“If you get me information, then you are, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Well, he hemmed and hawed a bit, checked out my credentials. I guess he’d met Caleb Edgington in the past and finally decided anyone working with or for my stepfather was okay.”

“And?”

“At first, he thought Julia Mullins jumped. The trajectory of the body over the cliff suggested some force behind her fall, rather than a suicide leap, though. And Julia’s actions just before her death didn’t match up.”

“Like calling a divorce lawyer and planning a move to Kansas?”

“Yeah. You knew about that?”

“Mystery told me earlier,” Axel supplied. “I don’t think she knows much else, though.”

“The body placement also ruled out an unintentional fall, which left them thinking murder. But the sheriff couldn’t positively place either of their only two suspects at the crime scene with her. So the case went unsolved. For some reason, the sheriff didn’t publicly classify her death as a homicide.”

“Why the hell not?” Axel demanded.

“To cool speculation in the press maybe. The detective I spoke to said they were under a lot of pressure to figure out what had happened. Calling it a murder would only have turned up the heat.”

That sheriff had done Julia Mullins and her loved ones a really crappy disservice, in Axel’s opinion. “So that’s it?”

“Not exactly. Fast-forward about four months,” Joaquin went on. “Campers in the valley below took some last-minute pictures before heading out, hours before anyone knew there’d even been a death. They finally got the film developed in their camera—remember, this was before everyone had a digital camera—and they spotted something interesting. I’m sending it to you now.”

Within a minute, Axel’s phone dinged with a text message. He put Joaquin on speaker and opened the message. Mountains, some snowcapped, filled the landscape, dotted with a thick forest of trees. The shot was panoramic and showed the majesty of the area. Then something to the left of the shot caught his attention. He peered more closely and expanded the view on his phone. But the old picture pixilated the more he tried to zoom in. Still, two things looked very clear: The date and time stamp on the photo coincided with Julia Mullins’s murder and on the mountain in which she’d met her doom stood not one figure—but two.

“I see a man and a woman on the mountain in the left side of the background,” Axel pointed out. “She’s definitely Julia Mullins. That’s probably the last picture of her alive.”

“Exactly.”

“Who’s that man standing with her?” Though the snapshot only showed the back of a man wearing a navy blue suit, Axel already knew that couldn’t be Mystery’s father. “The guy in the photo is too short and has too much gray in his hair to be Marshall Mullins.”

The man in the photo also wasn’t Heath Powell. He would have been too young at the time of the murder, and school records put him squarely in the UK at the time of Julia Mullins’s death. Axel had checked.

“He’s also too tall to be Akio Miharu, the Asian Mafia enforcer Mullins hired to consult on a movie and, according to rumor, to kill his wife. With their only two suspects most likely eliminated, the sheriff had nothing else to go on. The quality of the photo isn’t fantastic, and the negative is long gone, so we can’t improve the clarity.”

Which meant that using anything fancy, like recognition software, was out of the question. “So she was definitely murdered, and we have a new suspect we can’t identify.”

“Pretty much. The sketchy notes here indicate that the detective asked Mullins if he recognized the man with his wife. He claims he didn’t.”

“Why didn’t they ever release this photo to the press? Get it on the news and see if anyone could identify him?”

“Isn’t that a good question?” Joaquin asked cynically.

“What about records of people entering and leaving the park? Are any kept so we can cross-reference whoever entered that day with anyone Julia Mullins knew?”

“You need a parking pass for some locations within the forest, but nothing if visitors stay on the roads maintained by Los Angeles County. As far as I can tell, no one checked for a record of the parking passes issued that day.”

That was damn fishy. Axel sighed heavily as another question crossed his mind: If Mullins knew his wife had been murdered, why hadn’t he told his daughter that fact? Granted, Mystery would have been a child at the time, but he hadn’t come clean since she’d grown up. Axel suspected he’d have to break the news to her. He wished to hell the director would hurry up and make the connection between his wife’s murder and his daughter’s abduction. If Mullins did, he might try harder to help solve the case, which could end the danger to Mystery once and for all.

“And sixteen years later, I wonder if those records even exist anymore. That sucks,” Axel growled.

“Big, hairy monkey balls, yes. And the detective had nothing else useful in the file, so that’s all I’ve got.”

“I’ll have to run this photo past Mystery . . .” Once he caught up to her again and paddled her ass a glowing shade of red. “I’ll ask her aunt, too. Maybe one of them will recognize this guy.”

“I hope so. Otherwise, this is another dead end.”

No shit. “Thanks for the update. Let me know if you find anything else.”

Joaquin paused. “Logan and I are prepared to back you up, man. Just say the word. Hunter can’t get away with Kata due any day, but since Bailey is already busy with rehearsals because she won the lead in that ballet this summer, I’m free. Logan and I will come out there and help.”

The offer surprised him, especially since he and Joaquin weren’t really pals. “That’s damn nice of y’all.”

“Well, it might also be avoidance,” Joaquin admitted. “We inherited Caleb’s team of operatives when he gave us his business—a half-dozen psycho misfits. One guy is a former army sniper. He won’t even let us call him by name. He insists we call him One-Mile, an homage to his longest kill shot. I’d ten times rather deal with your shit than mine.”

Axel forced a laugh. “I might take you up on it. Once I get the lay of the land here, I’ll let you know.”

They rang off, and Axel resumed waiting for Heath to deliver Mystery to her aunt. He only hoped that his gut was right—that Heath wanted her for himself more than he wanted to kill her.

To pass the time so he didn’t go insane with worry, he picked up his phone again and texted Sweet Pea. How did the meeting with Stone go? Sorry I couldn’t stay. Did Zeb watch over you?

She wrote back almost immediately. Yes. I like Stone. We talked a lot. He wants to see me again and he’s going to talk to you.

How do you feel about that? he asked quickly. But he knew Sweet Pea well.

She hesitated, then tapped back. I don’t know. A little excited and scared.

She wasn’t ready for a Dom she barely knew. Hell, Axel didn’t even know if Stone was actually in the lifestyle. Jack Cole vouched for the guy professionally, but that wouldn’t cut it in a dungeon with a sub as fragile as Misty.

We’ll talk when I get back. Be safe. Call if you need me.

She sent him a winking face and a heart emoticon. Take care of your girl.

With a grimace, Axel tucked his phone away. He didn’t bother trying to call “his girl” again. If Mystery hadn’t answered the first fifty times, she probably wouldn’t answer now. Would she answer tomorrow? Next week? Ever? If Heath hadn’t nabbed her with dangerous intentions in mind . . . then what? Axel frowned. Had her post-coital glow worn off because he didn’t mean a damn thing to her, and he’d been too busy falling for her to notice? He had a lot of practice with sex . . . and not much with relationships.

This mental jaunt down Maudlin Street bored the shit out of him, so he trekked off this beaten path and glanced at the time. If they’d come straight here, she and Heath should be driving up any minute. Then? He expected fireworks.