Obsession Read Free

help us figure this out means a great deal to me.” 
    Still skirting her name . Jess pushed aside the confusion or frustration, maybe both, and the weariness and matched his stride as he led the way. “I can’t make any promises but I’ll do what I can.”
    He hadn’t given her many details over the phone; that he had called at all was proof enough of the gravity of the situation. 
    He introduced her to his personal secretary, then ushered her into his office and closed the door. Like the lobby, his spacious office smacked of Katherine’s touch. Jess placed her bag on the floor next to a chair at the small conference table and surveyed the four case files waiting in grim formation for her inspection. Clipped to the front of each jacket was a photo of a missing girl.
    This was why she had come all this way. However much his call gratified her ego, piecing together this puzzle was her ultimate goal. She leaned forward to study the attractive faces. Four young women in the space of two and a half weeks had disappeared, the latest just three days ago. No common threads other than age, no suggestion of foul play, not a hint of evidence left behind. Macy York, Callie Fanning, Reanne Parsons and Andrea Denton had simply vanished.
    “These two are Jefferson county residents.” He tapped the first and second photos; Macy and Callie were both blonds. “This one’s Tuscaloosa.” Reanne, a redhead. “The latest is from Mountain Brook, my jurisdiction.” The fourth girl, Andrea, was a brunette and his attention idled there an extra moment or two.
    Jess lowered into a chair. She opened the files, one by one, and reviewed the meager contents. Interviews with family and friends. Photos and reports from the scenes. All but one of the missing, Reanne, were college students.
    “No contact with the families? No sightings?”
    She looked up, the need to assess his facial expressions as he answered a force of habit. His full attention rested on the files for a time before settling on her. The weight of the public service position he held had scored lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth. Lines that hadn’t been there ten years ago. Funny how those same sorts of lines just made her look old, but on him they lent an air of distinction.
    He shook his head in response to her question.
    “No credit card or cell phone trails?” she went on. “No goodbye or suicide notes? No ransom demands?”
    “Nothing.” 
    With a fluidity and ease that spoke of confidence as well as physical strength and fitness, he propped one hip on the edge of the table and studied her, those familiar blue eyes searching hers as blatantly as she had assessed his seconds ago. “Sheriff Roy Griggs—you may remember him—and Chief Bruce Patterson in Tuscaloosa are doing all they can, but there’s nowhere to go. The Bureau won’t budge on the issue of age of consent. All four of these girls are nineteen or over, and with the lack of evidence to indicate foul play there’s nothing to investigate, in their opinion. File the report, add the photos to the various databases and wait. That’s what they can do.”
    According to the law, the Bureau was correct. Unless there was evidence of foul play or vulnerability to a crime, there was no action the Bureau or any law enforcement agency could take. He knew this but his cop instincts or his emotions, she hadn’t concluded which yet, wouldn’t let it go at that. And she did remember Griggs. He had served as Jefferson County sheriff for the past three decades.
    “But you think there’s a connection that suggests this is not only criminal but perhaps serial.” This wasn’t a question. He’d told her as much on the phone, but she needed to hear his conclusion again and to see what his face and eyes had to show about his words. 
    His call, just hearing his voice, had resurrected memories and feelings she’d thought long dead and buried. They hadn’t spoken since the summer after college graduation until