Page 40 of The Familiar Stranger

Until my phone buzzed with a text.

It was Kat:Nothing popped up. Not even a little bit similar. Maybe other parameters you could provide?

I responded with:We’re good. Thanks for checking.

Stay in touch, she replied. I’ll keep thinking on everything you told me. Takes my mind off everything else.

Focus on you, I typed.We’ve got this.

I glanced at Maddie. “Kat found nothing similar. Could be a good thing, or he could have just changed his MO. I feel like calling every person in my universe in the last twenty years to see if they’re okay.”

Maddie laughed. “We can’t do that, but we could run through your caseload, say in the last five years or so.”

“But I’ve been doing this, what … twenty plus years now?”

“I say we start with a smaller circle. If nothing gives, we’ll expand it.”

And so we worked on this number-one item in ourWhat We Need to Knowlist—if any of my cases reflected on the current state of affairs.

But nothing jumped out.

And that covered a lot of cases.

Discouraged, I said, “We gotta go back a few more years, I guess.”

“Right,” Maddie said, gulping down her second glass and pouring herself another. I was still working on my second glass, but she refilled me anyway. “So, we’ll go all the way back … to the beginning.”

What a trip that would be.

The process was easy for me. I never forgot a case. Year after year after year. Maybe not every detail, but every investigation.

I’d discussed my past cases for a while, and then Maddie lifted a finger, stopping at a case Cade, she, and I had worked on together. It was back in Jackson Hole, and it was where Cade and I had first met.

“Human trafficking,” I murmured.

“Yes. Do you think …?”

“I don’t know. It was a long, long time ago.” I shook my head, clearing the cobwebs from my memories. “There were two girls. Olivia and Savannah. Both kidnapped.”

“So crazy that one of the girls is named Savannah, and we’re in Savannah. It’s almost like she’s calling to us now.”

I ignored Maddie’s tendency to delve into the spiritual side of things.

“But we caught the guy, rescued the girls. They’re safe. Everyone’s moved on.”

“Do you know that for sure, though?” she asked.

She had a point.

Ididn’tknow for sure.

I hadn’t checked on them, but that wasn’t unusual. I didn’t typically follow up on the aftermath of a closed investigation. A new case always came up, and I focused on the present, putting the past behind me.

This one, though … it meant something more. In part because of the heightened aspect of the kidnapped girls.

“I have all the contact info on all my cases on a spreadsheet.”

“Perfect.”

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