Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
“To a family. To love. I worry you think you gave that up and don’t deserve a second crack at it. Or maybe you’re afraid.”
She could see the worry lines around her father’s eyes. He was speaking from concern. He was a good man who loved her and had loved his wife and younger daughter, and he had found a way to move on. Maybe she hadn’t. Not entirely anyway. And maybe she was closed off in some sense. Perhaps she’d held on to the guilt of giving up her son and shied away from offering her heart to anyone again in the hope of avoiding pain. She’d had enough of that to last a lifetime, thank you very much. Or at least that had been her approach for the last decade. Rex’s face flashed in her mind. But maybe . . . maybe she could rethink that.
The sounds of splashing and laughter drifted toward them from the backyard, and Cami looked in that direction. Whether she’d avoided it or not, love had shown up at her door. Or in the case of Cyrus, on her computer screen. And she needed to know why. “I’ll find some time for self-reflection later. Right now, I’m on a mission.”
His eyes softened. “My fighter.” He paused as he looked at her. “Just promise me you’ll keep yourself safe from here on out. No more going out on your own and putting yourself in danger. I can’t lose another daughter, Cam.”
Her heart twisted at the raw pain on her dad’s face. She reached out and squeezed his hand. “I’ll be safe, Dad. I’m just researching now, okay? I’ll let you—and the authorities—know if I find anything.” He nodded, and she let go of his hand. “Just one more thing. How can I look at the cases you worked on?”
“My cases? Which ones?”
“All of them. Or, no, let’s say going back five years from the date of the crime.”
“The digital files are with the courts. But I kept personal notes on most of them. Those are up in the attic in boxes. But Cam . . . what would you even begin looking for?”
“I don’t know. But it’s a place to start. Maybe something will jump out at me.” She had no idea what that might even be, if anything. But what else did she have?
Her father helped her bring down the six boxes of files and put them in her trunk. She wasn’t hopeful she’d find anything—after all, the police had already looked at that angle, but they hadn’t read through every detail of every case. And she didn’t think they’d gone back that far either. While Cyrus was sleeping, she’d begin that monumental task.
An hour later, after sitting on the patio in the sun and sharing a glass of lemonade with her father and Gigi, she and Cyrus packed it up and got back in the car. Cyrus looked happy and tired, his nose slightly sunburned. He looked like a little boy who’d spent a few hours simply being a kid. I’m going to give you more of that. I’m going to make up for all the hardships you’ve survived.
“Ready to go home?” she asked him.
He nodded. “Can we come back?”
“Of course. My . . . I mean, your pops said anytime.” Her phone rang, and she glanced at it in the console. It was a call from California. “Give me one second to answer this,” she told Cyrus.
“Hello, Camille?”
“Yes, Detective Mauro. Is everything okay?”
She listened for a moment, tears welling in her eyes. She thanked him and hung up and then met Cyrus’s eyes in the rearview mirror with a smile that felt a little wobbly. “Our blood matches,” she told him. “I’m your mom.”
“I already knew that,” he said very seriously.
She laughed and swiped at a tear. She supposed she did too. “We need to celebrate,” she told him. “And I have a really important question for you now.”
He scrunched his forehead down as he looked at her with at least a small amount of concern. “What?”
She paused for effect. “Pizza or burgers?”
His face blossomed in a smile, full of childish pleasure.
“Sushi.”
She laughed. Gosh, she loved this beautiful, unique little boy. “Sushi it is.”
Chapter Forty
They’d done it. Rex still found himself turning his head randomly to find the computer screen where he could check on the well-being of the little boy for whom they had desperately searched. And he had to continue to remind himself that Cyrus was fine. He was with Cami—his mother—and Rex’s role, such as it’d been, was done. He was no longer needed.
Which was good. It meant success. But it also meant saying goodbye to the partnership he’d formed with Cami, and damn, he missed having her by his side, even if he didn’t miss the circumstances under which she’d been there.