make herself do it. Now she was glad she hadn’t.
She grabbed a couple changes of clothes from her room, but nothing to make it look as though she wasn’t there, then ran back out to the car. She had no doubt one of the first places the police would start looking for Karine was at Vanessa’s apartment.
As she pulled away, she Bluetoothed the number on the back of the picture. She forced herself not to look at the much younger, more innocent version of herself in the photo. That girl was gone forever.
The phone rang twice before someone answered.
“DEA call center.”
“Um, yes, I’m trying to reach an agent. At least he used to be an agent.” Vanessa wasn’t sure exactly what she should say. Maybe Liam didn’t even work for the DEA anymore. “He gave me this number.”
“Please provide the name of the person you are trying to reach and I’ll direct your call.” The operator was briskly efficient.
“Liam Goetz.” Vanessa had no idea what department he worked for or even what city.
“Please hold.”
Vanessa drove toward some older hotels closer to Nags Head. They weren’t very expensive, which was pretty much all Vanessa could offer Karine right now. Plus, the police were probably less likely to look for her there.
The longer Vanessa was on hold, the more convinced she became that this whole call to Liam was probably useless.
“Hello? You’re trying to reach Liam Goetz?” A briskly efficient female voice this time.
“Yes. But I don’t know which division he’s in—”
“I’m going to connect you to his voice mailbox. Please leave a detailed message. We will make sure he gets it.”
Okay, so evidently he did still work for the DEA. That was good.
“Okay.”
“Please hold. Leave a message when you hear the beep.”
Vanessa was startled, caught off guard, a moment later when she heard the beep. There had been no outgoing message.
“Um, Liam, it’s Vanessa. Vanessa Epperson.”
How much should she tell him?
“I’m still living on the Outer Banks, but I’m actually staying at a hotel at the moment.” She gave him the name and address of the hotel they’d just pulled up to. “I need your help. I have a situation here and believe local police might be involved, so I need federal law enforcement. If you could just point me in the right direction, I would really appreciate it. I wasn’t sure who else I could trust. Just call if you can.”
She was rambling, so she left him her number and then disconnected the call. She’d done all she could do there. She knew she needed to have a backup plan in case Liam didn’t call her back. After all, the last thing she’d heard him say about her eight years ago was that she was a selfish, spoiled brat who didn’t have it in her to care about another person.
Yeah, she definitely better have a backup plan in place.
Liam listened to the voice-mail message for the umpteenth time.
Vanessa Epperson.
He could honestly say he’d never expected to hear her voice ever again. After all, she hadn’t even cared enough to leave him a voice mail eight years ago when she’d decided he wasn’t good enough to marry.
Or a letter. Or an email. Or a face-to-face explanation.
But evidently she’d gotten over her phone aversion. Good for her.
Liam played the message again.
She needed help and was contacting him because she thought he was still DEA. He hadn’t been DEA for more than five years, since Omega Sector’s Critical Response Division had recruited him to lead their hostage rescue team.
Fortunately for Vanessa, since Omega Sector was made up of agents from multiple different law-enforcement agencies—FBI, Interpol, DEA... Hell, Liam had worked a mission with a damn Texas Ranger last month—her message had been recorded and immediately forwarded to him.
She didn’t mention what sort of trouble she was in, just wanted Liam to drop everything and help her. Like how she’d always wanted everyone to drop everything to do what she wanted. Some things didn’t change.
He listened to the message one more time.
Liam should call one of his many friends from the head DEA office in Atlanta and have them send someone to Nags Head. Or he might even know someone at the FBI field office in Norfolk he could call.
It was the logical thing to do; probably the most professional answer to this situation. He could have someone there handling Vanessa’s problem in three or four hours.
But who was Liam kidding? He wasn’t going to make those calls. He was already walking down the hall of the Critical Response Division’s headquarters to his boss’s office.
He wasn’t sure what he was going to tell Steve Drackett. Just that he needed some time off to help an old friend. God knew Liam had enough time off saved up.
He knocked on Steve’s office door, his back office door that led directly to Steve himself, rather than pass through the main office entrance guarded by Steve’s four assistants.
Four young, attractive, quite competent and intelligent female assistants.
Liam knew them all, flirted shamelessly with them all. He’d spent so much time in the office with those women that Steve had threatened to fire him several times.
Not that Liam dated any of them—he knew better than to date anyone who might have his life in her hands—but at any given moment he’d be leaning on their desks chatting, and keeping them from their work.
Liam smiled. Steve’s main office was one of his favorite places in the world to be.
But not today. Not right now. He could not go in there and flirt with those beautiful women with Vanessa’s voice still filling his head.
Steve’s door opened.
“Hey, Liam. Come on in.” Steve said, still reading from a file in his hand as he returned to his desk. “I didn’t even think you knew this door existed. Hell, I wasn’t really sure you knew any offices existed outside those belonging to my assistants.”
Derek Waterman and Joe Matarazzo—both Liam’s colleagues and good friends—were sitting in chairs across from Steve’s desk. They held similar files.
“Hey, Goetz,” Derek murmured. Joe muttered something unintelligible without looking up from the file in his hand.
“I don’t mean to interrupt, Steve,” Liam said.
“It’s no problem. What’s on your mind?”
“I’m going to need a few personal days.”
Now the guys looked up from their files. Liam was pretty sure he’d never taken personal days except to go on actual vacations planned well ahead of time.
“Everything okay?” Steve’s concern was also evident.
“Yeah.” Liam shrugged. “Everything’s fine. I just have a friend who called needing some help back in the Outer Banks. My friend said this might be a little sticky with the locals so wanted some outside help.”
“You grew up there, right? You haven’t been home in a long time.”
“Yeah, not since my grandmother died. Not much there for me.”
Steve nodded. “Is your friend’s trouble serious? Do we need to send in a team?”