Page 32 of To Have and to Hold

It didn’t take long to find her.

Perks of my job, like the ability to look up people in a police database, made it easy to find what I wanted, even in a Lego block island populated by millions.

I’d spent a few minutes in my office, using the small space left on my desk between paper towers to push out my elbows and type in the name. Two minutes later, I had her.

Nicholas watched from his shared office as I hustled past him, his stare hooded with judgment. While I didn’t hesitate, it was the first time anybody in this office had really looked at me like that—like I’d screwed up.

Fuck that guy. He could assume I was ditching Delilah Marks in favor of personal pursuits. I had faith in this department to get the job done.

There were no illusions. I wasn’t the GOAT of the Manhattan DA's office. There were plenty of attorneys older, sharper, and more experienced who could take Marks’s case on with the ease of throwing a football. I may have won a few unexpected cases, but young and hungry, I wanted to learn plenty more.

With the various news articles along with my age and good looks, people seemed to forget that. Including “Nicholas.”

Ten stops later on the subway, I was there. She was on the eighth floor, and the doorman in the lobby glanced up from his newspaper as I passed, but didn’t push for ID or any other form of security. I took the elevator to her floor, found the apartment, and knocked.

Steps sounded on the other side.

“Coming!” she said. “But it wasn’t me who flooded the laundry room this time, Rio!”

The door opened, and a swatch of wild blonde hair filled the frame.

“Hey, Becs.”

Her face paled. “Holy shit.”

#

Becca’s apartment was filled with knickknacks that I imagine my grandma, if I had one, would collect. Porcelain cat figurines were crammed next to Disney character souvenirs on floating bookshelves lining walls painted in pink. Her L-shaped couch was dark brown, and her coffee table plonked in the middle was laminate white.

I’d stepped into Neapolitan ice cream, and Becca was exactly as I remembered her.

She was a paradox of fashion. Emme always said Becca’s home decorating skills were equivalent to a dumpster fire. Ironically, Becca was always very good at choosing her clothes, which made sense, considering it was a big chunk of her career.

I wouldn’t know if her current white button shirt with clunky jewelry in between and butt-hugging black pants hit the mark, but she looked good, if a little worn around the edges. The skin under her eyes was bruised, her cheeks splotchy. With a red-rimmed gaze and fidgety hands, Becca was still digesting the news of Emme’s disappearance.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” she said as she set coffee in front of me. There were bunnies on the mug. “What happened to your eye?”

“It’s been a long time,” I said.

Becca shrugged off my silence to her second question. Always one to pester, the fact that she didn’t spoke to the years that spanned between us.

“Seems like forever,” she said. She sat down on the other end of the couch, her drink held in both hands.

“You still dating Sophia?” I’d scanned the room, but didn’t see any pictures of the two of them. Amid the ceramic terrors on her shelves were photos of her and Jade, her and Emme, the three of them together clinking margaritas. Becca’s parents and other people I didn’t know. But no former girlfriend.

This was a tactic I used, a warm-up weapon. Get them on a passionate subject so they’d be passionate about all my other questions.

“We broke up a few months ago,” she replied, then said, “I was at the police station all afternoon yesterday.”

And there it was. Becca’s own tactic that deserved admiring. No bullshit small talk. “Did Knox interview you?” I asked.

A burst of recognition flashed into her eyes. “Some detective named Levi. But Knox is on the case?”

I nodded. “Precinct is stretched thin. Knox was willing to help work on it, and considering he used to know her…”

“Could only help,” she said, then sipped. Her gaze went distant. Sad.

“Were you able to tell them anything?”

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