Page 53 of Bittersweet Redemption

“Yeah.” I stand from the stairs. “Roman, stay with Riley, ok?”

He nods against her shoulder. As I walk away, I hear her ask him if he wants a snack, and they shuffle inside my house. Good, I hope she keeps him distracted.

When I get to where the police are gathered, I pull up the security footage and reluctantly recount the pictures and notes Willa and I have recently received.

I have little faith in the police and justice system after what happened to me, but I have to remember that these are different guys. This is a different jurisdiction and a different time. Maybe they do really want to help, and maybe they will. Honestly, I would sell them my soul to get Willa back safely.

I go back through the security footage to around the time Willa should’ve been home. I see her car pull up. She gets out, walks to the front door, and goes inside, then everything seems to freeze. There’s no movement, and no one appears on the front porch until Roman walks up with a confused look on his face. That’s not right. It can’t be. I rewind and watch it again. Nothing.

What the fuck happened to the footage? There’s blood on the front porch. Something had to have happened there.

Someone must’ve tampered with the footage. Whoever it was probably watched the day I had both systems installed. They figured out a workaround.

The crime scene investigators show up to take pictures and samples of the blood and grab any fingerprints, which is more than they did during my investigation. If they’d done that, they wouldn’t have found my fingerprints. To this day, I still haven’t been inside the jewelry store I was accused of robbing.

“We’re going to have to watch the entire day’s worth of footage to see if anything looks suspicious. Let’s hope he didn’t fuck up all the footage,” River says. I follow him into my house so we can log into the security system on the laptop to see it better.

We rewind all the way to midnight and start watching. Three cameras are set up at her house: one facing the road, one facing the door, and one facing the backyard. River takes the backyard footage, and I watch the road and the door.

No cars pass by except mine on my way home from work early this morning. There’s some traffic around five, but no one stops or slows down in front of her house. It looks like normal activity on our street.

Then I see Willa walk Roman out the front door. He gives a big yawn, which makes me laugh. Willa looks gorgeous in my hoodie and her leggings, her hair up in a lopsided bun. She’s so naturally beautiful that I don’t even think she realizes it. They walk down the driveway to wait for the bus. Willa waves at Roman through the bus window and watches the bus drive off like she always does. She walks halfway back to her house when she stops.

I lean closer to my screen to see what may have caught her eye. Did she see someone? Did she hear something?

But she’s not looking around. She’s looking at my house. Maybe she wanted to be with me as much as I wanted to be with her. Which is why I got my ass up way too early to get a haircut I didn’t even need. Because I fucking missed her.

I’ve got to find her. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. She’s my girl, and she belongs in my arms.

Finally, she goes back inside her house. The next time she leaves, she has her stuff and is heading to work.

There’s not much movement after that. A few cars go by every now and then. It’s not until early afternoon that I see something that makes me a little uneasy. A black sedan with a bumper sticker I can’t see drives by once, then again, and then a third time. It goes in the direction completely cut off by the cameras from Willa’s house and mine.

It could be nothing. But it could be something.

“River, can you look at this?” He scoots closer as I rewind the footage to show the car passing Willa’s house three times.

“That’s definitely unusual. It could be someone who was just lost, but it seems pretty coincidental that it was the same day Willa went missing.” He squints and leans closer to the screen. “I can’t make out the license plate, can you?”

“No. It’s too far away.”

Roman’s laugh travels from the kitchen to where River and I sit in the living room. It sparks something in my mind. I grab my laptop and walk to the kitchen. Kids are always smarter than adults give them credit for. And Roman has spent more time with Willa than anyone else. Maybe he would recognize this car. Maybe it belongs to one of her friends. She’s told me she doesn’t have any family, but maybe there’s someone I don’t know about yet.

“Hey, kid.” He looks up at me from where he’s sitting at the kitchen table, looking at Riley’s phone. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah.”

I sit next to him and pull up the best shot I can of the car. “Have you ever seen this car before?”

He looks closely at the screen, and I can see him thinking. “It kinda looks like Uncle Jake’s car.”

Chapter 27

Willa

My head is pounding. I want to open my eyes, but I can’t bring myself to yet. There’s a shuffling sound next to me, like someone is moving on a bed or a chair. Is it Roman? Did I fall asleep playing with him? Did I sleep through dinner?

A groan escapes me as I try to open one of my eyes again. The light shining in my eye only makes the headache worse. It’s been a long time—way before I had Roman—since I’ve had a migraine this bad. I don’t know if I can function anymore today.