Twirled Bond (Holly Woods Files, #5) (9 page)

Mrs. Russo? Why would she be coming to see me?

Uncertainty tingles in the pit of my belly.

“No, don’t send her away. As long as she’s quick, I’ll come down.” I hang up and slip my feet back into my heels under my desk. I smooth my outfit out as I leave my office and take to the stairs.

I see Mrs. Russo immediately—she’s sitting in the middle of the waiting room. Her back is straight, her legs are demurely crossed at her ankles, and her dark hair, peppered with strands of deep gray, are pulled back into a low braid that swings over her left shoulder.

“Mrs. Russo?” I say gently, approaching her.

She swings sad, tired, dark-brown eyes toward me.

“My assistant said you wanted to speak with me.”

“Ah.” She forces a small smile and, standing, takes my offered hand with a weak shake. “Ms. Bond. Yes—it’s not an inconvenience, I hope?”

Like Grecia, she has a Mexican accent, but Mrs. Russo’s is much fainter, barely there, swamped by a neutralizing Texas drawl.

“Not at all,” I reassure her. “My next appointment is my accountant, and I’d prefer to avoid that.” I finish with a small smile.

It draws another from her. “Thank you. I appreciate this.”

I touch her arm. “If you go up the stairs, you’ll find my office the first door on the left. Can I get you somethin’ to drink? Coffee? Tea? Water?”

“A cold glass of water would be wonderful.”

“Perfect. Head on up, ma’am, and I’ll be right after you.” As soon as she’s gone, I dart into Grecia’s office.

She looks up instantly.

“Call John. Tell him I’ll be late and a reschedule would be great because something came up last minute,” I say, referring to my accountant. “And a coffee and a water would be even better.”

A smile spreads across her face. “You got it.”

At least she looks happier than this morning.

“You’re okay, yeah?” I ask, double-checking before I leave. “You and Mike?”

“We’ll work it out.” She gets up with a smile. “Silly things.”

“Always is. Just remember to show him who’s boss. And he’s more dispensable than you.” I wink at her and quickly squeeze her into my side before releasing her and heading up to my office.

I still feel queasy from thinking about Mrs. Russo and why she wants to see me. I’m a big believer in coincidences, but somehow, I get the feeling this is far beyond that.

“Sorry about that,” I say, walking into my office and pushing my door closed. I round my desk and take a seat behind it, searching Mrs. Russo’s face for her gaze.

She doesn’t meet mine.

That’s never good.

“What can I help you with?” My voice is soft. I can almost feel the pain she’s carrying with her, and I feel as though she’s so delicate that too loud of a noise might break her.

“The...body...” Her voice cracks on the second word, although it’s barely a whisper. “Is it my baby?”

I should have known.
“Ma’am, if I knew, please know I would tell you. Unfortunately, it’s not information I have. I don’t think the police do yet.”

“I thought as much.” She sighs softly. “Ms. Bond, I would like to hire you.”

I blink several times, but I don’t say a word. I don’t think talking right now will help—she’ll expand in her own time.

Lord only knows she’s afraid. Her hands, clasped on her lap so tight that her knuckles are white, are trembling, and her thumbs keep fighting with each other as she fidgets. She keeps swallowing, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say she was chewing the inside of her cheek as she chooses her next words. Not to mention the rapid blinking.

Without a shadow of a doubt, Mrs. Russo is terrified of her next words.

“I need your help, Ms. Bond,” she says in a raspy tone. “I need you to find my baby. It’s been fifteen years, and I—” Her voice cracks, and she claps a hand over her mouth, glancing at me with watery eyes.

I walk around the table and grab the box of tissues to offer them to her. My own throat feels clogged up, like there’s a boulder of an emotional lump that won’t shift.

Mrs. Russo takes a tissue right as there are two knocks at my door. I leave the box on the desk with a, “Please, help yourself,” and answer the door. It’s Grecia with our drinks, so I take them and thank her with the instruction that I don’t want to be disturbed.

Then I lock my door.

This is more than an afraid woman.

This is a mother—a guilt-ridden, lost, hopeless, heartbroken mother.

She’s more important than anything else that could require my attention today. Even if I can’t help her. I get the feeling that what she wants more than anything is someone to listen to her.

“Don’t rush,” I say gently, touching my fingertips to her knee. “I’ve canceled my next appointment. Take all the time you need.”

“Sweet girl,” she whispers, wiping under her eyes. “You knew her, didn’t you? My Daniela.”

“Yes, ma’am. We were friends in school.”

“You have to help me.” She leans forward, clasping one of my hands in hers. One tear trails down her cheek and drops onto her arm. “I need answers, Noelle. The body they’ve found... I just want to know now. I’ve spent so long wondering. Dead or alive... I need to know where my baby is. They think I’m crazy for trying again. Think I’ll never find her, but I know. Please say you can help me. I’m desperate.”

She breaks down on the final words, her emotion backing her words up. Her sobs come thick and fast, her fear a thick echo of each broken sound as she cries. I take her into my arms, unsure of what else to do.

I was right.

She wants to be listened to. She wants someone to believe Daniela can be found.

Mrs. Russo turns her face toward mine and whispers, “It’s her.”

I sit back and touch her shoulder. “We don’t know that.”

“No, honey.” She takes a deep breath, one so strong that she sucks all the air out of immediate area, and squeezes me. “I
know.
In my heart, that’s my baby Doc Hermes is examining. But I want you to rule out every other option before they tell me.”

It makes no sense to me. Then again, a grieving mother’s request never would. I’m neither grieving nor a mother. Even if I do feel like my throat is tight and my lungs are closing up at the sheer force of love I’m feeling from her for Daniela.

After fifteen years, she’s still determined to know.

I thought I knew love. I thought I understood it.

I have no idea what love really is.

This woman would walk to the very depths of the oceans and the highest mountain peaks if there happened to be the barest glimmer of a chance her daughter’s there. She’d fight armies a hundred times larger than her and beat back animals wilder than you could imagine just to find her missing baby.

I can see it in her eyes.

Now this? This love, this raw, unbridled, uncontrollable parental love... Terrifying. Simply terrifying.

“You have my word, ma’am,” I say quietly. “As long as you agree that I’ll charge you basic expenses—gas and the like—and nothing more.”

“No.”

“She was my friend.”

“And she’s my daughter. I’ll pay your full rate, Ms. Bond.”

“Fifty percent and we’re even.”

She looks at me with her dark eyes for a long moment before she sighs and nods. “Fifty percent. I don’t want you to be out of pocket for your time, honey. I’m all good now.” She pats my knee. “Get back there on your side of this desk and let’s get down to the info.”

I hesitate until she waves me across the desk. Here, I sit and open my notebook. I grab a Post-it note and write
Daniela
on it in black Sharpie before I stick it to the top of the page so I can find it instantly.

“Okay,” I say, clicking my Bond. P.I. pen. “Tell me what you think I need to know.”

“Mr. Russo!” I cry, yanking the fridge door open. “Her father! The woman’s certifiable, Drake! I can’t just turn up to her house and start asking her father questions about their daughter’s disappearance!” I pull the wine bottle out and fill the glass as high as I can. I have to slurp it before I pick it up.

God, it tastes so good.

“Should you be drinking that before dinner?”

I turn and hit him with a gaze so frosty that it’d freeze Hell. “Come and take it from me, hot stuff. I dare you.”

“Nah, I’d like to keep possession of my balls today.” He sips from his beer. “Will it help you calm down?”

My gaze doesn’t get warmer. “I hope so. I’ve been worked up since she left. She wants me to investigate her daughter’s death and look into her husband? Is that not crazy to you?”

He rocks his head side to side before he finally speaks. “Not really,” he says slowly. “I see it a lot. For some reason, when a child has died, moms can be quick to blame their fathers.”

I groan and sit next to him at the kitchen table. If I go to the sofa, I’ll never get back up. “What do I do?” I sound kinda whiny, but whatever. “The man’s been harassing you. I don’t wanna go do the same to him.”

“Do you regret agreeing?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

I take a deep breath and slump forward. “I don’t,” I admit. My voice is almost sad. I run one hand through my hair. “She wants to find her daughter. I’ve spent the entire afternoon thinking she’s silly, that it’s been fifteen years, but then...I’ve also thought what I’d do in her position.”

Drake leans forward on the table. His blue eyes are unwavering on mine. “Which is?”

I shrug a shoulder, looking deep into his eyes. “I’d probably burn down every city in this goddamn country to find my daughter if she ever disappeared. Then, when I’m done, I’d take every one of Canada’s too.”

He eases forward and, wrapping one hand around the back of my neck, kisses me soundly. “That’s why people come to you, sweetheart.” He sits back. “Because they know your heart is made of gold and you’ll always help.”

A sigh escapes my lips. I really need to start being an asshole a bit more to stop that rumor. My heart is black before it’s gold. I’m a bona fide bitch.

Oh, who am I kidding? I’m a bona fide bitch with a soft side. Damn these motherfuckers exploiting said soft side. They need to get a new hobby.

“Where do I even start?” I ask him after swallowing a huge mouthful of wine. God, I’m so stressed. “Her gut feeling is that the skeleton is Daniela’s. If it is, I have nothing to find. I can’t exactly go searching for her and waste my time in case her feeling is right.”

He pinches the curling edge of the label on his beer and pulls part of it off in one long strip. “I hate to say this, but I don’t think there’s anything you can do until we get Tim’s preliminary report. At the very least, he’ll be able to sex and age the skeleton. If he says it’s the body of a teenage girl, I think we can be pretty sure it’s Daniela.”

“Then she doesn’t need to hire me at all.”

Drake rubs his hand over his face. He actually looks pained at what he has to say next. “Sweetheart, I don’t think she hired you just to find her daughter. I think she’s hired you to, once you’ve found her, figure out how and why she went missing. And how she died.”

Which would mean I’d be getting involved with an active police case.
Again.
Everyone in town knows just how much Drake loves that.

I purse my lips. “That’s going to end in disaster.”

“Yes. But you know as well as I do that you’d do that even if she didn’t hire you.”

“Are you trying to say I’m nosy?”

“Investigative is probably the term that’ll keep me my balls, right?”

My lips are still pursed. Bastard.

He grins. “You have an almost unquenchable thirst for knowledge, Noelle. When that’s mixed with your impulsive side, it gets you into trouble a helluva lot. When you catch a murderer and your bright spot is that at least you had a knife instead of a gun pointed at you that time, you should probably consider not being so impulsive.”

My cheeks flush. He has a point.

“I come to conclusions quickly,” I say. “That’s all.”

“And you make decisions even quicker.”

“Sorry, Dad.” I roll my eyes. “Look, if that body is Daniela, I want nothing to do with it. Of course I’m going to help you, because let’s face it. You need me.” I pause when he smirks then kick him under the table. “But I’m not going to be directly involved. Nuh-uh. Not this time. I would like to make it through this year without having a deadly weapon shoved in my face. Four times last year is enough for the rest of my life.”

“It’s enough for fifty lifetimes. For me, at least.” Drake drops his smirk. “I appreciate your resolve, but we both know that’s not going to happen. And, for the love of God, don’t tell me it will then change your mind, because I’m not repeating that again.”

Yeah. That time I investigated his ex-stepfather’s death without him knowing. In my defense, it was his mom’s fault. I’m sticking to that story.

“Do you not trust me to keep my nose out of your investigations?”

He blinks at me, his dark lashes fanning across his cheeks every time his eyelids drop. “I’m trying to figure out how to answer this correctly.”

“You don’t trust me to do that, do you?” My voice is quieter than it was a moment ago.

Wow. Why does this kinda hurt? I mean, I know that my track record doesn’t go in my favor, but still... Two of those times, I was hired. The other two... Well, I think I should get a shot at the best of five.