He thought about her situation as he studied her face. He saw the stubborn glint in her eyes and knew that it wasn’t his place to interfere, but still, he hated how much she was hurting. Especially when the fact that she wanted to reach out to them was obvious, just as obvious as how shit scared she was that things wouldn’t go well.
Because he didn’t know what to say, he pulled her into his chest again and rested his cheek against the top of her head when she let her own drop down onto his shoulder. For a moment, he was quiet, but then he took a deep breath. “When you’re ready, I’d like to be there with you.” The words sounded too strong, too much like how his thoughts about her had started to sound in his head, so he added, “Just in case you need an official witness.”
She didn’t say anything, but he felt her nod against his shoulder.
They stayed in that position for a few minutes more, before Lola glanced towards the bed where the pictures of the other victims lay.
Straightening her spine, she pulled away and moved back to the bed. “Jake.”
“What is it? Do you recognize another girl?”
“Jake, these are the friends!” Picking up the pictures, she placed them side-by-side next to Selma’s. “These are the girls she was with at the diner!”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yes! I…” she turned big, scared eyes on him, “I haven’t met them before. But…I’m certain that both of these girls were with Selma that night.”
His mind reeled. That was the connection. Lola had very nearly wound up dead because she had been seen in a diner with the three women. Whoever had murdered the girls clearly didn’t know them well enough to know that Lola wasn’t one of them, that she was just a passing acquaintance.
Shit. There go all our theories. Whoever had killed the girls had known that they would be meeting at the diner, had probably followed one of them there or known that they’d be meeting beforehand, yet didn’t know them well enough to know that Lola wasn’t involved in whatever they’d gotten themselves into.
Who are you, Asshole?
“Jake?”
“Sorry.” Looking up at her, he smiled through the thin layer of panic he felt sitting on the edge of his mind. “At least we know how you’re involved now,” he said. “The killer had to have seen you at the diner that night.”
“So, he was watching the girls?”
He nodded, unwilling to voice the thousands of thoughts running through his head. “I need to call my team. Update them. Do you mind driving?”
“Let’s go,” she said. “I need to get this over and done with.”
He nodded and quickly grabbed his phone, wallet, and keys from the small table by the door while she went into the bathroom to change.
Chapter 13
The Kent Henderson Hall of Administration looked like every other government building to Lola. It was a huge, rectangular mass with a rectangular entry archway, rectangular windows, and rectangular planter beds. The artist in her cringed at the sheer geometry of it, while the woman in her wondered what a newly orphaned child must feel like during his first night in the asylum-like building.
The façade was about as bland as the shape, with rust-colored tile and cream stucco. The only splotch of color marking the entire place, an unplanned stain of purple, was a single Jacaranda tree struggling to bloom in the sidewalk.
“They let children stay here?”
They were walking side-by-side towards the big monstrosity, their shoulders nearly touching. He glanced at her, surprised. “No. I’m sorry, I should have been clearer. This is just the administrative arm of the County’s Office of Child Protection Services. The children are housed a little out of the craziness of the city and in foster care programs.”
Her chest gave one solid thump in relief. “So, we’re just meeting him here?”
He nodded, a small curt gesture that, coupled with his clenched jaw, told her that he was just as uncomfortable as she was. The thought didn’t relieve her, didn’t make her feel any camaraderie. Instead, she felt that, between them, they were grossly ill-equipped to be helping Jordan Holt in any way, let alone resurrecting his trauma in the hope of prying any information out of him.
Feeling nauseous, she held a hand to her stomach. God, Selma Holt had just been murdered in cold blood, and, by all appearances, in a very calculated act that had left her only child alone in the world. Her palms started sweating instantly and she hazarded another glance at Jacob. Where she seemed to be getting more and more frazzled with every step, he seemed to become calmer and calmer until, by the time they reached the front door, his face was set in a completely smooth, blank mask. “How do you just turn it off?” she asked, studying his face.
He turned to her without a flicker of emotion. “Practice.”
She decided not to acknowledge the reply. The thought of the things he must have seen working for the LAPD over twenty years scared her more than she would admit to him, so instead, she turned and walked through the big, glass door that he was holding open for her.
Even though it was Sunday, a few people milled around inside, including a huge security guard with a big, broad smile. “Good morning,” he said, nodding to them as they walked by.
Lola smiled and parroted Jacob’s, “Good morning,” as she followed immediately behind him.
He didn’t stop and ask the man at the front desk for directions; instead, he marched over to an elevator bay and punched the up arrow. They waited silently until the slow elevator creaked to the first-floor lobby and coughed open its wide mouth.
Stepping in beside him, she noticed the stiff set of his shoulders and the focused look in his eye. For some reason, she knew that he was freaking out. She could feel the stress pulsing off him in waves that flattened her breath in her chest, making it hard to breathe. Because she didn’t want to make him feel small for feeling out of his depth, she extended her hand and gently linked it with his.
He hesitated for only a moment before tightening his grip. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t need to, but she found herself grateful for the silence. She would not cave now, not when she was about to face a ten-year-old child who had lost his only someone.
When the elevator doors pinged, they stepped out into a long, carpeted hallway that had several doors leading off it. The offices were old, partitioned with genuine oak paneling rather than the huge, open concepts of the more modern office buildings that she had been in. Jacob led her halfway down the hallway to a door that had the name Kimberly Kripps embossed on the mottled, glass screen.
He knocked.
“Come in,” a voice chimed from inside.
Jacob pushed open the door and held it open for Lola so that she could step in before him. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but the assault of color spilling from every available surface of the room took her by surprise.
Verdant plants occupied every spare wall and corner, a bright blue throw rug was splayed across the scarred, wooden floor, and a huge wooden chest spat an eye-catching fountain of children’s toys from its engorged center. Now, this is my kind of room.
A tall woman with a short pixie-cut of blond hair and sky-blue eyes pushed up from the carpet where she had been playing with a small boy, who Lola assumed was Jordan Holt. She came towards them, her hands outstretched so that she could envelop first Lola’s, and then Jacob’s hands between her own. Her wide smile was genuine.