Manhunt

THE AIR SEEMED to zip out of the room—leaving behind an unsettling silence. Braydon felt Sophia tense next to him. It was a response he was familiar with when bad news was flitting around.

“Did you find anything else?” Braydon asked. He wanted to know if Richard was aware of the other missing women.

“I called the hospitals and even morgues in the neighboring cities looking for her or a Jane Doe who matched her description, but nothing came up.” He pulled out a card and handed it to Braydon. “I even hired two PIs from this firm to search the cities.”

“You hired out-of-town private investigators before you contacted your local PD?” Braydon said incredulously.

“I hired them to stay out of town to find her. Culpepper is small. I had faith, if she was here, that I’d run into her.”

Braydon was fighting the urge to yell at the very rich, very pompous man in front of him. If he had just called the police when he first realized Lisa was missing, it could have made all the difference, but instead he wanted to handle it himself. He had as much pride as he did wealth.

“You still should have filed a report,” Sophia barked out, breaking her silence. “Did you ever think ‘What if she didn’t run away?’ ” Braydon could tell her composure was cracking.

“Of course I did. I’m not an idiot.”

“Well, you could have fooled me!” Under different circumstances, Braydon would have smiled at Sophia’s brashness. She didn’t bottle up her emotions—she let them pour out instead. The two of them would have kept on, but Braydon had had enough.

“Do you know Trixie Martin or Amanda Alcaster?” Braydon watched the man’s facial expression closely. He could see wheels turning but there was no concrete recognition of either name.

“Not personally. The Alcaster name sounds familiar, but what has that got to do with Lisa?”

Braydon took a breath. Sophia’s hands fidgeted across her lap. He wanted to hold them still, to keep her worries at bay. Personal experience had taught him that as long as a loved one was out there in trouble, no one, not even he, could quell all worries. That didn’t mean he didn’t want to, though. He cast another look at Sophia; the realization that he wanted to make sure she was okay was an odd one. He’d only known her for two hours at best and yet he empathized with her completely.

“They were reported missing today,” he said, squaring his shoulders. Richard’s brow furrowed, his frown deepened. Braydon balled his fists again, his body winding up. “This is why you let us know when something like this happens. This is why you call the police. It doesn’t matter if you’re taking time off of your job to locate Miss Hardwick because it’s myfull-time job to do that. I help people for a living, Richard.” Braydon wasn’t yelling. In fact, his voice had taken on an eerie calm. That calm voice indicated how furious he was that Richard had not reported the disappearance of Lisa. The missing woman who had a sibling drowning in a sea of worry—one beautiful woman desperate for answers. Professionalism was dialing his volume back but it wasn’t diluting his intensity. “Now let me do my job and tell me everything else you found out or I’ll arrest you for impeding an investigation.”

It turned out that Richard was almost as clueless as they were. Apart from the cell phone, he hadn’t found any evidence of blatant foul play or anything that pointed to Lisa running away. He had instead kept eyes and ears out for the woman he loved, hoping above all else that everything had been a misunderstanding. She hadn’t run. She hadn’t been taken. Braydon knew better than to cling to such false hope. If someone dropped off the face of the earth for four days, there was something wrong. Like kicking an addiction, admitting there was a problem was the first step.

Richard Vega hadn’t handled that step well.

They wasted little time in unnecessary back-and-forth before Braydon told Richard he needed to see the exact place where the cell phone had been recovered. As far as they knew, it was the last place Lisa had been—tied by electronic tracking and hard evidence. If he could see it with his own eyes, then maybe he could see more of what had happened through hers.

“Am I riding with you or him?” Sophia asked as Richard pulled his car out of the garage. Like most houses on Loop Road it had more square footage than the resident had known what to do with.

“You can ride with either,” Braydon said, watching Richard for any signs of fleeing. He didn’t think the wealthy man would run, but he couldn’t be too sure he wouldn’t. Just because the whole town seemed to love the upstanding, well-groomed businessman, didn’t mean Braydon was going to put his faith in Richard’s good intentions. “We’re all going to the same place.”

Braydon walked over to the 370Z and inclined his head down to meet Richard’s gaze.

“It should go without saying but if you try to leave or do anything suspicious, I’ll find you and arrest you.”

“I understand.” He responded without hesitation. “I assure you that you now have my full cooperation.”

“Good.” Braydon patted the top of the car and went back to his truck. He was surprised to see Sophia already sitting in the cab with the air conditioner blasting. “How did you turn the car on?”

She remained still as she answered, her eyes closed in the cold air stream. “I used the key. You know, the things that people use to start cars?”

“Your sarcasm is noted, but what I meant was how did you get my keys?”

“You threw them on the dash here.” She opened one eye, watching as he climbed into the driver’s seat. “Not the best hiding place.” He shifted into Drive and began following Richard out onto Loop Road.

“Tom says I have a nasty habit of doing that.” Being a cop in Culpepper had seemed to activate an invisible barrier around the truck. No one wanted to steal or strip down his vehicle. The townspeople knew better. “That still doesn’t give you the right to turn it on.”

“Listen, it feels like it’s over 100 degrees in this place. I needed some air and I needed it fast.” She closed her eyes again and let the air conditioner push against her face. It was flushed from the heat, he could now tell. There were patches of red across her soft skin, though she was still attractive.

“That outfit isn’t helping,” he observed.

“And that is also noted.”

They dove into a small silence. Sophia’s perfume was slowly filling the space of the cab. He marveled at the contrast between its airy sweetness and her hard resolve.

“I’m surprised you didn’t want to ride with Richard,” Braydon admitted. “I thought you two would want to catch up.” She had picked him, a stranger, over someone she knew of and who had close ties with her sister. Plus, that man had been Richard Vega. He could charm his way out of a jail cell faster than Braydon could lock the door. Another reason why he hadn’t yet arrested the man. Though, he would in a heartbeat if he needed to.

Sophia snorted.

“Remember when I said Lisa and I weren’t on the best terms this past year?” She motioned to the sports car in front. “Meet Richard Vega. He was the hammer to our nail.”

Braydon glanced over at her. “What happened?”

Sophia turned her head so fast that her bun released the rest of her hair. “It’s none of your business,” she snapped.

“It is if you want me to find your sister, I need all of the details pertaining to her and Richard.” Her anger seemed to fade.

“Why? Do you think Richard had something to do with her disappearance?”

Braydon thought about it before he answered. Richard certainly had the means to make a person fall off the radar but there had been an unmistakable concern that had covered every word and movement when he spoke of Lisa. “I personally think the only thing he’s guilty of is being a prideful son of a bitch, but I don’t want to rule him out, either. So, if there was a fight between all of you, there could potentially be a motive.”

She went back to fidgeting with her hands.

“I really don’t think that has anything to do with what’s happening....”

“A good detective can’t leave clues half-uncovered.” He prodded with a gentler tone, “If we’re going to find your sister, I need all of the information.”

She put her hand up to the vent and quieted. The past wasn’t a pleasant place to frequent, he knew that, but sometimes it was a necessity. He remained patient and watched as Richard turned off Loop Road and onto a connector that would get them to the main one. His red little car could easily outrun the truck. Braydon imagined the only reason he was going the speed limit was to avoid pissing him off any more.

Sophia sighed, touching her face with her now-cold hand.

“It was over money,” she started. “And we never really had a fight. It was more of a buildup of things we didn’t say. My dad died when we were little and Mom worked full-time while doing odd jobs along the way to support us. The years went by and we could see her trying to not blame us for her having to work so hard, but eventually the resentment set in. Lisa and I picked up the slack and looked out for one another—encouraged good grades, gave each other rides to work and helped take care of everything else. Lisa was my older sister, but she didn’t raise me—we raised each other.” Her voice shook and Braydon had to look to see if she was crying. Her head was bent, her fingertips suddenly fascinating. “Lisa has always been the prettier, more charming sister. As we got older, she was handed more opportunities, but she never really took them. That is until she started dating Richard. He offered her a world on a gold platter and she just took it. No questions asked. We spent years working so hard to make something of ourselves and then it was like she took the easy way out.” Her voice softened. “We never fought about it—I never said those exact words—but she picked up on how I felt.”

“And that was?”

“Anger...with a touch of resentment.” Her face flushed red. “Saying it out loud seems stupid, especially now with everything going on. I should be happy for her, but Richard was just a hard pill to swallow, I suppose. Still, I don’t think that has anything to do with her disappearance. The times we did talk this past year, she seemed genuinely happy.”

Again, Braydon was surprised by the woman next to him. Just like that she had not only told him a personal story, but she had admitted her true feelings about it. He understood her stubbornness; however, it was the ease at which she told the truth that made the younger Hardwick sister more and more intriguing.

“Does your mother know about Lisa, then?” He couldn’t remember her bringing the woman up in detail before. Surely she would have been there.

“No.” She didn’t elaborate and Braydon didn’t push her. The way her body tensed like the string on a bow, he knew he had hit a deep nerve. Her openness apparently had its limits.

“What about you, Detective? Any family drama to share?” Sophia said it as a joke, something to lighten the dark mood, but she couldn’t have picked a worse topic. Years of experience saved his composure. He smiled and shook his head.