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The florist in town—Maria, a sweet, charming woman who everyone loved—swore that she hadn’t sold any black roses in months. She didn’t keep them stocked right now and only ordered them later in the summer, closer to Halloween.

Every contact that we’d tried, every favor that we’d called in, had mysteriously come up with nothing. In front of Evelyn I was calm and hopeful. But inside I was getting more and more frustrated. No one in the world was that clean. Especially someone from a family like the Wests. It wasn’t always true, but in my experience, the more money someone had at their disposal, the more secrets they had to bury.

Which only left the conclusion that Nathan was paying a lot of money to cover his tracks, or he was being protected by someone incredibly powerful. Maybe both.

I looked back toward the stable. This was the first time I’d been separated from Evelyn since that first night together, and already I felt an itch under my skin. She was with Harlan and Jude, working with Penny.

That horse fucking loved her already. He was the happiest he’d ever been when we got there today, and that was fantastic. With her help, I was hoping we could turn him into a therapy horse after all. But that also depended on Evelyn being safe enough to continue working with him.

Harlan and Jude knew what was at stake. They would keep her safe. I knew that with every bone in my body. It didn’t stop my instincts from screaming at me to turn around and go back. To haul her into my arms, or just be in her proximity. To protect what was mine.

I stopped in my tracks. Evelyn wasn’t mine. No matter how much it felt that way. I refused to think like that. I understood the impulse, but I was going to reject anything that made me like him. Starting with the knowledge that Evelyn was her own person, and the fact that she chose to be with me was a fucking gift. One she could walk away from any time she felt like it.

One deep breath. And then another. The urge to turn around receded, and I kept walking. It wasn’t only protective instincts; it was my past. Old wounds rearing their head. If something happened to her and I wasn’t there. If I was too late—

I cut the thought off.

No.

This wasn’t the time for those thoughts. Dwelling on the possibility of something going wrong would only distract me if something actually happened. I’d made a call to Dr. Rayne with the intent of asking her to come over in case Ev decided she wanted to talk. But that call had turned into me checking in with the psychiatrist myself.

I wasn’t doing as well as I wanted to be. I would deal with it when this was through. Rayne would nail my ass to the wall if I didn’t. Hell, any of the guys would. They’d been where I was, and they knew the signs. One way or another, I was going to have to face my demons again.

Daniel was waiting in the security office for me, and I’d hoped he’d have good news for me. But his face wasn’t promising. “Nothing?”

He shook his head. “Nathan West is a ghost. Spook level. The only time I’ve ever seen this lack of information is when they’re trying to make someone disappear completely.”

“Fuck.” I shook my head. “Do you have any idea who’s protecting him?”

Daniel shrugged. “His father is a billionaire and West Technologies holds more government contracts than any other company out there. If I were a betting man, I’d say he has more than one person protecting him. There are likely multiple interested parties making sure that the West family appears squeaky clean, no matter what they’ve done.”

“Is there any way that could be changed?”

“I wish the answer was yes, but I doubt it. You know I don’t mean it this way, but when you’re comparing hundreds of millions in military technology contracts to the life of one woman, you’re not going to get very far.”

The insinuation burned under my skin, but he was right. Especially if we couldn’t identify the people protecting him and figure out a way to put pressure on them. I’d asked Daniel to look into a few things for me so that I could stay with Evelyn more. That was only one of them.

“Anything on the cops?”

He shrugged. “No. There’s no record of any complaint. The hospital doesn’t have any record of her admittance. Evelyn has just as few records as Nathan. All normal until four years ago. Then nothing. Like she vanished.”

“She did.”

“Yeah,” he said with a nod.

I sat down in one of the chairs and leaned my elbows on my knees. “So what do we do? He’s circling us. And neither we nor Evelyn can stay in limbo forever.”

The guys were willing to do whatever it took, but that still meant pulling long hours and extra work. It was fine for now, but we were all human, and it wouldn’t take long for us all to be exhausted. That was a worst-case scenario. Exhaustion led to mistakes, and that was something we couldn’t afford.

“You’re not going to like it.”

“Probably not.”

Daniel crossed his arms. “If we can’t find him, we need to bring him to us.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t like that.”

My friend chuckled. “I’ve got the basic outline of something. Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t, but either way it might give us more information.”