Insinuations Page 18

  It was hard to deny that, so Jordan stayed silent, staring straight ahead into the early morning mist.

  “Thank you. Now even if that was true, remember what we learned. The people he associated with were nowhere near as clever as him. He wouldn’t do that, because he’s vain. If they get caught, not his problem. That’s how he works, but at this point, we don’t even know it’s him.”

  “It’s too much of a coincidence. Those stupid texts…We should have never let that go.”

  “We didn’t. We just had a couple of more urgent cases on our plate,” Derek reminded her.

  “Well, this is urgent now. We were supposed to be on a plane to Costa Rica.” There was the tiniest crack to her voice. If she paid attention, allowed it to widen, Jordan knew she’d be losing it. She couldn’t. She had to believe that whoever had taken Ellie from her apartment was not a smart mastermind like Darby who had orchestrated kidnappings and killings in at least two states.

  This situation was nothing like the one Jordan had walked into at Darby’s house, and damn it, she had to stop thinking about it. Ellie, eager to prove herself to the detectives’ squad, had worked on Darby’s case. She’d also assisted in the search for Phil Hobbs, a felon whose escape had unleashed a crime spree and for Jordan, family secrets she preferred to pretend didn’t exist. Hobbs was back behind bars, and so were all his cohorts. While his former cell mate TJ Pratt, Jordan’s biological father, had reason to hate her, he didn’t even know about Ellie.

  The connection had to be somewhere else.

  She took a deep breath. It would be fine. Ellie would be okay, and they’d go on their delayed trip sometime soon.

  In their job, they looked out for each other. Sergeant Bristol would put every available cop on the case…but sometimes, that wasn’t enough. She turned away, pressing her hand against her mouth, only for a split second, as she remembered Jensen Baker’s funeral.

  Not again. She would see to that.