Finding Tessa by Jaime Hendricks (best ereader for comics .TXT) 📗

attempting to sign my name at the bottom. Then I shake the pen uncontrollably. “Crap. This one is out of ink. Can you grab another one for me?” I flash the million-dollar smile again.

“Sure,” he says with a smirk and turns around.

It takes me literally two seconds to turn the ones on my Social Security number into sevens and the threes into eights. Smith quickly becomes Smyth. Not my first rodeo.

Daniel hands me a new pen, and I sign the form. He says he has to take my picture, and I ask him if I can use some makeup on the bruise, explaining that I don’t want my permanent ID to remind me that I’m a punching bag. He obliges, and I dab concealer around it quickly. I wait five excruciating minutes for the photo to upload while he pecks my info, fake number and all, into the computer. He should’ve inspected my card closer and realized nothing matches anymore, but my guess is many people around here don’t exactly graduate magna cum laude, if they graduate at all. It prints out, and he laminates it. He hands it to me over the counter, then swiftly pulls it back from my open hand.

“Two fifty.”

Little shit! But I smile as I peel back the bills, not letting him see the wad around it. “You saved my life.”

He may not know he’s been conned, but he really did save my life. Because now, I can try to have one again. This one better not include falling in love in 2.5 seconds. Better yet, this time I just want to know that I am loved.

I’ve been to plenty of battered women support groups. In secret, of course. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the women are afraid of men, afraid of relationships, and afraid to date again. Looking over their shoulders. Hiding. Scared. This is the only time of my life I’m ever in the one percent. Off the pharmaceutical smack for over a decade, bad men are still like a drug to me. I don’t know if they sniff me out or if I sniff them out, but every relationship I’ve been in, one of us has been a goddamn hound dog.

That stops now.

I tug one of my burner phones out of my bag and send a text to someone who’s going to help me make Asshole a suspect in my disappearance.

Got the ID, all went as planned. Did you put that stuff in the house yet?

I wait. I get the answer in two minutes.

Not yet, but I will. He hasn’t told me you’re gone yet.

5

JACE

Jace swerved right into the police station and parked his blue Altima in a spot close to the front, one of the ones reserved for people on official police business. Trying to locate his missing wife counted, as far as he was concerned.

The heavy glass doors slid open automatically as he approached and there was a woman at a counter in the front. Her name tag said Sally Rosen, and she looked like a Golden Girl, set hair and all. Her glasses hung around her neck from a tortoiseshell chain against her long-sleeve black sweater, which Jace didn’t understand in the surprise end-of-September heat. She typed into a computer as she cradled a phone between her ear and her shoulder, giving out instructions to someone new to town, asking about holiday garbage pickup.

People bothered the cops with the stupidest things.

“Can I help you?” she asked as she hung up the phone.

“Yes. I’m Jace Montgomery. My wife disappeared last night. I was hoping to talk to—”

She held her index finger up to stop him, then pressed a button on that space-age-looking phone. He didn’t know if it was a switchboard or the key to running the galaxy.

“Detective Solomon, a Jace Montgomery is here for you.” She hung up and pointed to a fake leather sofa near the door. “Wait there.”

So she’d heard of him already. In a small town like Valley Lake, a missing woman was probably taken very seriously. Especially one missing under these circumstances. A kidnapping or, God forbid, a murder, only happened in those small suburban towns in those damn Lifetime movies Tessa occasionally made him watch.

And in those movies it was always the husband.

Jace plopped onto the brown pleather couch, keeping a good distance between him and another woman about his age, who no doubt had been directed there as well. The woman held her purse on her lap and looked him up and down. He squirmed, thinking he was recognized, but earlier he’d checked the online police blotter and Tessa’s disappearance hadn’t been released yet.

Another male officer opened a door from behind the counter and whispered to Sally, then they both looked at Jace. Whispered again. Snickered.

“Mr. Montgomery?” he called from the other side of the room. “Can you come with me please?” He pointed to a door at the far end of the hall.

Jace stood, his tired legs wobbly, and walked to a door. He tried to turn the knob, but it was locked. Two seconds later there was a vibrating buzz and the door clicked and gave way. He opened it and the officer stood right in front of him.

“Mr. Montgomery. I’m Sergeant Lancaster. You saved us a phone call. Detective Solomon wanted to speak to you this morning.”

Terrific. If he’d kidded himself for even a second that they didn’t view him as a suspect, that idea was out the window.

He followed Lancaster down a long hall, narrow, with overhead fluorescent lights. The walls were light-gray or “ash” in Tessa lingo, and the doors on both sides were a faded blue, or “stormy sky.” At the end of the hall on the left, Lancaster waved a key card over a small electronic box and the door opened. Jace’s stomach tightened as he walked through the door.

Detective Solomon sat at a rectangular metal table and waved at a matching metal chair. Jace lowered himself into the cold, rock-hard chair,