“I’ll go with you.” Brody wrapped his arm around her waist and spooned against her back. “We’ll arrange flights in the morning.”

“You don’t have to go with me.”

“Tomorrow morning I’ll have a tome of a report to type. But I won’t be on active duty until I get medical clearance. According to the ER doc, I’m going to have a few weeks off at minimum.” He rested his chin on her shoulder. “And I am not ready to let you out of my sight.”

The thought of leaving Brody behind hurt more than any of her injuries. She’d almost lost him tonight. She wanted to spend as much time with him as possible.

She rolled over to face him. Putting a hand on his chest, she said, “I don’t want this to end between us. I know we both said we didn’t love the idea of a long-distance relationship, but I’m willing to give it a try if you are.”

He kissed her. “I’ll do anything for you.”

Late the next afternoon, Hannah sat in a conference room down the hall from Detective Douglas’s office in Las Vegas.

Douglas scanned his report. “We found an arrest record for a weapons charge against Mick Arnette in Ohio. Some of his fingerprints weren’t clear, so they hadn’t been entered into the national database. After checking the missing persons reports for Ohio, we found a girl we believe is Jewel. Her name is Jenna Young, native of Toledo. Jenna ran away from home about a year ago. Her mother didn’t report her missing for several weeks.” He put a paper on the table in front of them. A dark-haired teenager smiled sadly at the camera.

Hannah sucked in a quick breath. “That’s her.”

But she looked different. Her eyes were mournful rather than panicked, and her face was fuller in the picture, as if she had lost weight since.

“Why wasn’t she reported missing right away?” Hannah asked.

“Her mother said Jenna had run away before. She thought her daughter would come back on her own.” Douglas frowned. “But the Toledo police found out that the mother’s boyfriend was a registered sex offender. He’d been convicted of molesting a twelve-year-old girl seven years before. Seems he hooked up with Jenna’s mother barely six months after his release from prison.”

“So you assume he molested Jenna.” The coffee in Hannah’s stomach soured. Brody put an arm across the back of her chair and gave her shoulder a supportive squeeze. She couldn’t have gotten through this day without him. His solid and quiet support made the most onerous subjects bearable.

“Probably a fair assumption,” Douglas said.

“Any ideas on how to find her?” Brody asked.