Chapter 3
T his time, Callie didn’t hesitate to start her car and drive away when the door closed behind her.
Something was up with Gabriel. She’d bought his story at first. He might be a lot of things that she didn’t know how she felt about, but he was the kind of guy who’d buy a sick woman—or man—a bottle of ginger ale and a sleeve of crackers.
But he’d lingered a little too long, insisted a little too much, that she think twice about looking for Laura Nolan.
She pulled out of the drive and headed south toward the lodge, the resort owned by Charley and Joey’s family that wrapped around the top of the lake that gave Mystery Lake its name. Although why, she didn’t know. The second-largest lake in the state was hardly a mystery .
By the time she parked at the studio cabin she’d rented for three nights, her mind had fixed on one question: how to get Gabriel to tell her what he didn’t want her to know.
Exiting her car, she checked the locks before pulling her suit jacket tighter around her and hurrying to the cabin. The temperatures had dropped overnight, and while nowhere near freezing, a warmer top layer wouldn’t have gone amiss.
Slipping through the glass door, she dumped her bag on the floor and kicked off her heels as she slid it closed.
Making a beeline for the safe that held her computer, she flicked the gas fireplace on as she passed, her bare feet thankful for the myriad of area rugs scattered around the nice-sized cabin.
She’d almost reached the safe when her phone rang.
Slowing enough to pull the device from her pocket, she smiled at the name on the screen.
“Hey, Daph. How are you?” she greeted her older sister. “You unstick that plot?”
Her sister had spent a decade jet-setting around the world as a model before retiring and trying her hand at writing.
Afraid of assumptions following her from one career to the next, she published her first book under a pseudonym.
Ten years and five New York Times Bestsellers later, most people still had no idea that the reclusive author DL Callahan was also former supermodel Daphne Louise Parks—the “Callahan” being their mother’s maiden name.
As far as Callie was concerned, though, Daphne was, and would always be, just her big sister.
“I did, but more importantly, how did it go with Gabe?”
Callie didn’t often talk about work, but technically, the FBI had closed the case that brought her to Gabriel’s doorstep years ago.
She hadn’t been involved in the original investigation and didn’t have access to the confidential records—if there were any.
And she’d taken personal leave to make this trip out west. As a “civilian,” she had more leeway in talking to her sister.
Or that’s what she’d claim if it ever came to it.
Besides, at this point, she trusted her sister more than her colleagues. They’d forged their sibling bond in the hellfire of their family, and that bond was unbreakable. They’d needed each other to survive, but now, sharing their lives was more a comforting habit.
Grabbing a throw blanket, Callie flopped onto the loveseat as she answered. “He says he ran into Laura that day in the mini-mart. That she’d been sick, and he bought her some ginger ale and crackers.”
Daphne chuckled. “Yeah, it’s been twenty years since we’ve spent any time together, but if Gabe kept any of the good parts of who he was back then, I can see him doing that.”
Her sister’s words brought Callie up short. Not that Daphne had no problem seeing Gabriel buying a stranger something to make them feel better—she’d had that thought as well. But her reference to his “good parts ” gave her pause. Parts , not just one good trait.
As kids, Gabriel had simultaneously fascinated, terrified, and awed her. Everything had come so easy to him—friends, popularity, sports. Everything . Some days, she hated him for it. Even then, though, she recognized that the “hate” she felt was more likely thinly disguised envy.
But despite everything he made her feel back then—frustration, anger, envy, other feelings she didn’t want to name—he did have good parts.
Several of them. And while she didn’t know him the way she used to, from her time with the Falcons, it seemed that he’d not only kept those good parts, but he’d made them a core part of who he was as a man.
“Yeah, me, too,” she replied. “Which is why I believed him.”
“Believed? As in past tense?”
“I’m not saying he lied, but I think there’s more to it than what he told me,” she said, tucking her feet underneath her.
“Like what?”
Her gaze rested on the flames dancing behind the glass. “I don’t know. That’s the thing. I can’t imagine in what world he would have come across Laura Nolan, but there was something in the way he talked about her. And her potential situation.”
“What does that mean?”
“He kept pointing out that if she went missing then maybe there was a reason.”
“Abusive husband?”
“Maybe,” Callie replied. Rian Nolan was a wealthy and powerful man.
Not that all wealthy and powerful men abused their wives or that poor men with no power didn’t, but she was a realist. On the rare occasion when domestic violence charges were brought, wealthy, powerful men tended to escape justice more frequently than others.
“And he’s concerned that if you find her, you might push her back into that world?”
“That might not have been her world,” Callie reminded her. “But that’s not the point. The point is, for someone who claimed never to have met her before that day, he was awfully adamant that I exercise caution when it comes to Laura Nolan.”
“And so you think he does. Know her, that is?” Daphne asked.
Her gut said “yes,” that he knew more than he’d shared. But her logic, as it tended to do, put a damper on that voice.
“Stop it, Cal,” her sister said. “Stop doubting yourself. What does your instinct say?”
“He knows more,” she replied. Unease slithered through her at the confidence in her statement, but so did a sense of rightness.
“Then what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Liar. You always have a plan.”
She exhaled. “I need more intel on the Nolan and Quayle families. If it’s possible that one of them was behind the bombing that killed Elizabeth—if I had more proof—Gabriel might be more willing to talk with me.”
“Then find enough proof to persuade him.”
“Easier said than done, Daph. I’ve had the thumb drive Elizabeth left me for three and a half years, and the only thing I’ve managed to decipher are those two names: Nolan and Quayle.”
“Both of whom were negotiating contracts with the French government when that bomb went off,” Daphne reminded her. As if she needed reminding. That bomb had killed her best friend.
“Yes, but at any given time, there are hundreds of businesses in negotiations with the French government,” she replied.
“But only two caught Elizabeth’s attention,” Daphne shot back, not at all put off by her doubts.
Callie did her best to rein in those tendencies—they didn’t serve her well in the field.
But left to her own devices, she second-guessed everything.
Even which coffee mug to use in the morning.
A charming legacy from her childhood when nothing short of perfection was acceptable.
“I never met Elizabeth,” Daphne said, her voice softening.
Despite choosing a different way to cope with their upbringing—the day Daphne turned eighteen, she signed with a modeling agency and moved to Paris without a word to their parents—she understood Callie’s process.
Callie sometimes wished she had her sister’s strength, but she’d long ago accepted that they were different people.
And that she could no more live like Daphne than Daphne could live like her.
“She left that thumb drive for you, Cal,” Daphne continued. “She trusted you. Honor her by trusting yourself. I know, it’s hard, but take the chance. What’s the worst that can happen?”
Nothing. That was the truth. The FBI had shut down her request to reopen the investigation, and with her reputation of being by the book, had never questioned whether she’d follow the order.
If she tried (again) and failed (again), no one but her and Daphne would know.
And even if someone else knew, did it matter?
Elizabeth Lightfoot had been her roommate at the FBI Academy—she’d been a second sister, her first real friend, and in many ways, a mentor despite being the same age.
Daphne was right; she owed it to herself and to Elizabeth to be the person Elizabeth believed her to be.
Not one without doubts or reservations, but one who pushed through those.
“Her mom,” Callie said.
“What?”
“I took two weeks of vacation. I have ten days left. I need to talk with Elizabeth’s mom. Lyda and Liza were close, very close. If anyone can help me figure out what the files in the thumb drive mean, it will be Lyda.”
“There you go. A plan,” Daphne said.
Yes, a plan. The tightness in her chest eased and for the first time that day, she smiled. “Guess I’m headed to Santa Fe.”
“Call me when you get there. You know the drill.”
“I do, and I will.” Although both their parents were still alive and well, the sisters only counted on each other. A tiny family, but a strong one. “Good luck with the next plot twist. Love you.”
“Love you, too,” Daphne replied before hanging up.
Callie didn’t wait to pull up Lyda Lightfoot’s number, and the call connected less than a minute later. Two hours after hanging up, she returned her car to the small airport south of Mystery Lake and checked in to her flight to LA, where she’d catch a connecting flight to Albuquerque.
Maybe the trip would be for naught, but regardless, she’d get to spend time with Lyda. And she had a plan.