Say Goodbye (Romantic Suspense #25) by Karen Rose

            He tipped her chin up and kissed her. “If it keeps you safe, I’ll tell you everything.”

            “I trust you,” she whispered against his mouth, then jerked away with a gasp. “Pebbles, no!”

            She leaped out of bed in all her naked glory and reached for Pebbles, who was headed out of the bedroom, Liza’s boot in her mouth. Tail wagging, the dog thought it was a game and ran. Liza chased her around the bed, then stopped in the doorway.

            Whirling around, fists on her hips, she glared at Tom. “A little help? She listens to you.”

            “Because I don’t let her lick my face,” Tom said dryly, then openly leered at her. “Plus I’m too busy looking at you.”

            She rolled her eyes, but she was pleased. “That shouldn’t make me forgive you as easily as it does.” She stomped out and he could hear her calling to Pebbles from down the hall.

            And then he heard nothing.

            He waited another beat, then jumped from the bed, closing the bedroom door before running to his office. Pebbles was half in and half out, her tail still wagging furiously. When he pushed by her, he could see the boot still in her mouth. “Drop it,” he ordered.

            She dropped it immediately and Tom bent to scoop it up. “Here it is,” he said, but Liza didn’t reply. She was standing at his bulletin board, staring at the photos he’d collected.

            His first thought was to tell her they were classified, but she’d already either known or figured out nearly everything about the case. Still, he strode forward, tugging at her shoulder.

            “Liza, honey, don’t look at those. Some of these are intense. You don’t want those images in your mind.”

            She looked over her shoulder, incredulous. “Tom, what part of ‘I was a fucking combat medic’ hasn’t sunk into your thick skull yet?”

            He grimaced. “Right. Sorry. Still. Come back to bed with me.”

            Ignoring him, she pointed to the photo of DJ Belmont as a child. “Where did you get this?”

            Once again he considered telling her they were classified, but she was going into Sunnyside Oaks on Tuesday morning. She deserved all of the information he could give her.

            Who knew what small detail might save her life if things went sideways?

            He set her boot on his desk. “Waylon Belmont’s sister-in-law let me take a photo of one of the pictures she had on the wall when Croft and I interviewed her. Interestingly enough, we were at their rental house when you called—the same address as was listed on William Holly’s ID. We’d gone to check it first in the event that DJ remembered the house and went back there. He’d lived there with his mother at the time of their disappearance. Pastor’s wife showed up with the kids four years later. Those photos are of DJ and his father at the same age.”

            “Whoa,” she murmured. “So you were physically sitting in front of William Holly’s old house when I called you about tracking him and his tattoo to Sergio?”

            “Yes.” Resting his chin on the top of her head, he wrapped his arms around her waist as he studied the photo of DJ Belmont, curious as to what she saw that had her so transfixed. “Why?”

            She pointed to the grainy photo he’d pulled from the old newspaper article about Pastor’s crimes against his old L.A. congregation, the embezzlement and fraud. “Bo and Bernice. Look at them. Now look at DJ. They’re about the same age in these photos.”

            Tom did as she directed, then exhaled, far more stunned than he had any right to be. Because she’d immediately seen what he should have seen, but had not. “DJ and Waylon looked alike, but Bo and DJ could have been twins,” he said quietly.

            “Uh-huh. And who is the common denominator?”

            “Waylon. That certainly would explain how Pastor’s wife magically ended up in the Belmonts’ rental house. Croft and I figured that Waylon had taken them there, but we weren’t sure why.” He tapped a document thumbtacked at the top of the bulletin board.

            She lifted on her toes to examine it. “A marriage license? I didn’t know that Waylon and Pastor’s wife were married. Was this while he was in prison?”