SEIZED Part 2: Steamy Romantic Suspense (Seize Me Romance Fiction Series) Read Free Page A

time to face Jacob before her afternoon gets too busy.
    I’m in luck when I wander past her office again. I see through the glass windows that she’s alone, typing. I knock on the door and wait. She doesn’t look up right away, so I get a moment to see how intent she is on whatever she’s working on. For some reason, I start to wonder if this woman is part of any scheme to put April in danger. I don’t know and I have nothing that points to her. What I do know is she’s my boss, I report directly to her as part of the anti-trafficking squad, and it’s time for me to let her in on the situation with April’s phone, and Carrie.
    “Afternoon Lieutenant,” I say.
    She looks at the clock and sees that it’s past noon. “Come in, Anderson. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Chapter Three
    Carrie
    I slide back into the prone position I was in before. I must have gone to sleep, because when I open my eyes, the shadow through the skylight has moved over me. I’m cold. I get up to turn on the heater, and grab one of the blankets rolled up in the basket beside the sofa.
    The bookshelf is full with tempting treats, and I wonder how long it’s been since I just shut my brain off with a good book.
    I browse the shelves for a second but nothing seems appealing. I’m about to turn on the TV when I come across the bound spine of an old photo album.
    Well this is officially rated as stalking, but I rationalize that if his mother hadn’t abandoned them, she would want me to see them. That’s supposed to be a rite of passage when a guy brings bring home a girl, or so I tell myself.
    I make some herbal tea, and sit cross-legged to start perusing their special memories. The album is a combination baby book and photo album. There are pages showing both Brenda and Blake’s birth weights and early eating habits. They are signed by a midwife, so I assume his mother was still under care.
    The pictures and staged that follow in the coming months are more sketchy. Sometimes the writing is neat and concise, while other times there are just scrawls and whole months missing from their early lives.
    Who knows when Blake got his first tooth or when Brenda took her first step. Seeing this makes me sad for them both. Their parents were absent from the start. Clearly it was for different reasons, but it looks like his Mom may have had mental health issues, maybe even before she gave birth to them. There’s a brochure on post-natal depression tucked into the inside of the album, along with some coupons for baby milk that she’d obviously meant to save.
    I turn the pages and the photos begin. The first is little Blake sitting on his Dad’s knee. The man looks extremely uncomfortable, but Blake is staring at him with adulation. That’s what babies do. They love you and love you until finally they learn you don’t love them back. Humanity is so depressing. There’s one family shot with the four of them, and a few of Blake’s Mom holding unidentified little bundles of blanket and looking tired. Later on in the album, there are shots of Blake on his first day of school.
    It almost jumps forward a decade, with no photos at all of their time in grade school. The siblings next appear at age fourteen or so in a group of kids the same age. I look closely, but don’t recognize the others. This must be from before they came to Iowa. There are pictures with Brenda looking shy, holding the hand of her first boyfriend, and then come the Blake photos.
    Page after page of Blake holding up a bottle, a girl plastered against him, or he’s pumping his fist at some music or some victory etched in history. These have been clearly taken by some adoring girl, and I can’t help but laugh at the way she’s tried to capture him unaware. I bet these were from one of his first girlfriends, because he looks about fifteen years old. Several are taken during parties with people of all ages around him. Most of them are displaying the meaty, intoxicated grins of