Chapter Twelve
Maeve rushed for the door, discarding the severed padlock and pulling at the heavy metal.
Fluorescent lights she was sure didn’t come standard in a crumby storage facility like this one flickered overhead.
An entire arsenal of weaponry, tactical gear and ammunition stared back at her from organized shelves, tables and cases.
In any other circumstance, she might’ve been impressed, but the fact this container had sat unlocked for weeks charged her with a tendril of panic.
Anyone could’ve gotten inside since Callen was here last. And it was becoming obvious someone potentially connected to Iliana Meyer’s disappearance had. “Can you tell if anything is missing?”
“I keep inventory.” Callen ducked into the container, heading straight for a bin along the back wall. “Last I checked, I had four Tasers. All the same make and model, but there’s only three here.”
“Someone was in here.” They’d left that Taser at the scene for a reason.
Why? Investigators had already combed through the riverbank, dredged the river itself and cataloged all evidence in and around Iliana’s abandoned vehicle.
What was the point in trying to draw Callen into the case now?
Or had it been dropped or discarded during Iliana’s disappearance and police had somehow missed it? “Anything else?”
“It’ll take me a couple hours to go through it all.” Hours they didn’t have. Callen sucked in a deep breath, looking every ounce the private security operator she’d known. On alert, anxious, defensive.
She stepped deeper into the container, noting a collection of hand grenades off to one side and a bulletproof vest on the other.
A red light caught her attention from the corner of her eye, and she turned to stare straight up at the small mounted camera in the corner over her right shoulder.
Just inside the door. “Does your surveillance system start recording when the door opens or is it designed to run twenty-four seven?”
“When the door opens.” His voice dropped an octave, a sure sign of the anger—probably lined with embarrassment at having his space compromised—radiating from within.
The tendons and muscles in his forearms flexed under the strain of his fists.
“The system pushes a notification to my phone. I know every time that door is opened.”
“But I take it you haven’t gotten any notifications in a while.
” So the surveillance probably wouldn’t help them.
Still, this unit was their best lead. If they could figure out who’d taken Callen’s Taser and left it behind at that scene, they could potentially connect them to Iliana’s—maybe Lauren’s—disappearance.
Maeve shut down the urge to run her fingers over the assault rifles—six of them—that hung on the wall from a self-installed grate and pegs. “Who knows about this unit?”
“No one.” He finally turned to her then, suddenly so much bigger in this limited space than she’d given him credit for.
He’d always been muscular. With his kind of work, he’d had to put in a lot of time building strength and endurance.
But now she wasn’t sure she could wrap her arms around his middle.
Not that she would want to. Unless he asked, which, based on his apology and determination to ensure her he wouldn’t come within a foot of her again, wouldn’t be in this lifetime.
“My parents didn’t want me leaving any of this at their house, so I brought it down with me in a trailer.
Got the unit under one of my aliases I used in my security work, and I pay for it out of an account in that name.
There’s no way someone could connect this back to me. ”
“But they did.” She surveyed the rest of the unit in a few seconds. Nothing looked out of place as far as she could tell, but what did she know? “How else could it have shown up at the river?”
“I have a hard time believing police missed it during their search of the area after your forensic analyst went missing.” Pulling up something on his phone, Callen swiped his thumb through what she assumed to be his surveillance app. “Which means someone most likely went there to frame me.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Yes, you have a connection to that place, but not to this most recent victim.
If that’s what Iliana is.” The truth was Maeve had no idea if Iliana Meyer was taken under the same circumstances as Lauren Russell.
She couldn’t deny the similarities. Both were single women, working in some kind of city or state capacity.
Lauren as an urban planner in Springdale and Iliana as a forensic analyst for the State of Nevada.
They were close in age, ambitious and came with their own list of enemies.
But the biggest resemblance? The fact their vehicles had been left on the bank of the Virgin River nearly one year apart.
“Who would want to frame you for Iliana’s disappearance? You didn’t know her, right?”
“If she was in Zion, there’s a chance we came across each other on the trail or in the visitor’s center, but no.
I’ve never formally met her, as far as I know.
” His mouth thinned into a strict line that told her this was getting to him far more than he let on.
“Forensic analysts aren’t common around here.
Considering the increase in homicides, I wouldn’t put it past the law enforcement division or Springdale PD to bring one in, but Simpson would’ve mentioned if Iliana Meyer was in Zion on a case, and I wouldn’t have any reason to meet her.
Which means she was most likely here on personal time. ”
She hadn’t thought of that. The second she’d heard a vehicle had been abandoned along the same river as Lauren’s, she’d gotten in her car and started driving over the state border.
No questions. No hesitation. The similarities between the cases had been too great.
There was another connection they hadn’t talked about, but it hurt too much to think about.
Maeve sucked in a sharp breath. “Except Iliana’s boyfriend said she didn’t have any vacations planned and couldn’t explain why she’d come to Zion of all places.
As far as I’ve been able to tell, she doesn’t have family or friends here, and she’s never been officially called into help with a police investigation. ”
“I imagine he would say that, considering seventy percent of missing persons cases lead back to the significant other.”
Maeve silently counted the number of tear gas grenades organized on the table in front of her. “I have fingerprint dust and brushes in my bag. We can pull prints. See who’s been in here. I can ask the medical examiner to upload the results to the federal database again.”
“If they got past my padlock and surveillance system, I doubt they were stupid enough to leave behind prints.” He looked at her then, his eyes dipping to her chin then back up to meet hers. “Why the medical examiner?”
Her stomach dropped. “What?”
“You took the Taser to the medical examiner to print and check against the federal database.” Turning to face her, Callen blocked off the only exit from the storage unit.
Whether he’d done it on purpose or not, Maeve’s entire body vibrated with awareness.
“Why would you drive thirty minutes out of your way rather than take it to the Springdale PD for processing?”
The ME had asked her the same question, but coming from Callen…
She tried swallowing around the dryness in her throat.
“Springdale is up against a two-week backlog. They only have one officer available to process evidence at the moment, and they’re overwhelmed.
The medical examiner’s office was the next best option if I wanted results quickly. ”
It wasn’t a lie. Local police often found themselves weeks, if not months, out from processing anything from toxicology samples to processing prints, drugs taken into custody and more.
And departments like Springdale, like Zion’s law enforcement unit, were always understaffed.
But that hadn’t been why she had yet to bring the police into her investigation.
A low hum issued from his throat, those intense dark eyes glued to her as though Callen was trying to see straight through her.
Her insides clenched because he could. He knew her better than anyone, knew how to get under her armor as though it’d never existed.
Knew how far she would go to find the truth and to give the Russells something to hope for.
“You haven’t just been working Lauren’s case the past couple weeks, have you?
You’ve been looking for leads ever since you were removed from the investigation last year. ”
He couldn’t know that. She hadn’t told anyone about the suspension, but Callen had always been able to see right through her.
Heat flared through her despite the frigid temperatures outside, but there was no point in lying.
Callen had his own connections in the law enforcement community.
It wouldn’t be hard for him to reach out to them and put the truth together, especially since she’d utilized some of his network to run her own investigation without her office knowing.
It all connected back to that damn notebook.
The one Lauren left behind in her vehicle the day she’d disappeared.
Maeve had followed protocol to the letter.
She’d documented the notebook’s location in the car, its appearance and condition, and confirmed it was Lauren’s handwriting inside before sealing it into the evidence bag.
But she’d made a mistake in bringing the evidence back to her hotel room instead of filing it with the Springdale PD clerk in the early morning hours when she could barely keep her eyes open.
One that would alter the entire course of her career and her life.
By the next morning, the notebook had gone missing, and she’d been removed from the case.
“I shouldn’t have even been on the case, but I was watching you break a little more each day.
You stopped eating. You stopped sleeping.
I couldn’t get through to you. I was losing you, and it scared me, Callen.
” Her voice didn’t sound like her own. Distant and scratchy.
Maeve licked her lips to buy herself time, but he was right about one thing.
He deserved to know. “Agents aren’t permitted to work cases they might have a personal connection to.
It’s a conflict of interest, and biases can creep up on you, but she was my best friend.
She was your sister, and I couldn’t stand there and watch you destroy yourself trying to find her.
So I convinced the special agent in charge in the Salt Lake office to let me drive down to assist local PD. ”
It all felt like another lifetime, her life separating into two different phases.
Before Lauren and After Lauren. “Nobody here knew my connection to Lauren, but once that notebook went missing, everything came out into the open. The special agent in charge immediately removed me from the case, and I was suspended. Within a week, the crime scene was released. A month later, the search teams and K9 units were called off. Nobody was looking for her, and I… I couldn’t leave her out here.
By that time, we’d already split, and I transferred to the Las Vegas office.
I had the resources, the anonymity and the proximity to keep searching.
There wasn’t much to go on though. Until now. ”
There was a softening in Callen’s shoulders.
Not a significant amount to convince her he could forgive her for compromising his sister’s investigation but enough to tell her he understood what drove her to lie.
“The container is making it impossible to access my surveillance feeds. I need to step out.” Lowering his phone to his side, he half turned toward the door. “Thank you. For not giving up on her.”
Maeve thought she might have nodded as he stepped free of the container.
Turning her back to the door, she swiped at her face.
She had to pull herself together. Emotion couldn’t take the lead in the case this time.
Lauren and Iliana were counting on her, and somewhere in this damn freezing box was a clue as to who might’ve been involved in their disappearances.
Heavy metal hinges protested from behind. She turned in time to see the door swinging closed and rushed forward to stop it. Too slow. Her hands connected with cold steel as scraping sounded from the other side. “Callen!”
The fluorescent lights flickered. Then went out.