Page 5 of Philly
This time, Callie didn’t hesitate to start her car and drive away when the door closed behind her. Something was up with Gabriel. She’d bought his story at first. He might be a lot of things that she didn’t know how she felt about, but hewasthe kind of guy who’d buy a sick woman—or man—a bottle of ginger ale and a sleeve of crackers.
But he’d lingered a little too long, insisted a little too much, that she think twice about looking for Laura Nolan.
She pulled out of the drive and headed south toward the lodge, the resort owned by Charley and Joey’s family that wrapped around the top of the lake that gave Mystery Lake its name. Although why, she didn’t know. The second-largest lake in the state was hardly amystery.
By the time she parked at the studio cabin she’d rented for three nights, her mind had fixed on one question: how to get Gabriel to tell her what he didn’t want her to know.
Exiting her car, she checked the locks before pulling her suit jacket tighter around her and hurrying to the cabin. The temperatures had dropped overnight, and while nowhere near freezing, a warmer top layer wouldn’t have gone amiss.
Slipping through the glass door, she dumped her bag on the floor and kicked off her heels as she slid it closed. Making a beeline for the safe that held her computer, she flicked the gas fireplace on as she passed, her bare feet thankful for the myriad of area rugs scattered around the nice-sized cabin. She’d almost reached the safe when her phone rang. Slowing enough to pull the device from her pocket, she smiled at the name on the screen.
“Hey, Daph. How are you?” she greeted her older sister. “You unstick that plot?”
Her sister had spent a decade jet-setting around the world as a model before retiring and trying her hand at writing. Afraid of assumptions following her from one career to the next, she published her first book under a pseudonym. Ten years and fiveNew York TimesBestsellers later, most people still had no idea that the reclusive author DL Callahan was also former supermodel Daphne Louise Parks—the “Callahan” being their mother’s maiden name. As far as Callie was concerned, though, Daphne was, and would always be, just her big sister.
“I did, but more importantly, how did it go with Gabe?”
Callie didn’t often talk about work, but technically, the FBI had closed the case that brought her to Gabriel’s doorstep years ago. She hadn’t been involved in the original investigation and didn’t have access to the confidential records—if there were any. And she’d taken personal leave to make this trip out west. As a “civilian,” she had more leeway in talking to her sister. Or that’s what she’d claim if it ever came to it.
Besides, at this point, she trusted her sister more than her colleagues. They’d forged their sibling bond in the hellfire of their family, and that bond was unbreakable. They’d needed each other to survive, but now, sharing their lives was more a comforting habit.
Grabbing a throw blanket, Callie flopped onto the loveseat as she answered. “He says he ran into Laura that day in the mini-mart. That she’d been sick, and he bought her some ginger ale and crackers.”
Daphne chuckled. “Yeah, it’s been twenty years since we’ve spent any time together, but if Gabe kept any of the good parts of who he was back then, I can see him doing that.”
Her sister’s words brought Callie up short. Not that Daphne had no problem seeing Gabriel buying a stranger something to make them feel better—she’d had that thought as well. But her reference to his “goodparts” gave her pause.Parts, not justonegood trait.
As kids, Gabriel had simultaneously fascinated, terrified, and awed her. Everything had come so easy to him—friends, popularity, sports.Everything. Some days, she hated him for it. Even then, though, she recognized that the “hate” she felt was more likely thinly disguised envy.
But despite everything he made her feel back then—frustration, anger, envy, other feelings she didn’t want to name—hedidhave good parts. Several of them. And while she didn’t know him the way she used to, from her time with the Falcons, it seemed that he’d not only kept those good parts, but he’d made them a core part of who he was as a man.
“Yeah, me, too,” she replied. “Which is why I believed him.”
“Believed? As in past tense?”
“I’m not saying he lied, but I think there’s more to it than what he told me,” she said, tucking her feet underneath her.
“Like what?”
Her gaze rested on the flames dancing behind the glass. “I don’t know. That’s the thing. I can’t imagine in what world he would have come across Laura Nolan, but there was something in the way he talked about her. And her potential situation.”
“What does that mean?”
“He kept pointing out that if she went missing then maybe there was a reason.”
“Abusive husband?”
“Maybe,” Callie replied. Rian Nolan was a wealthy and powerful man. Not that all wealthy and powerful men abused their wives or that poor men with no power didn’t, but she was a realist. On the rare occasion when domestic violence charges were brought, wealthy, powerful men tended to escape justice more frequently than others.
“And he’s concerned that if you find her, you might push her back into that world?”
“That might not have been her world,” Callie reminded her. “But that’s not the point. The point is, for someone who claimed never to have met her before that day, he was awfully adamant that I exercise caution when it comes to Laura Nolan.”
“And so you think he does. Know her, that is?” Daphne asked.
Her gut said “yes,” that he knew more than he’d shared. But her logic, as it tended to do, put a damper on that voice.
“Stop it, Cal,” her sister said. “Stop doubting yourself. What does your instinct say?”
