Page 87 of Mine to Keep

“Who?” I had the phone on speaker so Angel could listen.

“The name is Neil Hash. Now that name got hits. He was a veterinarian but lost his license about six years ago…for reasons. When I did a little more digging, he looks suspiciously like James Somers.”

“Because James nor Lenny were legal or there wasn’t any credit for them, he had to make one of his other aliases cosign?” Angel snorted. “I don’t know if that’s clever or insane.”

“Both,” Noel and I said at the same time.

“Something else I found. I put Nicole’s picture through facial recognition, and I got a suspicious tag and got the idea to rewind her age. I altered her face five years, then ten.”

“Okay, and?”

“And a seventeen-year-old girl matching her description was reported missing ten years ago in Eufaula, Alabama.”

“Nicole was twenty-seven? She looked older.” Angel was driving toward Rybelt, but I didn’t want to go there.

“Go to the apartment building. I’ll break into James’s; maybe there’s something there.”

Angel turned and made his way in that direction.

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Noel said. “I think Nicole was James’s obsession once, and he kidnapped her—you know how these things go. Brainwashed, abused, he molded her into what he wanted her to be.”

“That would explain why she said she disappointed him right before killing herself,” Angel added.

“Yeah. Noel, what about the lake house they said they go to all the time?”

“No such place. I looked under all the names. I mean there could be one under some other name, but I doubt it. He does have a sick mother, though. She’s in a home but according to her medical files, she hasn’t spoken in over seven years.”

“Shit. Okay.”

“Call me when you get to the apartment. I’m running a few more things, and hopefully I’ll get a hit. I’m scouring CCTV cameras around Rybelt. Maybe I can track where he went with Matt.”

“Thanks, Noel.”

“We’ll find him, Nick.”

I didn’t answer him. I simply disconnected the call and covered my face with my hands.

“We will get him, Nick.” Angel squeezed my arm.

I hoped they were both right, because I couldn’t fail Matt.

We gotto the apartment complex, and I didn’t even wait for the elevator—I took the stairs to the third floor. I glanced at Matt’s door, a dull ache weighing heavily on my chest. I wished I could knock and say, “Hey, Mattie,” and have him tell me to stop calling him that.

James used regular locks for all the doors, nothing a good old fashioned lockpick set couldn’t handle. I heard someone behind me and knew it was Angel—he’d have my back.

It took only a minute to get inside and unfortunately, it was eerily silent.

Angel shut the door behind him, and I gestured for him to go left while I went right. The living room was something out ofHomes and Gardens, and there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere. I mean, I understood wanting to have a clean home but there was clean, and then there was whatever this was.

Down the hall there was a bathroom, with the perfect color scheme and not even a towel out of place. Farther along had to be the master bedroom.

Immaculate like the rest of the rooms, there was a bed you could bounce a quarter off, his and hers closet sides, and dressers. I went through drawers but there was nothing, not even a fucking rosary.

“Nick.” I looked up, and Angel filled the doorway.

“You got something?”

“You need to see this.”

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