“Hell.”
“Yeah, I know. Were you able to speak with Billy’s mother, Mimi?”
“Yeah, we got a search warrant, and I’ve spoken with her. She says she doesn’t know where they’ve gone. I doubt that Mimi is telling the truth. She probably would do anything to keep them out of jail.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Grayson said. “I’m kind of surprised she didn’t leave with them.”
“They might feel she can help them better if she’s not with them. And they may also feel that she won’t face charges if she isn’t running with them. But the thing is, we can get her on aiding and abetting, and on obstructing. We’re monitoring her phone and keeping an eye on her house and her movements,” Rowland said.
“Good.” Kendra headed in a different direction, away from where the manager’s office would be.
Grayson caught a whiff of Younger’s sweaty, worried scent, too, then. “Even though Mimi knows what her son and husband were up to.”
“Yeah. She might really believe that they’re innocent, just like a lot of families of criminals don’t believe that their loved ones could do anything wrong.”
“That’s true,” Kendra said. “Like women who have a jailhouse romance with a guy who killed his wife, but he’s a manipulator and conman, and he tells her he didn’t do it, someone else did, or it was an accident, and the prosecutor didn’t believe him. Conmen are so convincing. She marries him, he gets released, and she begins to learn how abusive and controlling he is. Sometimes the new wife manages to live, and other times, she’s the next one of his victims.”
“Hell, yeah. There’s a guy in prison for killing his girlfriend, and he had girlfriends all over the world, corresponding with him while he was there, who wanted to marry him. Of course, they didn’t know he had tons of girlfriends. Everyone was sending him money for commissary goods. One was his fiancée, and she sat in on his trial the whole time, knowing he would be proven innocent. He told them all how much he loved them, using the same spiel for each. Until the prosecutor shared this information with all the girlfriends. One wanted to rip another’s heart out,” Grayson said. “Some of them realized he had used him.”
“And his fiancée?” Kendra asked.
“Dumped him.”
13
Kendra was leading the way while following Younger’s scent. He had walked all over the apartment complex. Too bad for him that they could smell his scent. If only they had a tracker on him so that when they couldn’t smell his scent, like when he stole another car, they could still follow him.
They had to go through a lobby to reach the walkway to the apartments, the elevator, and the stairs. Younger had taken the stairs. They followed his scent to an apartment door on the third floor.
“He has got to have gone in there,” Kendra told Grayson.
“Agreed.” Grayson knocked on the door.
At least on the third floor, there was no way out of there unless Younger jumped out a window. He could sustain severe injuries, including skull fractures, brain injuries, broken limbs, and pelvic fractures—even death, so he probably wouldn’t opt for that.
Grayson tried the doorknob. The door was unlocked. “Do you hear someone who sounds like they’re in trouble?”
“Uh, yeah, sure.” That was one way to gain entry, since they didn’t know whether Younger was renting the apartment. What if he had gained access to the apartment and was holding someone hostage?
They headed into the apartment, quietly, not wanting to alert Younger. Then again, what if he had gone the way he had come, leaving his scent at the door and then just walked back the same way he had come?
Kendra texted Rowland, asking whether Younger was renting the apartment or who might be renting it if not Younger.
They smelled Younger’s scent in the apartment, so they knew he had gone inside. And like him, they followed where he’d traveled throughout the apartment. Because he lived there? Or because he was searching for something?
They didn’t smell the teen or Mimi. The apartment was furnished, but something about it felt off. It looked almost like a model apartment, with no personal effects anywhere.
Kendra got a text message back and checked it out. Rowland told her the furnished apartment was vacant.
“Vacant,” Kendra whispered to Grayson.
“Then he got inside illegally.”
“Yeah.” Kind of like they had.
They continued to explore the rest of the apartment, but Younger wasn’t there.
“He came inside and left the way he had come. Let’s go.” Grayson led the way out the door and down the hall to the stairs.
