Page 101 of I Never Stopped Loving You

They ran her DNA through the system and matched dental records to a woman named Molly Spruce who lived only a few towns away from Norfolk. Monty tracked her records back to the day she was born.

It. Wasn’t. Her.

Even now, I can still feel the pain drowning me. This is the closest I’ve ever come to finding my little rabbit.

Another glass topped off, another glass drained. Over and over, I've been emptying this bottle at almost an alarming rate, especially for me. I've never been one to drink to numb my feelings, but tonight it felt necessary.

Before I know it, the glass is shattering against the bricks in the fireplace, alcohol igniting in the flames.

“Goddammit!” I scream as I fall to my knees.

My head is pounding. The distant sound of my phone going off is barely registering as I drag myself up off the ground. I don’t know what time it is. All I know is I’m not nearly drunk enough yet to forget this pain.

“What!?” I snap, not even looking to see who’s calling me first.

“Hey, boss. I know you said not to call you, but…” Monty’s voice trails off.

After he called me and told me it wasn’t her, I hopped on the next flight home and haven’t left my house since. Everyone was aware to leave me the fuck alone, and even Jeremy understood and didn’t ask questions, which was surprising.

“But what, Monty?”

“I found him. I wasn’t going to call, but I thought you’d want to hear this.”

“I don’t give a fuck. Pass the info off to the police, and hopefully they can do their Goddamn job and lock the fucker away. It’s not her, so it doesn’t…”

“It was her boyfriend,” Monty says, interrupting me.

“What?”

“Yeah. I was cross-referencing license plates near that area, since where they found her was down a country road so there were no cameras. One of the plates was a match to one that was in the hospital parking lot. I checked, and the fucker got his car fixed the morning she was brought in. According to the shop he went to two towns away, it was listed as front-end damage from a deer.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Fuck. Are you one hundred percent sure, Monty?”

“Boss, I wouldn’t have called you if I wasn’t one million percent sure. It was him. He has a previous record for domestic violence, and in the last two years, Molly’s been to the hospital for broken ribs, and a fractured wrist.”

“How the fuck has this not been taken care of already?” I demand.

I thankfully keep hydration packets and water bottles stocked in this house, just in case I forget to water the thing locked in my labyrinth for a day. Never know when you’ll need them. I grab one of each, combine them, then shake it up before downing it as fast as I can. I know I’m not going anywhere tonight, but by morning, I should be good to go.

“She works on her boyfriend’s farm. They were all dismissed as just work incidents.”

“Fucking hell.”

“When do you want to leave?” he asks, stunning me.

“What?”

“I’m assuming you want to go there and snatch him up. I can tell from your voice you’ve been drinking. So, when do you want me to pick you up?”

“I never said I was going back out there, Monty.”

“But you want to.”

I’ve never told Monty what I do, but he’s helped me track down a few of the fuckers on my list in the last two years. He never asks any questions, even when the men mysteriously go missing. It’s always been a no-questions-asked kind of friendship, which is exactly how I like it. Just like how Jeremy knows I have my demons, but doesn’t ask which kind, Monty has been the same.