Page 39 of Tactical Revival

The door is unlocked, so I step inside. Jaxson looks up from the computer he’s sitting behind and smiles at me. But that smile fades almost instantly. “Is everything okay?” He pushes up.

“Yes, fine. I brought you coffee.” I set it on his desk as he sits back down, then take a seat beside him.

“Thanks. I actually was just thinking about how badly I needed a caffeine boost, and this is much better than what I would have made for myself.”

“Good.” I set my purse down on the floor beside me. “Patty Ester, Lanetti’s mom, came to see me at the B&B.”

Jaxson’s expression reflects his understanding that the conversation likely didn’t go well. “Sheriff Vick talked to her already.”

“How can he think she ran away? You found the card.”

He sighs heavily and leans back. “At this point, he’s not sure what to think. He didn’t tell me what was in the journal, but that it implied heavily she was unhappy here.”

“Patty told me what was in it.”

He arches a brow.

“Lanetti had feelings for you, which you already suspected.”

“More than suspected, but yeah.” He runs his hands over his face. “She was angry that I didn’t return them?”

“More than that, I’m afraid. According to Patty, Lanetti wrote pretty heavily about how angry she was at the relationship you and I seemed to have.”

He stares back at me. “She thought we were dating?”

I nod. “She was mad and wrote about how she’d rather be anywhere but here and forced to see us together.”

“Oh, man.” He jots something down on a notepad sitting on the desk beside him. “I see why Vick thought she might have run away.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“If we hadn’t found the card, then I would,” he replies. “The trouble is, there’s no evidence to suggest Morah had anything to do with anything that’s been going on, and even though I pulled all the old case files and had them sent over—” He shakes his head. “I know she didn’t run away. I know this is all connected, I just can’t figure out how. Normally by now, we’d have a call. Something.”

“What do you mean?” When he doesn’t respond, I reach over and place my hand on his arm. His gaze locks with mine, and the air charges around us. “Sometimes it helps to run things by another person, right?”

He swallows hard and breaks the connection when he pushes up from his chair. “In all the other cases, he left a riddle of some kind. Whether it was a note left at the crime scene or a phone call made after the abduction. And with Lanetti, there hasn’t been one. No one has tried to make contact with me.”

“Yet. It could still happen, right?”

“Sure. But every minute that passes makes it more unlikely we’ll find her.”

“Does Lance think she ran away?”

“No. Honestly, I don’t think the sheriff believes it either. My guess is he told Patty that to try and give her some hope that her daughter was out there somewhere of her own volition.” He drops back down into the chair. “I think she was grabbed because I was talking to her outside the bakery.”

“It’s not your fault, Jaxson.”

“It feels like it is.” His gaze meets mine again. I see his pain, and I want nothing more than to wrap my arms around him in an attempt to take at least some of it. “How are things going this morning? I could use some good news.”

“Well, my lawyer is moving to have the case Chad filed dropped before I even have to go to court.”

He arches a brow. “That’s good news.”

“It is. Maybe then he’ll leave for good.”

Jaxson’s expression shifts again. “When did Chad get to town?”

“About a week ago? It was the day you picked up the paint.”

---