Stolen Hearts by Eliza Lentzski

Author:Eliza Lentzski [Lentzski, Eliza]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-05-15T16:00:00+00:00

My cellphone rang with an incoming call from Julia a few hours later. I typically didn’t answer personal calls during work hours, but it was close enough to the end of the work day that I didn’t let it go to voicemail.

“Hey, babe,” I greeted. “Are you done for the day?”

“I’m afraid it’s just the opposite,” came her bad news. “I’m held up at work. HR is being stubborn about the language in my job ad, so I need to revise it before I can come home. Will you be okay for dinner on your own?”

I frowned at the question. It was the second night in a row she’d had to work late. I hoped it was only this first week at her new job and not our new normal.

“Yeah. I’ll survive.”

“Thank goodness for small miracles,” I heard her chuckle.

“How has your day been?” I asked.

“More routine than the day before,” she noted. “I’m starting to feel more comfortable, like I don’t need a map to find the bathroom or write down the key code to the photocopier.”

“You need to hire an assistant, ASAP,” I opined. “I can’t imagine you doing something so mundane as making photocopies.”

“I’m not above a little collating,” she defended with a laugh. “How did your archaeology adventure go today?”

“Fine,” I decided. “We won’t know anything until the professor has time to read and interpret the data though.”

“And the people who found Danika’s bike?” she pressed. “Did you speak with them?”

“Uh huh,” I confirmed. “Nothing suspicious there. They’ve got so much construction on the trust land that the family hadn’t been able to schedule an excavator until now. Apparently there’s a waitlist for that kind of work.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Julia allowed. “I’m curious though why her body wasn’t discovered with the bike.”

“I know,” I agreed. “That’s been bothering me, too. Why go through all the trouble of wrapping the bike in a tarp but not bury the body as well?”

“You’re assuming the bike was disposed of at the same time as the body.”

I let Julia’s statement sit with me. “You’d get rid of the body first. But why hold on to the bike?”

“A trophy?” Julia suggested.

“We’re not dealing with a serial killer,” I rejected. “No other area girls went missing around the same time. Plus, if it had been a trophy, they’d still have it, not randomly bury it later.”

Julia made a thoughtful noise in agreement. “There’s got to be a practical reason why the body and bike weren’t found together.”

“Separate them to make identification harder?” I posed.

I heard her skeptical hum. “You might separate body parts if that was your goal—not a bike and a body.”

I pressed my palm into my forehead. “I’m not smart enough for this. I’m a bludgeoning tool who’s supposed to stop people from speeding.”

“Hey.” Julia’s stern word delayed my downward spiral. “Do not doubt your abilities, Cassidy. If I thought you were unfit for this kind of work, I never would have offered you an investigative job.”

“And here I thought you just wanted eye candy around the office,” I deflected with a joke.

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