Page 17 of Veil of Silence

Chapter

Five

Austin had been sitting in his father’s motel room for at least twenty minutes before Manager Denise finally stopped hovering in the doorway.

Probably because Austin had stopped looking approachable.

He sat at the desk with his dad’s phone plugged into a charger and the laptop open in front of him. Denise had agreed to leave the room untouched for the remainder of his father’s reservation.

Austin rubbed a hand over his jaw and stared at the laptop screen. Password protected.

Of course.

His father believed reusing passwords was reckless and that writing passwords down was idiotic.

Austin reached for his father’s phone instead. It had finally gathered enough charge to stay on. He tried the passcode he remembered from years ago, then his parents’ anniversary, then his mother’s birthday.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

He stopped before the phone locked him out completely.

Instead, Austin leaned back and glanced around the room again. His dad had clearly been working the Loveless case before he disappeared. That much was obvious from the notes on the legal pads, the missing file box, and Nora Loveless’s name on his phone’s missed call list.

The whole thing felt painfully familiar.

Austin had been twenty when Christian disappeared, old enough to remember his father sitting at the dining room table after midnight with photographs and reports spread around him.

At first, Austin had admired his dedication. A missing seven-year-old boy deserved someone who refused to quit.

Then his mother had died after a quick fight with pancreatic cancer, and Dad had buried himself even deeper in his work.

Weeks became months. Months became years. Somewhere along the way, Austin’s admiration had turned into something more complicated. Despite that, he’d followed his father’s footsteps.

Baltimore had been Austin’s choice. It was far enough from Memphis that he could be an agent without everyone asking about Jeff Donnelly. Far enough that neither of them had to explain why they rarely saw each other.

He rubbed both hands over his face. Whatever had happened between him and his father over the years didn’t matter right now. Dad was missing.

And Nora Loveless might know why.

Austin looked at the phone once more, then stood and grabbed his jacket. He wanted to talk to Nora face-to-face.

Maybe his father had finally found what he’d been looking for all these years.

Or maybe he’d gotten too close to it.

Nora was halfway through unloading groceries from her car after her last home health visit when a dark SUV pulled into the driveway.

She paused near the trunk with a bag against her hip.

No one she knew drove that type of vehicle.

That didn’t mean much anymore. Reporters had come and gone for weeks. So had investigators, curious church members, acquaintances bearing casseroles, and people who claimed they only wanted to pray with the family but somehow ended up asking whether Christian remembered anything new.

Nora watched the SUV stop beside the house.

The driver’s door opened, and a man climbed out.

He was tall, broad through the shoulders, with dark hair that looked as if he’d run a hand through it one too many times. Jeans. Burnt orange North Face jacket. Nothing about him screamed law enforcement, though something about the way he surveyed the property made Nora think he wasn’t simply lost.