“What the hell does that mean?” His voice sharpened. “Just tell me the truth. Are these two cases connected or not?”
She sighed, wanting to commiserate but needing a professional distance from him at the same time. “I don’t know, Callen. It’s too early to tell, but there are some similarities.” Maeve extracted her laptop from her overnight bag, set it on the desk and brought it to life. Turning the screen to face him across the desk, she opened a photo of the latest victim. “Do you recognize her? Did Lauren ever mention the name Iliana Meyer before she disappeared?”
“No.” Callen shook his head, scrubbing one hand down his face as he sat back in his seat. Out of relief he hadn’t recognized the victim or something else, she didn’t know. “Who is she?”
“Iliana gave testimony in court in my first serial case. She worked as a forensic analyst back in Salt Lake. She was in charge of analyzing and processing trace evidence found at one of the crime scenes three years ago.” Maeve had been scared out of her mind to be brought onto such a monumental investigation, but closing that case had ignited her passion for working the next serial crime. Then the next. It’d gotten to a point she’d racked up so many closed cases—some cold for years—that she’d gained the attention of her superiors and been awarded recognition from the director of the FBI himself.
Callen had been so proud of her then—the whole Russell family, really. They’d taken her out to dinner to celebrate, and Callen… He’d proposed that night. Right in front of Lauren, hisbrother and their parents. Everyone had been so happy for them, she could still feel the ache in her cheeks from smiling so hard. That night had been the first time she realized she’d officially get to be part of the family. No longer an outsider begging for scraps of affection. Though the Russells had never made her feel less than, even knowing where she’d come from. Who her parents had been. After that, she’d done everything in her power to become the go-to investigator her office needed at both Lauren’s and Callen’s encouragement. She’d come to need their approval and love and acceptance.
Right up until her world had gone up in flames.
“Iliana was reported missing five days ago by her boyfriend. Her phone last pinged off Springdale’s cell tower, but the boyfriend can’t tell me what she was doing so far from home. Iliana wasn’t the kind of person to be impulsive. She ordered the same thing at the same coffee shop every day, showed up for work at the same time, followed a routine when she got home. An impromptu trip to Zion doesn’t fit her profile. She doesn’t have any debts, her rent is paid up-to-date and she volunteers at the animal shelter near her home on the weekends.” Maeve cleared her throat, along with the memories that just didn’t want to let go. “The serial case we worked together spanned over a year with more than five victims. Iliana’s work and her testimony was the linchpin that got us a conviction.”
“And the suspect?” Callen’s gaze told her he wanted the easy answer, the one that would point him in a direction and promised to burn the world down on the way there.
“I’ve already looked into it and the rest of her cases, especially the most recent ones.” She tossed a pen onto the surface of the desk. “He’s still serving back-to-back sentences for the five victims he butchered. If he has any connection to Iliana’s disappearance, he’s not making it easy, and nothing has thrown up any red flags from her recent cases.”
“I’m going to need a name.” The threat of violence blazed in Callen’s eyes. This was the private security operative who’d uncovered her past without judgment, who’d collaborated with police to track down her father’s killer so she didn’t have to, and who’d promised to protect her from every threat—physical and emotional—when he’d gotten down on one knee and asked her to spend the rest of her life with him. He probably hadn’t known he would be the biggest threat to her back then. Or that he had the ability to finish breaking her now.
“It won’t change anything.” She wanted it to. So much. But this was a dead end they would only be wasting time pursuing. “The FBI has gone through his entire life with a fine-tooth comb. While there’s a small chance he wanted revenge on Iliana for her part in sending him to prison, no one else from the investigation has been targeted, and there’s nothing to tie him to Lauren. I’ve already checked.”
The muscles in his forearms hardened as he leaned his elbows onto his knees, and Maeve couldn’t look away. He’d always been handsome, but now? She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Couldn’t help but wonder whether those arms were as strong as they looked, wonder what it might feel like if she ever had the chance to feel them around her again. “Then why don’t you tell me where we start.”
The fantasy ended.
“‘We’?” He had to be kidding. Informing him about the investigation that’d brought her to Zion was one thing. A part of her felt as though she owed him that much to fix the cracks between them. But bringing him into it was another risk entirely. There were too many variables, some she couldn’t even account for right now. Not to mention he wasn’t a trained investigator. He had no experience in crime scenes or evidence or protocol in interviewing witnesses and interrogating suspects. “I agreed to share the information I have on a possibleconnection to Lauren’s disappearance. Not bring you in. The park’s law enforcement division and Springdale PD are trained to run an investigation like this. You’re not.”
His answer was more growl than human. “You can’t honestly expect me to sit back and let you run this investigation into the ground all over again.”
Maeve couldn’t stop herself from flinching, as though he’d slapped her, and she hated that she’d given him that much. And there it was. The blame she couldn’t move past. Because he wouldn’t let her. His parents had called in those weeks after Callen had ended things. His brother had sent messages to make sure she was okay, to let her know he was there for her. Callen’s family forgave her, but he couldn’t. Wouldn’t. She saw that now. It didn’t matter if Lauren walked right through that door behind him, she couldn’t fix them. She’d promised herself to keep things professional when she’d crossed the border into Zion, but he just wouldn’t let it go. He refused to see anything but his grief. Tears she hadn’t let fall in months burned in her eyes. “Is this how it’s always going to be between us? Is what we had really so far gone we can’t even be professional with each other? I’m a good agent, Callen. You know that.”
Her heart thundered in the silence in that three feet of distance between them, waiting for him to finally make the killing blow.
And he did. “Does taking a case that’s possibly connected to my sister’s disappearance seem professional to you or what a good agent might do, Agent Perry?”
She didn’t have an answer for that, and Maeve had the feeling he wasn’t really looking for one. He’d just wanted to make a point, and maybe he was right. Maybe she shouldn’t be here, but her connection between both victims—personal and professional—held more value than risk in her mind.
Callen stood, towering over her. She’d always had to crane her neck back to look up at him, and she’d loved it. His size, his ability to sweep her over his shoulder and toss her around. But this wasn’t the man she’d known. A stranger stood in his place. “What we had ended when you lost the one thing that could’ve helped bring Lauren home.”
The notebook. Lauren’s notebook. It’d been left behind in her vehicle the day of her disappearance. She’d carried it with her everywhere, made notes and sketched out ideas in her pursuit of bringing modern development to the sleepy little tourist town on the other side of the park’s entrance. And it’d vanished from Maeve’s custody. There in its evidence packaging on her kitchen table one minute and gone the next, with no signs of a break-in at the hotel room she’d been staying. That single event had kicked off a series of ripples that led her to lose everything and everyone she’d ever cared about.
“You owe me this, Maeve.” His voice had softened, providing her the barest glimpse of Lauren’s brother. Not the former security expert who’d walked away from the hugely successful company he’d built. Not the ranger who’d fought her on the trail earlier. Just Callen. The man who’d caught Maeve’s attention the second she’d stepped into the Russells’ house that first time after school as a seventeen-year-old. Who’d given in to his sister’s pleas to protect them from invisible killers when the horror movies they rented got to be too much in the middle of the night. Who’d ignored her obvious crush on him and watched her date poor substitutes for years until asking her out for himself. Who’d brought her down to the police station while the man who’d killed her dad was being processed. “Don’t put me on the sidelines. Not this time. Please.”
She’d missed that man. More than she wanted to admit. They’d spent years flirting, texting, laughing, crying, staying uplate to talk and find pleasure in each other, saying I love you. And now they didn’t talk.
But this case could change that.
Rolling her lips between her teeth, Maeve bit down. She shut off the urge to ask if his involvement would fix what she’d broken, but she didn’t have the guts. She’d brought down a handful of serial offenders and been on the wrong end of a gun too many times to count. But she couldn’t survive her heart breaking again. “We start where both of the victims were last seen. We start at the Virgin River.”
Chapter Five
He’d been here a dozen times. Maybe more.
The tire treads from Lauren’s vehicle were gone now. Police had given up protecting the scene where his sister’s car had been found within a couple of weeks of her disappearance. It hadn’t mattered much to him at the time. Forensic units had scoured the area for any sign of her and photographed the weeds, sand, river and rocks to within an inch of their lives by the time they were finished. Lauren had disappeared right before Thanksgiving last year, right before winter storms tore through with winds and snow to erase any trace of her presence. It hadn’t been practical to keep a unit here just to preserve evidence they couldn’t collect.
But there was nothing to suggest she’d ever been here now, and a part of Callen felt…empty as he tracked the white crests.
The river itself wasn’t deep, but it spanned at least twenty feet across at this point. The currents had slowed over the past few weeks as most of the rock bed drained, and the snow kept its hold on the cliffs rising up behind the opposite shore. Come spring, he wouldn’t even be able to see the smooth rocks that’d taken years of beatings. Nothing but dirt and weeds choked this side of the bank. The section of the river curled along the south side of Springdale but was never meant to act as a parking lot.
