Chapter 27

TWENTY-SEVEN

Gulf Shores, Alabama

Sunday, September 22

5:29 p.m.

Leigh wedged the hotel room door open with her foot. "Make yourself at home."

It was all too easy to imagine the distress of a fourteen-year-old forced to stay with a stranger—a woman investigating her mother's disappearance—and Ava Portman crossed the threshold without looking up. She scanned the room, took in the two queen-sized beds and a single bathroom lacking for space.

"It's not much, but it'll do its job until we can find someone more suitable for you to stay with." Leigh unpocketed her phone and the hotel key card, setting them on the desk. Embarrassment seized her as she realized she'd left the container for her pork nachos from last night out. At the same time, her stomach growled for her to finish off the stale chips and meat. She'd been going from one place to the next all day. With nothing to show for it.

"You're not suitable?" Ava tossed the clothing Leigh had collected from the vacation house onto the bed farthest from the door then took up position on the edge.

"There are more qualified people out there to care for you than me." Leigh bit back the urge to list all the reasons.

"My mom told me about you." Ava studied her with unwavering determination. Though a darkness had set up residence under her eyes, in the hollows of her tear-stained cheekbones. The girl had been through so much in such a short amount of time. Losing friends. Losing her mother. Now hearing the news of her father. It was any wonder she was still talking, but Leigh wouldn't push. She wouldn't ask about the lie Ava had told Gulf Shores PD about being in the house when her mother was attacked. Not yet. "You found a killer after like twenty years and stopped another guy from murdering a bunch more people. I'd say you're overqualified."

Leigh tried not to laugh, but in the face of so much pain and loss and grief, it felt good to taste the other side of things. "Well, when you put it that way." She tossed the menu onto Ava's bed and detached the hotel phone from its cradle. "I'm ordering room service. Pick anything you want."

Except the line didn't connect to the front desk. She checked the connection.

"Agent Brody?" a voice asked.

"Who is this?" Her attention cut to Ava as the girl surveyed her options from the edge of the bed, and Leigh turned her back.

"Officer Parks, Gulf Shores IT," he said. "You submitted a burned phone as evidence to the Elyse Portman investigation."

Hope brightened at the center of her chest. "Were you able to get anything off of it?"

"The damage was pretty substantial," the officer said. "The only thing we were able to recover was a couple photos of a text message exchange. Screenshots as far as we can tell. Even then, it's hard to make out specific details. There are no names or numbers, but we do have time stamps and read receipts. It may be possible to request more information from the cell phone company with a warrant."

"Thank you." It wasn't the answer she'd been looking for, but the exchange could prove important. Why else had Elyse kept it on her phone? "Please let Detective Moore know. She'll be the one submitting the warrant request."

"Will do." The line disconnected, and Leigh hung the phone back on the cradle.

Had the exchange been between Elyse and another party? Or a conversation she'd come across? Why keep it screenshots of it either way?

Ava hauled herself off the bed, handing back the menu. "I'm not hungry."

It took a moment for Leigh to catch up. "Are you sure?"

"Was that about my mom?" Ava asked. "That call?"

"Yeah." There was an opportunity here. Uninhibited by an angry parent or a questioning detective with more on the line than most. "I found your mom's phone. It'd been destroyed in a fireplace. The police were just calling to let me know they were able to recover a couple recent photos. A text message exchange. Do you know anything about that?"

Ava smoothed her expression into a blank slate. The same look she'd had at the station. A look that said she knew too much and not enough at the same time. She shook her head. "No. My mom's been weird lately. Ever since she came back from the hospital."

"That's understandable after what she'd been through, don't you think? With the assault and everything." The "everything" in that sentence would be the easiest to accept. Learning of Wesley's affair, of the financial loss. Elyse asking for a divorce. Leigh gripped on to the laminated menu a bit too hard. She hadn't meant for any of this, and if she was being honest with herself, she saw a bit too much of herself in the fourteen-year-old staring back at her. Losing one parent to suicide. Another having been ripped from her life without explanation. These current circumstances were far different than hers, but she couldn't help but compare their lives. What would she have wanted to hear at seventeen? Who would she have trusted?

"I need to check in with Detective Moore." Her phone vibrated from the desk. "Why don't you shower and change while I get some food ordered? You might be hungry by the time you're cleaned up."

Permission. That was what she would've wanted as a teen. Permission to escape, to be alone, to process her entire world blowing up in her face in privacy without having to keep on a mask that said everything was okay. It wasn't okay. None of this was okay, and it wouldn't be for a long, long time.

"Yeah. Sure." Two words. Ava grabbed for her bag and closed and locked the bathroom door behind her. The sound of water hitting tile drowned out the buzz of her phone.

Leigh waited a moment. Took a deep breath as she registered the caller. Then answered. "Director Livingstone."

"Agen' Brody. I've just received notice you submitted a warrant request for the GPS of a cell phone with a Clarksburg area code registered to an Elyse Portman." Angelina Livingstone's Scottish accent tended to thin or thicken with her moods. It was more pronounced now. Darker. Not a good sign. "Considering you're on medical leave for the next few weeks, you can see why I might be confused."

There was no point in lying. She'd known what she was getting herself into—that she would be risking her job—disobeying a superior's order. "Elyse Portman is missing. I was asked to contribute to the investigation by Gulf Shores PD."

"You don't have authority to contribute, Agen' Brody, nor has this unit been asked to collaborate," Livingstone said.

"Not officially, no." What else was there to say?

"And you realize any evidence you personally uncover in regards to a missing persons investigation could be thrown out of court because of that?" Livingstone let her statement hang there for a moment. Let it sink in.

There was a dryness Leigh couldn't dislodge from the back of her throat. She tried to swallow past it, but she couldn't deny the director's insight. She'd lied to her unit, to her family, to Detective Moore. And now that lie was coming back to bite her in the ass. All for the sake of another personal case she shouldn't have gotten involved with. "You could authorize me to work this case. Make it official. Detective Henrietta Moore is my contact in Gulf Shores PD."

"What have you discovered in the course of your investigation, Agen' Brody?" Her superior was giving her a chance to dig herself out of this hole. One shot. That was all she had to fix this.

"Elyse's phone, found in the suspect's home. IT was able to recover a couple photos from the device, but not much more is known at this point. The phone was badly burned. Destroyed." The words escaped her control as a rush to prove herself took over. "And I found photos in Elyse's home. Of a teen who went missing three weeks ago. Her body was discovered yesterday morning. I'm not sure why Elyse had them or how she was involved, but there is a connection with the victim's daughter. And now another girl is missing, and I'm trying to find out why. I don't have the whole picture yet, but I know we're close."

There was no point in mentioning the second phone she'd found with the photos or the profile and digital evidence of Katie Rose. Leigh didn't have enough information yet. She was reaching for straws at this point, and they both knew it. Because what had she really found up to this point? Nothing definitively linking Elyse to anything. The photos of Ruby Davis could've come from anywhere. And the phone wasn't even registered in Elyse's name. There was just this feeling of knowing Leigh had relied on over the years. A nagging knot she couldn't get rid of. "A pool of blood in the victim's home was also confirmed to be from Elyse. Enough to convince Detective Moore the victim couldn't have survived."

"But not you." Livingstone had that uncanny habit of being able to read Leigh better than Leigh knew herself. Perhaps from her experience hunting serial offenders across the UK and United States. Perhaps because Leigh really wasn't as good at masking as she thought. "Based on what you've told me, Agen' Brody, I don't believe Gulf Shores PD is in need of this unit's insight. There is no serial pattern or additional victims that would warrant our involvement."

Panic squeezed the oxygen from her lungs. "Director, you don't understand. There is something else going on here. Something we're not seeing. It has to do with the underaged victims. I just can't see how it all fits together. If you could just give me a little more time?—"

"You are compromising the case, Leigh." The director lost her accent. There was no anger, no disappointment. Just the truth. The longer Leigh was involved in this investigation without authorization, the higher chance the case would fall apart if it ever went to court. "You've been through a lot the past few months. Everything that happened in Lebanon, your father's release, finally closing the Chris Ellingson case. If you're like me, and I know that you are, I'm sure you've conditioned yourself to move from one case to the next. Afraid of what might happen if you're not fully committed to saving the next victim. I know because I built this unit to avoid having to deal with the grief that came with my partner's death."

Not just a partner. Livingstone had been engaged to the man she'd fought beside in the field. They'd been planning on getting married, starting a future together. Right up until the Ravelston Strangler killed him back in Edinburgh. It was the catalyst that had driven her to turn her attention to serial offenders. As losing her brother had been for Leigh, and she couldn't argue. About any of it.

"As you're on medical leave for the next three weeks, I can't tell you how to spend that time or where to spend it, but I can prohibit you from investigating this and any other case until your leave is finished. Failure to comply will result in negative action toward your placement in this unit and ultimately your career." A beat of silence told Leigh that was the last thing the director wanted. "Is that clear, Agen' Brody?"

"Yes, ma'am." Except she couldn't say her heart was in the response. Unlike her choice to collaborate with Detective Moore to find Elyse. That had been all heart. Personal. An attempt to save the one and only friend who'd looked past Leigh's history and helped her through losing the possibility of a future family. That kind of bond had fundamentally changed her. And it couldn't be broken by a career, financial instability, or murder.

Leigh ended the call as the sound of the shower cut short. Ava would be out soon, and she had yet to order dinner. Calling down to the front desk, she put in an order, doubling up on the fries and hot fudge sundaes. They'd be eating their feelings in no time.

Her phone buzzed in her hand with an incoming message from Detective Moore:

You lied to me.