Torn - Cynthia Eden Page 0,22
Jim pushed his hand through his hair. “That’s not like Melissa. She always checks in with me.”
“Have you contacted her family?” Wade asked as he stood a few feet away, his arms loose at his sides.
“She doesn’t have other family. Melissa was a foster kid, just like me. I am her family, and she wouldn’t just vanish.” His face hardened. “No one would listen when I started calling this morning. Cops told me that since she was over eighteen, there wasn’t even a reason to look for her yet. She’s gone. That’s a reason.”
“Did you check the hospitals?” Wade asked.
Jim flinched. “No . . .”
“That will be our first order of business. We’ll call all the hospitals and make sure no one fitting her description was brought in between last night and this morning.”
Hope came and went on Jim’s face. “LOST.” He still held Wade’s card in his hand. Though it had gotten a bit crumpled in his fist. “You . . . you really do this shit? You find the missing?”
They worked cold cases. Not something like this. If this Melissa actually turned out to be missing—and not just hanging with a friend or recovering in a hospital bed—then the local authorities would take over. LOST wouldn’t have any sort of jurisdiction. They weren’t a federal agency. They were the ones who came in when hope was lost.
Hope isn’t lost here.
“We try to find them,” Wade said carefully.
Jim sucked in a deep breath. “What do you need to know? What can I do?”
“First, I need her name. Full name.”
“Melissa Hastings.” He hesitated, then a brief smile curled his lips. “Melissa Margaret Hastings, though she’s always hated her middle name.”
“Tell me what she looks like.”
“About five-foot-six, one hundred thirty-five pounds. Fit, cause she runs a lot.”
Just like Kennedy had run? Victoria’s stomach knotted.
“Blond hair, long, just to her shoulders. Blue eyes. Last night she was—she was wearing a blue shirt. White skirt. Heels.”
“Good,” Wade said. “That’s good information.”
Jim nodded and hurriedly said, “I can do you one better, man.” He fumbled and pulled out his phone. He tapped on the screen a few times and then lifted the phone toward them. “This is her.”
Victoria leaned in to see the picture of the pretty, smiling blonde. Dimples winked in her cheeks, and she had her arm wrapped around Jim’s neck.
Wade took the phone. “Mind if I text this picture to my phone? It can help in the search.”
“Anything man, anything.” While Wade texted the photo, Jim mumbled, “I—I tried using that Find My Phone app, but it didn’t work. I don’t know if—if she disabled it or if . . .”
If someone else did? “Like I said,” Wade said, his voice calm and easy as he handed the phone back to Jim. “First we check the hospitals . . .”
BUT MELISSA HASTINGS wasn’t in any of the local hospitals, and an hour later Victoria found herself standing outside of a run-down little bar called Vintage. They were on the edge of the historic district in Savannah, and the area was bustling with tourists, even at that time of the day.
“The place was packed last night,” Jim said. “It’s always big at night. Melissa was dancing one moment, then gone the next.”
Melissa Hastings, age twenty-three. A grad student in psychology who’d worked as an assistant for Dr. North so she could help pay the bills at the apartment she shared with Jim. Jim had been quick to point out that he and Melissa weren’t involved in any relationship. He’d said they were more like family.
Sometimes, family can be your biggest danger.
Jim rocked forward on his heels. “I have to be at work soon, but, Jesus, I can’t just walk away! She’s out there. She needs me.”
They’d learned more about Jim and Melissa in the last hour. The two had first met when they were fifteen and they wound up at the same foster home. They bounced around after that, but something had clicked for them, and when they’d been reunited at Wellington . . .
Jim had told Victoria that fate brought him back to Melissa.
Victoria hadn’t been able to tell him that she didn’t believe in fate.
“Go to work,” Wade ordered him. “We’ll look around here. See what we can find out.”
There was no missing the relief on Jim’s face. “Thank you!”
He shouldn’t thank them. They hadn’t done anything.
She paced away from the men as Jim rattled off his phone number and other contact information to Wade. Then the young guy was