Chapter Twelve
CHAPTER TWELVE
T he mall was quiet for a Wednesday night. The unseasonable cold meant the place was even less crowded than usual. Abby stood alone behind the counter at the pastry shop, looking both bored and nervous.
“Stay behind me.” Haisley raised a hand so he’d back off. “I got this.”
He grabbed her by the wrist. “Wait.”
“What?”
God, he was such a sucker for this woman. Even her impatience was adorable. “I know you’ve got this. I just wanted to say I’m glad you’re here. We make a good team. Always have.”
Something raw and vulnerable flickered in her eyes before she blinked it away. “Maybe. Now let’s get the job done.”
Haisley hadn’t given him much…but she’d exposed a little crack in her seemingly impenetrable armor. It was a start.
As she faced the teenager, she pasted on a soft smile and approached. “Abby?”
“Um…yeah.” The teenager cut a skittish stare over Haisley’s shoulder at him.
Since Nash couldn’t make himself smaller, he stepped back, parking himself at the nearby bistro table to give Abby plenty of space for comfort and Haisley room to work.
“Hi. I’m Haisley Rowe. I work with the man who interviewed you last night, Mr. Scott. Do you have a minute to talk with me?”
Abby sent a questioning gaze to her manager, who lurked a few feet behind. Then the girl flashed another cautious stare Nash’s way.
“It’s up to you,” her manager said, but the woman’s tone encouraged her to say yes.
“Absolutely,” Haisley seconded. “I know you’re scared, and we’re only here to help. If you’re worried about backlash?—”
“A little.” Abby fidgeted. “But terrible things are happening to girls my age. I talked to my mom, and I-I really thought about it. I can’t sit back and let it happen just because I want to protect myself.” The girl took off her hat and apron and shelved them under the counter, then turned back to her manager. “I won’t be long.”
“Take your time. This is important. It’s a slow evening anyway.”
Abby nodded, then raised the counter between her and the rest of the food court and emerged before following Haisley to the table beside his. Bless her for understanding that he needed to hear whatever Abby said rather than getting the information secondhand. And she was also smart enough to put Abby as far from him as possible to set the girl at ease.
Nash sent Abby the kindest smile he knew how. “Hi, Abby.”
“Hi, Mr. Scott.”
“Just Nash, okay? I want you to relax. You’re with people who will do anything to protect you.” She nodded nervously, and he gave the girl props for her courage. “Haisley is going to ask you questions. Nothing hard. I’m happy to help or clarify if you need me to, but I promise you’re in the best hands. She’s great.”
Haisley flashed him a surprised glance as she stripped off her coat and hung it on the back of her chair before giving Abby her full attention. “Thanks. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. I know you’ve been asked a lot of questions.”
“Not really. The detective who spoke to me only asked if I saw any part of the two most recent disappearances. I didn’t work here for any of the others. But I wasn’t scheduled for a shift during the abduction last September because school had just started. I didn’t see anything on Christmas Eve. It was too crowded. Once Officer Haskins heard that, he was done with me.”
Haisley’s face tightened. For a moment, she looked as annoyed as he felt, but she did a great job of smoothing her expression and giving Abby an encouraging nod. “I’m guessing Nash asked you a lot more questions.”
“And the guy he was with, yeah. Ethan? Is he here?” she asked softly, a little blush staining her cheeks.
Nash reared back. Holy shit. Maybe Abby hadn’t been intimidated by him as much as she’d been tongue-tied around pretty-boy Ethan. He hadn’t seen that coming…
“He’s working another angle of the case.”
“Oh.” She looked a little disappointed.
He and Haisley exchanged a glance. Clearly, this development surprised her, too.
Thankfully, she didn’t let that derail her. “Do you remember seeing anything odd recently? Or potentially dangerous?”
“A-a few things. Maybe. I’ve complained more than once that the janitor is creepy. I guess it’s his job to lurk around the bathrooms and clean them. I don’t look on the other side of the food court where the men’s room is, but he doesn’t spend as much time there as he does slinking around the women’s room. I know that doesn’t make him actually guilty of anything, but I’m putting it out there.”
“You’re doing great. Every detail helps. We just want to hear whatever you’ve noticed that caught your eye. Has he done anything you would consider threatening or over the line?”
“Not specifically. He just stares a lot.” She shivered. “Like I said, he’s creepy.”
Abby was right. The janitor’s behavior sounded shady, but that didn’t make him guilty. On the other hand, that didn’t mean he wasn’t a person of interest since he’d come up in multiple interviews. Nash had intended to sit down with him anyway, but now he’d grill the dude.
“I know it can be tough and scary to work around someone who hits your ick button,” Haisley empathized, making the girl feel heard and validated.
“Oh, my god. Exactly! He just gives me the willies, and I can’t even…”
“I get it. But nothing specific that made you think he might be involved with the kidnappings?”
Abby shrugged. “I just feel like he watches all the girls at the mall, especially the pretty ones. He doesn’t actually say anything, but he leers. It’s gross.”
Haisley sent her a sympathetic smile. “Are you ever asked to take out the trash down that hall and through the door to the bins out back?”
“Not anymore. My manager makes the guys do that. Or it stacks up until she can do it. But all the girls around my age know better.”
“When you use that bathroom yourself, have you noticed anyone or anything else that made you anxious or uncomfortable?”
Abby shifted her gaze, then glanced toward the hallway in question. “When I work evening shifts, I try to hold it. It’s a long four hours, but I can usually make it. Weekends are a full shift, though. I wait to use my lunch hour to walk to another bathroom, but I can’t always make it, especially if it’s…you know, that time of the month.”
She whispered the words so softly, Nash barely heard. Poor thing seemed embarrassed about mentioning her period in front of a man. She had no way of knowing that, growing up, he had three sisters with whom he and his four other brothers shared a single bathroom. He lacked delicate sensibilities when it came to menstrual cycles. They were merely a fact of life.
“I know exactly what you mean,” Haisley assured. “Go on.”
“Well…”
Nash couldn’t tear his gaze away from Haisley’s profile as she listened to Abby. The determined set of her jaw and the keen intelligence sparking in her eyes as she absorbed every word mesmerized him.
God, she was incredible. A force of nature in her own right, with a knack for reading people and getting them to open up that left him in awe. He’d always known she was whip-smart and tenacious, but seeing her effortlessly accomplish what he hadn’t been able to made his heart swell with fierce pride and admiration.
And a bone-deep, unshakable love that felt like a battering ram to the chest.
“The night not too long ago, when one of the girls got away? I was going to run to my car because I’d left my phone in my glovebox. It wasn’t quite dark yet, so I thought it might be safe, and my mom was probably getting frantic that I hadn’t checked in. But when I opened the door to sneak out to the parking lot, I spotted a brown van and a guy in a dark skull cap hanging around. He bolted the second he saw me.”
Nash leaned in to bark out a follow-up. Haisley shot him an emphatic glare, so he bit his tongue. He wasn’t used to downshifting, much less taking a back seat, but she was making strides with Abby. He just had to let her do her thing.
With an almost imperceptible nod, he leaned back in his chair and ceded the interview to her.
She flashed him a grateful smile, then turned back to Abby. “Bolted? He got in the van and left?”
“Yeah. Tore away from the curb, burning rubber and everything. I ran back into the food court. I was so freaking scared, I trembled for the next hour.”
“I’m sure. I would have been afraid, too. Did you get a good look at the guy?”
“It was starting to get dark out there, but I saw enough.”
“Had you seen him before?”
Abby thought about it, then shook her head. “Not that I remember. I mean, I see a lot of faces here, so if he was milling around the mall, I didn’t notice him. He wasn’t super tall, like him.” She glanced Nash’s way. “Or even particularly memorable. He seemed…average. But, you know, on the disturbing side. Besides the dark skull cap, he had brown facial hair and brown eyes. Um…his complexion wasn’t dark or light. Maybe in the middle? That’s harder because it was shadowy out there.”
“Any identifying characteristics?”
“His nose was crooked, like it had been broken at some point. He had this blue teardrop tattoo under his eye.” She pointed. “It was attached to something…tribal looking, but most of it was covered by his skull cap. And more tattoos on his knuckles, but I couldn’t make them out.”
Nash jerked upright and exchanged a glance with Haisley. Sure, that teardrop might mean the guy had lost someone, but it was also a common tattoo for gang members or those who had served time. Then again, attached to something tribal, the ink could mean something else altogether. “Could you describe him if we brought in a sketch artist?”
“Yeah. I have a good memory. I suck at names, but I remember faces.”
Nash reached for his phone, happy to help and have some purpose in this conversation. “I’m on it.”
As he texted Hunter Edgington, he heard Haisley continue with questions. He was so damn proud of the progress she was making. This was their first possible break in the case.
“Fantastic. Did you get the make and model of the van? Did it say anything on the side, like the name of a business? Did you get a license plate?”
“It was a Chevy, but not like a minivan. It was more old school, like something out of the seventies.”
“A conversion van?”
“Yeah. There was nothing on the side. More than that?” Abby shrugged. “Sorry. I was too rattled to look at the license plate, but I did notice the front right hubcap was missing. The whole thing looked dingy. Tinted windows and a dented chrome bumper.”
“What shade of brown? Light, like a tan color or?—”
“No. Darker, like a coffee brown. That’s all I remember.”
“That’s a lot, and it’s incredibly helpful. Have you told anyone else?”
“Just my mom. I was too scared to tell anyone else.”
“Do you remember anything else about that incident? Did you see anyone else outside? Or in the hallway when you came back in?”
She paused, then frowned. “I didn’t think about it then because I hadn’t been working when anyone was abducted, but the janitor was hanging around the women’s bathroom. When I came back in those doors, he had the hall blocked off, and he looked…”
“Annoyed?”
“Startled. I didn’t know what was up with him, but I didn’t stick around to find out.”
That was the third mention of the fucking janitor. Nash made a mental note to move him to the top of the interview list. Even if the creep wasn’t involved, even if he was just doing his job, he must have seen something at some point.
The glance Haisley sent him suggested the same thing. He nodded, letting her know they were on the same page.
Damn, she was good at this. He already respected her intelligence, but tonight had taken it up another notch.
“You absolutely did the right thing, hustling back to safety,” Haisley assured the girl. “Anything else you remember?”
Abby paused again. “Not that I can think of. Sorry.”
“No, you’ve done great. You’ve helped more than you know. Do you have your phone handy? I want to give you my number in case you think of anything else.”
Abby reached in her pocket, unlocked the device, and handed it to Haisley. “Cool.”
Haisley tapped in her number as a new contact and saved it, then texted herself from Abby’s device. “Got it. I’ll pass your info on to Nash and Ethan, too, okay?”
Good call. Her mother was probably in protective mode, and who could blame her? Given that, if a grown-ass man gave her underage daughter his phone number, she might not take it kindly.
Abby nodded. “Yeah.”
Finally, Nash leaned in. “You’ve been a big help. We appreciate it.”
The girl looked relieved. “I wanted to do whatever I could.”
“Have you thought about quitting your job until this is resolved?”
Abby winced. “My mom wants me to, but I’m saving for college. I need the money. Otherwise, I can’t go.”
She was in a tough place, and Nash understood. He’d grown up the dirt-poor kid of a coal miner. There hadn’t been money for more than the necessities when he was a kid, and he’d worn nothing but Trees’s hand-me-downs until he was an adult. “If I put out some feelers for a different job that has similar hours and pays at least as much, would you consider it?”
Haisley snapped her stare to him, clearly surprised. By his offer? That he cared what happened to the girl? God, did she think he was the kind of asshole who didn’t give a shit about anyone but himself?
“Y-you would do that?” Abby breathed.
He purposefully softened his voice. “Sure. I can’t promise anything, but this world is scary, and you shouldn’t have to feel unsafe where you work.”
Abby glanced over her shoulder to her waiting manager. When she turned back, her expression looked guilty as hell. “I hate to leave Ginger. She’s been really good to me, almost like a second mom.”
“Then she should want the best for you. I think she’ll understand,” Haisley said, backing him up.
“Yeah. Then, um…if you hear of something and I’d qualify, I’d appreciate it.”
They wrapped up the interview and stood so Haisley could don her coat. Nash insisted on watching Abby until she made it back to her unit and was ensconced safely behind the counter.
As they headed for the exit, Haisley turned to him with a triumphant grin. “I think that was a success. We have a solid lead to chase down.”
“Thanks to you,” he said, unable to keep the note of pride from his voice. “I couldn’t get her to even look me in the eye yesterday. But you? You were amazing.”
“Thanks.” She gave him a faint grin. “I’ve had a little experience. Well, it was a simulation with an online crime-solving group, but the others involved told me I did okay. It was good experience to do the real thing in person.”
“You’ve got a knack for it.”
But he wasn’t surprised. Haisley wasn’t merely amazing. She was the kind of woman who would keep him on his toes, challenge him in all the best ways. And he wanted nothing more than to support her and stand by her side in every sense of the word.
A pretty flush stole across her cheeks at the praise, but she shrugged it off. “I just approached her a little differently, and you did a really good thing, offering to help her find a safer job. Think you can pull that off?”
“No promises, but I know some people. I can make some calls.”
“I love that you’d do that.” She smiled as he opened the door to the parking lot. “And you’re right. We make a good team.”
Her words were like a caress to his heart, igniting a fierce spark of hope in his chest.
God, he wished she’d tell him why she’d left two years ago… Or he needed to work up the guts to ask. If she’d be honest, they could work through anything. He was convinced of that, just like he knew they were meant to be together.
For now, he bit back the words and helped her into his truck. The time wasn’t right. He hadn’t regained her trust. They were in the middle of a dangerous investigation and emotions were running high, fueled by worry and adrenaline. But she’d moved back, and that bought him time. She’d find out soon enough that he wouldn’t give up until she was his again.
“We do. In every way.” He sat beside her and let the words hang in the charged silence, heavy with barely restrained desire.
Haisley’s breath hitched as he started the engine, her pupils flaring wide as she stared back at him. He felt caught in the magnetic sway that pulled them inexorably closer.
But then she blinked away and cleared her throat. “We should start running down this information, see if we can locate that van. Oh, and revise the list of people who need interviews and the questions we should ask.”
“You’re right. Want to do that over pizza and beers?”
“I-I…don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Nash tamped down a flare of frustration. But even if he couldn’t say the things burning the tip of his tongue, he could show Haisley that he was all in. That he believed in her, understood her, supported her, and loved her with every fiber of his being. “Then we’ll start again tomorrow. I’ll track down the janitor, and together, we’ll solve these abductions.”
And as he drove her to her car and secretly followed her home to make sure she got inside her place safely, he hoped that maybe, if they kept chipping away at this case together…she’d truly believe in them again, too.