Mother May I(38)

He nodded, even as Gabrielle’s jaw unhinged. He turned to her before she could speak. “We’ll leave you out of anything illegal. I don’t see another way.” The daughter was the only thing she cared about. Finding her was the key.

Bree stood up, firming her lips and squaring her shoulders, her gaze burning into him. Gratitude and hope and something else, unreadable. “So what do we do first?”

She asked as if she were sure he knew, and he felt her faith like a jolt, pure energy crackling through him. This was that force she had in her, the thing that had made her so electric on the stage. She’d turned it on him like a beam.

“We send the phone and bag to a private lab. The pill bottle and the dosed flask incriminate you, so I’ll hold them in case we need them. I know a lab that works Saturdays. I’ll call them. A rush job will be expensive, but . . .” She was already waving that away, so he started packing the artifacts into the gaudy bag. “Not enough time for DNA, but if they can get fingerprints, maybe she has a record. Gabrielle, call a car service? As soon as we’re done here, you need to go drop this stuff off.” He handed her the sack, then unclipped his own phone from his belt. “I’ll text you the lab’s address.”

“I can do that.” She came down hard on the last word as she got her phone out. It was a warning; there were things she would not do.

Bree understood the warning as well. She turned to hold his gaze in what became a promise between them. No limits.

Then she looked down, her cheeks coloring, and changed the subject. “The mother said finding her wouldn’t help me find the daughter.”

Pushback was good. If he had to convince her, it made this idea more his. If it failed, at least Bree would have someone to blame besides herself.

“She meant finding her physical location wouldn’t help. We know the daughter isn’t with her. But her identity? If she didn’t care about us knowing that, she would have answered your last question. She told you everything else you wanted to know. About herself, her family, her motivations. Geoff. But she wouldn’t tell you her name, or her husband’s name, or her daughter’s. She wouldn’t say what Trey and Spence did, and people with a grievance love to express their outrage. She didn’t because if you knew which case had harmed her, then you could find her name. If she wants to hide her name, then it’s worth finding.” Bree was nodding, seeing it, so he pressed forward. “I need a water glass and a big Ziploc storage bag, please.” She turned toward the kitchen, but his next words made her blanch. “Then you have to call Trey. Get him up to speed, so he’ll hop the first plane home.”

“I will.” She hurried away to get the things he’d asked for.

He turned back to Gabrielle. “After you drop this stuff off, can you go into the office? I’ll stay here and start the research. By the time you get there, I’ll have emailed all my notes to you. You can use them to narrow down Spencer and Trey’s cases.”

Bree was already back. He took her hand and found it trembling so hard he had to steady it as he pressed her fingertips cleanly onto the water glass. “So the lab can rule your prints out.” He dropped the glass in the bag and sealed it.

“Thank you,” she said. That was all, but her eyes were full of unsaid things.

He nodded, feeling a sudden need, sharp and small and selfish, to be the one to make this happen. He would shake hands with Satan, trade anything, to be the one to get Robert back. He could almost feel the small, live weight of the baby, see how joy would crash through her as he put that weight into her arms.

He pushed it away, dirty from the want of it. Find the name. Get the daughter. That was all.

“My car is here.” Gabrielle took the bagged glass. “Call the lab. Tell them I’ll be there in half an hour.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Bree said.

Marshall didn’t want to be in the room when Bree returned. It would be hard enough for her to call her husband, tell him what she had to tell, without a witness in the room. Besides, there were things he needed to be doing.

He went into Trey’s office. It felt strange to be in this room, alone. Or at all. Trey was his boss. They hadn’t really socialized since he lost Betsy. But he remembered the place, with its spare, modern furniture and high bookshelves lining two of the walls. He sat down at Trey’s desk, but Trey was shorter, so the chair didn’t fit him. His knees jutted up. Still, he wasn’t going to change the settings.

He called the lab and got lucky; the cute tech with the dimples, Jenna something, picked up. She always came through for him. He told her it was for the firm but made it plain it was more urgent than a regular rush job.

“I’ll get it done. But only because you begged,” she teased. “I’m going to be here until midnight, though.” A dramatic, suffering sigh.

“I owe you,” he told her.

“What kind of owe me?” she asked. “Six-pack of PBR or shrimp dinner?”

“Lobster, if you find me some fingerprints.”

She laughed, and they disconnected.

He was swirling Trey’s mouse to make Windows come up before he realized he’d probably just been asked out on a date. Worse, he’d probably accepted.

Betsy had always told him he was stupid about flirting. Once, at the grocery store, he’d left the cart to go grab a local lager from the refrigerated case in the back. A woman came up and asked what kind of beer went well with steak. He’d been telling her about his favorite brewery when Betsy came to find him. The woman left abruptly, and Betsy had almost choked to death laughing. She’d fluttered her eyelashes and fake-swooned into his shoulder. “Excuse me, kind sir, do you have any beer in your pants?”