Chapter Thirty-Four
Less than an hour after landing in Charlotte, Danny sped along the interstate toward Bella’s townhome as dawn shot tendrils of blazing orange over the horizon. He hadn’t slept on the overnight flight from Phoenix. How could he? All he could think about was Bella. What she was going through.
If she was afraid.
He cranked the air conditioning higher. Seventy-three degrees shouldn’t feel so oppressive, but unlike Phoenix with its dry desert air, Charlotte’s humidity clung to his skin, thick and suffocating.
His hands locked around the steering wheel. Too tight.
It promised to be a beautiful summer day.
And all he could think was that it might end with Bella dead.
Four hours stuck inside an airplane at thirty thousand feet had been too much time to ponder every worst-case scenario he could come up with. The police officer who’d called him entered Bella’s home and found her purse and phone. Trip was unharmed, but Bella was nowhere to be seen.
They’d gone to Talia’s home as well.
Nothing.
Trip greeted him as he let himself into Bella’s home. He let the dog out back, dropped some kibble and fresh water in his bowls, then stood in the living room.
Even empty, Bella’s house should have felt alive.
It was never this still.
This wrong.
Even the air felt flat, unmoving. Almost as if the house knew the woman who lived inside might not return.
He bent forward, hands braced on his knees as they threatened to buckle.
No.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he forced air into his lungs.
Bella was alive.
He refused to accept any alternatives.
Rage surged to fill the space grief left behind.
If Talia had hurt Bella, he’d make sure she didn’t live long enough to regret it.
Bella’s purse sat in its usual place on the kitchen counter. He dumped the contents, items scattering across the white marbled granite in a careless spill.
Lip balm. Pens. Keys. Breath mints.
In her wallet, he found a credit card receipt from the wine bar in Ballantyne, dated yesterday.
She’d made it that far.
The video clips from Bella’s exterior security cameras showed Talia leaving Bella’s home after ten p.m.
She’d been gone less than nine hours. He typed the passcode on Bella’s phone. Missed calls and unread texts. Dozens. All from him. Not a single one had reached her.
He went through her text thread with Talia, searching for any clue that would give him a place to start.
Talia had texted to confirm their outing. She’d offered to drive.
He needed to access Talia’s home. Her computer.
Fuck, he needed Nathan.
Opening Bella’s contacts, he pulled up Talia’s home address.
Trip barked. He called the dog back inside and gave him a pat.
“I’m going to bring your mama back, I promise.” He had to force the words past the lump in his throat.
Deep breath. Get it together.
Right now Bella needed him thinking clearly.
Pulling up Talia’s address, he studied the location—a modern apartment complex in South End. Third floor. Secure building.
Pet-friendly.
That was his way in.
Who wouldn’t want to help the new guy with his friendly, fluffy dog get into the building because he was a dumbass and forgot his electronic key fob?
“Come on, Trip. We’re going for a ride.”
Twenty minutes later, Danny parked in a visitor’s spot at The Stratton apartments, leashed Trip, and headed toward one of the building’s black metal-and-glass side entrances.
At Bella’s, he’d quickly changed into one of his loud Hawaiian shirts and a pair of khaki cargo shorts and left his hair loose around his shoulders.
This had to work. Assuming he could pull off his usual patented charm.
Because right now, every second he didn’t know how to find Bella was a drop of acid eating away the lining of his gut.
A trio of women in their twenties clustered near the entrance, overpriced coffee drinks in hand.
He approached and greeted them with what Emily Long would call his cheesy surfer dude smile.
The women divided their attention between checking him out and cooing at Trip, who was only too happy to receive the attention.
“I don’t suppose any of you live here?” He gestured to the locked door with an embarrassed shrug. “I’m visiting a friend and forgot the key fob. Now I’m locked out.”
The brunette with long, straight hair held up her keys. “I’ve got you.” She held the fob to the lock, and it buzzed.
He grabbed the handle and pulled before it re-locked. “Thanks.” With another manufactured megawatt smile, he entered with Trip. The women followed.
When the elevator doors opened, they all stepped inside.
The brunette placed her fob over the elevator keypad. “What floor?”
“Three. Thanks.”
When the doors opened on third, he stepped out, his shoulders relaxing when none of the women got off with him.
He wound his way down the hall, following the apartment numbers until he came to Talia’s apartment.
The doorknob moved freely in his grip, but when he pushed against the door, he met resistance.
Deadbolt.
He angled his shoulder to block the line of sight down the hall in case one of Talia’s neighbors made an appearance. Reaching into the side pocket of his cargo shorts, he slid out a thin black case and flipped it open.
Removing an L-shaped strip of metal, he inserted it into the keyhole. Light pressure. Next, he inserted the rake pick. Using quick strokes, his fingertips picked up the vibrations as the pins caught and lifted with a faint metallic click.
The third pin slipped.
Fuck.
He eased out a breath, refocused, and tried again.
Voices echoed somewhere down the hall.
Danny froze.
The voices faded.
He exhaled slowly and turned back to the lock. There was a subtle give in the cylinder, and the deadbolt slid back with a click.
Easing open the door, he and Trip slipped inside.
Talia’s space was neat. Sterile. The colors muted beige and white. It reminded him of Bella’s house, only without the humanizing touches of a dog or the romance books scattered in random spots.
There was definitely no pink bedroom with flowers and fairy lights and painted drawers.
Dammit. Moisture stung his eyes.
He left the dog in the kitchen and stepped into the main bedroom.
His jaw slackened. “No fucking way.”
Photos. Everywhere.
Walls. Nightstands. The dresser.
Bella’s face stared back at him from every angle—laughing, smiling, caught in moments that should have been private.
This wasn’t friendship.
It was obsession.
He kept his head down, avoiding Bella’s eyes as he went through Talia’s drawers, searching for anything that might clue him into where she’d taken Bella.
His attention settled on the corkboard resting in a corner on the floor. Pushpins held several newspaper clippings in place.
He placed it on the bed. Scanned the articles.
They were the same ones Olivia Flores received in the mail. The ones postmarked from Los Angeles.
“California State Assembly Candidate’s Daughter Missing After Apparent Abduction.”
“Anonymous Note Raises Fears for Missing 12-Year-Old Girl.”
“Isabella Strickland Rescued Alive After Three Days in Storage Unit. Suspect Arrested.”
According to Bella, Talia traveled frequently to California for work.
He moved into the second bedroom, more of a home office with a desk and a couch. The wall above the desk had two hangers nailed into it, spaced about sixteen inches apart.
For the corkboard she’d taken down?
He searched the drawers. No laptop, no tablet. No electronics at all.
Nothing that gave him a clue about where Bella might be.
A bed pillow, a folded bedsheet, and blanket sat neatly on the couch.
Danny frowned. Other than Bella, Talia seemed to have few friends. Who would she have invited to stay over?
He lifted the pillow. Held it to his nose.
Cologne.
Sharp. Mineral. Familiar.
His body went still.
He’d smelled it before. At the gala.
When he’d taken Hassan down.
Danny wheeled, raking the room with a quick glance.
He yanked open the closet. Three men’s dress shirts and two pairs of trousers. A brown leather duffel on the floor next to a pair of men’s sneakers. He rummaged through the bag. Men’s underwear, socks. Toiletries.
Talia had housed her brother.
Protected him.
Until she’d murdered him.
Why? It made no sense.
What had Bella told him Hassan’s actual words to her were?
He said I was in danger and trusted the wrong person.
And then at the gala. The sins of the father shouldn’t be visited upon the child.
Hassan hadn’t been hunting Bella.
He stepped back into Talia’s bedroom, taking in the wall-to-wall photos. Using his phone to document what he found, he sent the photos to Nathan’s phone and to the homicide detective who’d called him the night before.
Hassan had been trying to warn Bella while still protecting his sister.
Because Talia wasn’t about to give up her obsession.
His phone buzzed.
Nathan. Relief loosened his chest.
“Lachlan and I just landed. Where the hell did you get those photos?”
“At Talia Collins’ apartment. I sent them to the Charlotte police. There’s nothing here that tells me where she might have taken Bella, and she took all her tech with her.” Nathan’s ability to hack into anything was his last hope. “Can you trace her phone if I give you the number?”
“I gotta find a place to set up my computer, but yeah. Give it to me.”
Danny rattled off Talia’s digits.
“Hang tight, amigo. We’ll be in touch.”
He’d just reached Bella’s home when Nathan called back.
“I’ve got a general area.” Nathan rattled off the closest intersection. “It’s a mix of residential, retail, and industrial developments. Unless I can get a better ping, it’s going to be like finding a needle in a haystack.”
Danny plugged the street names into Google Maps and scanned the area.
Too many options.
His gaze snagged on the wastewater treatment facility nearby.
And all the undeveloped wooded land surrounding it.
If you were going to dispose of a body—
No.
He cut the thought off hard.
“Danny.” Nathan’s voice cut through the speaker on his phone. “You okay?”
He swiped a hand over his face, silently cursing the tremor in his fingers. “Yeah.”
Bella wasn’t dead.
She wasn’t.
He scanned the map again.
Talia needed somewhere there’d be no witnesses.
Somewhere no one would question her presence.
Easy to get in and out of.
His gaze stopped.
A self-storage facility. Wait. Two, almost directly across the road from each other.
If Talia were looking to recreate Bella’s worst nightmare, it made sense.
But which storage facility? He didn’t have time to search them both.
He pressed the phone back to his ear. “Meet me here, as quickly as you can.” He rattled off the address, his feet already taking him back to the Mustang.
“Wait for us, Chaos.”
A command from his boss. His former platoon leader.
He ignored it.
Every second might make the difference between life and death for Bella. He was fifteen minutes away. Nathan and Lachlan were twenty-five.
He wasn’t waiting.
“Hold on, Bella.” His voice came out rough. Raw.
“Just a little longer.”