“Read. Rest.”
“You’re near the beach. Can we go for walks?”
“No.”
“Not even—”
“No,” he repeated, quieter this time.
She frowned. “How are you supposed to catch him if the bait isn’t out there?”
His gaze snapped to hers. “You’re not luring anyone.”
“It could take forever.”
“Forever while you’re safe,” he said evenly, “sounds like the right plan to me.”
She didn’t answer that.
He brought over two plates of crispy bacon, perfect eggs over medium, and buttered toast. They ate in silence. Afterward, she insisted on doing the dishes.
“You cooked. I clean. That’s fair,” she said before he could say no again.
He allowed it, mostly because an alarm sounded. He checked his phone. “That’s Alec here with your things.”
Leland let him in, and she watched as Alec hauled in a suitcase the size of a small planet. Julia stared at it. That much space wasn’t for an overnight. Or a long weekend. It was what you packed when you didn’t know when you’d be home again.
Her stomach dropped. This wasn’t a temporary inconvenience. She was looking at a long, grinding confinement.
Alec was alone, which was disappointing. She would have liked to see Emily.
“Don’t worry,” Alec said as he set the case down inside the bedroom door. “Em packed it, not me.”
“She couldn’t come with you?”
“Sorry. In protective custody, we try to keep traffic to a minimum.”
They talked about the investigation, which was stalled with no new leads—even more discouraging. Callan had gone over all the surveillance data, and there was no sign of the killer.
“It’s driving him nuts,” Alec said. “The guy was like a ghost, and he can’t figure out how.”
The talk turned to other cases and staffing, and Julia got bored. She wandered to the window to look out, jumping out of her skin when the alarm shrieked.
“Like I told you,” Leland said as he hit the reset. “Stay away from the doors and windows. The sensitivity is on full.”
“Sorry,” she muttered. “I’ll just go change.”
Alone in the bedroom, she sank onto the bed, unsure how she would ever survive this.
She showered before she unpacked. Leland had tons of closet space and two empty drawers. That passed an entire hour of the day. She’d heard Alec leave a while ago but wasn’t ready to join Leland in the living room for more silence or small talk. So she wandered around his room, checking out his books, mostly crime-solving nonfiction, and flipped through a police journal. Neither interested her. The framed photo on his dresser stopped her cold, however.
A younger Leland smiling—actually smiling—with a woman wrapped in his arms. She had dark hair with a bright smile. Her hand rested on his chest, a diamond ring catching the light.
Her gaze swept the room for a wedding picture. But the one she held was the only photo she saw. Julia stared down at it, a million questions whirling in her mind. Number one: what happened to her?
Whatever came after, they looked happy that day. If it was a breakup, why keep the picture on display all these years later? It had to have been something much worse.
There was a knock on the door. Julia quickly replaced the frame exactly where she had found it.
