No. No, she didn’t.
Because her phone hadn’t charged.
Because the USB port in the lamp didn’t work.
Because the lamp was unplugged.
Something Scarlett didn’t realize until this morning because the light switch for the room was connected to a different set of lamps.
So here she was, in a verysloooowlywarming shower, rushing to get herself ready in less than thirty minutes, which was when her sister’s friend was set to arrive.
Sister.
A fist tightened around her heart, the force divided between excitement and fear. Excitement because she had asister!Fear because that same sister had been reported missing.
The urgency in her mission aided Scarlett’s efforts to wash the short night’s sleep from her eyes. Thomas had assured her that the DNA ancestry kit results were valid, which meant Scarlett did, indeed, have a half-sister.
A sister she’d never met. One who, up until four months ago, Scarlett never even knew existed.
I have a sister.
Her lips twitched with the need to smile, but it was hard to let the joy shine through when Rose was out there, somewhere. Alone. Hurt, maybe? And she had no way of knowing her family was trying to find her.
Scarlett squeezed her eyes shut tight to keep out the foamy suds covering her head. She still couldn’t believe she’d made it this far. The news about Rose’s disappearance had been devastating. One minute, she was finding out she wasn’t an only child after all. The next, that elation was shattered with the news that yes, Rose Goodwin did exist, and yes, she was Scarlett’s half-sibling but…
I’m sorry to say she’s gone missing.
Thomas had said those words when he called her into his office. The sixty-year-old private investigator she’d hired had sat her down and given her the good news first. He should have started with the bad.
Always start with the bad.
From the beginning, Scarlett had known finding Rose would be a long shot. But she had to at least try.
She hadn’t hired Thomas right away, though she wished she had. Instead, she’d taken it upon herself to play amateur sleuth.
Scarlett’s first attempt was through social media. But after spending hours scrolling through the billion-and-one profiles using Rose Goodwin as their name, she finally moved on to other avenues.
Countless internet searches, including job search sites, basic browser searches, and obituaries—just in case. She’d even tried her hand at searching through arrest and incarceration records.
But Scarlett soon realized watching all those true crime shows and listening to podcasts did not make one an investigator. That’s where Thomas came in.
Thomas found Rose, or at least where the woman should have been. And once he discovered she’d been named in a missing person’s report, he’d immediately put out feelers, as he called them.
They seemed more like Hail Mary’s to her. But at that point, Scarlett was willing to try pretty much anything if it meant finding her sister.
I have a sister.
Another almost smile lifted her lips, but then…like it always did since she’d learned of Rose’s disappearance…the tendrils of fear and dread reached in and pulled her happiness away.
I’m going to find you, Rose. I promise, I will.
And she finally knew just where to start. Because Thomas had discovered something else during the course of his investigation…Rose had two very close friends who lived here, in Denver.
One was a woman named Brooke Jensen, who Rose worked with up until the day she’d gone missing. The other was a man named Oliver Garcia. The man Scarlett was set to meet in the downstairs lounge area in…
She glanced down at her water-resistant watch.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!