“Completely understand.”

And I did. I knew that I was selling my soul to the proverbial devil. I had no idea when Anchor might come calling for repayment or what he’d need me to do. But I knew the stakes. It wouldn’t be a surprise. It was a trade-off I was willing to make if it got me what I wanted.

“Thank you,” Anchor said. “For your professionalism.”

I wasn’t sure that’s what it was, but he could call it what he wanted.

“I need to make a few calls,” Anchor said. “I also think it may require having someone from our organization accompany you. Trust can be an issue sometimes with these kind of things. I assume you have no objection to that?”

“None,” I said. “I’ll do whatever’s needed.”

“Excellent. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.”

We hung up and I set the phone back on the counter. I stared at it for a moment.

It was going to ring at some point in the future and it was going to be Anchor. And he was going to ask me to do something I most likely wouldn’t want to do and I wasn’t going to be able to say anything but yes. It wouldn’t be a choice. It wouldn’t matter that I wouldn’t like it or feel comfortable doing it. I’d already agreed to do whatever was asked. A dangerous way to do business.

I looked at the phone again.

I hoped I knew what I was doing.

THIRTY FOUR

I opted for my run instead of breakfast and did a slow thirty minutes along the water, the ocean shrouded in fog, my legs just as tired as the rest of my body. The fog made the air feel wet, almost like running through a cold shower, and as I turned up my street, I couldn’t tell what was sweat and what was morning dew on my face and neck. I crossed the pavement and wiped my shirtsleeve across my face, rubbing at my eyes.

A dark red sedan was parked in my driveway and I could see a figure through the tinted driver’s side window. As I approached, the car door opened and Agent Blundell got out, pushing sunglasses off her face and looking my way.

I didn’t rush to reach the driveway and she closed the door just as I got there. “Mr. Tyler.”

I nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“Nice morning for a run,” she said.

“Not really.”

“Cool, at least,” she said. “I can’t stand running in the heat.”

I shrugged.

“How’s your daughter?”

“Fine.”

“Yeah?”

“We’re figuring it out.”

Her hands were clasped in front of her. “Your wife, too?”

“Yep.”

“Why didn’t you go to Minnesota with them?”

I smiled. “Keeping tabs?”

She leaned back against her car. “My job.”

“Is it?”

“Investigation is still open,” she said. “You’d know that better than anyone.”

“How’s that?”

“You’re still looking.”

“Am I?”

She finally returned my smile. “You are.”

“Why are you here?” I asked.

She looked around the neighborhood. “You wanna go inside?”

“Not really.”

She unclasped her hands and folded her arms across her chest. “What do you know?”

“I know that I don’t why you’re here.”

“I’m still working Elizabeth’s disappearance,” she said, shifting her weight from one foot to another. “And I know you are, too. I thought we agreed to share information.”

“I don’t think we ever agreed on anything. But do you have something to tell me?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Not really. But I hear you’re knocking on all kinds of doors.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“In my ear,” she said, frowning, tired of the cat and mouse conversation. “What do you know?”

“So much for sharing,” I said. I reached down, unlaced my running shoes and pulled on the tongues, loosening the shoes. I stood up. “Pretty sure it was from inside my old department.”

“Coronado?”

“Yeah.”

“Highly doubt that,” she said, shaking her head. “I would’ve gotten wind of that a long time ago. Even a rumor, I would’ve heard it.”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

We stood there looking at one another.

“That’s it?” she said, holding her hands out like she couldn’t believe it.

Of course that wasn’t it, but I was irritated that she would just show up and expect me to share what I knew when she wasn’t sharing a damn thing. And part of me was seriously pissed off that, for years, I hadn’t seen a single agent show up at the house to talk to me or to Lauren. Elizabeth’s case may have been open, but they hadn’t treated it like it was. But now that she was back and the media had brought the case back to the forefront, Blundell and her colleagues were all hot and bothered to supposedly figured it out.

Yet they seemed to want me to do all the work.

“I need a shower,” I said. “I’m going inside, Agent Blundell.”

She dropped her hands. “You know, I don’t get why we can’t find a way to work together.”

“Me either, actually.”

“So why are you being so stubborn?”

I stared at her. “Tell me exactly what you or your agency has done, besides piggy back on all the work I’ve done here. I tracked her for years. I found her. And I’m gonna find out what happened to her. I’m really close. But that’s me.” I gestured at her. “Tell me exactly what the hell you’ve done.”

She looked away from me and took a deep breath. She rubbed her hands together, almost like she was cold, then shoved them into her pockets and looked at me again.

“You know what happens when a case like this actually turns out like yours?” she asked. “I mean, when a kid is actually found and returned to whomever she belongs to?”

I wasn’t sure if it was a real question or a rhetorical one, so I didn’t say anything.

“Fingers get pointed,” she said. “Everybody’s doing everything they can to make sure it wasn’t their fault, that it didn’t happen on their watch. No one wants to take the blame. So while everyone’s sure happy that the kid gets found, no one wants to dig in because they don’t want anyone looking at them like it was their fault. No one want to raise their hand and say ‘Yep. I was the one who fucked up.’”

I knew how vital politics were to surviving in any profession, but especially in law enforcement. She was telling the truth.

“Everyone slowly backs away,” she continued. “Paperwork gets filled out, but unless it’s clear cut, everyone chooses to focus on the happy reunion rather than backtracking the case. Because somewhere, sometime, someone’s going to get hammered for missing something. So resources get cut, requests get denied and you get assigned something else to keep you from finding out what happened. Not always. But a lot of the time. And this is one of those times.” She shook her head. “People are slowly backing away because they’re afraid of what they might find. I don’t have the freedom to go do what I want to do.” She paused. “So I need some help here.”

I looked up at the sky. The fog was beginning to burn off, strips of blue visible through the gray. I didn’t think she was playing me, but I also wasn’t willing to just jump into the investigative bed with her. I didn’t give a crap who got credit for finding out the truth or how it happened. I just wanted the truth.

But I believed her more than I didn’t.

I looked at Blundell. “Give me a day or two. I’ll give you what I have then.”

“That’s not what I was hoping for,” she said.

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t give me the sob story about your investigative obstacles and then bitch at me, alright? I said a couple of days and I meant it.”

“You find anything in Phoenix?” she asked.

I hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah, I did.”

“What?”

I shook my head and walked up the driveway. “I’ll call you in a couple of days.”

“You aren’t a cop anymore, Mr. Tyler,” she said behind me. “Don’t forget that. There are boundaries.”

I stopped and turned around. “So maybe I should just stop then? And then no one can do anything and we’ll just all let it go as one of those unlucky things that happens in life? That what you want?”