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It felt final this time. He could feel Ellie moving away from him—physically, emotionally... and, worst of all, irrevocably.
So on Friday, when he finally won a hard-fought, drawn-out court battle and turned to shake hands with his client’s father, he was shocked to see her sitting at the back of the courtroom.
Was he imagining her?
Other people came forward to congratulate him on the win, momentarily blocking his view. He shook hands and exchanged pleasantries, but his eyes were constantly drawn to the back of the room.
When the crowd thinned, she was still there.
It was actually her this time, not a figment of his ever-hopeful imagination. There was no mistaking those bright red glasses—her favorite pair in her seemingly endless collection—and that explosion of blond curls that she could never fully tame.
She stared at him, her expression unreadable. His heart pounded in his ears as he excused himself from the crowd and headed toward her.
As he approached, Ellie looked at him with a kind of clinical detachment, as if she were studying something under a microscope. Her impassive gaze was colder than any he’d received from her in the past, and she held up a hand as he opened his mouth to say... something. He had no idea what. He wasn’t going to apologize for what happened between them last weekend.
“I’m not here to talk about what happened at the wedding,” she said flatly.
“Okay.” He drew the word out. “Then why are you here?”
Instead of answering, her gaze shifted toward his client as the bailiff led him out in handcuffs. “What did he do, kill someone?”
The kid had non-fatally shot someone in a panic as he tried to rob a convenience store for drug money. He’d used the drugs to self-medicate untreated schizophrenia. It was precisely what the insanity defense was made for, but going that route was always dangerous. A plea of insanity worked in a defendant’s favor only around twenty percent of the time, so he’d had to get creative with his defense.
But he couldn’t tell her all that, so he simply said, “No, he didn’t kill anyone.”
A furrow formed between her brows. “Didn’t you win?”
He watched until the kid and the guard disappeared out the side door. “I did.”
“Then why is he still in handcuffs?”
“Because he’s still in custody and will remain so for several years, but now, instead of going to prison, he’s going to get medical help.”
She studied him for a moment, then nodded, her gaze drifting away from him. “That’s good,” she murmured.
“Yes, it is.” His voice was soft, intentionally gentle. “He needed help, not punishment.”
She flinched. He’d once said the exact words to her about Jaxon Thorne, who was also now serving out his sentence in a prison psychiatric hospital due to severe untreated PTSD and drug addiction.
The courtroom slowly emptied around them, the hum of conversation dying down as people filed out.
Cal waited a moment longer before asking again, “Why are you here, Ellie?”
She picked up a thick file from the bench beside her and handed it to him. “This is everything I have about Hope—all the research I’ve done, every lead I’ve followed over the years.”
He slowly took the file and thumbed through it. There was a lot of information here, far more than he ever managed to extract from the few police reports he’d found concerning her disappearance. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. Ellie researched every case she and Alexis covered on their podcast, and she was nothing if not thorough.
“Okay,” he said, closing the file and handing it back to her. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”
She refused to take it back and curled her hands into fists in her lap. “You’ve managed to find out more about her in a matter of months than I’ve found in years. You found—” Her voice broke, and she cleared her throat before trying again. “You found her daughter.”
“More like she found me.”
“She reached out to you because you’re… you. People trust you. I don’t inspire that level of trust, so…” She wouldn’t meet his eyes, focusing instead on the far wall over his shoulder. “I need your help to find her again.”
He grinned. “That hurt, didn’t it?”
“What?”
