“I can drive myself to the dang police station and wait while you two do whatever you need to here.”
“Bella, go home with Holden. He’s not part of the sweep.” Spencer looked at Holden with understanding. He knew better than anyone how stubborn his sister could be. “We’ve ascertained your house is clear last night, and I’ve had a unit there all day, with two additional officers patrolling your property. Your house is safe as long as Holden is with you. I can’t risk you going anywhere else, Bella. You could lead the killer to innocent people.”
Bella’s eyes widened, her cheeks pink with anger. “Wait a minute. You’re blaming me for the explosion, for Becky’s nasty fall?”
“Of course he’s not.” Holden knew he had to share in the line of fire with Spencer. “There’s a criminal here, possibly a serial killer.”
“You mean probably, don’t you?”
“I can’t confirm anything yet.”
“Give Holden a break, Bella. Now’s not the time to get all reporter on anyone.”
“Oh, that’s rich, Spencer. You telling me how to do my job.”
“I just want you to be safe, sis.” Spencer must have heard the hurt in Bella’s tone. Holden wanted to take her away from all of this, to another state, another country. Anywhere but here, where the omnipresent sense of danger lurking wouldn’t shake.
Bella’s posture softened a smidge. “I know. But I have a job to do, too
, you know. I can’t do it from my house, no matter how safe. I have to figure out where the files from the Ms. Mustang Valley archive have been taken. I need to go through them, see if any of the suspects I’m looking at have evidence in them.”
“Who are you looking at?” Spencer looked at Bella, then Holden.
Bella told him about Becky, Selina, Hannah Rosenstein, and Ben the lighting guy.
“You’re right, sis—you need the information they contain. Someone on the committee knows where they are, and probably what’s in them.”
“Bella’s already done a lot of the same background research that we did in our field office. But we still don’t have motivation or corroboration on the suspects that are on the Ms. Mustang Valley committee.”
Holden took a step closer to her and placed his arm around Bella’s waist. He saw Spencer’s brow raise. He didn’t care. They were working a life-or-death operation and he suddenly didn’t care what his best friend or anyone else thought about the nature of his relationship with Bella. His grandmother had told him that some connections were visceral, inexplicable. His attraction to—and protective instinct toward—Bella fell into that category.
Bella looked up at him, met his gaze and held it. If he was able to trust that it wasn’t just wishful thinking on his part, he would say he saw a flicker of trust in her eyes. Trust in him.
“Do you think so?”
“I do. And if anyone can get someone to spill, you can. It just won’t be over the next thirty-six hours.” He turned to Spencer. “I’ve got your sister’s back, Spencer.”
Spencer nodded. “I know you do. I’ll make sure the patrol remains in place regardless. For both of your sakes.”
Holden had to fight the urge to keep his arm wrapped around Bella’s waist and pull her to him as they walked across the wide field to the parking lot. He opened the door for her and then got in the driver’s side of his nondescript sedan.
“Please try to see it from my point of view. This is my only chance to get this story right, and I’m coming up against brick walls in every direction.” Bella spoke the moment his butt hit the car seat, and he had no doubt she was hyped up on adrenaline.
He put the car into gear and drove out of the school lot. “There are other pageants in the area, aren’t there?”
“None is as important as this one, from all Gio told me. It’s Ms. Mustang Valley where Gio got her start in the pageant business, and when she said her eating disorders began. I should know, as I tried to get her into a doctor six years ago, after that year’s Ms Mustang Valley. For some reason, Gio’s illness always flared around the time of this pageant.”
“You never noticed she had issues before then?” She’d mentioned that she and Gio had been friends since grade school.
Bella sighed. “Not at the time. We did everything together, from summer camps to sleepovers. I thought Gio never ate differently than the rest of us, and she told me herself that her problems with body image and food began when she entered this pageant for the first time. Looking back, I suppose her problems may have began many years earlier than I originally thought.”
“How many times did she compete in Ms. Mustang Valley?”
“Eight. Until last year, actually, when her physical appearance began to visibly suffer from the bulimia. There was a point when no amount of clothing or cosmetics could hide the toll of the bingeing and purging. It affected her mental health far longer, but it wasn’t as physically visible until it was too late.” He shot a look at Bella’s resolute profile, the passing desert scenery serving as a colorful backdrop. The timelessness of her beauty struck him and he forced his gaze back to the road.
“It had to be incredibly difficult to watch that. When did she tell you she had a problem, or did you figure it out first?”
Bella shook her head. “That’s just it. It was insidious. I had no clue at first, years ago. But gradually her symptoms began to add up to me. Her depression, bouts with anxiety, her obsession with food. Then I noticed her teeth were yellowed. Gio always had a bright smile and I asked her if she was smoking. She laughed and said no, it was from an antibiotic she’d taken as a kid. But I knew that wasn’t true. Her mother spoke to me, as she was worried, too, as was her entire family. They thought I’d be able to convince her to go to the hospital. Gio had blown off their concerns. I begged her to get help, even offered to drive her to a clinic for treatment of eating disorders. Gio refused, said she’d fix it herself. Now I realize that we were both in denial of how lethal her illness was. Her mother called me a couple of months later and asked to meet me. She told me Gio had entered rehab and was in treatment. I couldn’t visit her for the first part, but I did go several times to visit, when allowed.”