“This whole meetup makes me nervous.” Carys twisted her fingers together in her lap. “There are too many what-ifs and no proof this person has useful information.”
“At least we know there are a lot of cops around if this thing goes south.”
Carys shook her head. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”
“It’s all we have.”
“We still have one bar left,” she said.
“Which isn’t as good of a lead.”
“We don’t know that,” she said. “All we know for certain is that someone asked to meet after work. How far away from the picture was he?”
“A foot behind the bartender.” If that much.
“And you said he walked past. As in, he kept going.”
“That’s correct.”
“Which means he barely got a glance at the picture,” she said.
“I wouldn’t say that.” Blaize had a good feeling about the guy. “What reason could he have for speaking up? Why not just let me walk out the door? The bartender didn’t know anything. Why raise suspicion?”
“THAT’S A GOOD POINT.”Breathe.They might’ve been getting close to a breakthrough. “I’m freaking out over your safety.” And the general feeling of not being able to control the situation. Turned out being overly protected as a kid could cause you to need to control everything.
“I’ll be careful.” Blaize’s reassurance sent a wave of calm washing over her and through her. “Believe it or not, I’m pretty good at keeping myself alive. There’ve been plenty of times that I’ve been out on the land, staring down wild hogs capable of killing me on the spot and had to come up with an escape plan. I’ve faced down poachers and survived. I’ll take any and every threat seriously, but I didn’t get that kind of vibe from this guy. He looked concerned and maybe a little scared to speak to me. Does any of this help ease your concerns?”
He pulled into a newly available street-side parking spot. That was lucky.
“It does,” she said before reaching out to touch his arm. The contact was electric, as she was beginning to expect whenever they touched. It was also tender enough to cause her breath to catch in her throat and her stomach to freefall like she’d just base jumped. “A surprising amount actually.”
“Good.” He leaned over. “Because I’ll be careful and you’ll be watching my back. We have no reason to believe the barback saw us together in that crowd.”
It had been shoulder-to-shoulder in the room.
“Why do you think he might be scared?” she asked. “If you had to guess.”
“Could be for a lot of reasons.” If he leaned any closer, they would be within kissing range. “Like he knows why she ended up in a fiery car crash.”
“As far as we know, it was a lone vehicle accident.” She hadn’t considered this could be a murder investigation. So far, she assumed Stephanie was hiding both herself and her child from a potentially abusive relationship.
Would the father of her child have murdered her?
“Without a murder investigation, the sheriff won’t look into her text messages,” she said after taking a moment to think. A thought struck. “I’ve been going back and forth on whether she’s alive or gone but that might be wishful thinking for Rue’s sake. Do you think there’s a possibility Stephanie Cross is alive?”
“No,” Blaize said. “Although I learned a long time ago to never saynever.”
Carys let the thought sit before trying to unpack it.
All they had right now was very little information and a whole mess of speculation. Going down a trail of what-ifs with this little to go on could be counterproductive and end up getting them lost.
They needed to stick to what they knew was fact, despite how much her brain wanted to fill in the holes. She also needed to tread lightly on this case and not leave a digital or paperwork trail that could come back to bite her in the backside.
Besides, there were too many questions in this case.
With this barback, they might get answers.
Chapter Fifteen
