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CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Evan dropped his duffel bag on the bed and walked to the window and then pulled the heavy curtain aside. The window was tinted, and so although it was midafternoon, it looked like it was early evening. Par for the course in a gambling town, where it was in the casinos’ favor to trick people’s bodies into thinking it was perpetual night. Perpetual party hour.
“So what do you think?” Noelle asked from behind him. He turned from the window, watching her for a moment as she sat down on the bed, opening a bottle of water and taking a swig.
“I think Tallulah experienced the same thing we did.”
“If she’s not making it up.”
“The police thought she was.”
She screwed the top back on the bottle, her expression thoughtful. “Evan, is it possible that the man you spoke with in prison, and/or Tallulah Marsh, read about what happened to us and used the details from our crime to fake their own?”
“To what end?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they were involved in something they were trying to cover up.”
“But both of them went to the police on their own. They weren’t arrested or even questioned for something else. I can’t think of a motive for faking their story. Especially since nothing ever came of it.”
“True,” she said. “But people fake crimes for different reasons. Just because nothing came from it doesn’t mean there wasn’t intention ... to get attention or ... who knows. People do weird things all the time for reasons that are hard to understand.”
He walked to the desk across from the bed and turned the chair toward her before sitting down. “But both of them? I had the same thought about Lars, even though my instinct was that he was telling the truth. But we have two people now who are telling similar stories.”
She nodded, biting at her lip, her eyes meeting his. Something moved between them, a current that made the hairs on his arms stand up. They needed to stop meeting in hotel rooms like this. The thought almost made him laugh.Pretend she’s your business partner, nothing more.
Right.You used to be more honest, too, Evan.
“Did you get the feeling Tallulah was lying?” he asked, forcing his attention back to the conversation at hand.
“No.” She sighed. “But now we have two people who might have been victimized by the same people, or group or whatever, as we were, and we still have nothing to go on. The police checked out the locations, and even if they missed something in both cases, so much time has passed that even if we could persuade the local authorities to reexamine the scene, any evidence would be totally destroyed by now.”
“The weird thing is,” he said, “the police didn’t believe Lars or Tallulah because of who they are. Their stories were easily dismissed. But we were different. We were noticed. The news showed up. Articles were written. If some sort ofchoosingwas done, why choose two people who would be high profile?”
“Especially you,” she said softly. He didn’t deny it. As the son of Leonard Sinclair, Evan’s abduction was never going to fly under any radar.
“Maybe they didn’t mean to,” she said. “Maybe they didn’t know who we were. Or who you were.”
“But again, our connection.”
“Yes. You’re right, it’s off,” she said on a sigh.
He sighed too. He felt her frustration. “We need to find someone else. We need to build more of a pattern.”
“Well, I doubt Aria’s going to be so gung ho to dig through reports for you now,” she said. There was a note of bitterness in her tone the same way there had been that morning, and it made a well of hope open within him. She was jealous. At least a little. She uncapped the bottle again and took another sip.
“Probably not,” he agreed, suppressing the smile that threatened. “Any more thoughts about why your dad might have sold your mom’s ring and given the money to Dow?” he asked, changing the subject, since they’d run out of ideas on the current one.
“I racked my brain last night,” she said, massaging her temple. “It had to be for something extremely important to my dad. Of all the money problems he had, all the bill collectors that called our house, he held on to that ring through it all. I didn’t even know, but he did. I just can’t imagine what he let it go for. Nothing makes sense.”
“Like I said before, the only thing that makes sense is if he let it go for you,” Evan said. “You would have been important enough for him to sell your mother’s ring.”
“I agree. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me too. But I wasn’t missing yet. And if he’d been somehow told in advance that I would be and was ... I don’t know, trying to pay someone off to stop it from happening, he’d have let me know in some way. He’d have warned me or hidden me orsomething. At the very least, he would have called me.”
Yes. But there was some thread of truth floating around their attempts to understand. It was like he felt it, but he just couldn’t connect it to the part that would then link it to something else until the trail led them to all the answers. It was frustrating as hell, because itwasn’t like they had nothing. They just didn’t have enough. Not yet anyway. “Hey,” he said. “Since we’re here, what do you say we change and go check out the strip? It might help us clear our minds. Sometimes ideas end up coming to me about a case when I put my brain on search and then go off to do something else.” He smiled. But it was true. It’d helped before.
She ran her finger over the label on the water bottle for a minute, finally nodding. “Do you mind if I lie down for a little bit? I slept awful last night. I’d like a shower, and then I’ll meet you in the lobby?”
He stood, holding out his hand. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet. “Sounds good. I’ll see you in a couple hours.”
