Free Twisted by Andrea Kane

have seen her before she disappeared.”
    “I don’t understand,” Deanna responded, clearly upset. “That seminar was almost a full year ago. Are you telling me she’s been missing for that long?”
    “That’s what I’m telling you. The police and the FBI have been trying to determine her whereabouts. I have investigative experience, and I’m also a close childhood friend of Penny’s. Her parents hired me to see what I could find out. You just helped me narrow down where she vanished from.”
    “But not why, or by whose hand.”
    “No. Not yet. Deanna, I’m going to contact the FBI , and let them know about this development. Their resources are obviously far more vast than mine. I’m sure the agent who’s handling Penny’s case will want to contact you. Please tell him everything you remember, down to the slightest detail. His name is Special Agent Derek Parker.”
    “Of course. Anything I can do. Anything at all.”
    “You have my contact information in that e-mail Doris Hayden sent you. Use it. Anytime, day or night. If you have a question, or if you recall even a tidbit of related information, please call me. Penny is very dear to me. I plan to find out what happened to her.”
    FBI New York Field Office
    3:45 P.M.

    Derek was in a foul mood.
    He’d done a thorough job of prepping John Lee for tonight’s stakeout. The listening device he’d given Lee was concealed in a pen, so tiny and unobtrusive that no one would spot it. Lee was edgy but under control. He’d do what he had to, since the alternative was jail. The entire squad was prepared for a long night, and Tony had made up the surveillance schedule.
    With luck, they’d not only find out if Lo Ma really was responsible for the brutal killings of Xiao Long’s girls, but they’d get some solid evidence on both Dai Los to pass along to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
    So everything was in place. And Derek was wound up and ready to go.
    Back in his Ranger days, he’d learned to eat when he could, since the next opportunity to do so might not come for a while. With that in mind, he wolfed down a sandwich, grabbed some bottled water and a bag of chips, and headed back to his desk, intending to type up his interviews and return his e-mails.
    That’s when his mood had gone south.
    At his desk, he’d found Sloane’s voice mail waiting for him.
    The message itself was pretty cryptic, saying only that she had a lead on the Penny Truman case, and she needed to talk to him as soon as possible.
    Its vagueness was irritating enough.
    But the fact that her voice still had the power to get to him the way it did—now,
that
really pissed him off.
    He leaned back in his chair, linked his arms behind his head, and grudgingly let his mind go where he’d avoided letting it go since Monday.
    When he’d walked into that conference room and she’d been standing there—it was like a punch in the gut. He’d written his reaction off as the result of being blindsided. After all, she’d been the last person he expected to see when he stepped through that door.
    But now there was no excuse. He knew she was working for the Trumans, and he knew she had a personal stake in the case, since she and Penelope Truman were childhood friends. He was the agent of record. It was natural she’d be calling him with any information she stumbled on.
    Derek was a hard, fast realist. He didn’t delude himself—not then, and not now. He wasn’t over Sloane. What they’d shared had been much more than an affair. Everything about it had been intense—the attraction, the connection, the sex. It had started—and ended—like an explosion, knocking them both on their asses, going up in fireworks and down in flames.
    There’d never been any closure. There hadn’t even been good-byes.
    She’d been a stubborn, stoic coward, who’d shut him out and then walked away when the going got tough.
    And he? He’d been a hotheaded, judgmental ass, who’d been too pissed off by her decision