AllFreeNovel
Share Us
As if on cue, two male members of the hotel staff appeared behind Brown. Noah gave them a nod and they stepped in to take Beau. As they struggled with him down the hall toward a staff elevator, Josie looked back at Brown. “As you know, we’ve got a uniformed officer outside to keep an eye on Mr. Collins, should he decide to leave the hotel.”
Brown smiled tightly. “Yes, your Chief contacted me directly about that. I’ve made no issue of it.”
Noah said, “But there are many ways to exit the hotel, and as drunk as Collins is—”
Brown raised a hand to silence Noah. “Say no more. I’ll have the staff discreetly keep an eye on him for the duration of his stay. I doubt he can go anywhere tonight in his condition, but I’m happy to do what I can to assist you in securing his safety.”
“Thank you,” said Josie. “We’ll speak with Mr. Collins tomorrow when he’s sober.”
There was nothing more they could do but wait until the next day.
Unlike Beau, Josie spent the night wide awake and seething while Noah and Trout snored beside her. Studying Noah’s face in the half-light from the moon, her anger turned to bewilderment. His words from the other day came back to her.
“If anything ever happened to you, I’d burn this entire city down finding the person who hurt you.”
She knew this was true. He would move heaven and earth. He would not rest. She would do the same for him. That was better than them knowing Five Familiar Facts about one another any day. Josie had grown up in a toxic environment, raised until age fourteen by a woman whose definition of a good relationship was one in which she literally got away with murdering her partner. Or disfiguring them. Josie’s best friend and first love, Ray Quinn, had come from an almost equally toxic family. His father had been an alcoholic who beat his mother—and him—until one day he abandoned them altogether. Neither Josie nor Ray knew what a “good” relationship entailed. They just knew they wanted to stop pain from being inflicted on one another. They’d tried and failed at marriage. Miserably. Josie had tried and failed in her engagement to Luke. Miserably. Noah was quick to blame Luke, but the truth was that Josie had withheld so much of herself from him, he hadn’t had much to work with.
Still.
Even with her deep psychic wounds, literal scars, and toxic relationship examples, Josie loved fiercely enough to fight for both Ray and Luke. It hadn’t been enough, but she had tried.
Beau seemed more concerned about his own status than losing Claudia. He was falling to pieces when they needed him most to catch her killer. A killer he might be able to lead them to if only he’d stop lying. He said that Claudia had meant everything to him, but given a chance to identify any potential killers, he clammed up. Why? Had the distance between them grown so big that it had become impossible to bridge? Had there ever been any real affection between Beau and Claudia Collins? The photo from Paris made it seem as though they’d once been deeply in love. But had they really?
A warm palm touched Josie’s hand, squeezing and then traveling up and down her arm in smooth, even strokes. Her body relaxed. In a sleep-drenched voice, Noah said, “You need to get some sleep. Beau Collins will still be there in the morning, and I promise you, he’ll be every bit as much of an asshole as he was the last time you saw him.”
He was right, but it didn’t help her sleep.
The next morning, the unit assigned to Beau advised Josie and Noah that he’d gone to WYEP. Shortly after that, they stood in the middle of the Collinses’ set, staring down at Beau Collins, who was seated on the white couch being primped by one of the stylists. No cameras were rolling. They still had over an hour before Beau went live, but several of the staff strode about, making preparations for that morning’s show, including Liam Flint, who seemed to be doing a very poor job pretending to fix some imaginary knob on the camera’s side while he eavesdropped on the conversation. Just off stage in the other direction, Margot Huff lingered, hugging a tablet to her chest and watching them warily. A make-up artist carrying a small pouch walked up to Beau but he waved her off.
Josie said, “Mr. Collins, maybe we should go into your office.”
He looked back up at Josie and Noah, his face full of genuine distress. He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. His voice was husky. “If this is about Trudy, I will reach out to her brother. I want to cover the funeral costs, and of course, I’ll do anything I can to help with her mother’s care.”
“Were you and Trudy close?” asked Josie.
Beau said, “She was the practice secretary for over twenty years—before we even took it over.”
Noah said, “But you hadn’t practiced in a long time.”
“Sure, but Trudy was still a vital part of our work. She single-handedly ran that practice.”
“She had a lot of responsibility,” said Josie.
He nodded.
Noah added, “You could trust her with anything.”
“Yes,” Beau whispered. “Anything.”
Josie moved around the small coffee table between them, insinuating herself between it and the couch. She perched on the edge, almost knee to knee with Beau. She leaned in close to him. He still smelled faintly of bourbon. “If there was some important document that needed to be retrieved, you could ask her to do that, couldn’t you?”
Beau said, “Of course.”
Josie said, “Even if that document was supposed to be mailed. You could ask her to get her hands on it and hold it, couldn’t you?”
Beau’s brow furrowed in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
From inside his jacket, Noah pulled a sheaf of papers. They were copies of Claudia’s job application packet. Noah handed them to Josie, and she spread them carefully across the table, scooting over a bit to make room. As Beau studied them, his body stiffened.
