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Doyle’s name lit up my screen, and I eagerly took the call. “What do you have for me?”
“I’ve got a couple girls here who might fit the profile.”
I exhaled in relief, my heart threatening to beat right out of my chest. “Thank God.”
Doyle’s next words doused my excitement. “Don’t get ahead of yourself just yet. I limited my results to a hundred-mile radius of Chicago and checked every possible variation of the name. The search came back with seventy-two results.”
“Jesus.” I swiped a hand down my face. “So, what now?”
“I filtered them by age since you seem to be fairly certain of her birthdate. There are seventeen women with that name between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five.”
That was doable, at least. I let him continue.
“I didn’t want to restrict any physical features, because hair and eye color can easily be changed. I’ll need you to look at the photos of each girl—specifically the facial structure—to be sure we’ve got the right one.”
“No problem.”
“First batch is on its way to you now.”
I clicked open the email he’d sent and found five images attached. I opened the first photo and scanned it. The girl was pretty, with blonde hair and blue eyes, but she wasn’t my Jules. I did the same for the other four images. “Not her.”
“Okay. Next group.”
I shook my head as I examined all five of those. “Not in these.”
The last batch had six photos, none of which were Jules. I let out a growl and crossed my arms over my chest as I slumped back in my seat. “Damn. I thought for sure she would be there.”
“There’s one more.”
Attention captured, I sat forward a bit, already reaching for the mouse. “Send it over.”
“There are no verified photos that I can find,” Doyle remarked cautiously. “She’s practically a ghost aside from her birth certificate. There was nothing else in the system—no driver’s license, no student ID, nothing.”
What the hell ever. I didn’t give a goddamn as long as it would lead me to Jules. “And?”
The exasperation in my tone was evident, and a long pause on his end ratcheted up my anxiety tenfold. Finally, he blew out a harsh breath. “Before I send this over to you, I need to ask you a question.”
His tone immediately set me on edge, and I answered warily. “What’s that?”
“How well do you know this girl?”
The question sent tendrils of anger and heat snaking through my body in equal measure. I was fucking sick and tired of people questioning my relationship with her. I knew her better than anyone. I knew her hopes and dreams for the future. I knew every inch of her body like the flesh that covered my own, and the blood that raced through my veins. I swallowed down the retort that jumped to the tip of my tongue. He had every right to ask since I’d reached out to him to find her true name. I answered as honestly as possible. “As well as anyone could, given her past.”
There was another slight pause, then— “Did she ever tell you anything, allude to what may have happened?”
“No,” I admitted. I wished I’d pushed harder, convinced her to trust me. “She said...” I choked on the words and started over. “She said she was engaged, but she didn’t give me a name. Didn’t say anything about him.”
The thought of her with another man still made my gut burn with jealousy.
“Nothing else?”
I dropped my head into the palm of my hand and closed my eyes. “I have a feeling she’s from the Chicago area, but that was only based off of a conversation we had months ago. She was always reserved, even with me.”
Doyle made a little sound. “You grew up there, right?”
“Til just a few years ago.”
“I remember you.”
I jerked back at his words. “From when?”
“Our teams worked together on the Capaldi crime case. I was at the warehouse that night. I didn’t remember your name at first, but after Frankie told me about you...”
I knew exactly where he was going with that. It would be hard to forget the SWAT member who’d damn near had his head severed off by a crime boss. Unbidden, my hand moved to my throat.
“Capaldi was killed, but his brother took over operations.”
“Yeah,” I breathed. “I’d heard that.”
Doyle spoke haltingly. “We researched the family for several months before we decided to move in. The bureau had Ignacio on their watch list for years, but he was a slippery fuck—always managed to evade any snare we set for him. I knew there was a brother—Massimo—but he wasn’t there that night, for whatever reason.
“There wasn’t much information on the other family members, so I didn’t make the connection immediately. I went back through birth records, just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. Capaldi and his wife never had a son; their only child was a daughter who was sixteen at the time.” He paused, letting that bit of information hang in the air for a moment. “Which would put her right around twenty now.”
My heart stopped, and breath suspended in my lungs at the implication. No. It couldn’t be. “How certain?” I forced the words from my lips.
Doyle sighed. “Damn near positive.”
“Okay.” I couldn’t think of one single other thing to say at that moment.
His words sounded far away when he spoke. “Information is on its way over to you.”
I managed a thanks and hung up. It didn’t feel real. It couldn’t be real. How could she do this? In startling clarity, I saw the events of the last few days line up. She’d begun to pull away after I told her about the mission and what had happened at the warehouse. I thought she was overcome with sympathy and pity for me. Instead, she’d been thinking of her father, a man who had tried to kill me and died at the hands of my partner instead.
I felt sick. I’d made love to her. Asked her to marry me. And she was the only child of the man who had tried to take my life. Where did her loyalties lie? Maybe she had left on her own, gone back to her fiancé—back to her family. I didn’t want to believe it, but I couldn’t refuse the evidence waving like a red flag in front of my face. It was entirely possible that she’d set this whole thing up. She wouldn’t have driven her Cavalier; she was too smart for that. I could have it reported as stolen and have her found within hours.
By leaving everything behind and having someone come to collect her, she could effectively disappear from my life like she’d never been there at all. I hated her in that moment. Worse, I hated myself more. Because deep down, I was still in love with her.