Page 52 of Teach Me
“Jesus.”
He’d never had this much at stake, never had so much to lose, and it made him afraid. If he lost Jess, he’d lose himself. They’d known each other a mere handful of days, and yet they were so tightly intertwined that he knew he couldn’t lose her. He had to protect her, much, much better than he had before.
Like a hundred-pound weight, the image of Jess on the ground, Holbrooke’s boot making contact, hit him in the chest. It hurt so bad he couldn’t breathe, could only wheeze with the need to stop it from happening. But there was no stopping it; it had already happened, and he hadn’t been there in time to prevent it.
Get. It. Together.
Breathe.
He barked the command in his head, the sound so much like his first—and most hated—drill sergeant that he had no choice but to comply. Swallowing the bitter taste at the back of his throat, he stared down the shoreline toward the house, still and dark, and just breathed. In and out. Again and again, using the sound of the water hitting the shoreline as a guide. Deliberately he thought of Jess as he’d left her, continuing to sleep in that big bed in his solid, safe house shadowed by the surrounding woods. The would-be tints of dawn struggled to lighten the sky, and Jess still slept, he hoped for a while longer. She needed the rest, the time to heal, the escape from this hellish limbo. And he needed the time to get a good goddamn grip on himself.
He couldn’t hold back a heavy sigh as he continued along a parallel path to the bank, searching the likely hiding places, keeping an eye out for scuff marks on the rocks, tracks and broken plants in the underbrush, anything that might indicate a visitor other than the normal wildlife. Nothing was disturbed. They were safe, at least for now.
He was a hundred yards from the house when his cell phone vibrated, the quick one-two-three buzz that indicated Jack was calling. Settling with his back against a thick maple tree, Con dug the phone out of its holster on his belt. “Yeah.”
“Don’t you sound chipper this morning.”
Con couldn’t hold back a snort. “What’s up?”
“A lot.”
His entire body tensed. “Well don’t hold back on my account.”
“I won’t,” Jack said. His words were flat, ugly. “I really want to kill this bastard, Con.”
“Don’t we all?”
Jack grunted. A pause, some paper shuffling. “I managed to unlock Holbrooke’s juvie record. History of stalking, including two restraining orders, escalating until his eighteenth birthday. No convictions.”
“And no record of anything after that?” Con asked.
“Nothing. I did find mention of him connected to two investigations, one Jess’s, the other a Rebecca Wellsley.”
“Who is she?”
“Holbrooke’s previous girlfriend. Appears he collects them like someone else would china. Same MO as Jess: father died just before they got together, no mom in the picture, became very isolated from her friends…”
“I’m seeing a pattern here.”And not getting a good feeling about it.
Jack grunted. “No kidding. Holbrooke chooses his victims carefully. Actually made it to the fiancée stage with Wellsley.”
Thinking of Jess tied that closely to Holbrooke tightened his gut. “Why is there a case file on Wellsley?”
“Because she disappeared a couple of years before Holbrooke met Jess.”
“Shit.” The worddisappearedrang in his head like a gong. “Any connection between Holbrooke and the disappearance?”
“No more connection than there is between him and Jess’s assault, which is to say there’s lots of conjecture and no hard facts that aren’t contradicted by his alibis. I checked through old newspaper articles, gossip-column stuff, and found a rumor that Wellsley had moved out to Arizona, but according to a police report filed in Tucson, she never claimed her apartment. The rental company reported her missing after several months went by. No movement on credit cards, bank accounts; no record of her name, driver’s license, anything turning up in any reports anywhere in the US.”
“Think she’s in hiding?”
“No, I don’t,” he said, shades of the Grim Reaper clinging to the words. “The investigation was turned over to Atlanta PD when it was determined no evidence existed that Wellsley had even entered Arizona. Once here, it was shuffled to some newbie detective who didn’t really pursue it, said there were no leads, and the disappearance landed rather quickly in the cold-case files. Since there was no one looking for her here—Holbrooke included, apparently—no one noticed.”
“Sounds like a cover-up,” Con growled. Maybe it was the similarity to Jess’s story, the knowledge that if no one had cared about Jess, if Cris and Saul and Steven hadn’t existed, she might’ve vanished just like Wellsley, that made it feel fishy, but he didn’t think so. He smelled dirty cops, dirty politics, and dirty money all over the case, and he and Jack had seen it often enough to trust that instinct. “So one or more of the local PD are on the payroll.”
“More likely higher up. A grunt won’t question his CO’s command to look the other way and forget the whole thing. There’s just no way to know for sure who the dirty hands belong to. What we do know is that Holbrooke’s family has an assload of official and unofficial connections—and a fuck ton of money. Enough money to bury any involvement of their name deep. Deep enough I almost missed it.”
“What about Gaines?”
