Page 19 of Weight of Guilt

Nash went still, though he wasn’t exactly surprised by her words. “Small town.”

“Salon talk.” She had the grace to look apologetic about it. “Listen, if I tell you something, are you obligated to report what I say?”

“Are you telling me about something illegal?”

Her gaze traveled back and forth. “No, I don’t think so. Not really.”

“I’m officially on medical leave. But if you tell me you just committed murder, I will have to report it.”

That got a nervous laugh out of her. “No, no murders.”

He tilted his head and kept his voice soft as he asked, “What’s going on, Wren?”

She rubbed her hands on her jeans. “My brother . . . he disappeared ten years ago. And . . . this is going to sound crazy.”

“I’m listening.”

“He just . . . showed up at our house today, and he can’t remember what happened to him.”

He sucked in a breath. “Wow. That’s a lot.”

“I know. I’m still processing everything and trying to figure out what to do. My sisters and I all are, but we feel like fish out of water.”

Nash turned that over for a second. “You know for sure he’s your brother?”

“I don’t know what to think.” She set the glass down. “He knows things—things that only family would know. And he has a scar on his arm in the same place my brother did.”

“Keep going.”

She shivered and rubbed her arms. “And . . . today is the exact anniversary of the day he disappeared. Something about the timing feels—” She shook her head. “I don’t know . . .”

“It feels suspicious?”

She frowned before nodding. “Yes, suspicious. And I have no idea what to do, and you have experience with this sort of thing. So I came here.”

Nash’s heart pounded in his ears. He wasn’t sure what Wren was asking of him.

But he wasn’t ready to say no yet either.

Chapter

Nine

Nash set his glass down, buying himself a moment after Wren finished telling him what had happened—including details about her brother’s scar and his memory of his sisters singing.

He’d left these kinds of cases behind in Nashville when he came here. But he couldn’t ignore what Wren had just told him.

Different town. Different music. Same kind of people looking to turn someone else’s talent into their own opportunity.

“I have a few thoughts and questions,” he finally said. “First—what actually pointed to an abduction back then? I don’t mean what you believe now. I mean what the case was built on at the time.”

Wren blinked as if the question had caught her off guard after a decade of not needing to answer it. “The police and the community searched for Christian for three days straight. Cadaver dogs, volunteers, the works. They found nothing—no trail leading out, no sign he’d wandered off on his own. Christian didn’t wander. He was seven, but he wasn’t the kind of kid who went off script.” She shook her head. “There was never a body. Never a ransom call. Just—nothing. He was here, and then he wasn’t.”

“No custody dispute? Nobody in the family with a reason to take him?”

“No. No one.”

Nash nodded slowly, filing that information away. “Who was in charge of the investigation?”