Page 76 of Closer Than You Know

She managed a small smile. “I know you’ll try your best, Bent. We both will.” Her lips trembled again, and a tear slipped down her cheek. She scrubbed it away. “I’ll tell you a little secret.”

He held her gaze, wanted with his entire being to reach out and touch her but didn’t dare. He couldn’t risk she would see it as him taking advantage of the situation.

“Tell me,” he urged when she remained silent.

She swiped at her eyes again. “I cannot do this life ... without her.”

“I know.” The two had clung to each other after their mother had passed. They’d kept their secrets and protected each other all these years. Truth was, he couldn’t imagine one without the other either. “Right now, Eve needs us to put aside our personal feelings and to focus on finding her. We have to think like cops, Vee—not family, not friends. Just cops.”

“You’re right.” She pushed away from the wall. “I’d like to talk to Suri again.” Her breath caught. “Did you send someone to Luna’s house? She could be in danger as well. God damn it, where is my brain?”

“I did, and I’ve explained everything to Jerome. He’s taking time off from work to be with her until this is finished.”

“Jesus.” Vee shook herself. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that already.”

She was only human, but Vee had never liked admitting as much.

“Come on. Let’s talk to Suri again. See if she’s remembered anything more.”

As they reached the small living room, Eric Jones walked through the front door. He went straight to Vee and gave her a hug—something Bent had worried he shouldn’t do. He’d spent the past seven months trying to figure out where he stood with Vee. He wasn’t sure he would ever really know. But he had no one to blame for the distance between them except himself. He was the one who had walked away in the first place.

Walked. Yeah right. He’d run. He told himself it was to protect her from making a mistake. But maybe he’d been protecting himself from something that scared the hell out of him.

“I’m so sorry,” Eric was saying to her, his voice low. “We’re going to do everything possible to get her back unharmed.”

Vee nodded. “I know.”

“We were about to talk to Suri again,” Bent said, rather than what he wanted to say, which was something along the lines ofGo home, we don’t need you.

He was having more trouble keeping the personal junk away than he’d anticipated. And here all this time he’d thought he was immune. Vee was the only person who’d ever made him feel like he might be vulnerable to his emotions.

Jones, Vee at his side, followed Bent to the larger of the two bedrooms in the house. The bedrooms were on one end of the house, while the living room, kitchen, and bathroom were on the other. It was a small home, with a couple of acres of woods around it. Suri’s grandmother had left it to her since both her parents were deceased and her brother had already moved to Huntsville to start his business. Bent had suggested Suri call her brother and let him know what was going on. But he doubted Suri would be willing to go and stay with him until this was done. She would want to be here just in case. Bent would assign a deputy to her as well.

It was a damned good thing he’d gotten his personnel quota up to where it needed to be. He had a good, solid team now.

Vee sat on the bed next to Suri and put an arm around her shoulders. “This is Lieutenant Eric Jones. He’s an analyst I worked with in Memphis. He’s familiar with the perp we believe is behind what’s happening, and he’s going to help us.”

Suri glanced at Jones. “She’ll be pissed.”

Jones frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Anything or anyone that threatens the people she cares about makes her angry. She’ll give him a hard time.” Suri’s tears started again in earnest. “That’s the part that worries me the most. She won’t be easy to handle. He’ll wish he hadn’t taken her.”

A shaky smile tugged at Vee’s lips. “She will. She’ll give him hell.”

Bent suppressed a chuckle. They were right about that. Eve was a fighter. She wouldn’t take this lying down unless she was unconscious. Otherwise she would be fighting tooth and toenail. Not to mention raising hell.

“Walk us through what happened once more,” Bent suggested.

“We both had stressful days.” She glanced at Bent.

The confessions about Gates. He asked, “Did the two of you go back to work after leaving my office?”

Suri nodded. “We were both behind for the rest of the day. We didn’t get home until around nine. We ate. I took a shower, and when I got out ... the message was on the mirror.” She closed her eyes and shuddered. “Eve, you’re next.I screamed for her. She came and saw it. It made her angry, and she scrubbed it away. I told her she shouldn’t have done it, but it was too late.”

“She didn’t harm anything,” Jones explained. “It’s unlikely that the person who put the message there left any prints or other usable evidence.”

A slow nod, and then Suri continued, “We both understood we needed to call Vee.” She glanced at the woman next to her. “She said she would, so I got dressed and dried my hair. When I finished, I went looking for her since she never came back and told me if she got in touch with you. That’s when I found the back door standing open and Eve’s cell phone on the floor.” She moistened her trembling lips. “There was a chair overturned like she had reached for it ... there was blood on the floor too.”

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