Page 60 of Tangled Past
JT’s expression sobered. “From Raymond’s notebook?”
She nodded. “All those women just disappeared, and no one really looked for them.”
“We’re looking for them now,” Asa said softly. “We won’t give up until we find your mother and them. And the truth.”
She swallowed.
JT shifted his grip on the laptop. “Will’s going to be a while. The state cold case unit wants to loop in their profiler. Rachel’s staying on with him at the station. Eli, Declan, and I will watch from outside. That leaves you two to argue over who gets which bedroom. You should sleep, Maya.”
“I’m not sleeping,” Maya said.
“That wasn’t a suggestion,” JT replied. “It was a warning. You’ll hit a wall eventually if you don’t.” He disappeared back into the hall.
Asa exhaled. “He’s right.”
She turned back to the window. The lighthouse beam swept across the dark again, a pale arc cutting through the mist.
“You think he’s out there? Watching us?”
Asa studied the view. “If he knows about the safehouse, we did something wrong already,” he said. “We moved in unmarked vehicles. No lights. No sirens. No chatter on open channels. The only people who know we’re here are in this building, at the station, or on the state call.”
“The person who erased my file and apparently knows how to read all of those systems.”
Silence stretched between them.
Then Asa said, “There’s someone I want to speak to about my father’s notes.”
She glanced at him. “Who?”
“My uncle,” he said. “Jonas.”
She rolled the unfamiliar name around in her head. “I thought your dad was an only child.”
“He was,” Asa said. “Jonas is my mom’s brother. I’ve been updating him on the case so far. I’ll see if he remembers hearing anything about the missing women. I’m thinking he might have heard something over the years.” His mouth tightened. “My uncle has traveled extensively throughout his life. He might also have heard of the freight company's name. Maybe he can give us something the paper trail won’t.”
Asa glanced at his phone. “Unfortunately, he’s in Paris right now, and it’s still early there. I’ll try to reach him on the phone first. If he doesn’t answer, I’ll text him with my questions.”
He reached up, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering for a second against her skin. “Be right back, okay?” he said. “Try to sit. I’ve heard rumors that it doesn't kill you.” He disappeared down the hall toward the small bedroom they’d claimed as temporary command central.
Maya stayed at the window. Outside, Eli’s flashlight swept briefly across the yard, a moving star against the dark. The house settled into a different kind of quiet—thin walls, distant voices, the hum of the old refrigerator in the kitchen.
She wrapped her arms around herself. Alone in empty spaces, she didn’t choose. That part felt familiar. The difference now was the people filling them.
She wandered away from the window, pacing the small living room. A sofa against one wall, with a quilt tossed over it. A bookcase held a few abandoned paperbacks and a stack of puzzles. A framed photo of the lighthouse in summer hung slightly crooked above the TV. A postcard version of the view outside.
She sat on the sofa for a moment. Her body hummed with too much adrenaline to settle in one place for long. She laced her fingers together and stared at the coffee table. Her mind replayed the notebook in her head page by page.
Unlinked disappearances. Vanessa’s refusal to talk. Her eventual decision to trust. Raymond’s warning to his son.
She thought of Margaret’s voice on the phone.
“‘I remember you being brought into the station that night. You looked so small and fragile, unable to say a word.’”
She’d stayed silent for so long. Now the words wouldn’t stop.
“Lord,” she whispered into the empty room, the word awkward but necessary on her tongue, “I don’t even know how to ask for what I need. I don’t know what to say for all those women. For my mother. For Asa’s dad. But You saw them. Yousaw us. Please . . . don’t let this be for nothing.” Her throat burned with emotion.
A moment later, Asa stepped back into the living room with the phone still in hand. “No answer. I’m sure he’ll call once he gets my message.” Asa shrugged and dropped into the chair opposite the sofa with a frown on his face. “If our killer was, say, in his thirties, then he’d be in his fifties now. From what we’ve discovered so far, there haven’t been any recent disappearances tied to the bar. He could have stopped.”
