Chapter Seven – Molly

 

“Christ,” I said as I watched him descend on his plate of sausage, eggs, bacon, and toast like a ravenous beast. “Got enough to eat there?”

“Flew out here from St. Louis,” he said between bites. “Last time I ate was four o’clock yesterday, your time.”

I ate a few, much smaller, bites of pancake as I watched him devour the nearly two plates of food between us. It was almost impressive to watch this man who was clearly on a mission. And then something inside my head clicked, and I realized why I recognized his body language, and why it set him apart from everyone else eating in the diner with us.

“You were in the military, weren’t you?” I asked as he dragged his toast across the top of some sunny side up eggs.

He stopped for a moment. “What makes you say that?”

“The way you carry yourself, that’s all.” I smiled. “You’re watching the door, even while you’re eating.”

The napkin he used to wipe his lips hid a little half-smile. “How’d you know?”

“Dated a guy in college who was there on his GI Bill. Did the same thing when we were in public. What branch?”

“Army. Special Forces, specifically.”

“That like the Green Berets?”

He nodded, that half-smile dancing on his lips. “Yeah, that’s what they call us.”

I set my coffee aside and began to delicately pick at the pancakes in front of me. Sheldon, the sweet little event coordinator we’d upset so badly, had told me he’d seen Heidi the night before, but that she’d left with one of the clients. Not something they really recommended to any of the girls that came up there, but it was her body, after all.

“Besides,” Sheldon had told me through the little private sex room’s door, “any kind of extracurricular, ahem, dealings she may have are outside our purview. That’s between you girls and your, ahem, modeling agencies.”

I took another bite of pancakes. Why would Sheldon have lied? Where would it get him to tell me he’d seen her leave? After all, it was in his best interests to make sure she was safe, right?

Luke, coffee cup nearly at his lips, cleared his throat and got my attention. “All right, tell me everything.”

“Everything?” I asked as I carefully sliced off a tiny bit of pancake. “What do you mean?”

“Start with her other friends. Anyone else she would have gone to for help, if something happened? Family, maybe?”

I shook my head. “No, she definitely would’ve come to me. No one else knows what she does for a living, not even her parents.”

“Is she ashamed of it?”

I furrowed my brow. “Not exactly. Well, kind of, I think, but only because she knows it’s breaking the law. She told me a couple months back that she’d be trying to screw these guys, anyways, so they’d buy her stuff. At least with this arrangement, everyone was up front about what it was costing.”

He glanced up at me. “What do you think?”

“About her line of work? Or her screwing guys so they’d buy her stuff?”

He shrugged. “Whichever.”

I took a bite of pancake, considering the question as I chewed. I didn’t know, to be honest. I’d tried not to think about it over the year I’d known her. On one level, I understood where she was coming from. On another, though, that was just almost the exact opposite of what I wanted out of a relationship.

Carefully choosing my words, I started slowly. “I think that, with Heidi at least, you know what you’re getting. Even when we were at our previous job, she’d always date these rich, older guys, and part of the attraction she felt to them was the money. Plain and simple.”

“Used to work together?” he asked.

“Yeah. I moved down here right out of school. Did my internship, all that kind of stuff. Got a job at a nature expedition agency as their social media coordinator.” My eyes flickered back down to my plate. “That’s where I met Heidi. She was one of the agents, best one they had.”

“What happened?”

I shrugged. “Turned out the owner didn’t have any money anymore.” I smiled wanly. “He spent it all on an opioid addiction, and we didn’t find out till our paychecks bounced, and the landlord locked the office doors.”

“Christ.”

“Luckily, Heidi had a place I could stay when I got evicted from my own apartment a week later. And, well, we’ve been best friends ever since.”

“All right.” He took another sip of coffee, his eyes on mine over the top of his coffee cup. “Moving on. Sheldon told you she left with some guy last night. Did you get a description or a name?”

I winced. “Was I supposed to?”

He sighed. “Yeah. Would’ve helped. But, it’s okay. You’re a civilian, and you were in there flying blind without any direction.”

My stomach sank a little bit more, and the bite of pancake I’d speared with my fork didn’t seem nearly as appetizing as it had moments before. I set the fork back on my plate, the syrup-drenched morsel sitting there in limbo.

I could’ve maybe helped in some way. But I’d fucked it up.

“Hey,” Luke said, reaching across the table and putting his hand next to my own, “you did the best you could with what you were given. You got us in there better than I could have, and we’ve got some new kind of piece of information.”

“We do?”

“Well, Sheldon said he saw her leave with somebody, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, maybe he did? And maybe that’s the lead we’re looking for. Do you remember the name of whom she works for? Have a phone number, maybe?”

Lips thin and tight, I shook my head again. “No.”

“Remember how she gets paid, at least? Is it cash, or with a paycheck?”

“A mix, I think.” I laughed a little, despite the topic of conversation. “She’s always complaining about how she’s getting taxed, even though she’s doing something illegal. From what she’s told me, the people she works for call it a model agency, and keep it clean that way.”

“No idea what the name of it is, though?”

I shook my head.

“Think she keeps her pay stubs?”

“I think so. She has a little office at the house, and I know she keeps track of her finances. They may be in there.”

“Well, sounds like the place to start, then. I’ll get the check.”

“Oh,” I said. “One other thing. The name of the guy who met us when I dropped Heidi off was Dominic.”

“Sure about that?”

“Positive,” I said, a little chill passing down my spine as I remembered his masked face, and the way those eyes of his had seemed to drink me in. “Definitely Dominic.”

“Think he had anything to do with her disappearance?”

“Maybe,” I said, looking down at my half-eaten pancakes. For a moment there, I’d thought my appetite might return. Nope.

“All right,” Luke said. “All right. That’s good. I think we’re getting somewhere now.”