Missing Read Free

begun. The world thought this was
proof that he was a perfect father.
    He wasn’t.
    For so long, he’d been the kind of parent his father had
been to him. While he was still married, he and the girls would have fun when
they spent time together, which wasn’t very often, and most of the hands-on
work was left to nannies and exclusive private schools.
    When he’d become a single father, he’d suddenly been hit
with the weight of responsibility, so the time he spent with them—which still
wasn’t very much—was no longer fun. He relied even more on the girls’ nannies
and schools to do everything he didn’t know how to do.
    The times he did get involved in their lives, he’d done
everything wrong.
    Victoria, three years younger, hadn’t been so challenging
for him, but Elizabeth had borne the brunt of his failure in fatherhood.
    Her running away was his fault. He knew it with every cell
of his body. But he desperately wanted her back.
    He talked to Martin for a few more minutes, discussing some
other possible avenues of investigation. He met with the private investigator
every week to get a progress report, but it was mostly to ensure that his
daughter remained at the top of the agency’s priority list.
    For the entire first month after she’d run away, Nathan had
been obsessed with finding her, putting aside everything else in his world in
his desperation to locate his daughter, but that couldn’t last.
    He had another daughter, and he had to live his life.
    He was doing everything he could do now, but Elizabeth
obviously didn’t want to be found.
    When Martin left, Nathan sat at his table for a few more
minutes, finishing his coffee and thinking about Elizabeth.
    Being a better father now took up all of the time and
emotional energy he didn't put into work, so he’d given up on romance. Even sex
had gotten rather boring and artificial to him—so most of the time he hadn’t
found it worth the trouble.
    But that had changed two years ago on the 24th of the month.
    He glanced at the date on his watch. Five more days until
the 24th of this month.
    His body tightened automatically—in anticipation. He was just
past forty, and he hadn’t had sex in eighty-four days.
    He needed the release, a temporary escape, a night of
intense pleasure, completely cut off from the rest of his world.
    He tried to remind himself that Lynn might not be there.
They never made promises. They always left themselves an out.
    She might be dating someone else by now. She might have
fallen in love in the last three months.
    She might not show up in their hotel room five days from
now, in which case he would simply have to deal with it.
    But he hoped she would be there. Sex with Lynn was
better than any sex Nathan had ever had in his life.
    And he’d been missing it.

Three
     
    For the thirteenth time in the last
hour, Lynn checked the clock.
    It was twenty after seven on a Thursday evening, and the
minutes were passing very slowly.
    She grabbed the note she’d just scrawled onto a stray piece
of paper—a lead someone had just called in—and got up to see if anyone was
around to cover the story.
    “Where is everyone?” she asked the slender brunette who was
the only person in the open area where several desks were set up.
    Beth Broadview had started working on Monday this week. She
was a pretty girl—with classic features, trendy glasses, and long shiny hair. 
    “Josh was sick, so he went home early,” Beth replied,
straightening up in the way a lot of the younger staffers did when Lynn
appeared. “And Marleigh and Ross are out following stories.”
    “Busy night, I guess.” She handed Beth the lead she’d
scrawled a few minutes before. “Since no one else is around right now, you get
to write your first story this evening. No more than three hundred words. Get
it to Kevin by eleven-thirty tonight.”
    Beth’s eyes—which looked more gray now than blue—widened as
she read the handwriting on the paper. “Thank you, Ms.