Page 7 of Keeping Collette

And he was about to shatter that fragile thread that had begun to grow between them during the short journey from the building’s foyer to the room they were standing in.

“Is it possible she didn’t tell you everything? That this spot,” Deal pointed to it on the screen, “is where a new friend lives? Maybe a boyfriend she didn’t want you to know about yet, and this was where they agreed to meet and hang out?”

He waited for the fire. For her to turn around and blast him for talking out of his ass. Instead, her shoulders slumped, and she faced him, her brown eyes dull. The sadness in them hitting him low in the belly. “I don’t know anything anymore. Maybe everyone’s right and I’m wrong. Maybe she was into drugs. Maybe,” she pressed her finger hard against the green dot, “this was where she met her dealer. Maybe she turned her phone off and left it there so she couldn’t be found.”

“No!” He practically shouted the word. “You don’t lose faith. You know your sister better than us.”

“Do I?” she threw back. “I’m beginning to think I have rose colored vision when it comes to Courtney. I believed that she was different to our parents. I wanted to believe it. Now, I don’t know.” She laughed, harshly. “Perhaps she wanted to get so far away from me because I was stifling her.”

Deal glanced over to Cass and Irish to gauge their reaction to Collette’s outburst. His gut was telling him Collette’s belief in her sister was true. What she was saying now was due to grief, fear, and anger all mixed together.

His friends were thinking the same, he could see the sympathy in their eyes.

He went over to where she still stood staring at the screen, her arms hanging limply by her sides. Her head lowered to her chest.

“Collette,” he murmured, and gently touched her shoulder. She didn’t flinch like he expected her to. He inched a fraction closer, knowing that whatever he said next, he had to tread carefully. It took him a second to collate his thoughts. “All of that might be right, but deep down you know it’s not. You know your sister better than anyone. She’s more like you than your parents.”

“How would you know? You’ve never met her. Heck a couple of hours ago, you even thought my sister could be doing any one of the things I just listed.”

His about-face would shock anyone, but he’d had time to think, and his reaction toward her had been all wrong from the start. There was no point going into it now with her because there were more important things to discuss. “You’re right, I haven’t, but I trust you. If there was even the most miniscule doubt within you that your sister could be any of those things, you wouldn’t be trying this hard. You’d know that she’d fallen into the clutches of drugs, like your parents. You would’ve seen the signs. You know addiction.”

Her shoulders lifted on a deep sigh. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

Deal got that. She’d been living and breathing this situation for far longer than he had. The burden she had to be carrying was massive, and she’d been doing it alone because no one had listened to her. “You’re not alone now,” he said. “You’ve got us, and we will get to the bottom of her disappearance.”

He could’ve easily given her a false promise that they would find her happy and healthy, but he’d seen way too much as both a Navy SEAL and the work he’d done since he’d joined Alliez to do that to her.

As much as he wanted to believe Courtney was alive and well somewhere, the reality of it was with every passing minute, the chances of that coming true was dwindling.

“I’ve got something,” Cass said in a low voice, her attention drifting to where Collette had fallen asleep on the couch in her office.

They’d moved from the conference room hours ago. Cass needed all her computer screens to be able to work on Courtney’s possible location. There were four screens going at once, and Deal had no idea how she kept up with it all, but she did.

He pushed aside Courtney’s phone records he’d been going through—for the third time. The numbers melded together, which required a couple of passes before he could happily put them aside and say there was nothing out of the ordinary with them. “What have you got?” he asked, as he stood and cracked his back and neck, the popping sounds indicating how long he’d been crouched over the papers.

“I don’t think you’re going to like it.” Cass took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes, tiredly. Irish scooted his chair closer and pressed a kiss against her temple. The closeness of the couple struck something inside of Deal, and he pushed it away, not ready to examine what it was all about. Right this moment, he had to concentrate on what Cass had found and why she thought he wouldn’t like it.

He glanced again over to Collette. She was still sleeping, but if it was bad news, he would be the one to wake her and tell her. “It’s not like we haven’t seen or heard bad shit before.”

Cass nodded. “You’re right, but this could change the whole way we look at Courtney’s disappearance.”

Now he was intrigued. “How so?”

She tapped at her keyboard and pulled up a map—he recognized it as the pings from Courtney’s phone. A second later, it changed and showed about eight purple dots, spread out over about a circular three-mile radius. “These represent locations where bodies have been found over the last two years.”

They’d been at this for a few hours, so Deal’s brain was having trouble connecting the dots—literally—between why Cass was showing him where bodies had been found and Courtney’s location. “You’re going to have to elaborate.”

“Maybe this will help.”

Once again, the screen changed seconds after Cass fingers flew over the keyboard. A grouping of yellow dots all centered around the green dot where Courtney’s phone had last pinged, and Deal’s stomach dropped as it all fell into place. “They all disappeared from the same spot.”

“Yes. Over a five-year period from what I could tell. There are months of gaps between people going missing from my initial search. I’ll need to delve deeper to see if I can find a pattern.”

“Right. So you’re saying some of those missing people were killed.”

“It appears so,” Cass said quietly. “The first body turned up two years ago.

Deal scraped a hand down his face, not liking what was being suggested. “Are you saying, on top of what appears to be a Bermuda Triangle for disappearances, which can only mean they were possible victims of a trafficker, but we may also have a serial killer in Los Angeles? And if so, why hasn’t there been any coverage on the news about it?”