ve forgiven her. You have no idea how bad things got after you broke off the engagement. She didn’t have anyone.”
“Wait. Back up. You said you talked with her a couple weeks ago, and she told you she was coming to Zion?” Callen couldn’t think straight. Maeve had been talking with his parents, and they’d forgiven her? How bad had things gotten for his parents to get to that point? Heat exploded from that hollow place in his chest. None of this made sense. How had Maeve known to come to Zion before Iliana Meyer had disappeared?
His mom nodded, strands of her white hair sliding free from one shoulder. “Yes. She said she needed to start at the beginning.”
He didn’t understand. Maeve had been in Springdale and Zion for weeks rather than just the past two days? Why hadn’t she told him? Why come here at all? It couldn’t have been to look into Iliana Meyer’s disappearance. The forensic analyst’s vehicle hadn’t been found until six days ago. Callen ran through everything, every conversation, every move made on Maeve’s part since showing up at the scene of the skeletal remains yesterday morning. “The beginning of what?”
“Of Lauren’s case. Didn’t she tell you?” Helen Russell finally centered herself on the screen. “She’s still looking into your sister’s disappearance.”
Chapter Ten
The federal database was lying.
Maeve scoured the report for the hundredth time, but the information printed on the single sheet of paper hadn’t changed. She’d gotten two clean fingerprints off the Taser’s casing, with a few more partials that’d been smudged or eroded by weather, wildlife or location. A one hundred percent match.
It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. But no matter how many times she blinked, the data didn’t lie.
A knock sounded at the room’s only door, racketing her heart rate higher. She’d hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the handle, and the housekeepers had already been through when they’d gotten the room ready. Who else knew she was here?
Maeve slipped the fingerprint results under her laptop. She’d lucked out when she stopped by the motel last night after processing the fingerprints in the medical examiner’s office: One room available. She’d snatched it up without even asking the nightly rate, not ready to face Callen after what had happened last night.
That kiss. She’d thought about it all damn day when her brain wasn’t trying to convince Dr. Yarrow she wasn’t some random stranger off the street trying to get access to his morgue. Her credentials helped, but there’d still been a few suspicious looks thrown her way as she’d dusted the Taser on the small space of countertop he’d granted her. Ugh. Why did Callen have to kiss her? She’d gone an entire year without remembering what hismouth had felt like on hers, and he’d blown it up in one single night.
Furnished with a queen-size bed, a dresser, two nightstands, a desk and a bathroom, the room provided space for her to work and get her head on straight. Two-for-one special. All the floral prints on the curtains, wallpaper and bedding were beginning to give her a headache, though.
Another knock sounded, and she crossed the small distance from the desk. Maeve wrenched open the heavy door. “What about Do Not Disturb do you not under—”
Crap.
Her brain short-circuited at the sight of the man staring down at her. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”
“We need to talk.” Callen crossed the threshold, and maybe a part of her had let him. While he was definitely not an opponent she’d want to face in the ring or the field, between his foundational training and the FBI’s close-quarters combat instruction, she could hold her own.
Maeve closed the door behind him, and the space she’d appreciated a few minutes ago suddenly seemed so much smaller with him taking up a big portion of it. “All right. Start by answering my question. How did you know I was here?”
“Where else would you have gone?” Callen surveyed the room, most likely memorizing the layout like he’d taught her when she was a seventeen-year-old, paranoid her father’s killer would come back for her. He took a step toward her open laptop. “Would’ve appreciated a heads-up, though. I wouldn’t have felt so bad about eating your sweet and sour pork from last night.”
