Read Only One Life for Free Online

the offices, but Bengtsen was the only person still at his desk.
    “Did everyone else go over to the hotel?” she asked. Bengtsen nodded without looking up from his copy of Venstrebladet , Holbak’s left-leaning daily newspaper.
    Louise went into her office and found Storm’s cell phone number so she could call and update him on her conversation with the girl.
    “Hurry over here and get some food, then we’ll go over it after we’ve eaten,” he said curtly.
    “If it really is the friend, shouldn’t we get in touch with the parents right away?” Louise objected.
    “Of course, but we also need to eat; it’s going to be a long night,” he said. “Afterward we’ll check out what other tips have come in on the missing-person report, and then we’ll know where we stand before we start talking to people.”
    Louise would have continued protesting, but then she remembered that Storm called the shots. Instead, she went back in to see if Bengtsen wanted to join her.
    He shook his head, but this time his eyes left the paper, and he looked at her.
    “Aren’t you going to eat?” she asked before leaving his office.
    “Yes, but I prefer to eat at home,” he said, briefly explaining that she should just head left when exiting the police station, and then take a right. Then she’d come to the Central Station Square where the train station and the Station Hotel were located.
    “See you later,” Louise said, heading back to retrieve her bags from the car before she set out on foot toward the hotel.

5
    L AST NIGHT HE CUT DEEP GASHES INTO HIS OWN FACE. He can’t take it anymore; I have to keep an eye on him.
    Camilla teared up as she read the old e-mail in her inbox. She was still deeply upset that Henning had shown up at the community center to tell her to her face that she should stay away. When she got back to her office at Morgenavisen , she immediately checked her e-mail to see if he had sent an explanation, but there wasn’t any word from him. Now she sat there depressed, skimming through his old e-mail instead.
    They used to talk to each other, she and Henning. They both thought their relationship was strong enough to handle what had happened in Roskilde. Camilla couldn’t recall ever being so determined to fight for a relationship. Not even when she and Tobias had started drifting apart when Markus was about one year old.
    A few weeks after Henning’s brother was arrested, they had lunch at one of the colorful eighteenth-century restaurants on Franciscan Square, right off the pedestrian shopping district downtown. After coffee, they sat holding hands across the table, promising each other that their relationship would survive, despite the trauma they had shared in regard to the headline-grabbing online-dating case involving several brutal rapes.
    “It’s settled. It will always be the two of us,” he said, and at the time that had filled her with relief. But then everything suddenly went to hell—ending with that e-mail he’d sent saying he had to focus on taking care of his brother.
    As she sat staring at her screen, she would have given anything in the world to just let go of him and move on, but she couldn’t. He filled her thoughts, and she was close to exploding from the pain of longing to have him back in her life. He was the man who had finally shown her what it felt like to come home. He was the one: she had known it after their first week together.
    Her hands were still trembling a bit as she opened the door to her editor’s office to announce that she was back.
    Terkel Høyer was sitting behind his desk and didn’t look like he was going to be heading home anytime soon either.
    “No word from Holbæk since they issued the missing-person report,” he said.
    Camilla had been on the crime beat at Morgenavisen for several years and had gotten good at reading her boss. She could sense that he was all fired up about running something in the paper the next day.
    “We’ve got to include every