AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Why can’t I find a duke?” Ellie slurred as they practically carried her to the door. Her cheeks were rosy pink from the wine, her hair was a frizzy riot of curls, and her glasses were adorably askew. “Instead, I find a cute lawyer—he’s cute, right? With all that blond hair and that crooked smile?”
“He’s cute,” Alexis confirmed, straightening Ellie’s glasses before they completely slipped off her face.
“Who?” Veronica mouthed over Ellie’s head.
“Cal,” Alexis whispered back and pulled open the door.
“Ohh.”
Ellie sighed and staggered out of their grip. She whirled to face them and almost took out a floor lamp. “Cute, with a very squeezable butt.” She held up her hands and squeezed the air suggestively. “But a squeezable butt doesn’t make up for the fact he’s a complete... ashhole.” She tilted sideways and righted herself with a hand on the doorframe. “No, asshole. I meant asshole. Complete asshole. Throw the whole man out. I hate him.”
At that very moment, the cute lawyer with the apparently squeezable butt walked up the porch steps with the sheriff right on his heels. He froze at Ellie’s declaration, his expression like a kicked puppy.
“Hey, Ellie,” he said awkwardly, shoving his hands into his pockets and shifting from foot to foot.
Ellie whirled toward his voice.
“You!” she shrieked, outraged in the way only a drunk person could be, and pointed an accusing finger at him. He flinched as if expecting it to become a weapon. “You’re an ashhole?—”
“Okay,” Alexis cut in, drawing the word out as she grabbed her sister by the arm and propelled her down the steps. “We’re going home. Goodnight, Cal.” She nodded to the sheriff. “Ash.” Then she waved to Veronica. “Bye, Vee. We have to do this again soon.”
The sheriff waited silently until Alexis had bundled Ellie into the car, and the car was turning to leave. Then he faced Veronica, and the look on his face had her stomach knotting up.
She straightened away from the door. “What’s wrong?”
“We need to talk to Connelly.” His tone said it wasn’t Ash, the friend, who needed to talk to him, but rather Ash, the cop.
“He isn’t here.”
The two men shared an indecipherable glance.
“He should be here by now,” Cal muttered.
They both looked toward Connelly’s rental house. No lights shone through the shifting branches of the trees.
“I’ll send a car to check.” Ash grabbed his radio, ordering the two deputies on the road to drive over to the house.
While they waited for the response, Veronica’s gaze bounced back and forth between them. She had a sick feeling in her stomach, and it wasn’t from the wine she’d been drinking earlier.
“What’s going on?” Panic rose in her throat, choking her. Her eyes finally settled on Cal. “I thought he was with you.”
“He was, but he left…” He checked the time on his phone. “Nearly forty-five minutes ago.”
The radio crackled to life in Ash’s hand. The house was empty.
“Fuck,” Ash muttered and raised the radio to his mouth again. “Dispatch, this is Sheriff Rawlings. I need a BOLO for a potentially endangered missing person. Connelly James Davis, male, thirty years old. Estimated height six-two and weight one-ninety. Brown hair, brown eyes. Last seen leaving The Mad Dog Pub at around twenty-three hundred hours driving a dark blue BMW X7, Washington license plate alpha, x-ray, x-ray, two…”
Veronica’s head spun as the sheriff continued rattling off Connelly’s details.
Potentially endangered missing person.
Connelly had told her he’d be back around eleven, but she hadn’t been worried when his arrival time came and went. After all, he often got lost in thought, scribbling down ideas on whatever scrap of paper he could find. It wasn’t unusual for him to lose track of time.
“How do you know his plate?” Cal asked, sounding like he was at the end of a long tunnel.
“I have all my friends’ plates memorized,” Ash replied, also from the end of that tunnel.
“Of course you do. Why am I surprised?”
