Chapter Nine
Sawyer
It was like a punch to the nuts to hear her when I walked into the hall to take Slim for a walk.
A walk, I might add, that I needed to try to work off the extra sexual energy I had coursing through me from making out with her.
Then, as I leaned down to pet his head, I heard the low, throaty sound of a moan behind her door.
And I knew she hadn’t been able to just shake it off and go to sleep. No. She needed a release, a release I wanted to give her a fuckuva lot more than I should have.
But I had been right to pull away. Just as I had been right to talk it out with her as well.
Nothing good came from letting shit slide.
And nothing good would come from getting involved with someone who I was not only working for but who was crashing at my place.
If things went bad, as they likely would eventually, I couldn’t tell her to leave because she had nowhere else to go.
It was a genuine no-win situation.
Though I couldn’t help but goad her when I was sure she was avoiding me.
The panties were just my way of reminding her that we agreed to move on from the make-out session. Even if I had taken the issue into my own hands once last night and twice that morning, and it still wasn’t out of my system.
That didn’t matter.
What mattered, I reminded myself as I jumped in my car and hit the road toward Navesink Bank Fertility Center, was the job.
The clinic was a building I had passed by countless times and never really noticed.
It was a one-story white stucco building with dark windows, shaped shrubbery, and a small square parking lot out back.
I parked, climbed out, grabbed a notebook, and headed in.
The inside screamed ‘doctor’s office.’ There was a small U-shaped sitting area with armchairs that had awful mauve cushions and a large coffee table covered with a dozen parenting magazines.
And an issue of Golf Digest… just for good measure.
The walls had some kind of oatmeal-colored textured wallpaper, and the floors were hardwood and shiny.
There was an L-shaped white reception desk that faced both the seating area and the hallway that led into multiple exam rooms.
The woman behind the desk was in light pink scrubs, her shiny, long-layered, wavy hair left around her shoulders to catch the artificial light overhead.
She was in her late twenties or early thirties and pretty with a slightly round face, big blue eyes, and a curvaceous body that teetered the line between average and full-figured.
“Hey there,” she said, giving me a warm smile that could have easily been due to good nature or her job. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, actually,” I said, giving her a smile too. “I’m here about Riya Sweeney.”
She visibly jumped back, her lips parting. “Riya?”
“I understand she used to work here.”
“I, ah,” she said, self-consciously looking over her shoulder for a second. “I’m sorry, who are you?”
“My name is Sawyer Anderson,” I said, reaching into my pocket to show her my ID and PI license.
“A private investigator?”
“Yeah. I work for Ms. Sweeney. Can you tell me your name?”
“Ah, yeah. I’m Ginny. Ginny Mayer.”
“Okay, Ginny Mayer,” I said, jotting that down. “What can you tell me about Riya?”
“Wait,” she said, brows drawing together. “You said you work for Riya?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why are you asking about her?”
“Trying to figure out why no one reported her missing, is all.”
“I don’t… I mean, I guess that didn’t seem like it was my place. I figured she had quit or something.”
“Did that seem like something she would do?”
“Well… no. She had worked here forever. She was the one who trained me, actually,” she said, smiling like it was a fond memory.
“Did anyone try to get in contact with her?”
“Yeah. I mean, Maryanne called her at least a dozen times, but then her phone stopped working…”
“Maryanne is the office manager,” I guessed. “Is she here? Can I speak to her?”
“Ah, let me go check,” she said, moving out from behind the desk and going into the hall, knocking on the first door on the left, going inside, then reappearing a moment later.
“You can go right in,” she said, giving me a quick once over and there was an unmistakable light in her eyes that suggested if I was in, so was she.
I should have been in. She was pretty. She was friendly. She didn’t fucking hire me to figure out where a year of her life was.
But I felt nothing.
So I went into the office, shut the door, and didn’t even try to pursue it.
I talked to Maryanne. I was told all about Riya’s perfect work record. I was told how much the office felt her loss, that she all but ran the place most days.
When I asked why no one reported her missing, though, I noticed that she stiffened and her tone got more guarded. “We just figured she wanted a change and left.”
But that was all she would give me.
And it wasn’t enough.
So I had something else for Barrett look into—the people at Navesink Bank Fertility Center. Because Maryanne, at least, was hiding something. And I wanted to know what that was.
I got back in my car, jotted a few notes, then plugged in the next address into my GPS.
Her first boyfriend, the one from high school, Eric O’Neil didn’t need to be checked up on.
He had finished college in California, then permanently relocated there, getting married, having two kids, and working some boring ass mid-level job at some PR firm.
Due to complacency and the lack of a letterman jacket, along with the training that went with it to keep him fit, he had bloated up and lost his hair.
She had dodged a bullet by them breaking up.
But the next long-term boyfriend was worth looking into. He was not only the longest relationship left on the list at two years, but he had stayed in the area, getting a job one town over at a bar as a bouncer.
Derek James dropped out of community college after a year and a half, just six months shy of graduation.
From there, he bounced around at various restaurant and store jobs before getting the bouncer position.
He had a couple of petty arrests for drunk and disorderly and one assault arrest that didn’t end up with any kind of conviction.
But still, it was violent, which made him worthy of checking out.
He lived in a rental house with his brother in a decent area where they must have paid a mint to stay.
“Can I help you?” A woman answered the door, her brow raised and her hip cocked, as if she had no patience for whatever I had interrupted.
“I’m Sawyer Anderson. I need to talk to Derek James.”
“Derek!” she shrieked over her shoulder. “Door!” she added, gave me a hard look, and wandered away.
Derek James had the perfect build for a bouncer.
He was a solid six-three with huge shoulders and biceps bigger than some men’s thighs.
His white tee stretched over a strong chest and abs, a hint of a black tattoo creeping out of the neck of the shirt.
His dark hair was kept short, and his deep brown eyes sized me up quickly.
“You a cop?”
“PI,” I corrected instead.
“PI, huh?” he asked, putting a hand on the doorjamb, making it obvious I wasn’t invited inside. “What are you here for?”
“Riya Sweeney…”
“Riya?” he interrupted me, his body stiffening. “She alright?”
“She’s fine now.”
“Now? What happened to her?” he asked, curious, interested. Whatever happened to her, he wasn’t in on it.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“I haven’t seen Riya in… fuck, I don’t know… three years? And even then, it was just that we happened to be at the gym at the same time. Never saw her there again at that time. Guess she didn’t want to see me after that.”
“Any particular reason why?”
He shook his head at me, looking at his feet for a second. “I fucked up. Young and stupid and thought she would love me no matter what I did.”
“What did you do?”
“You met Jodie,” he said, nodding his head toward the woman inside.
“Yeah, she’s a real sweetheart,” I agreed, lips twitching a little.
“Yeah, well, I knocked her up while I was still with Riya.”
“She must have been pissed.”
“Nah, man. Riya doesn’t run hot. She gets pissed, she gets fuckin’ frigid.
She told me that she hoped I had a daughter and would understand how shitty what I did to her was because of that.
” He paused at that. “I did have a daughter, and I would gut a motherfucker who did what I did to Riya to my little girl,” he said with a nod. “Though we were doomed to fail anyway.”
“Why’s that?” I asked as a little girl walked up behind him, smiling up at him.
“Because I wanted this,” he said, reaching for the girl and picking her up.
“Riya doesn’t want kids?”
“Riya had her tubes tied the week she turned eighteen. She wants kids, but she wants to adopt. I wanted my own.”
“Alright,” I said, exhaling. “Well, thanks for your time,” I said, knowing it was wasted on both our parts.
He nodded. “I hope you get the answers Riya needs. She’s a good woman. I hope nothing bad happened.”
With that, he backed up and closed the door.
I went back to my truck and scratched out his name, picking up the paper for the next guy on the list.
Timir Lee was in marketing, making huge sums of money and living in the luxury townhouses in town. The ones that cost millions. For a fucking townhouse. Timir drove a nice car and vacationed in nice places.
He and Riya had dated for a year back when she was twenty-three, pretty fresh out of her relationship with Derek.
Timir had been ten years older than her at the time.
I drove over to his office, waiting in the lobby until I saw him break for lunch.