Free Twirled Bond (Holly Woods Files, #5) by Emma Hart

on the desk with a, “Please, help yourself,” and answer the door. It’s Grecia with our drinks, so I take them and thank her with the instruction that I don’t want to be disturbed.
    Then I lock my door.
    This is more than an afraid woman.
    This is a mother—a guilt-ridden, lost, hopeless, heartbroken mother.
    She’s more important than anything else that could require my attention today. Even if I can’t help her. I get the feeling that what she wants more than anything is someone to listen to her.
    “Don’t rush,” I say gently, touching my fingertips to her knee. “I’ve canceled my next appointment. Take all the time you need.”
    “Sweet girl,” she whispers, wiping under her eyes. “You knew her, didn’t you? My Daniela.”
    “Yes, ma’am. We were friends in school.”
    “You have to help me.” She leans forward, clasping one of my hands in hers. One tear trails down her cheek and drops onto her arm. “I need answers, Noelle. The body they’ve found... I just want to know now. I’ve spent so long wondering. Dead or alive... I need to know where my baby is. They think I’m crazy for trying again. Think I’ll never find her, but I know. Please say you can help me. I’m desperate.”
    She breaks down on the final words, her emotion backing her words up. Her sobs come thick and fast, her fear a thick echo of each broken sound as she cries. I take her into my arms, unsure of what else to do.
    I was right.
    She wants to be listened to. She wants someone to believe Daniela can be found.
    Mrs. Russo turns her face toward mine and whispers, “It’s her.”
    I sit back and touch her shoulder. “We don’t know that.”
    “No, honey.” She takes a deep breath, one so strong that she sucks all the air out of immediate area, and squeezes me. “I know. In my heart, that’s my baby Doc Hermes is examining. But I want you to rule out every other option before they tell me.”
    It makes no sense to me. Then again, a grieving mother’s request never would. I’m neither grieving nor a mother. Even if I do feel like my throat is tight and my lungs are closing up at the sheer force of love I’m feeling from her for Daniela.
    After fifteen years, she’s still determined to know.
    I thought I knew love. I thought I understood it.
    I have no idea what love really is.
    This woman would walk to the very depths of the oceans and the highest mountain peaks if there happened to be the barest glimmer of a chance her daughter’s there. She’d fight armies a hundred times larger than her and beat back animals wilder than you could imagine just to find her missing baby.
    I can see it in her eyes.
    Now this? This love, this raw, unbridled, uncontrollable parental love... Terrifying. Simply terrifying.
    “You have my word, ma’am,” I say quietly. “As long as you agree that I’ll charge you basic expenses—gas and the like—and nothing more.”
    “No.”
    “She was my friend.”
    “And she’s my daughter. I’ll pay your full rate, Ms. Bond.”
    “Fifty percent and we’re even.”
    She looks at me with her dark eyes for a long moment before she sighs and nods. “Fifty percent. I don’t want you to be out of pocket for your time, honey. I’m all good now.” She pats my knee. “Get back there on your side of this desk and let’s get down to the info.”
    I hesitate until she waves me across the desk. Here, I sit and open my notebook. I grab a Post-it note and write Daniela on it in black Sharpie before I stick it to the top of the page so I can find it instantly.
    “Okay,” I say, clicking my Bond. P.I. pen. “Tell me what you think I need to know.”
     

     
    “Mr. Russo!” I cry, yanking the fridge door open. “Her father! The woman’s certifiable, Drake! I can’t just turn up to her house and start asking her father questions about their daughter’s disappearance!” I pull the wine bottle out and fill the glass as high as I can. I have to slurp it before I pick it up.
    God, it tastes