TO DIE FOR (Eva Rae Thomas Mystery Book 8) - Willow Rose Page 0,18

my clothes off.”

She closed her eyes briefly. “You’re overstepping the boundaries again, Jeffrey; we talked about this.”

He laughed. “All right; all right. I’ll leave you alone. Yes, I told you I had met someone. Her name is Alice. I really like her. Do you want to see a picture of her?”

He pulled out his phone and turned it on, then showed the screen to her before she could tell him that, no, she actually didn’t really want to see a picture of the woman who got to go home with him at the end of the day.

“Here.”

Lynn stared at the screen, her pulse quickening. She could barely swallow. She stared at the woman with the dyed red hair, alabaster skin, and black-framed glasses on the screen.

She was the spitting image of Lynn herself.

Lynn lifted her gaze and met his while she wondered if he could see the resemblance.

“Cute, right?” he said. “Normally, I like blonde girls, but this one really stood out to me. I met her on this dating site. We’ve had a few dates, and I think she could be it, Doc. She could be the one. Don’t you think?”

Chapter 19

Bryan Abbey was a man in his mid-thirties with long brown curly hair sweeping across his shoulders as he moved and a thick brown beard. He was big and sturdy, and with his many tattoos, he came off as quite intimidating at a first impression. But as soon as he opened his mouth, that changed completely. It became quickly evident to us that he was worried about his sister and missed her greatly. His dark eyes teared up a few times as we spoke about her, and he grew silent for long periods.

“I just don’t understand why she would leave us like that,” he said as the food had arrived and we dug in. Bryan didn’t touch his at first. His eyes remained on me, and his fingers were fiddling with the edge of his black shirt.

“One day, she was there, and the next…gone. That was three years ago now.”

“You didn’t hear from her at all?” Scott asked.

“She called me a couple of days after she left. She told me she was fine and not to worry. That’s why we never went to the police. She sent my parents a letter, explaining that she was fine and not to look for her. It broke their hearts. She left no address and no number to contact her. When our dad got sick, we had no way of letting her know. And now, it’s too late. He doesn’t remember any of us anymore. We had to place him in a nursing home.”

“That’s awful,” I said.

I shoveled in scrambled eggs like I hadn’t eaten in weeks while pondering this new information, wondering what on earth would make a young woman leave her entire family like that without any way for them to contact her.

Scott looked at me and chuckled. I blushed, feeling embarrassed. His warm gaze was still on me after I had swallowed and washed the eggs down with orange juice. I felt his eyes on me a lot when we were together, and it brought back some feelings that I wasn’t sure I wanted to let back into my heart. I lifted my gaze, and our eyes met again, making my knees go soft.

I closed my eyes briefly to shake it, then looked away.

“And then…now, a couple of weeks ago, the police contacted my mother and told her Sarah was missing. I can’t…and that’s how we find out that she was there all along? In Viera? That’s so close. We could have…” Bryan trailed off as tears once again filled his eyes. I could tell he was struggling to fight them.

“And you have no idea why she left?” I asked.

He shook his head and drank his Pepsi Max. “I have thought about it for so long. Was it her boyfriend? Was it Tommy? Or was it something between her and our parents? But I can’t put the pieces together.”

“And that Tommy, he was good to her? Could she have been running from him?” I asked.

“Tommy Waltman was a great guy. He wouldn’t lay a hand on my sister. He adored her and worshipped the ground she walked on. Sure, they had their issues. He told me later that they didn’t sleep together anymore and that he believed they were drifting apart, but that’s hardly a reason for her just to run off like that. It broke his heart. She