Page 17 of Lost and Found

He smiled. Coworkers. That didn’t completely sound like she wanted him to leave. “You are indeed a great person. Most definitely because you brought me coffee.” He lifted the coffee cup to his lips. “Thank you, Bailey. I mean it.”

He tried to see himself through her eyes. Before yesterday, the last time she’d seen him was the day before their investigation into Natalie O’Malley was unceremoniously shut down. Wes had been easy to get along with, despite all Erick’s interference. She and Wes had partnered well. They had no idea how the next day would change the course of their lives.

Yeah, Wes had been fired from the FBI in a grossly political power play, but she’d lost her husband. No matter how angry Wes had been with her and the Cosgroves, none of that had probably mattered to her. Hell had broken loose in her life. Wes likely hadn’t even been on her mind. “I’m sorry for being the grumpy grouch.”

“Grouchy grump.” She lifted a shoulder, more interested in whatever she’d been reading before he arrived than in him. “But sure. All’s forgiven.”

He didn’t believe her, and it irked him. “I am, and not because you got me coffee.”

She barely lifted her gaze from the paperwork. “The coffee’s just making you feel guilty.”

“You’re a better person than I am.”

“I know.” At that, her lips twitched. She tossed the pen onto the papers. “I’m glad we agree.”

He pulled out the chair across from her, still trying to make sure she didn’t call Vivian and replace him. “I hold grudges, and I shouldn’t.” Bailey wasn’t even technically to blame, but she’d been what his anger latched onto. “I unfairly cast you as the root cause of what happened, and you’re…not.”

“I’m absolutely not.”

If he were honest with himself, he could have figured that out sooner. “I know. Maybe I should’ve known before, but I didn’t.”

Her gaze sharpened on him, as though she were running his words through a bullshit-meter. “You’re laying it on pretty thick, Wes. What do you want?”

“To help. If that still works for you.”

Her lack of an immediate yes tightened his chest. Finally, Bailey relented. “I’m only forgiving you because this groveling is keeping me from enjoying my coffee.”

“Your coffee with two sugars, vanilla, and almond milk.”

Surprise jerked Bailey’s eyes up.

“I remember, too.” He shrugged. “But I’m not groveling.”

The tension behind his sternum eased. He would see this project through. They might have lost the ability to take down Peter Phillips for murder, but Wes was on board with bringing whoever had hurt Caitie to justice.

Bailey had divided the folders into two stacks and slid his pile next to his notebook. “More interviews. I don’t think there’s anything we don’t know, but there’s only one way to find out.”

They settled into a surprisingly comfortable silence, moving through the interviews faster than he’d expected. She pushed her last interview to the “read” pile. “That was a lot of paper to say not much.”

He agreed. Caitie Flanagan was a type-A go-getter. Much loved. Much admired. “It lines up with everything you told me.”

Disappointment tugged Bailey’s lips into a frown. “Nothing new caught your attention?”

Wes shook his head. “Did the cops ever connect her murder to similar crimes?”

Bailey set down her coffee and walked to the wall of newspaper clippings. “There was a girl strangled nearby.”

Wes joined her, scanning the newspaper cutout that had Bailey’s attention. Caitie’s name was highlighted over two-thirds of the way into an article about the murder of another girl.

“A little more than a year later,” Bailey said. “She was a sorority girl who was strangled at Columbia.”

“Caitie went to Barnard,” Wes said while remembering that Ryan went to Columbia.

Bailey nodded. “Close proximity.”

“Practically on top of each other.” Wes pulled out his phone and searched for the second victim’s name. Just like with Caitie, most of what he found came from student-run newspapers and blog posts. “She was sexually assaulted and left in an alley nowhere near her dorm.” His stomach turned. “Her underwear was used to strangle her.”

Bailey shook her head. “People are sick.”