Chapter 1
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N ot too many hours later, Masters returned to the department and headed straight back to Jasper’s office. As soon as he got inside, he shut the door, then sat down and sent Jasper a text. Good morning. I’m at your desk and need permission to access your system again. His phone rang almost immediately.
“You’re in there now, huh ?”
“Yes, I signed off when I left late last night—well early this morning actually—so I’ll need you to get me logged in again, as well as permission to be here.”
“Done and done,” Jasper stated. “What are you after so bright and early after working late?”
“I’m after any information that we can find on this Nicholas guy.”
“What’s that about?” he asked curiously.
Masters half smiled and replied, “I wondered if you knew anything about it.”
“No. I don’t. Fill me in.”
Masters quickly shared the little bit he knew. “That’s what I got from Morgan, though it seems as if there ought to be more than that.”
“Maybe he just didn’t choose to share,” Jasper replied.
“That’s what I was wondering,” he noted, “so I wanted to cut the circuitous route in half and get the information myself.” He listened as Jasper gave him the log-in information for the day, and Masters quickly had access to the computer system again. He added, “And you need to clear it with whomever because I’m pretty sure we’ve got an all-out fight coming up.”
“Probably,” Jasper agreed. “Yet, with any luck, not so much. I’ll be there soon.”
“You sure you’re ready to come back in?” Masters asked, a note of humor in his tone.
“Just because I might want to stay out doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.”
“No, of course not. I’ll see you when you get here.” Then Masters quickly hung up.
He didn’t know how long it would take before the rest of the team realized he was in here. He’d walked in fairly easily, and nobody had questioned his presence, but he knew that wouldn’t last. He’d hoped that he would make it until Jasper arrived, but, when the door opened about thirty minutes later, he looked up to see Sam glaring at him, Morgan at his side.
“You have no right to be here,” Sam declared. “You were way out of line last night.”
A man behind them spoke up and said, “Hold up a minute. Don’t start without me.”
Masters looked up with relief to see Jasper striding toward them.
“I okayed it.”
“You have no right to okay anything,” Sam snapped.
Something was just so wrong with Sam’s attitude that Masters couldn’t believe they kept such a liability around. He had no reason to even think that way, but something was just wrong about a guy so smug and so difficult to deal with.
As it was, Morgan stared at Jasper. “You got clearance for all this?” he asked.
Jasper looked at both and announced, “This is Masters. I’ve worked with him before. He’ll be our secret weapon.”
“Like he’s some secret weapon or that we even need one.” Sam snorted.
Oddly enough, Morgan, who had temporarily been leading this department, nodded. “Might not be a bad idea at that,” he murmured. He turned and looked at Masters and held out a hand. “Nice to meet you. Sorry for the trouble you had last night.”
Masters shook his hand and nodded. “Likewise.”
Sam didn’t say anything but turned and stormed out.
Masters looked over at Jasper. “We had quite the chat last night. Not a fan of yours, it seems.”
“No, he sure isn’t,” Jasper confirmed, with a wry look, “but that’s okay. He doesn’t have to like me, but we do need to clear him.”
“It’s okay,” Morgan noted. “He’s been good for the department, and he does good work. He’s got an alcohol problem that had been pretty well in hand, after he went through rehab a few years ago. However, it appears he’s been struggling recently and fell off the wagon hard last night. He doesn’t do well with change, especially when he has no say in it.”
“Yet this department is full of changes,” Jasper declared.
“It is, indeed, which is another reason why Sam has struggles now,” Morgan noted, with a small smile. Looking at Masters, he said, “I don’t know what you told him last night, but you scared him sober. If you need anything, let me know.” At the doorway, he stopped, looked over at Masters, and added, “I’ll put in a request to get your own log-in set up, so you’re not coming in under Jasper’s.”
“Thanks,” Masters replied cheerfully, as he watched Morgan leave. Then Masters faced Jasper. “Good timing. That could have gone differently without you here.”
“You would have handled it,” he said, with a shrug. “Sounds like you handled Sam last night. We’ll have to keep a close eye on him, although it explains the reservations I’ve had about the guy.”
“Yeah, drunks lie so much, and the deceit comes off them in waves. Also I highly doubt I’m any secret weapon, by the way.”
“You would be surprised. Something is going on here that none of us are getting very clear answers on.”
“That’s why I want to find out everything there is to know about one Nicholas Woodrow.”
“Are you sure it’s not just because his last name is the same as yours?” he asked.
Masters shrugged, “Ah, no. Turns out I’m a little deeper than that.”
“If you say so,” Jasper quipped.
“I do say so,” Masters stated in a cool tone. “No relation either, by the way.”
“That’s good because that’s a complication we wouldn’t need.”
He laughed. “Yeah, that would certainly add another element to the mix, wouldn’t it?”
“It would. And not in a good way. So, what have you found out so far?”
“Only that one Nicholas Woodrow was working on an investigation here in this department. I just find it odd that nobody mentioned anything about it, especially considering he just disappeared about four months ago on his way to work one morning. His car was found abandoned on a side road, where the team supposedly found his key card.”
Jasper sat down in the chair across from him. “On his way to work?” he asked cautiously.
“He didn’t show up, and nobody has seen him since.”
“That’s not to say that his disappearance was definitely related to an investigation on this base.”
Masters nodded. “Right. Last night Morgan told me that the team had been working on another base shooting. Digging in further, I found it was some bar fight gone wrong. So not the connection I expected to link that incident to Mason’s shooting. I’m still searching other cases the team dealt with recently. Would be nice if we had access to all their files on the database.” Masters raised one eyebrow.
“Yeah. We should have full clearance today. Still, we can’t go down that line of thinking without further evidence, but it’s a concern that Nicholas never showed up again.” Jasper pondered that and added, “Let me bring Morgan back in again.” And, with that, he stepped to the door and called out for Morgan.
Morgan appeared a few minutes later, obviously busy, as he was talking on the phone to somebody. He stepped in, ended the phone call, frowned at them, and asked, “What’s up?”
“Nicholas Woodrow,” Jasper stated.
“Ah.” Morgan frowned and nodded. “I was wondering if that was something that needed to be brought up.”
“I’m stunned that you didn’t think it was something worthy of mention right from the get-go,” Jasper declared.
“That’s because we haven’t had anything to go on. If we thought it was connected somehow, that’s a different story.”
“Why would you think it couldn’t be connected?” Jasper asked, frowning at him.
“All kinds of shit goes on around the base here, and we have a lot of investigations. So absolutely no reason to think that Woodrow’s disappearance would have anything to do with the sniper shooting of Mason,” Morgan replied. “As far as we know, Nicholas had nothing to do with Mason, and the cases are not connected.” He hesitated. “Yet I can see from the look on your face that you don’t necessarily agree.”
“We don’t know that for certain because we didn’t know anything about Nicholas’s disappearance,” Jasper remarked in exasperation. “And it seems foolish to decide that they aren’t connected just because you haven’t found anything connecting them.”
Morgan frowned. “And what other criteria would you use to make that decision?”
“A full investigation of Nicholas gone missing is a start,” Jasper pointed out. “Until we do that investigation and clear this up, then we won’t know.”
“You’re free to do that. I’ve got all the files. It’s not in the files I gave you access too already because it involves one of our own, so it was kept in an area with less access, just in case.”
“Unlock it now so we can have a look,” Jasper said, “and let’s see if we can’t solve two of these at the same time.”
After Morgan did something on his phone, he shared, “Okay, I’ve given you both access to those files. The thing is, our CO asked us to keep this one under wraps,” he added, “so there could be backlash when he finds out I’ve given you access.”
“That’s fine,” Jasper stated, eyeing him. “If you get called out on it, I’ll take the heat.”
The look of relief on his face gave Masters some insight into what working here must be like for some of the investigators.
When Morgan left, Masters looked over at Jasper. “We’re already checking into the team members, and now we should check out the CO too? Not a good omen.”
“Nope, it sure isn’t.” Jasper groaned. “I sure as hell hope this doesn’t involve some BS move up the chain. That’s all we need.”
“When you say, BS move , what do you mean?”
He shrugged. “The usual. I just don’t want to find out that somebody up the chain of command is involved in this or, worse yet, is involved in the attempted murder of Mason.”
Masters stared at him in shock. “Oh, hell no,” he replied. “Those cases are the worst.”
“I know it. As it turns out, Mason just came off an ugly scenario—and not long ago—where the commander of the base camp up in the Arctic was involved.”
“Ah, shit,” Masters mumbled, staring back at him in shock. “I hadn’t heard.”
“I’m not surprised. The brass likes to keep those things under wraps. The very nature of it doesn’t inspire confidence in the troops or their leadership, and that is paramount.”
“Of course.” Masters considered all the implications of something like that and winced. “What a shitty thought.”
“It’s beyond shitty,” Jasper confirmed.
Masters asked, “So do we know that Mason’s case has some long arms, reaching out to get payback?”
“No, we don’t know. And yet that is always possible,” Jasper muttered. “I would hate to think so, but I’m not ready to rule anything out. Let’s get what we can for information on this Nicholas guy so far and see what else we can come up with.”
As Jasper got up to walk out, Masters called him back. “How do you feel about their not saying anything about another investigator’s disappearance?”
“Shitty,” Jasper stated. “That stops now.”
Masters snorted. “Says you.”
“Yep, says me,” he declared, with a sigh. “And I understand that we have our work cut out for us to get that attitude shut down, as we can’t have that.”
“No, we can’t, but it doesn’t mean that any of them will be interested in talking to us about it.”
“They don’t have to talk to us,” Jasper pointed out, with a flat smile. “They just have to do what they’re told.”
“Did you officially step in and take over this department?” Masters asked.
“It’s in the works. I told the brass that I would handle this because of Mason, but I wasn’t sure I wanted it long-term.”
“I can’t see the brass letting you do that, just taking the job on a contingency basis like that.”
“They’re not. So, yes, I did promise them more, but that doesn’t mean I have any intention of solving everything else that this department is currently working on,” he explained. “Yet I’m thinking about it.”
“This is where you want to be though, right?”
“It is where I want to be, but I also want to ensure that the members of this department are people I could work with and handle, where the bosses won’t be screwing me over every time I turn around.”
“Ha. You find a department like that in the military, and I’ll follow you right into it.”
“I wanted to ask you earlier if you were interested in working as an investigator,” Jasper noted. “We already have some staffing issues, as you can see.”
“There are, indeed. Sam being one. What’s up with that?”
“Apparently he’s got a chip on his shoulder about other people making decisions without his input. Then add that to the fact that he’s got ongoing issues with alcohol abuse, and it’s a tough deal. I’ll look into it more, but I get the sense that he goes for long periods of time being sober and doing well, but occasionally something will set him off, and he falls off the wagon.”
“None of that will bode well for him in the military, particularly in the work we do.”
“I know, and I plan to watch him pretty closely, so I can decide for myself. In the meantime, I’m cutting him a bit of slack and withholding judgment for a time,” Jasper shared. “So, for the moment, he’s free and clear to continue doing his job.”
“Speaking of which, we have some information to track down,” Masters said, tapping the computer screen.
“What did you find?”
“Nicholas has a sister.”
“Interesting. And what about her?”
“Apparently she’s the one who raised the alarm that he was missing, telling his team. Then she went to the brass, and afterward she contacted lawyers.”
“Lawyers?” Jasper repeated, his eyebrows going up.
Masters nodded, as he read the sheet in front of him. “According to this, she maintains that the military has been no help in finding her brother and is directly responsible for what happened to him.”
“Does she give any more information?”
“She does not.” He got out a notepad, quickly wrote down her contact information and physical address, then looked over at Jasper and smiled. “Time for a road trip.”
“It’s definitely time to connect with somebody much more interested in Nicholas disappearing than anyone we’ve spoken to so far,” Jasper replied, with a nod. “What’s her name?” he asked curiously. “I may know her.”
“Do you know many people around here?”
He shrugged. “Not that many, but it’s always amazing how many people you do know after a few years in the navy,” he commented.
“Let’s see here. Her name is Elizabeth,” he shared, reading it off from the page. “Elizabeth Woodrow.”
“So, she’s not married then?”
“No, not unless she just chose to keep her maiden name. It doesn’t look like it, but I can’t tell for sure. I don’t have much history here on her,” he said, clearing the screen and checking for more information. Then he shrugged. “Jeez, I’m not getting any information on her at all.”
“Okay, we definitely need to give her a phone call then.”
“It might be easier if I skip the phone call and go straight to a visit,” Masters offered.
“That certainly cuts through a lot of the time-wasting, especially if she’s fed up and wants to avoid that too.”
“And we don’t have time for any of that,” Masters agreed, as he stood up. “Okay then, I’m out of here. So here’s your desk back.”
“Right, and make sure you follow through with getting that log-in resolved and anything else you need. Anybody gives you trouble, give me a shout.”
“I’ll work on it,” Masters said, with a laugh. And, with that, he headed out to the parking lot and his car.
*
Elizabeth Woodrow opened her front door and stared at the stranger with a look of consternation. “Can I help you?” she asked cautiously, looking around to see where this tall, incredibly capable-looking man had come from, wondering what the heck he wanted with her. He smiled at her in a gentle way that made her even more cautious. She shook her head. “I don’t know you, and I don’t understand why you’re here, so please state your business, then be on your way.”
His eyebrows shot up, and he nodded. “I’m investigating a possible murder attempt at the base.”
Her stomach clenched, and all the heat sank to her toes, leaving her body chilled and trembling.
He made an odd exclamation and stepped forward, catching her as she stumbled into the small chair sitting outside on her deck. “I am so sorry,” he blurted out. “It’s not your brother. We didn’t find your brother. It’s not about him. Christ, I’m sorry. I should have made that clear.”
She blinked rapidly, as the world started to refocus again. “Oh my God, are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” he stated. “I’m here regarding a sniper shooting incident on the base,” he added. “It has not resulted in a death at this time,” he explained, “and we’re doing everything we can to prevent that from happening.”
She gripped the armrests of her chair and glared up at him. “None of that makes any sense.”
“That’s because I got off on the wrong foot with you and screwed up my response. I’m so sorry. Let me start over.” Taking a deep breath, he began again. “We had an assassination attempt, a sniper shooting, on a fairly high-ranking officer on the base. It is still unclear if he will survive. We’re figuring out who is behind it and why, and we’ve also had some additional attempts to take out people close to him, almost spitefully so because they failed at their first attempt on their intended target.” He crouched in front of her, gripped her hands, and added, “I came because I don’t know if this is connected in any way to your brother’s disappearance.”
She blinked. “And how would anybody know?” she snapped, some of her feistiness returning. “Near as I can tell, they did essentially no investigation into my brother’s disappearance. So why the hell should I help you right now?”
“I understand how you could feel that way,” he admitted. “And I’m certainly not here to tell you that everything was done as it should have been because I don’t know that. I only just found out about your brother’s disappearance and have just joined that department,” he shared. “I can understand that you might be feeling a little bit bitter.”
“A little bit?” she snapped again, glaring at him.
He winced. “Okay, so a lot, and I get that. However, if these cases are connected, it will help us to get answers for your brother.”
She stared at him. “Yet somehow I suspect that the only answers we’ll get involve the cases that you’re actively investigating.”
“It is a possibility, and I don’t know for sure what has been done to date on your brother’s case.”
She shook her head, closed her eyes, and whispered to herself that she could do this, that she had to do this. If nothing else, she had to do it for her brother. Nicholas was a good man. He didn’t deserve to be dropped off into the abyss and forgotten. She finally opened her eyes to see the stranger staring at her in concern. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “I’m not fine -fine but—”
“I understand,” he replied. “I considered calling you first, but I was afraid you wouldn’t talk to me.”
She blinked her eyes at him several times. “Maybe I wouldn’t have. I’m feeling pretty let down by the world, and I don’t like the idea of talking to anybody.”
“And yet, if we were able to do something to help find Nicholas, it could—”
“I would do anything for answers,” she whispered. “Yet, so far, answers have been few and far between.”
“Can you give me the details of what happened?”
She shrugged and began, “He… was having a regular week, and then, the day before he disappeared, he sounded a little stressed, a little worried. I talked to him that night, told him to go to bed and to get some sleep, and, when he woke up, things may not seem quite so difficult.”
“Did he explain what the problem was?” Masters asked.
She slowly shook her head. “No, he didn’t give me any details. Something about one of the cases he was working on. He couldn’t get anywhere with it, and that was frustrating him.”
At that, the stranger just nodded.
She frowned and asked, “Do you have any identification?” She knew nothing about this man. He pulled out his credentials, and she read the name on it. “Masters Woodrow. Woodrow ?”
“I know, right, but no relation,” he replied. “At least none that I know of.”
She nodded but continued to stare down at his ID. “That is an awfully odd coincidence.”
“I was working on the sniper case before I found out about your brother’s disappearance, so it’s exactly what it sounds like, a coincidence.”
She returned his ID and nodded, studying him through her narrowed gaze. “I can’t say you look like the family.”
“No, I don’t,” he agreed. “I’m dark-haired, and you guys are all, I presume, redheads.”
“Yes. All of us are gingers, and we pay the price for that too,” she shared, with an eye roll.
“I’m sorry,” Masters replied. “Kids can be especially cruel.”
“And I couldn’t care less about any of that. I just want my brother back,” she murmured. “He’s all I have,” she shared, looking over at him and holding back the tears.
He nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t think there’s any hope of finding him alive, do you?”
He sighed. “I honestly have no idea because I’m just coming on this case, and I only learned about your brother today. However, I always approach cases like this with hope,” he told her, “and can’t imagine even doing this job without it.”
She knew what he was saying, and he was right. But it all felt so very hopeless. “I pray you’re right,” she murmured. “It seems as if, up until this point, nobody has given a damn.”
“Some of us do,” Masters murmured. “And, right now, I need as many details as I can get. So can you go back to what you were saying?”
She nodded and picked up the story. “I talked with him that previous night for, I don’t know, maybe twenty or thirty minutes. He was obviously upset, though I wouldn’t have thought he was terribly distraught or anything. Frustrated maybe is a better word,” she stated, thinking about it.
“And he went to work the next day?”
“As far as I know, he went to work the next day as usual. He doesn’t live here with me, but, when he didn’t show up at the base, I was called because I’m listed as his contact. They asked if I had seen him, and I said no. Of course, that set me off, and I started calling Nicholas but got no answer,” she shared, with a shrug. “And there’s been no answer ever since.”
Masters sat back on his heels, his arms resting easily on his knees as he stared at her. “And there has been nothing since that time?”
“There’s been nothing ever again. I’m still waiting for him to show up to work or to come home from work, like nothing ever happened,” she murmured. “I’m caught in limbo and getting absolutely nowhere.”
“And I understand how unbelievably difficult that is.”
“It sure is,” she declared. “There’s no closure in something like this, and you just… you’re waiting. Every time you hear a knock at the door, every time you hear a noise, every time you hear a sound, you’re just waiting for something, for anything to help you understand what happened. I’m still waiting for Nicholas to walk in the door. So far, he hasn’t, and all that stressful and worrisome waiting continues.”
He nodded and didn’t say anything more.
“What are you thinking?” she asked, curious.
“I’m just wondering about all the various scenarios where something like that could have happened.”
“You can wonder all you like,” she said. “I’ve done more than enough wondering for a lifetime. It’s never easy to not have any answers, and it doesn’t seem to ever go away.”
“No, of course not. So, you’ve tried his phone again recently?”
“Yes, but it just goes to voice mail. I don’t know whether anyone from your team has contacted somebody to get the telephone records or if it’s even trackable, but I would assume so. Nobody’s told me whether they have or haven’t, even though I’ve asked.”
“So, I heard you got yourself a lawyer,” Masters shared, a note of humor in his voice. When she eyed him suspiciously, he just shrugged. “I have to admire you for that,” he said.
She snorted. “It didn’t help. The military closed ranks, and, as far as they’re concerned, it’s an internal investigation, and it’s still ongoing. It doesn’t matter whether I like the way they’re doing it or not. I don’t have any say in the matter,” she muttered. “And that’s equally frustrating.”
“I understand that for sure,” he replied. “So, for the moment, we’ll go on the assumption that he’s alive. Do you know what case he was working on?”
She shook her head. “No, I sure don’t. His investigations were something he took very seriously, and he held all to be very private in nature. I know that he was bothered about some aspect of his job, but he just wouldn’t tell me very much.”
“Depending on the circumstances, it would make sense that he couldn’t share much with you.”
“If you say so,” she muttered. “At the moment, I wish he’d spilled the beans because, if it has anything to do with why he hasn’t come home, I want to make sure that somebody pays the price for whatever has happened to him.”
“I get it.” He straightened and added, “I don’t have legal access to his place. Do you still have it?”
“The mortgage is still paid out of his paycheck,” she stated. “I’m the acting executor of his estate, but I can’t do anything one way or another right now, and I don’t want to do anything,… not until I know exactly what happened to Nicholas.”
“Is there any way I could go to his house and take a look?”
Surprised, she slowly stood. “Yes, I guess so. What will that do?”
“It might not do anything,” he conceded, “and I would hate to give you the idea that it could, but I’ve got to start somewhere, and who knows? Something at his house might help. After all, I won’t know what I’m looking for until I find it.”
“Then let’s go,” she stated abruptly. When he nodded, she shrugged. “He lived—he lives just around the corner.”
“Let’s go,” he replied.
She pointed to her house. “Let me just grab my keys and his.” And, with that, she headed back into her house. When she rejoined him, he stood there, staring around at the neighborhood. “Problems?” she asked.
“No, not at all,” he said, “just checking out the area and what it’s like here. Is there a high-crime rate or anything that would be disturbing?”
“No,” she replied. “It doesn’t make any sense that anything could have happened to him here. I walk constantly all over this place.”
“Do you still do that though?” he asked, looking at her in surprise.
She nodded. “We’ve been here all our adult lives. I bought this house, and he bought the house just down the road here,” she explained. “So, this is a place we’ve always felt safe, and I can’t imagine that would have ever changed for him. I’ve just assumed his disappearance had something to do with his work.”
“And it could have. I’m not saying it doesn’t. I just… don’t know yet.”
She studied him for a long moment, not exactly sure how to take this new arrival into her world, and then she shrugged. “Come on. Let’s go. I’ll take you over to the house.” Leading the way, she headed out to Nicholas’s house. As she got up to the front yard, she motioned at the door. “This is his place.”
Masters stopped, took a good look around outside—something else that surprised her—then nodded and strode forward again.
“What did that little search do for you?” she wondered out loud.
He smiled. “Just getting a feel for the place,” he murmured. “Things are always going on in life that you can’t place , so you hope that something will make it feel right in some weird way.”
She shrugged, not sure what that meant, but happy enough to let it go. She walked up to the front door, unlocked it, then stepped off to the side so he could take a look inside.
He stepped forward and asked, “Do you mind if I go in alone?”
Her eyebrows shot up, and she frowned.
“That’s fine. Obviously my request bothers you. So your answer can be a no, if that’s how you feel.”
She didn’t know what to say, but his request seemed odd to her. She hesitated, watching from the sideline as he stopped at the entrance, almost as if just looking inside would tell him something important. She’d never seen anybody act like this before. His gaze never rested and went from the weird hall tree that her brother had for hanging coats, to the pictures on the wall and on from there, covering basically all of what could be seen from the front door.
She finally granted her permission for him to enter.
Masters moved from one thing to the other to the other.
Fascinated by him and encouraged by the thought that the military would do something this time, Elizabeth watched, as he worked his way through the first floor of her brother’s home. When he finally came to a stop, she asked, “And?”
He smiled but shook his head. “I’m not seeing anything. You’re right. However, I’m not saying there isn’t anything to see.”
Confounded by his wording, she waited as he walked through the rest of the house.
When he was done, he came back outside and sat down on the deck beside her. “It doesn’t look as if there’s been anyone in or out of here recently.”
“No, of course not. Why would there be?”
“Cleaning ladies, you, anybody?”
She shook her head. “No. No reason for it. My brother wasn’t here, so no need for me to be here.”
“Could somebody have come in and come out without anybody seeing?”
Surprised, she frowned. “In theory it’s possible, but I haven’t seen anybody.”
“And you haven’t noticed any changes, anything moved, or anything along that line since you were here last?”
She curiously turned to look at the house behind them and asked, “What exactly are you talking about?”
He tilted his head and then spoke. “I don’t see any electronics. I don’t see a laptop. I don’t see a desktop. I don’t see a cell phone or chargers.”
She stared at him, then blinked and nodded. “They were here, although surely Nicholas had a cell phone on him. I know the military took a lot of his electronics from here,” she said cautiously. “They told me that they needed it for their investigation.”
“And they probably would have taken Nicholas’s electronics as part of their investigation,” he agreed.
“ Probably would have does not have the same meaning as I would have expected it or something like that.”
He chuckled. “I’m not trying to split hairs with you or anything like that. If the base has Nicholas’s electronics, I’ll see if I can get access to them.”
“I would hope so.” When he glanced back at the house, she noted, “Something’s bothering you.”
“I guess it’s the open window,” he shared, with a wry look. “For me, I leave the windows closed most of the time. I have them open when I’m at home, but I close them when I’m gone, just because it’s an open invitation for people.”
“His windows are closed,” she stated.
He studied her curiously, then shrugged. “They aren’t though, are they?”
She let out her breath slowly. “Could you explain that, please?”
“Let me show you instead.” And, with that, he got up and walked back into the house, and she followed.
Sure enough, in her brother’s office, the window was open, and the curtains billowed freely. She shook her head. “It never was open before,” she exclaimed, as she raced over.
He stood in the doorway, as she turned and glared at him. “You saw that right away, didn’t you?”
He shrugged. “I saw that the window was open right away, sure. The curtain is blowing everywhere, so why wouldn’t I see that?” he asked, looking at her steadily. “The question is whether that’s normal for him or not.”
“It’s not,” she admitted. “Not at all.”
“Okay. So, in that case, this is obviously something that’s most likely changed, but, when it changed, I don’t know.”
She let out a deep breath, as she tried to think clearly. “It’s very confusing because I didn’t notice it. I wish now that I had.”
“How often do you come over here?”
She frowned. “Lately not that often. After he first went missing, it was almost a daily occurrence. I couldn’t leave it. I finally spoke to a therapist who seemed to feel that wasn’t healthy for me.”
“Wasn’t healthy?” he repeated.
“Yes, because I was incapable of moving on,” she explained. “It wasn’t healthy, and I needed to let it go.”
“Ha,” he muttered. “That sounds like a therapist for you.”
She smiled. “It does, doesn’t it?”
He just nodded and didn’t say more.
She had to admit that an awful lot of what the therapist had said didn’t make sense to Elizabeth because seeing her brother, being close to her brother, had brought her comfort that was hard for anybody else to understand. Yet Masters here seemed to get it. She frowned at that too, not liking the way her thoughts were going or that this guy could understand what she was going through. “Have you ever lost anybody like this?” she asked.
“Like this? No,” he replied. “This?… This is one of those experiences that you hope you never have to deal with. As you mentioned, there are just no answers, and you can’t find any answers to make peace with your life. Therefore, it’s hard to move on.”
“Exactly,” she agreed, “and that’s probably why my therapist told me to find another way to make peace.”
“And yet it didn’t work.”
“No, it didn’t,” she stated, with a nod. “Doesn’t mean it couldn’t work though. I’m just”—she winced—“I’m refusing to allow it to work.”
He chuckled at that. “If it were my brother, my sister, my family, I would be right there with you.”
Somehow it made her feel a whole lot better to know that he wasn’t judging her for her actions and for her inability to let go. “She says it’s not healthy.”
“Maybe she’s right,” he said, with a shrug. “But it’s not as if we can pick and choose our emotions for this thing, and I don’t imagine that she knows what advice to give you, as it’s not the easiest situation to deal with. What is she supposed to tell you? Just forget your brother? No. Honor your brother? How do you honor your brother when you don’t even know if he’s alive or dead?”
Elizabeth had to admit that, with every word Masters spoke, she felt a lot more relaxed and comfortable. She now had some hope that maybe the navy’s investigation team would take her brother’s case seriously after all.
As they walked through her brother’s house again, he pointed at the kitchen and asked, “Does he always keep these windows closed?”
She nodded. “Yes, he does. He doesn’t open the windows very often at all.” She frowned and then added, “To be honest, he’s a bit of a security freak.”
At that, Masters slowly turned and nodded. “As an investigator, that could come with the job. Has he always been that way?”
She shook her head. “No, it was a more recent thing. He was looking into getting a better security system put in, and I didn’t understand why. Honestly I’d forgotten about it until just now,” she muttered. “I’m wondering if more was involved with that.”
“It’s possible,” he said, “but you can’t hold yourself responsible for that too.”
At the word too , she turned, but he was staring straight at her, with that same calm, caring, and yet, not neutral, but almost implacable look. She’d never seen anything like it. “You said too .”
“Haven’t you taken on the guilt? He’s your younger brother, isn’t he?”
She held her breath, then let it out slowly and nodded. “Yes, he is my younger brother, and you’re right. To some extent I feel terribly guilty.”
“Do you want to tell me about that?”
“Not really, because it just adds to my guilt.”
He smiled and said ever-so-softly, “All the more reason to find a way to get past it.”
She sighed. “That night he wanted to talk, and I brushed him off,” she admitted. “I was tired and stressed. I was beyond tired, to be honest. So, I talked to him for a little while, and then I shut him down. Now I wish I hadn’t, and it’s so frustrating because I never got a chance to say, Hey, sorry about that or to let him know that I did care, and that I wasn’t just fobbing him off.”
“I highly doubt that would be his reaction,” Masters replied. “If it had been my sister, I would understand. I would completely get that she loved me and was just having a bad day. Or maybe I just had crappy timing, which you and I both know happens more than we would like to think. Either way, I’m pretty sure he would understand.”
“What if he’s dead, and that’s just all that there is?” she murmured.
“If he’s dead, and that’s what’s left, then that’s the part you’ll have to deal with. Yet don’t take on the guilt because you didn’t have time to talk to him very long. You did talk to him, even if it wasn’t for very long.”
“I did get a chance to tell him that I love him,” she whispered. “I have to hang on to that.”
“You do, and I wouldn’t give up on him and assume that he’s dead at this point either. We don’t know yet, and we can’t know. So, for the love of God, let’s not put those thoughts and ideas into our reality one second before we have to.”
Her lips twitched. “You sound very esoteric with that comment.”
He shrugged. “I certainly didn’t mean to. I’m just somebody who likes to see reality and not necessarily jump into other theories sooner than necessary. If he’s dead and gone, you could have done nothing anyway. It most likely would have happened right around the time he went missing, and, if he’s alive, then we’ll find him.”
“If he’s alive, we should have found him a long time ago.”
“Maybe, yet perhaps there’s a reason why we haven’t.” He hesitated and then added, “Look. I know this sounds foolish, but did you check all the hospitals around here to confirm he wasn’t there, even as a John Doe?”
“I phoned a bunch of local places early on, but I can’t say I phoned everywhere. Is that—” Then she stopped and nodded. “I should make more phone calls, shouldn’t I?”
“Let me get into it,” he offered. “Let me put out some feelers and see if we can come up with something.” He stopped, then asked, “By the way, what do you do for a living?”
“I’m in the finance industry. I work for a bank doing investments.” He didn’t say anything for the moment, then she lifted her gaze and asked, “Why?”
“Have you been approached in any way, in any unorthodox way?”
Her eyes widened. “I’m not sure I like the way you asked that. What exactly do you mean?”
“If we look at Nicholas’s disappearance with an open mind, embracing all possibilities, we should consider the idea that he could have been taken and held because somebody wanted you to do something for them, and he’ll be the trump card.”
The breath whooshed out of her, as she stared at him in shock. “No, nothing like that.”
He lifted a hand. “I’m not putting that idea out there as something that I’m considering either. I just… I can’t not think about it when we have this scenario going on. If he had been missing for a shorter time period, and you got calls early on, then it would seem to be more of a possibility. However, the fact that he’s been missing as long as he has makes this theory much less likely.”
Dazed, she could only stare at him and slowly nod. “I do hope you’re right,” she whispered, “because that would be unbearable.”