Twirled Bond (Holly Woods Files, #5) (13 page)

Am I? I guess so. “You say it like I’ve never asked your advice.”

“I’m not sure you ever have. And no, advice on cushion colors doesn’t count.”

“Your teasing is starting to piss me off.” I sniff and shove him out of the way off the coffee machine. “I can make you sleep on the sofa, you know.”

“But you won’t.” He steps up behind me and grasps my hips, moving forward against me.

My skin tingles when his fingertips brush the side of my neck as he sweeps my hair around to one side.

“You’d miss me too much if I weren’t in bed with you.”

The kisses he drops on the exposed curve of my neck makes me shiver. And, when he grips my hips so tight that his fingertips burn through the fabric of my dress, I swoon.

“Stop it,” I mutter, my words belying the fast beat of my heart. “I have to work, and so do you.”

“Nuh-uh.” He kisses just below my ear. “Not until ten.”

I glance at the clock. Just before eight a.m. “Well, I have to be gone in an hour, stud, so...” I slap at his hand.

“You think I can’t make you come and get you out of the door, ready, and caffeinated in an hour?”

“I know you’ll think you can, but with as thorough as you are, no. You can’t.” I look back and grin.

His eyes sparkle, his lips twitch into a smirk, and as payback, he grabs my chin and kisses me so hotly, so deeply, that being late for work might be worth it after all... “Now, you’re gonna regret this choice all day.”

I’m already regretting it. “Yeah, well.” I set the coffee machine to ‘on’ and raise my voice. “I have to go to the Russos’.”

“Why?”

“I want to look through Daniela’s things to see if there’s anything private she has that might not have been looked at before.”

Drake frowns when I hand him a mug.

Yep. Giving him the first mug of coffee. That’s love.

“I’ve read that report what feels like a hundred times, Noelle. If there was anything that could have helped, it’s still in evidence.”

Oh boy. I’m gonna have to spell it out for him, aren’t I? “Right, but you’re forgetting one important point: I knew Daniela. The Daniela she was when she went missing. I’m likely to spot something that’s out of character for the girl I knew—even if the police couldn’t.”

He slowly nods in agreement, and I set the machine for a second time. He waits until I’ve pulled it out and am stirring milk into it before speaking again. “Do you think they’ll still have her things?”

“Yeah. Until this past weekend, they always hoped she’d come home. I think they have every single thing she left behind.”

Drake grimaces. “Well, we don’t have much of anything to go on, so I hope, for the sake of this investigation, you’re right.”

I’
m right. I know it the moment I get out of my car outside the Russos’ house and the garage door is open.

It’s impeccably kept and the literal meaning of the phrase “everything has a place.” There’s cupboard after cupboard, each one with a little, white sticker with presumably what’s inside. One side of the space is reserved for electric items, like a lawn mower and a hedge trimmer, and aside from a handful of old appliance boxes at the back, a large workstation takes up almost half the space.

Mr. Russo is at the workstation, using an electric sander on what looks like a coffee table. His eyes are protected by plastic safety goggles, but they don’t hide the exhaustion I can see from the doorway.

“Try knocking on the door,” Drake says, coming up behind me.

I roll my eyes. Of all the things he could have done before heading to work, he had to get dressed and join me. More fool me for having mentioned it to him.

I guess this is the Droelle Working Together: Test One.

God damn it. Now, even I’m calling us Droelle. I’m going to kill Bek.

I knock on the door, but after a good minute, there’s no answer. I shake my head at Drake just as the sander is switched off and Mr. Russo catches sight of us. He holds two fingers up before he turns, flicks a switch, and removes his glasses.

“Detective Nash. Ms. Bond. I would shake your hands, but...” He holds his sawdust-covered hands up, smiling even though sadness shimmers in his eyes. “What can I do for you?”

“Mr. Russo—”

“Daniel, please.”

Daniel. Daniela. She was his namesake.
No wonder the man looks so broken, despite his best efforts at hiding it.

“I’m sure you’re aware your wife hired me to help find out what happened to Daniela.” I hesitate, and he nods, so I continue. “I was wondering if you still had any of her things and, if so, if I could look through them. I’m trying to piece together anything that could have led to her disappearance.”

His Adam’s apple bobs with his loud swallow. “We do. Her room is as intact as the day the police searched it. Not that they did too much of a great job, but they had a lot of pressure from outside sources. No offense to your father, Ms. Bond.”

“Noelle, please. And none taken—I remember. Would you mind showing me up there?”

“Of course not. Let me wash my hands and take off my boots. Dori will lose her mind if I tread this crap into the carpet again.”

I can imagine.

It only takes him a couple of minutes to do that, so within five minutes, I’m being led into the house, up stairs where the walls are lined with family photographs, and down the hall to a shut bedroom door. A door plaque surrounded by puffy, pink paint proclaims it to be Daniela’s room, and a chill skitters down my spine.

God. This feels so wrong.

Daniel takes a step back and motions to it. “Sorry. I’m not sure I can go in there today, but take your time. I know I speak for Dori when I say you can take anything you think might help. Just... If this is ever over, I’d like it back.”

I reach for his hand and give it a gentle squeeze. “Sir, I promise that I won’t take anything unless it’s absolutely necessary and that I’ll always bring it back.”

He squeezes my hand right back. “Thank you. I’ll be in the garage if you need anything.”

“Want some company?” Drake offers. “I’d love to hear what you’re working on. I didn’t think you were doing carpentry anymore.”

“Ah, of course.” Daniel waves at him to follow him down the stairs. “I do it for fun or when I need to escape, and well. I’m just fixin’ up an old table Dori wanted...” His voice trails off as a bit of life is injected into it.

I smile slightly. Now, I understand why Drake wanted to come with me. There isn’t a thing that man doesn’t know about people that he can’t use to brighten their day.

If he ever wanted the Sheriff’s job...

I turn back to Daniela’s door at the closing of the front one downstairs and stare at the plaque. It’s nothing special, nothing I and every other girl didn’t have on our door, but to see it... I know the room inside is going to be frozen in time.

“Sorry,” I whisper into the silence, grabbing the door handle. “I just want to help you.”

It feels weird—but walking in without saying anything feels weirder. Besides, if I asked Bek, she’d tell me that Daniela’s a ghost with unfinished business. She’s been watching too much TV, but it feels kinda right to apologize for invading her personal space.

It’s exactly how I remember it. The walls are plastered in NSYNC posters—no Backstreet Boys in her room, a point of issue in our friendship because I loved, and still love, me some Backstreet Boys—and the teen heartthrob gallery is broken only by a handful of photos taped to the wall and pennants in our high school colors.

I choose to ignore the photos. I see several I recognize.

The rest of the room looks as though it’s walked right out of a retro catalog for a ‘90s teen girl’s room. A candy-pink, corded phone sits on top of the desk, right next to a matching CD player. I can see from here that a disk is still in it—N-SYNC’s first album. I’d recognize it anywhere.

A stack of teen magazines peeks out from beneath cheerleading pom-poms—she made the squad; I didn’t—and an open notebook lies haphazardly next to a stack of neon gel pens. Of course, the only light source in the room is a pink-and-purple lava lamp. The lava goo is all clumped at the bottom, and I doubt it’d even work now if I turned it on.

I swallow as I look around. I don’t know where I’m supposed to start. This seemed like a great idea in theory, but I feel as though Doctor Who has dropped me back to 1998 in his Tardis or sometime around then.

The room is literally untouched, a shrine to the daughter whose fate has been unknown for a decade and a half.

The bookshelf catches my eye. Two of the shelves are filled with novels by Anne Rice and Philip Pullman among others, including Lemony Snicket’s
A Series Of Unfortunate Events
and JK Rowling’s
Harry Potter
. Beneath those two shelves is one that has crazy-patterned storage boxes.

I figure they’re as good a place as any to start.

I put my purse on the floor and pull the boxes out. There are three, and the first two hold nothing of any interest. Mostly clunky jewelry, bright hair ties, scrunchies, and clips. The third one piques my interest though. There’s nothing but a small key on a key chain with a picture of Justin Timberlake.

I pull it out of the box and look around the room. It doesn’t look like there’s anything with a lock, but anything that has one is something I want to know about. I put the key in the front pocket of my purse. Just in case. You never know when that’s going to be needed in this case.

I perch on the edge of the bed and look around. I wish I knew to look for something specific, except something with a lock. I guess, when the police looked through here originally, they had several people on each spot looking through her belongings.

I should have called Bek, Dean, or Mike to help me.

Rookie mistake. That said—I did expect Drake to help me, but his talking to Mr. Russo is for the best.

Fuck it.

I shrug and start slowly tearing Daniela’s room apart. Beating the nauseating guilt down, I riffle through her closet, her drawers, and her desk. After ten minutes, I drop back onto the bed with a huff.

Is there really nothing here? No journal, no diary, no notebook riddled with teenage angst?

“Ugh.” My frustrations leave me in a grunt, and I grip the edge of the bed. I guess a key that belongs to nothing is all I’m taking from this wasted trip. I push up off the bed, my foot coming back to hit the bottom of the bed.

A dull thud echoes through the room.

The base of the bed is hollow.

I drop to my knees, lift the sheet, and stare at it. It looks like a normal bed base, but when I knock my fist against it, yep, definitely hollow. Crawling across the floor, I run my hand across the base in the hope of finding evidence of an opening.

There’s nothing.

I’m barely sitting back on my haunches when I make my decision. I’m going to shift the bed out a little—just enough to look.

So shift the bed, I do, just enough that I can lift the sheet and peek down the side of the bed.

There’s a rip in the fabric at the other end.

I pull my phone from my purse and turn the flashlight function on. There’s not just a rip—there’s a sizable rip. Enough that you could hide something in there for sure. I shuffle down between the wall and the bed the best I can without pushing the bed out too far and risking upsetting the nightstand and the desk. Somehow, I make it close enough that I can see that the corner of the bed fabric is stapled to the frame.

This is for the greater good. I hope.

I rip the staple out with one harsh tug on the fabric and aim my phone light at the secret compartment beneath the bed. Here, tucked away, is a black box.

Complete with a tiny lock on it.

I reach up and get the key out of my purse compartment. It perfectly fits the lock, and when I lift the lid of the box, I’m greeted by two stacks of handwritten letters.

My brow furrows. She must have had a pen pal—not one she ever mentioned as far as I can remember. I flick through the envelopes to make sure, but they’re all written in the same rough, but readable, script. They look like a male’s handwriting. They’re always a little less neat and a little scribblier than a woman’s.

I hear a door open downstairs and quickly lock the box. It perfectly fits inside my purse, but as I put the key back, stand, and hurriedly push the bed back into position with another whispered apology to my absent friend, something tugs at my stomach.

Don’t tell Daniel Russo.

Guilt accompanies it, but whatever my gut feeling is doing, I know that it’s telling me that these letters, whoever they’re from, are a secret Daniela took to her early grave.

Maybe they even killed her.

I fake looking through the desk cupboard when I hear footsteps. Thankfully, a glance over my shoulder confirms it’s only Drake.

“Find anything?”

I nod, but say, “No. There may be something in here though. Look with me?”

His brow furrows, deep grooves appearing in his forehead, but he joins me on the floor in front of the desk. “What was the nodding about?” he says under his breath.

“Not here,” I hiss in a barely there whisper. “Hey—that looks like a journal. Stuck back there. Peeking out. Black—you see it?”