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The rain dwindled to a sprinkle, with ribbons of sunlight peeking through the gray clouds. If we were lucky, the temperature would tiptoe above forty in the sunshine today.
Jace leaned over as I climbed out of the passenger side of her car into the agency parking lot. “Tell second-place best friend I said hi.”
I smiled and shook my head, closing the door. I was not getting in the middle of that never-ending battle.
The passenger window dropped, and warmth from the heater swirled around me. Jace called out, “Come by my place around three so we can hang out before we figure out what to wear.”
I didn’t relish playing dress-up to find an outfit, but the nicest thing I owned was the sweater I’d worn during my testimony, and I couldn’t wear it without remembering that day in court.
Jace whipped out of the lot, intending to spend the rest of the morning and afternoon at the hospital with her brother. If I didn’t have a missing girl to track down, I would keep her company and help break up the hours of painful silence.
There was no telling how much longer Scott would cling to this world, but I had noticed the guarded smiles and careful words of the nurses the last time we visited him.
I dreaded the day he passed, because Jace would be inconsolable. It had been almost twenty years since my precious sister’s death, and I still felt the sting of her absence.
As I turned toward the agency, I caught my reflection in a puddle, my features rippling with every raindrop that kissed the surface. The sight released a beautiful memory from a time before I was familiar with trauma and loss.
Gin, wearing one of her flowery dresses and polka-dot rubber boots, laughed as we splashed through rain puddles in the backyard, dancing in the sprinkles that dripped off the tree leaves.
Her laughter always reminded me of bubbles—floating and carefree. We used to puddle-jump after every rainstorm and then whirl through the house like the tornado that barely missed our small Kansas town.
Mom would huff with amused exasperation, “Who needs tornadoes when we have these two?”
Dad would say, “I know how to stop these little twister sisters in their tracks.” And then he would scoop us up midtwirl and smother us with kisses until we giggled ourselves breathless.
The sweet memories left an ache in my chest, and I tipped my face toward the drizzling sky. “I miss you, Gin-Gin.”
Heaven was lucky to have her.
I passed an unfamiliar car parked beside Jordan’s as I strode toward the agency entrance.
“Please be a paying client.”
A hissing sound cut through the air, drawing me up short of the sidewalk, and I scanned the parking lot. What was that?
A thump, followed by a pained groan, came from the abandoned building next door. Someone was inside, and it sounded like they were having a rough morning.
Squeezing the strap of my knapsack with both hands, I crossed the parking lot to the front of the building, pausing on the sidewalk at the foot of the steps.
“Are you all right in there?”
The door had been kicked off its hinges long ago, leaving a gaping void crisscrossed with plywood and weathered boards, and I squinted, trying to see inside without venturing any closer.
Half of a shadowed face appeared in the opening, and my heart fluttered in my chest. The woman stared at me with one large eye. She shifted, revealing more of herself, and I recognized her as the homeless woman who wandered this street.
“Are you okay? I heard you fall in there.”
Her short, gray-streaked brown hair was pasted to one side of her head, like she’d just woken up. Had she slept here last night? With no door and most of the windows busted out, she must’ve been freezing.
She pressed her lips together and looked around before leaning through the opening. “Did you know?”
“Did I know what?”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Your parking lot is haunted. I saw a ghost here last night.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that since the only ghost I believed in was the Holy Ghost, and he didn’t drift around parking lots after sundown.
“What did this ghost look like?”
“A watcher.”
She pointed to the place where darkness formed a pocket at night, the very spot Riley had fixated on while Hope and I were speaking.
A chill crawled across my skin. “What was he watching?”
“Who,” she corrected and then disappeared from view.
“Wait.” I leaned forward, trying to see her, but all I could see was the shadowed destruction of the interior. She’d apparently said all she intended to say on the matter.
I didn’t believe she’d seen a ghost, but she’d seen someone. Thoroughly spooked, I kept an eye on my surroundings as I walked back to the agency. Before I could reach the door, a woman burst out of it.
“Ridiculous. Filthy, cockroach-riddled hole in the wall.” She clomped to her car in alligator-skin heels and wrenched open the driver’s door. “Useless.”
I took exception to that string of insults.
Our business might be a hole in the wall, but it was not filthy or riddled with roaches. I scattered the dust bunnies regularly and even washed the windows.
Well, the parts I could reach.
I eyed the obvious zigzag of grime that coated the top half of the glass. I needed a squeegee and a step ladder to reach that.
The woman slammed her car door and peeled out of the parking lot, flinging grimy water with her tires. I back-stepped, avoiding most of the spray.
“I bet she sucks the joy out of any room she stomps into,” I muttered, wrapping my fingers around the door handle.
From this position, I had a direct line of sight into Jordan’s open office. He sat with his elbows on his desk and his face in his hands, weariness and frustration in every line of his body.
He’d left our hometown, his family, and a stable career because he wanted to be a regular part of my life, and now he was struggling to keep the lights on.
Guilt tried to slither in, but he’d reminded me more than once that moving here was his decision, not mine.
I opened the door and stepped on the mat to dry my boots. Jordan straightened, his hands dropping from his face. In an instant, all vulnerability vanished, and he summoned a smile.
“Morning.”
He crumpled a piece of paper in his fist, leaned back in his office chair, and let it fly. It bounced off the door frame instead of the trash can and rolled into the lobby.
I scooped it up. “Whiff.”
His forced smile spread into an easy grin. “Nice try, but whiff is a baseball term, meaning you swung and missed the ball entirely. In basketball, missing everything is called an air ball.”
“Well, you definitely air-balled.” I tossed the crumpled paper back, and he snatched it, taking a second shot that sent it straight into the can.
“It’s more of a noun.”
“That wasn’t the message I left on your desk, was it?”
“No, the lady you spoke with wanted details on our success rate before sending a friend our way. The woman who left a minute ago was a walk-in.”
“Walked in and stomped out. That can’t be a good sign.”
“She wanted dirt on her soon-to-be ex-husband. She had an affair, he cut her off financially, and now she wants something she can leverage against him for money. I told her we don’t do that kind of work.”
“Clearly, she takes rejection well.”
Jordan moved his coffee so I could sit on the side of his desk, my favorite spot for discussing cases. It made me feel more involved and capable than the squat guest chairs on the opposite side.
I hopped up. “What are we gonna do for cases?”
“I wish I knew. I’ve left business cards everywhere and even checked news articles for people who might be interested in our services. All that’s left to do now is pray.”
I tilted my head at his choice of words.
I’d heard a lot of Christians use the phrase “All that’s left to do is pray.” It seemed odd to me that prayer was a last resort for people who claimed to believe in a God capable of making the impossible possible.
“I feel like prayer should come first, not last,” I said. “Anything we do to try to fix our situation will pale in comparison to what God can do, so why wait until we’re desperate and out of options before we turn to Him?”
“I guess I hadn’t really thought about it like that. It’s in my nature to try to fix things under my own power.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s human nature.”
A frown line appeared between his eyebrows. “I’ve never been all that good at praying.”
“It’s just talking to God. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. There aren’t any magic words or phrases.” I rubbed at a muddy spot on my jeans from Cruella’s tires. “You should . . . come to church with me tomorrow morning.”
“You mean come to church with you and Marx.”
“He’ll behave. Probably.”
“I doubt that.” He leaned back in his chair and propped a leg over his knee, considering my invitation. “As long as no one’s gonna quiz me on the Bible and I don’t have to sing, I’ll be there.”
“Good.” I snagged a paper clip from the bowl by his stapler, twisting it between my fingers. “Would you mind checking the front door camera for the period of time you were gone last night?”
“Sure.” He opened his laptop, bringing up the video clips from the motion-activated camera. “What are we hoping to see?”
“There’s a lady in the abandoned building next door, and she says she saw someone loitering.”
His mouth tightened. “I wish the city would tear that place down. Having it vacant makes me nervous.”
I leaned over to study the screen as he played the recordings. “She said the person was in this area.” I circled it with my finger.
It was strange, watching the interaction between me and Hope. Outside of the occasional hand gesture and the moment when I passed her my shoes, I was out of the frame.
“I don’t see anything there. Hope shows up, you two talk, you give her your shoes.” He cracked a smile. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. She leaves, and there’s nothing else until your cab arrives.”
“Hmm.”
It was possible the woman had mistaken a passerby or even a moving shadow for the person she believed was a ghost, but my instincts and Riley’s senses suggested otherwise. And yet the camera showed nothing. Maybe he was too far away to trip the sensor.
I straightened. “Did you find any information about Cami that might be helpful?”
“I found information, but no telling how helpful it will be.” He swiveled in his chair to grab the documents from the printer, clipping them into a folder. “You can review it on the way. Cami’s apartment manager agreed to answer whatever questions he can about her.”
“Do you think we can get in and look around her place without breaking any laws?”
“We can try to convince him to let us in. But before we get to all that”—he reached into the bill folder and pulled out my paycheck—“any idea how this ended up here?”
I puckered my lips between my teeth and shrugged.
“Yeah, that was almost convincing.” He slid the check across the desk to me, and the moment he lifted his fingers, I slid it back. “Holly, you have to take your paycheck.”
“No, I don’t. I’m . . .” I tried to think of a good excuse. “I’m on vacation.”
“You’re not, but even if you were, that doesn’t affect your paycheck for the past two weeks.”
I left the check where it lay on the desk. “I know it won’t cover much, but the electric bill is around three hundred dollars. Maybe you could use it for that and some of the water bill.”
He stared at me, his expression unreadable. “I’m not using your check to pay the business bills.”
“And I’m not cashing it, so . . . you can use it or . . . it can hang out there collecting dust.”
“You having enough food and staying warm at night is more important to me than paying the electric and water bill.”
“I know, and I have faith that God will work all that out.” When his stubborn expression didn’t soften, I added, “You help me all the time. Now it’s my turn. Please let me do this.”
He swallowed, and I glimpsed a sheen of moisture in his eyes before he looked away. “I don’t . . .” He blew out a breath and ran a hand over his hair. “I don’t know what to say.”
I turned my attention back to my deformed paper clip. “I’m sure you’ll pay me back with a lifetime of trips to ice cream shops, so you don’t need to say anything.”
“A lifetime, huh? You sure you wanna spend that much time around me?”
I shrugged, heat creeping up my face. “I’m warming up to the idea. But no more ice cream strolls in February. It’s freezing. In fact, I think we should wait until it’s above sixty degrees.” I set the twisted paper clip on his desk. “Ready to go track down a missing girl?”
Jordan closed his laptop and opened his top drawer to retrieve his gun. He clipped the holster to his belt and grabbed his keys. “Let’s go see what we can find out.”