that this investigation was handled properly. He wouldn’t be swayed by the local authorities who considered her just another distraught mother who wouldn’t face reality. To them, this whole thing was nothing more than a misplaced body. The body would show up, they’d assured her. She might as well come to terms with the loss now.
But she couldn’t do that. Wouldn’t do that.
Bill leaned forward, propped his arms on the table and peered at her with those steady gray eyes. “We’re going to need help on this one, Mel. I’m good, but not good enough. We need the best on our side.”
Melany stilled. A new kind of emotion stirred inside her. A mixture of fear and a kind of anticipation she didn’t want to feel. No. Not him. She shook her head. “I don’t want you to call him. I trust you. You know how to do this.”
“This is too important,” Bill countered firmly, his voice carefully gentled. “You know it better than anyone. We need the best. He is the best.”
She started to argue but he stopped her with an uplifted palm. “I’ve already called him. He’s here. He wants to see you.”
Dammit, she did not want to see Ryan Braxton. She twisted her hands together in her lap to keep them from shaking. “He’s here? Now?”
Bill nodded. “He wants to help you, Mel. Let him. He’s the best there is and you know it. We need him.”
Bill was right. Ryan Braxton had been the best man at Quantico when it came to finding missing children and their predators. His instincts were uncanny. His skills unparalleled. He never failed. Katlin deserved the best. Melany needed him, even if she didn’t want to admit it. But hadn’t he left the Bureau?
As if reading her mind, Bill said, “He’s with a private agency now, but he’s willing to take the case if you want him.”
If she wanted him? She almost laughed, but couldn’t manage the energy required. With monumental effort she pushed the past aside and focused on one thing, her daughter.
“All right,” she agreed, her voice so stilted she hardly recognized it as her own. “Whatever it takes to find my little girl.”
As if on cue, the door behind her opened once more. He’d been listening, she realized. He knew she didn’t want him here, but then that wouldn’t surprise him, she imagined.
That damned anticipation spiked again, sending adrenaline rushing through her veins. She moistened her lips, summoned her resolve, and looked up to greet the man she’d walked away from two years ago. The man she’d loved with her entire being. The same one who’d chosen his career over a life with her. And Bill was right, she suddenly realized. She needed Ryan Braxton. It would take his kind of relentlessness to look beyond the obvious and find Katlin.
When her gaze met his she wasn’t at all prepared for the impact of those deep blue eyes. Her resolve crumbled immediately, leaving her as defenseless as she’d been two years ago, all over again. His dark hair was still short. There was a peppering of gray at the temples. Her gaze lingered there. That was definitely new. She would never have believed anything, not even age, could touch Ryan. He was far too invincible, too unreachable. But there it was. Did he look older, otherwise? She resisted the urge to shake her head. No, he looked exactly the same.
Tall and lean with broad, broad shoulders. His Armani suit looking as if he’d just put it on. The navy a perfect match for those dark eyes. His too-handsome face clean-shaven, the set of his square jaw all business.
“Hello, Mel.”
He didn’t sit down. She’d known he wouldn’t. It was an indication of power. She’d seen him in action countless times. He was in charge now and the sooner she realized that, the better it would be.
“Ryan,” she returned. Fierce emotions warred inside her. The need to drink him in with her eyes, the need to touch him…and at the same time the urge to run like hell. How could she talk to this man, tell him about her daughter, and not tell him everything? She considered the sculpted angles of his face again, the shallow cleft in his chin, the mouth she’d kissed so many times, and then she looked fully into those all-seeing eyes. Her heart lurched at what she saw there. Something more than the sympathy he wanted her to see. And then it was gone, but not quite quickly enough.
He still cared for her and, damn it, that only made bad matters worse.
“I want you to start at the beginning,” he said in that deep, husky voice that made her shiver. His words were calm, quiet, as if they hadn’t lived together for three years…as if they hadn’t made love night after night all that time.
“Tell me everything,” he added, then reached into his inside coat pocket and removed a document. When he’d unfolded it and laid it on the table, he pushed it in her direction. “Make me believe that this is a mistake.”
Melany dragged her gaze from his to stare at the document. Shelby County Health Department. Certificate of Death. Katlin Jackson.
“Give me one shred of evidence that this is a mistake, Mel,” he told her, “and I swear I’ll move heaven and earth to find your daughter.”
Chapter Two
By 7:45 p.m. Ryan and Bill had commandeered a fair-sized office with two incoming lines and a fax machine. Memphis P.D. was happy to help, and to turn the case they definitely did not want over to the Feds. Bill inconspicuously passed Ryan off as an agent, as well. The usual jurisdiction battle lines went undrawn. No one wanted to touch this case. Even the press had played it soft. Minimal coverage in the papers. None of the local television channels had spent more than a perfunctory thirty seconds on Melany’s grave-digging escapade.
It was just as well, she decided. Any hype in the media could work against them. The last thing they needed were calls from people who thought they knew something when they really didn’t. She wasn’t ready for false Katlin sightings from strangers just yet. She’d worked in the investigation business long enough to know that most of the input generated by the media was useless. There were times when the media could actually be a very efficient tool, but those occasions were few and far between.
At least the local cops were no longer looking at Mel as if she was crazy. She almost smiled. Those accusations now rested firmly atop Bill’s and Ryan’s shoulders. The boys in blue merely looked at her with sympathy at this point. No doubt the possibility that the Feds were only dragging out the inevitable had been discussed by all on duty.
Mel didn’t care what they thought. All that mattered was that she finally had help. Expert help. If anyone could find Katlin, it was Ryan. Her gaze drifted in his direction. They had to find her. Soon. Mel wasn’t sure how much longer she could take the not knowing.
They had exchanged cell phone numbers for convenience and Ryan had already started a time line on a wall-mounted whiteboard. Sitting stiffly at the equipment console-turned-conference-table, Mel stared at the time line now, her abdominal muscles clenched in a familiar knot of anticipation. She knew this routine, somehow found it comforting. This was the first step and her relief was almost palpable. Bill was on the telephone getting a court order for copies of all the hospital reports related to Mel and Katlin, his voice a low, but gruff murmur. Any minute now he would snag one of the locals and make him his personal gopher.
“What can I do?” Mel’s voice sounded stark in contrast to Ryan’s silence and Bill’s quiet cadence.
Ryan stopped labeling and dating incidents and turned to her. “What?”
The trance. A familiar pang of jealousy speared through her. The Braxton trance. Whenever he took on a case he immersed himself so completely that he was barely aware of anything else around him. He blinked now, focusing on her, waiting for a response, attempting to assimilate her comment. Their relationship had never stood a chance against his work. It consumed him…defined him. Nothing or no one else mattered. If only she could tune out all else as he could, maybe the next few days wouldn’t be so bad.
“Would you like me to set up witness interviews?”