Chapter Twenty-Four

No. Please, no . But the look on Evan's face said it all.

He didn't want her. Didn't want what she'd taken as a giant leap of faith to offer him on a silver platter—her love.

After all this time, finally, she'd fallen in love again. It was too bad the man she loved didn't want her. Maybe he didn't have it in him to want anyone .

Slowly, he shook his head. "I can't give you what you need. What you deserve ."

"I don't understand." She sat up, letting the covers fall to her waist, then grabbing them to cover her nakedness. Stupid, really, since she'd just done all sorts of intimate things with him. "All I said was I wanted you to be part of our lives when this is over. Maybe I'm na?ve, but I don't think so. I thought you wanted that, too. What changed in the span of one short phone call?"

"Everything." He hung his head. "Maybe nothing."

Judging by how he couldn't even look at her, she doubted it was nothing. She hadn't treated a patient in years, but that didn't mean all her training and experience had disappeared. The "everything" he'd been referring to had to be his sister. "This is about Grace, isn't it?"

He nodded, his eyes filled with the same sad, haunted look she'd glimpsed the first night they'd made love, when he'd confided to her about the day his sister had gone missing. "There's a lot I haven't told you."

Her heart skipped a beat. What could be worse than what he'd already confided? Like any good psychologist, she waited, even though she wanted to scream at him to spill it and get it over with. Whatever it was.

"I know who took my sister. It was Frank Manello."

"How do you know this?" More importantly, when did he find out?

"The interview I did at the airport. Arthur Constantino. He was the owner of another pool cleaning company, the same one that used to clean my family's pool when we were kids. Turns out Manello never worked for that company on the books. He was the owner's nephew and got paid under the table for years."

She shook her head, still not understanding why he thought this was such awful news he had to keep it from her. "I don't understand something. You showed Noah a driver's license photo of Manello. Why didn't you recognize him from that photo?"

"He's changed a lot. He doesn't look anything like the guy Gracie and I knew. I only realized it was him when Constantino's wife showed me an old family photo with Manello in it."

Evan wouldn't like what she had to say next, but it had to be said. "You told me Gracie was a habitual runaway. How can you be certain Manello had anything to do with her disappearance?"

"The day I found Noah in Manello's basement, we also found photos of other children." He paused, looking at her so intently, she understood this was the other shoe about to drop, the secret he'd been hiding from her. "Gracie's photo was there," he continued, clenching his jaw. "It was an old picture. She was wearing the same clothes she had on the day she went missing."

Marlie gripped the covers tighter, absorbing not only the gravity of the situation but the importance of what it meant to him. Personally . "Why didn't you tell me?"

When they'd struck their bargain to work together, he'd promised to never keep anything important from her. Instead, he'd flat out lied to her.

He hesitated before answering. "Partly because I couldn't. For an agent to have this much personal stake in an investigation, let alone one he's the case agent on, goes against policy. My boss convinced the director to let me stay on the case as long as I kept it confidential." He took a deep breath. "I know I promised to keep you informed, but I couldn't."

"Couldn't you?" She choked down the lump of emotions clogging her throat—sadness, disappointment, hopelessness. His boss's edict wasn't the real reason he'd kept such critical, personal information from her. The pain and frustration were so evident in his strained features it broke her heart almost as much as where she knew this conversation was going.

There was no place for her in his life.

"Don't you see?" He sat on the edge of the bed. "Gracie might still be alive. Manello is the key to finding her. I can't stop until I do. She might not be at the camp anymore. I don't know how long this will take, and I can't ask you to wait for me. It's not fair to you."

In that, he was right. It wasn't fair. Life wasn't always fair. That much she already knew. Still, the healing doctor in her had to help him see the truth in the event that he did, somehow, miraculously find her. "If she's still there, this would have changed her. She might not be anything like the girl you knew, and you can't ignore the other possibility. What if she doesn't want to be found?"

He drew back as if she'd slapped him. "Too bad. I'm going to find her anyway."

"You're not thinking rationally. You have to prepare yourself." He was already burned out from making a career of tracking down missing children. What would happen to him when he failed to find the one child who mattered to him the most?

He'd implode, and he'd take anyone around down with him.

Understanding why he was pulling away from her didn't stop her heart from breaking or from doing what she had to for her and Noah. "As soon as Brett and Gemma bring Noah home, we're leaving."

"What do you mean, you're leaving?" His brows drew together. "Where are you going? It's not safe at your apartment."

"I know that." Nakedness being the least of her concerns, she threw back the covers and slipped past him off the bed. "I'll find another place. For the moment, we'll be staying with Tish. She lives in a gated community with a guard on duty at all times." When things had been at their worst, her friend had offered her one of the extra bedrooms in her house. In the interest of exigency and Noah's safety, she hoped that offer was still good.

She grabbed clothes from the dresser, then went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. As an afterthought, she locked the door. Two seconds later, the handle jiggled.

"Marlie!" Evan called from the other side. "Open the door. We need to talk."

"No. We don't," she said, more to herself than to him. The time for talking was over.

Not two hours ago, she'd watched him with Noah at the piano, thinking what a great father he'd be. Now it was time to disconnect from him. It was the only way she could survive another loss in her life.

She yanked open the shower door. Three years ago, she thought she'd die. Now she wanted to live life to its fullest. Focusing on Noah and making a home and a good life for him was all that mattered. She stepped into the shower and turned her face into the spray, willing the pain and disappointment in her heart to wash away with the makeup she'd so painstakingly applied that morning.

Over the pounding spray, she heard Evan shouting. "Marlie!"

She covered her ears, praying he didn't kick down the door. If she looked into his face right now, she feared her resolve would spiral down the drain, along with the plans she was determined to set in motion.

He'd let her go, and she had to do the same with him. Opening the door would only lead to more heartache by dragging things out.

It was too late to turn back now.