Chapter 1
ONE
Present Day
Woodbridge, Virginia
This week was set up to be an anomaly. The heat advisories were off the charts, and Amanda’s nine-year-old daughter, Zoe, was staying with her grandparents.
It wasn’t often she and Zoe were apart, but the arrangement freed up some time for spending with friends or Carter Paulsen, who she’d been seeing for the last couple months.
She certainly had no intentions to sit around by herself, but her social plans were something she could decide after her shift ended.
Amanda sipped on the Hannah’s Diner coffee she picked up on the way to work. The place served the best brew she’d ever tasted. The downside was since more people had discovered the place, it took longer to get in and out in the morning.
Most of the paperwork from her last case with her partner, Trent Stenson, was tidied up, making today, and this week, a fresh slate.
Not that she’d admit as much out loud. She wasn’t superstitious, but in her experience just as soon as she declared work slow, all hell broke loose.
For her, working Homicide with the Prince William County Police Department, that meant bodies started piling up. She wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
Trent walked in at eight twenty-five, cutting it close to the start of their shift, which was eight thirty. “Good morning.”
“Yes, it is.” She was grinning, unable to push down the memories from the weekend of rolling in the sheets with Carter.
“I’m not even going to ask.” Trent headed for his cubicle. It faced hers, and the partition was just high enough to afford a modicum of privacy. They could see from the bridge of each other’s nose up.
“Well, I’m going to ask why you’re cutting it close.
” Why did I do that? She was bound to get some story about his girlfriend, Kelsey, pulling him back to bed.
Things were comfortable between Amanda and Trent, so why was she trying to upset that balance?
A part of her thought the more open they were about their relationships, the easier it would be to ignore their underlying attraction toward each other.
“You’re not the only one in a… healthy coupling.”
Amanda laughed. Sex was clearly screwing with his brain because he never spoke like that.
“Uh-huh.” Her cell phone rang, saving her from feeding this awkward conversation.
She caught the caller’s identity just as she picked up.
“Spencer?” He was her half-brother, the product of an affair her father had twenty-nine years ago.
His mother, as it turned out in the small world of Prince William County, was Emma Blair, a crime scene investigator Amanda often worked with.
“Amanda, I need your help.”
She didn’t know him well, but the tone of his voice alerted her that something was wrong. She sat up straighter. “What’s going on?”
“I can’t reach my girlfriend, and it’s not like her to ghost me. Please help me out here.” Spencer’s words ran together.
“Just slow down a bit. When did you see her or speak with her last?”
“I saw her on Wednesday.”
“Of last week?” It seemed straightforward, but details were crucial.
“Yeah.”
“And you had plans she missed or…?” Amanda was trying to figure out what alerted Spencer to a problem.
“We didn’t have any plans since Wednesday, and I was on call this weekend. I still tried calling and texting her, but no response. When I called her just now, her phone went straight to voicemail like it was off. It’s never off. Amanda, her phone is her job. She’s a real estate agent.”
Spencer was a firefighter for the Triangle Volunteer Fire Department, as one of its paid employees.
He should be skilled at keeping calm under stress, so what about this had him so worked up?
“All right, well, maybe her phone ran out of charge? It can happen.” She grabbed onto an innocent explanation to calm him down.
“I told you. Her phone is her livelihood. Unless it’s the middle of the night, that thing is on. Heck, it wouldn’t surprise me if the ringer was on even then. And this morning, I went to her house. She wasn’t home.”
“She could be at work already. Maybe she had an early showing. It is Monday morning.” Amanda struggled to see his side.
“She doesn’t go in on Monday mornings. I’d call her daughter to see if she has heard from Christine, but the kid’s not my biggest fan. It would be a shame to worry her if this turns out to be nothing.”
“It probably is nothing.”
“I thought you’d take me seriously.”
There was a prolonged silence, which Amanda struggled to fill. She wasn’t trying to be difficult. “You said Christine has a daughter. How old is she?”
“Nineteen.”
Spencer was only twenty-eight himself, so Amanda could understand why the daughter might resist the relationship.
“She’s not exactly a kid, but if her mother up and disappeared, I’d think she’d be concerned.
Wouldn’t she call you in that case? Or file a missing person report.
” For that matter, one could be in the system already, and Spencer didn’t know about it.
“Knowing Riley, she went off with friends for the weekend. Home is just a base point during the summer. The rest of the year, she’s in DC, where she goes to school.”
Amanda remembered what it was like to be that age.
Her biggest responsibility was getting to class, so during breaks from school, she was footloose.
Riley sounded like she lived her life much the same way.
If she had gone away for a few days, she wouldn’t necessarily be concerned about reaching her mother.
And there was the possibility Christine was avoiding Spencer.
“I don’t know what you expect me to do.”
“Amanda, can’t you track her down? Make sure she’s all right? I tried calling Christine’s boss this morning, but he’s not disclosing anything to me.”
Amanda could understand that he wouldn’t want to part with employee information.
She could just tell Spencer to file a missing person report and leave it at that, but she felt a touch of obligation toward him.
After all, he was her blood, if only by half.
“I can call him and see if he’ll talk to me. ”
“That would be great, Amanda. Thank you.”
“No promises. I’ll just see what I can do.” It was a slow morning so far, but that was subject to change. “What’s her full name?”
“Christine Lane. She’s forty-one, and don’t get into the age difference between us because I don’t want to hear it.”
She expected Christine to be older as soon as she heard Riley’s age.
But she wasn’t in any position to give him her opinion.
“While I look into this, you should get in here and file a missing person report.” Even as she gave this advice, she knew it was rare for adult disappearances to be investigated without obvious signs of foul play.
“Okay, I’ll do that.”
Before ending the call, Amanda got Christine’s number, home address, place of work, and her boss’s name. She brought up Christine Lane’s driver’s license photo. It showed a brunette with curly shoulder-length hair. She next checked to see if anyone had reported her missing. No one had.
Trent was standing in the opening of her cubicle. He flicked a finger toward Amanda’s phone, which she’d set on her desk. “What was that about? Everyone all right?”
“Too soon to say.” Amanda shared the information from the call.
“And that’s her?” Trent pointed at the photo on her monitor, and Amanda nodded. “It’s quiet around here. I’m sure Malone would be all right with us stepping out and looking into this.”
She appreciated his eagerness to help but wanted to try something first. “I’m going to try her phone myself.
” She did that and landed right in voicemail.
“Huh. All right, one more place to try. I’ll see if I can get anywhere with her workplace.
” She sounded far more confident than she felt.
Even with her badge to back her up, she didn’t expect better luck than Spencer had in talking with Christine’s employer.
“Makes sense.” Trent walked back to his cubicle while she found the number for the real estate company and put in the call.
“Good morning. Best Homes Realty. How can I help you today?” The woman who answered sounded young.
“I’d like to speak with Christine Lane, please.” Amanda figured it best to try this route first despite what Spencer had told her.
“Ms. Lane isn’t in the office this morning. I could take a message for her.”
“Then you are expecting her in later today?”
“At one. Can I tell her who called?”
“This is Detective Steele with the Prince William County PD. When did you last speak to Ms. Lane?”
“Let me get Mr. Beasley for you.”
“And who is that?”
“The owner.”
Amanda wasn’t given the chance to respond before she was put on hold and soft rock started spilling into her ear.
“Yes?” a man said upon coming on the line.
“Detective Steele, sir. Is this—?”
“Art Beasley. I’m the owner of Best Homes.”
“You’re the perfect person to talk to then.” She paused, expecting to be interrupted again. When Art said nothing, she continued. “We have a report that Christine Lane hasn’t been heard from for several days, and her phone seems to be off. When did you last hear from her?”
“Her phone is off?” Concern coated his voice.
It’s her livelihood… Spencer’s words ricocheted in her head. It was interesting, of all Amanda said, the phone was his first concern. Not the fact she was unreachable for days. “It is. If you could please answer my question.”
“Friday afternoon when she came into the office to proof an offer she had her assistant draft on behalf of a client.”
Since he saw her just before the weekend, that explained why he wasn’t worried about her several days comment.
That time period had been from Spencer’s perspective.
What if all of this was nothing more than Christine ghosting Spencer?
But he said she would never… And that didn’t explain why Amanda’s call went straight to voicemail. “How was Christine on Friday?”
“Just her normal self. Uh, what’s going on here? Why are the police interested in Christine? Her boyfriend called here earlier asking about her too.”
“We’re just trying to locate her, sir. Did you expect to hear from her after that?”
“No. You telling me her phone is off is the first I’m hearing of it, and it’s so unlike her. You must realize agents are commissioned. If they don’t answer their phone, they don’t sell houses, and I have better things to do than manage their schedules.”
For the first time since Spencer’s call, Amanda got a true sinking feeling. “Is it common to go the weekend without talking to her?” She was thinking the realty business didn’t sleep.
“Of course.”
“If you end up hearing from her, call me immediately.” Amanda left her number with him.
“Will do.”
Amanda hung up with a sour pit in her stomach. “Trent, I’m going to talk with Malone.”