was short, well-groomed.
Her heart beat painfully as she leaned close. He looked younger, but she could recognize those dark eyes, the lazy half-smile on the very attractive, familiar mouth—the one she’d recently licked and kissed. Sam Allen was Nick Rossi. No wonder why he was trying to hide. But why was he hiding here of all places? Hiding or seeking?
He’d avoided everyone in town, everyone but her, and now she knew why. He had to be looking for Elliot and decided to use Elliot’s naïve sex-starved sister to find him.
“No.” She said the word out loud. “Please. No.”
With trembling fingers, she clicked on the source of the photo, a party from a long time ago. She traced the photo back, through a gossip column about fresh young faces at a nightclub, back to a Facebook page belonging to a woman named Sandy Marvin from Brooklyn, New York. Sandy claimed to love partying and clubbing, and, judging from the photos Ames found, she had big hair and legs to kill for.
Sam Allen–no, Nick Rossi–wasn’t the only one who could go hunting.
Ames decided to try to add Sandy as a friend and wrote a quick message to her via Facebook. “I noticed we have a friend in common in your pix. Nick Rossi. Could he currently be in Arnesdale, Wisconsin?”
She hit send. Then immediately started another message. “Sorry to bother you again, but I wonder if maybe you have heard of my brother, Elliot Jensen? He’s been missing for a few months.” She deleted the second sentence. No need to spook the woman, after all. She substituted, “I’m currently trying to track him down. Thanks!”
She grimly set to work discovering everything she could about Nick Rossi and then Sam Allen and she had almost no luck. Neither identity had a presence on the Internet. He’d never been convicted of a crime. Then again, who knew what names he used and how often? Ames gave up and went back to work.
At about one a.m., when she should have been asleep, she still sat at her computer. As she updated the Shear Madness Hair Salon’s page, an e-mail pinged in her inbox.
Sandy had accepted her friendship with a note. “OMG. You know Nick? And he’s in Wisconsin? OMG! I bet some of our homies will be psyched to hear that.” She had added a smiley face. “Don’t tell him I said hello tho. It’ll be a surprise.”
She didn’t mention Elliot.
Ames should have explored her new “friend’s” page at once, because when she took time to check few minutes later, Sandy had unfriended her. She must have done more than that, because now Ames couldn’t find any proof on Facebook that Sandy Marvin existed. The photos of Nick Rossi had vanished too, though a couple Sandy had posted were still in Ames’s computer memory. What was that about? A Facebook glitch? She doubted it. Her spine prickled with unease. Why would Sandy Marvin wipe away all evidence of herself?
She wrote down the name of the nightclub before she or her computer forgot it and wondered if she should call. After all, they must still be open.
Instead, she stretched out on her bed, thinking of how she could get Nick Rossi, aka Nick Ross, aka Sam Allen, to tell her everything. Maybe she could use her father’s shotgun to threaten him. That dangerous man would get it out of her hands before she’d manage to level it at him.
No, she’d keep playing his game of pretend. Maybe it was time to contact the authorities again. They were sick of her nagging them about Elliot, but now she had more to hand over. The FBI might even be interested.
Ross, Rossi. It had been dumb of her not to notice, but she wasn’t a trained professional. Why hadn’t that detective found this stuff out?
She punched the pillow and tried to force herself to relax. She couldn’t do anything about Rossi in the middle of the night. But knowing that a man who could potentially tell her about her brother was living only a few miles away made it impossible to sleep. She felt sick at having spent most of the day with him, laughing and talking, telling him stories about her and Elliot, letting him into her life. My God, she’d kissed him! More than kissed him, she’d writhed against his hard body acting like a cat in heat. This twisted bastard knew all sorts of things about her, and she knew nothing about him.
Ames threw back the