Justine Davis - Colton's Secret Investigation

“What you don’t want to picture is me without it. Other people count to ten to hold on to their temper. I count stitches.”

“Point taken. Er, no pun intended.”

“Too bad,” she retorted. “It would have been a good one.”

And suddenly they were both laughing. And it was the most amazing feeling she’d had in a long time. That they could laugh amid what was going on was probably a bit macabre, but she couldn’t deny it felt good.

“Thanks,” he said. “I needed that.”

“Me, too. So, shall we get back on the merry-go-round?”

As had become habit now, they went through it all again. They’d done it so often they both had every step of the investigation practically committed to memory. But this was her first case anywhere near this magnitude, and Daria was determined to justify Trey’s faith in her.

They went over what little they had on the newest missing girl. They knew little except that she was from Denver, had been gone a week longer than expected and resembled the other victims. It wasn’t even certain yet that she was a victim of their quarry. But the resemblance was there, so they factored her in, although as of now she was in the category of “possible.”

Others were searching for her as an active missing person, and Daria sent up an earnest hope that she was found alive—and not simply because another victim would ratchet up the pressure on them.

“Blue Eyes,” Stefan muttered when they finally reached the newest bit of information they had.

“Helpful, huh?” Daria deadpanned.

“More than we had before,” he said. He turned to the laptop that was now booted up on the table in the center of the room. He tapped a couple of keys, and the recording she’d heard at least a dozen times played again. She listened to Lucy Reese, aka Bianca Rouge, tell her friend Candace—who had unexpectedly turned out to be the mother of the baby left on Fox Colton’s doorstep—that her date had passed out drunk, so she was down in the hotel bar and had connected with an older guy who was “still hot.” She had cheerfully referred to him as Blue Eyes and ended with a promise to see Candace later.

A promise she had been unable to keep.

It still gave her chills to listen to that rather ordinary message, given in such normal, even happy tones, by a woman who would soon be dead.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that,” she said.

“Used to what?”

Sighing, she looked at Stefan. “Hearing her sound so happy and chipper. It’s still distressing to listen to, knowing what happened to her.”

“Don’t ever get used to it,” Stefan said quietly. “If you ever get to the point where you can hear that, knowing, and not be distressed, it’s time to walk away.”

She hadn’t expected that. Sometimes this man surprised her. There were depths to Stefan Roberts that he kept hidden. It occurred to her to wonder if that might be part of the problem with his son, if he kept his feelings so masked the boy didn’t know how he felt, but she quickly pushed the thought away. It was, she reminded herself again, not her business.

An hour later they exchanged a glance, and both sighed at the same moment. He gave a low chuckle. “No sense putting it off any longer.”

“Agreed. Frame by frame this time?”

He nodded. He adjusted the settings on the video player on the laptop while she grabbed the remote and turned on the flat screen. This was going to take hours upon hours, she knew, going through all relevant feeds and angles of the security video from the hotel one frame at a time, but they’d so far been unable to find anything at all, even in slow motion, and this was their last shot.

“What do you want to start with?” he asked.

“The elevator lobby,” she said. “We know Bianca at least was upstairs first.”

He nodded and called up the video. It was already at the point where they had spotted Bianca coming out of elevator two. The timing coordinated with the message she’d left Candace, which was how they’d located this moment when she had come out of the elevator after leaving her drunken, passed-out client up on the third floor.

It was slow work. By utilizing some facial recognition software Stefan had access to, they had managed to track Bianca from the elevator across the lobby. Daria felt like calling her Lucy, because that’s who she really wanted to get justice for, the girl she’d once been who had found her way into this life for reasons they hadn’t yet uncovered.

Bianca had been headed in the general direction of the bar off the main lobby, but as far as they had been able to tell, she had not appeared in any video of the bar itself. So they now set themselves to going second by second, looking at every figure in the busy lobby, as far into the background of the video as they could see. They made notes of clothing to compare with other shots, anything that looked even vaguely similar to what Bianca had been wearing.

They studied any exchanges between men and women, taking notes again on clothing and any other distinguishing characteristics, on the theory that any man in the lobby could have been the one she connected with, and that he might have tried to pick up another woman before Bianca. And just because her message to Candace had mentioned the bar didn’t necessarily mean she’d met him in there.

She and Stefan had spoken little, but she’d found it interesting. Since they couldn’t see eye color on the videos, they’d given up trying to eliminate on that basis. Especially after, when she wearily suggested they just look at blonds for a while, Stefan smiled wryly and said, “I’ve got a cousin who’s darker than I am and has the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen.”

“I was kidding,” Daria said. “But I’ll bet your cousin is striking.”

“She’s gorgeous.”

Well, that doesn’t seem fair. Two of them in the same family? She yanked herself back to the matter at hand, although her next thought grew right out of that.

“That brings up the other issue,” she said.

“You mean her description of the guy?”

Daria nodded. Bianca had referred to the man she was meeting as handsome. They’d each pointed out men in videos to look more closely at, but after a couple of startled looks at each other over their selections, they laughed again.

“I defer to your female judgment,” Stefan said with a grimace. “Obviously I have no clue.”

“Different things are attractive to different women,” she replied. “But I’m not sure that applies in Bianca’s case. For her…job, she’d be looking for the ones who perhaps couldn’t get any woman in the room with a look.”

“You mean not the glamour guys, the movie-star types?”

“I mean,” she said, risking a grin at him, “guys who don’t look like you.”

He looked taken aback. She knew it couldn’t be at her assessment of his looks—after all, the guy had to look in a mirror now and then. He had to know he was way beyond handsome. Was it that she dared to tease him?

She shrugged. “I figured we’d been working together long enough now I could rib you a little. Sorry if I was out of line.”

“I…no. I just didn’t think you…thought that.”

It was her turn to blink. “What, you didn’t think I noticed? I’m not blind, Roberts.”

He looked at her for a long, silent moment. Let his gaze slide from her head to her toes. “Neither am I,” he said softly.

And that quickly he turned it around on her. Daria’s breath jammed up in her throat. She knew she could clean up nice, and when she took the time and trouble in, say, formal wear, she was attractive enough. But on duty she was all business. She’d set her course when she’d first been hired on here four years ago, and any guy who tried to flirt with her on the job was quickly chilled by her lack of response.