“Then why are you here, Detective? Why did you race ahead of backup?”
“I’m securing the perimeter. Standard procedure.”
“Is it?” I take another step closer. “Or did you need to get here first? Make sure everything is positioned correctly to frame Mr. Morra?”
“Your boss is the stalker. This is a setup. He killed Abel, and he’s manipulating everything to have her.”
That part of my mind that has been seeing things in Mrs. Abel’s house that don’t make sense runs its own parallel operation, collecting, cross-referencing, arriving somewhere I don’t want to reach.
“You have to believe me. He’s—” Sirens blare in the distance, cutting him off, getting closer by the second.
“I’m guessing that’s not your backup.”
He backs toward his car.
“They won’t find anything to incriminate Mr. Morra anymore.” I follow him. “I can’t say the same about you.”
“Stop.” He aims his gun at my chest. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Where is she, Detective? She was inside, her laptop and phone, too, with enough evidence you made sure pointed at Mr. Morra, but then you moved her. Where is she now?”
The sirens grow louder. Lights flash red and blue through the trees. Ashford waves his gun with more urgency. “I said back off. Now.”
“You’re not gonna shoot me, Detective. You’re not that stupid. But you are going to run. Because that’s what guilty men do when they’re caught.”
“This is wrong. Everything about this is wrong.”
“Then stay. Explain yourself. I’m sure your fellow officers will understand.”
His eyes dart around at me, the cabin, Birdie’s car. “You know damn well I don’t have her, but you do. Where is she? Don’t follow Morra blindly. Just tell me so we can save her. Where’s Birdie, Gatsby?”
I think of the woman who has trusted me with her life out of all the men in the team. The woman who must have instinctively felt it, our connection, even though she has no clue who I am. The woman I pulled out of the tub a few weeks ago, the one I almost lost before I had the chance to tell the truth.
I must save Birdie Abel, and I will if it’s the last thing I do on this earth.
I raise my hands up warily. “Tell me one thing. Is she really working with you to capture him?”
I watch him, his reaction, the specific moment his gaze shifts from furious to startled and then hopeful, not in the way a vulture swoops down on a target, but as a desperate man witnessing a miracle.
“How did you know that?” he whispers.
“Is she?!”
“Yes. Yes! I can prove it.”
“How?”
“It’s gonna sound crazy, but she wrote a story, a whole manuscript, and this, this is almost word for word, except for you. That part isn’t there. I was supposed to walk into the trap but then run before the police arrived to make Morra think they were hunting me. That way we could tail him to find her without triggering his suspicion. I’ve already tipped off my team earlier. I have the story on a thumb drive in the car. I have my computer, too. You can read it for yourself.”
“I don’t need to. I already have.” I’ve been assigned to her personal security long enough to have access to her bedroom where she keeps her regular laptop…and a second one she only uses when she thinks no one is looking.
When you work with someone like Tristan Morra, you learn a thing or two about stealth. It’s helped that she hasn’t paid enough attention to me, that she doesn’t like to look at me. It’s given me several opportunities to snoop on what she’s writing on that secret device. “That’s how I know you didn’t do it.”
“Thank God. Gatsby, you have to help us. Morra is Birdie’s stalker. He is a very dangerous man. Every second he has her is a threat to her life. You have to help me find her now.”
“Listen, the police following Morra won’t get you Mrs. Abel. It will only spook him, make him more careful. Let me do it.”
“Do you have a plan?”
