Deceptive Truth: Cowboy Justice Association (Serials and Stalkers Book 4) by Olivia Jaymes (reading women .txt) 📕

Frankly, it would be easier for Knox to go in there by himself. Cop to former cop. Especially if Jenna and this guy already had a difficult history. He didn't want to ruffle the guy's feathers right out of the gate. It was usually a good idea to keep on the good side of local law enforcement.

"You don't have to go in if you don't want to." Knox pointed to a coffee shop across the street. "Why don't you go over there and wait for me? I shouldn't be too long."

"Sold. Good luck. You're going to need it."

Knox locked up the vehicle and headed inside while Jenna went to the coffee shop. The sheriff's station looked like so many that he'd visited. Desks crammed into a small space, the smell of burnt coffee, the low hum of telephone conversations.

"Can I help you?"

A young officer was sitting at the front counter and he barely looked old enough to drive.

Damn, I'm getting ancient. They're looking positively adolescent these days.

"I'm here to see Detective Bauer. I called yesterday. My name is Knox Owens."

"Uh, right, hold on," the deputy said before scurrying off to a set of double doors at the back of the room. Knox only waited a moment before the young man reappeared, motioning for him to follow. "Mike is back here."

Detective Mike Bauer was seated at a metal desk shoved into a corner. There was a second desk in the small room as well which Knox assumed was probably for a second investigator who wasn't in the office at the moment.

"Grab that chair and have a seat," the detective said. "Do you want some coffee?"

Having drank gallons of crappy coffee while a deputy and then a sheriff, Knox declined immediately. He needed to cut down on the caffeine anyway.

They shook hands and Knox introduced himself before taking a seat opposite the other man. Dressed in blue slacks and a white button-down shirt, Mike Bauer looked like he might be in his late twenties, early thirties at the most.

"Are you sure you don't want any coffee?" he asked, taking a drink of his own mug. "It's terrible but it's hot."

"Really, I'm good." Knox pulled out his phone and held up the photo of Lori that Jenna had sent him earlier. "I'm here about Lori Water's disappearance. I'm told you were the detective on the case."

"I would hardly call it a case," Bauer laughed. "There really wasn't much to it. Lori Waters left her family and they were concerned. A few days later she sent them a text that she was fine and would be in touch. Case closed."

"Except that she never has contacted them again," Knox replied. "From what her family says, they were very close and talked or texted every single day."

"Maybe her family has a different view of how close they are. Maybe Lori Waters wasn't as thrilled with her family as they think she was. Hell, my relatives can drive me up a wall by two o'clock in the afternoon on Thanksgiving. There's no law against someone not wanting to keep in touch."

"That's true," Knox conceded. "But she didn't take her car. Or her luggage. Or anything from her home. You don't think that's weird?"

The younger man shifted uncomfortably in his chair as if he didn't like being questioned.

"Maybe she was in a hurry. Maybe she took a bus or a plane."

"That's a possibility." Knox tried a different angle. "Did you speak to her boyfriend Callum Owens?"

The detective's face split into a grin. "I did. Great guy. He answered all of my questions."

I just bet he did. Charming bastard.

Clearly, Mike Bauer hadn't put Knox's last name together with Cal's last name. Not yet anyway.

"He was supposed to meet her for coffee that day. He said he didn't see her but the coffee shop employees say that he did. That they talked and left the shop together."

Could it be the same shop that Jenna was sitting in right now? Shit, that hadn't even occurred to him. He needed to talk to those workers there. Being in the vehicle, right next to Jenna, was messing with his head. He needed to get in the game and keep his mind where it needed to be. Not on how lovely Jenna looked this morning.

And she did look good.

"Well...yeah," Bauer said, squirming in his chair again. "But after talking to them, they couldn't be completely confident that Lori Waters came in that exact day. Apparently, she came in almost every day so they could have easily gotten mixed up."

It was on the tip of Knox's tongue to ask if the baristas hadn't been confident or if Bauer himself hadn't been confident. Those were two different issues. He didn't ask it, however. He was beginning to see why Jenna had been so desperate. It was easy to see that no one here in law enforcement was going to help her. They'd been snowed by his brother.

"Do you have any traffic cameras that might have footage from that day?" Knox asked. "We can check that specific day and see if she was there."

Bauer shook his head. "We only keep the footage for about ten days."

Knox had known it was a long shot. Most municipalities kept video a very short time, some as little as twenty-four hours.

"What about the shops along the same street? Do any of them have security cameras?"

There was a small chance that a vendor might have accidentally picked Lori up on one of their cameras and that film was sitting in a database somewhere.

"Some of them do," Bauer confirmed. "We don't have a lot of crime in our town but we