“He might think he can outrun us-”
And he might be right. Thus, Bailey’s rush. “Do we know what name he bought the ticket under?”
“I didn’t ask. We can do it at the station.”
As Bailey navigated the morning traffic, I tried to stuff some food down. But after a few sudden stops and sharp turns, I gave up. I decided I didn’t want to be Exhibit A for a new definition of pancake makeup.
We headed straight for Bailey’s desk, and while she made the call to her contact I poked through her in-box. It looked like we already had a few reports from Dorian. Bailey fished them out and scanned them.
“Anything?” I asked.
“Dorian found no evidence of forced entry or struggle at the party house.”
That’s what we’d named Russell’s house in the hills. “We didn’t expect to. Did she recover any trace evidence to put Brian there?”
Bailey scanned the page again. “Doesn’t say in this report. But I know she lifted some prints.” Bailey flipped to the next page. “She notes plant debris on Hayley’s body that looks similar to some debris on the undercarriage of the car-”
“So he took her with him to the ransom drop in Fryman Canyon.”
Bailey nodded, then handed the reports to me. “We’ll need to find Brian’s prints on something official so we can give Dorian something to compare to whatever she lifted at the house.”
I scanned the reports, then ran out to the vending machine to get some water. And since I was wearing old jeans, a faded sweatshirt, and no makeup, I of course ran into Graden.
He, on the other hand, was a sight for very sore eyes. His crisply pressed lieutenant’s uniform showed off his lean, well-muscled frame, and his perennial light tan enhanced the wide cheekbones, sandy brown hair, and hazel eyes. Graden Hales was a man who very seldom got turned down. Surprisingly, that popularity had not turned him into an ass.
I told him about finding Hayley. “You’d think I’d know better than to get my hopes up by now.”
Graden shook his head, his expression sad but resigned. “You never will. No one does. Hope dims over time, but it never completely goes away.” He kept it light, but I heard the serious message underlying his words. It occurred to me that he might be referring to us.
The odds of getting back with Graden had been pretty slim. Even though I could now accept that my reaction to his Googling me wasn’t rational, the hell of being “that girl” in the small Northern California community after Romy’s abduction was still fresh enough to make me cringe. And so when my mother and I moved to Los Angeles, I kept my traumatic family history from everyone-including Bailey and Toni. My childhood therapist and now friend, Carla the Crone (as I’d called her), had always told me that my secretiveness was unhealthy and very likely stemmed from my irrational feelings of guilt for not having saved Romy. Though I recognized the truth in what she said, and in Bailey’s and Toni’s urgings that Graden shouldn’t be thrown out as untrustworthy, it had taken all I had to make myself give him another chance. And he knew it.
