Page 67 of Still Missing You

“So, you want to tell me who Dylan Moore is?”

I look over at Linc, waiting expectantly, and shrug. “You already know. He’s a client.”

“But he’s more than that, isn’t he?” Linc’s mouth curves into a knowing grin.

“He’s someone I used to know. We went to high school together.”

Linc’s expression is doubtful. “That’s all?”

The truth is, I didn’t know what Dylan was to me anymore. An old boyfriend? The man I still loved today as much as I did ten years ago? Maybe nothing after I walked out on him. I close my eyes and rub them with the palms of my hands. I’d really fucked this up.

“Look,” I say, opening my eyes and letting my arms fall to my sides. “Whoever Dylan is to me, it’s between us.”

“If he’s your client, he definitely shouldn’t be here with you. Whatever history you have, you should have turned the case over to Colin or me.”

I know he’s right, but it’s too late now. I can’t turn back time and do the right thing, not when I took on his case or anything that came after. “I know you didn’t drive out all this way just to give me shit about Dylan, so why not tell me why you’re really here?”

Linc nods, still eyeing me thoughtfully. “You’re right, I didn’t come here to interrogate you about your love life. I wanted to go over the footage you sent me. Let’s sit.”

He nods at the two armchairs in front of the parlor fireplace.

“Knock yourself out,” I say, following him from the lobby into the room. He sinks into the chair where his bags are piled. He’s staying.

We settle in across from each other, the old floorboards creaking under our weight. The place is quiet at this hour. I keep glancing toward the door without meaning to.

Linc notices where my attention keeps drifting and smirks. “Expecting someone?”

“Yeah.” My face heats. I don’t elaborate. I don’t want to admit I abandoned Dylan at the bar after an argument and shine a spotlight on how just unprofessional I have been. So much for objectivity.

Linc leans back, stretching out his long legs, and cocks his head to one side. “Where is your client?”

“He’s still at the bar. I had work to do. I left him my truck. He should be back any minute.” Even I hear it.

Linc raises a hand, his smirk growing wider. “I’m not here to interrogate you. Footage.”

That snaps my focus back to the here and now. “Tell me you found something useful.”

Linc reaches into his bag and pulls out a laptop. He lifts the screen and taps the keyboard before handing it to me. “We went through the files you uploaded from Matthew’s gear. Took a while to sort through everything. A lot of footage was raw.”

I scroll through the thumbnails, interviews, and landscapes. Exactly what you’d expect.

“Matthew wasn’t just making some generic film,” Linc continues. “He was working on something personal.”

Something had drawn Matthew to this random Vermont town, but what? “How personal?”

“Very.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “Did you know his mother was murdered?”

“I know they disappeared when he was young, and they’re presumed dead. There were other unexplained disappearances in the area around the same time.” Just like the unexplained disappearances from Coldwater over recent years.

The skin on the back of my neck prickles. “I didn’t have enough time to charge my phone when I popped upstairs to my room a few moments ago and really need to finish charging it.”

Linc frowns, likely caught off guard by my abrupt change of subject. “Sure,” he says, reaching into his computer bag and pulling out a cable. “You can use mine.”

“Thanks.” I plug one end into my phone and the other into Linc’s laptop. Then look back at Linc. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

“Matthew believed his mother was murdered,” Linc says.

“Okay, so why come here?”