Page 33 of Burned

“It will be short if you keep sharing your opinions,” I tell him.

He grins. “There he is.”

Rafe clears his throat. “We have three points of confirmation.”

The room tightens.

My attention snaps to the laptop sitting ominously before him. Gregory’s shoulders tense beside Rafe.

Confirmation she’s alive.

“First,” Rafe says, turning the screen to face me, “a woman matching Isobel Vale’s description was seen outside an old Bachman contact point in Queens.”

The name hits differently out loud now that Erin is in the room.

I do not look at her.

That may be a mistake.

No.

It is definitely a mistake, because I sense the shift in her anyway. The small lean she does toward the other end of the table. The way her fingers curl around the cuff of her sweater.

Told you I’m failing.

But right now, I need to focus on the bigger picture, which is exactly why she shouldn’t be in this room. My attention will always be drawn to her.

Her safety will always be my first thought.

I force my gaze to the screen.

The clip is short, the image grainy, taken from a damaged, forgotten security camera still mounted across the street. A woman stands beneath the broken metal frame of what was once an awning outside a shuttered storefront, her face turned just enough for the camera to catch the line of her cheekbone, the blond curtain of her hair, the shape of her mouth.

Slender frame. Pale coat. One hand on the wall as if she is steadying herself.

She looks up at the camera.

Like she wants to be seen.

My blood goes cold.

It’s her.

And she’s standing in front of a Bachman property.

Why would Isobel be there?

“It used to be an old Bachman contact point in Queens,” Gregory says. “The one your family converted to a jewelry store in the fifties.”

I glance at Erin and catch her frozen to her chair.

She knows Bachman’s Jewelers. Every woman in New York knows about those curling gold letters spelling out our family’s proud name across the front of a little red leather box.

Spotless glass counters behind shining windows, filled with cases of the world’s finest jewelry, and the only place we Bachman men would go to buy our girl a ring.

Four carats. Princess cut. Platinum band.

Yes, I’ve thought about it.