Page 32 of Veil of Silence

He’d been watching them, hadn’t he? She couldn’t blame him for being curious.

Part of her wanted to leave his reappearance alone. To accept that he’d returned and be happy about it—despite her unanswered questions. But she knew she couldn’t do that.

When she looked back at Austin, he was still watching her.

“You want me to keep looking, don’t you?” he asked.

Nora opened her mouth to deny it but stopped. She wasn’t ready to say the words out loud. Not yet.

Instead, she said, “I want to know what your father found.”

Austin held her gaze for another second. Then he nodded. “So do I.”

Chapter

Eleven

Austin took Room 209, four doors down from his father’s.

The layout matched 214 exactly. Same brown carpet. Same photograph of a covered bridge above the headboard. Same ugly lamp bolted to the nightstand so nobody could carry it off—as if anyone would want to.

For one disorienting second, Austin felt as though he’d walked back into his father’s room.

Then he saw the empty desk. The lack of legal pads beside the telephone. The bedspread pulled smooth and tight.

Austin sat on the end of the bed without taking off his jacket.

Sometime after ten, the ice machine near the stairs cycled and shuddered into silence. A truck pulled into the parking lot below, idled, then cut off. Two doors slammed. A woman laughed at something, and the sound carried over the railing before fading.

His father was in the medical examiner’s cooler across town. The thought was still surreal.

Austin had made the calls. His supervisor. The ME’s office. An aunt in Delaware who cried and asked twice whether Jeff had suffered.

Austin had told her no both times, though he had no idea if it was true.

Now he needed to think about something other than his loss.

His father’s phone pressed against the inside of his jacket. He should have turned it over to authorities hours ago. He knew that. But once he surrendered it, the device might disappear into evidence for weeks—and whatever answers his father had left behind would disappear with it.

He’d turn it over—and soon. He just wanted to look at it one more time first.

For now, he pulled out his own phone and searched Nora Loveless.

He told himself it was relevant. Her name had been on Dad’s phone, and Jacob Morgan had appeared in the case notes. But looking into someone else’s life was also easier than sitting alone with what had happened to his.

The first results focused on Christian’s return. Beneath those were newer articles about Jacob.

Austin skimmed enough to understand the basics. Jacob Morgan had dated Nora for nearly four months. She had introduced him to her family and trusted him around her seven-year-old nephew. Then Jacob had kidnapped Mason and ended up behind bars.

The articles reduced the betrayal to a tidy collection of names, dates, and charges. They couldn’t explain what it had cost Nora, but Austin had seen some of the damage in her guarded eyes and in the way she seemed to weigh every answer before giving it.

No wonder she had studied him as if trust were something he would have to earn.

Austin closed the search and pulled his father’s phone from his jacket pocket. The cheap case was scuffed, one corner cracked. The man had safely carried a firearm for twenty-six years but had never managed to keep his phone from hitting the pavement.

He suppressed a smile at the memory.

He tapped the cell phone screen, and the device lit.