Page 88 of Bring Them Home

He looked over at her. “You didn’t expect you’d tie it to him that easily, did you? The guy makes his living on drugs and weapons.”

“We’re due for a break.”

“Not going to argue that, but sadly, we’re not that lucky. But I have no doubt Hernandez fired on Abigail himself. It was personal for him. He was the one she overheard. He had to teach her the lesson.”

“Agreed.” An epiphany was starting to edge in, just as her phone rang. “It’s Briggs,” she told Trent and answered on speaker. “Hello, is everything all right?”

“It’s fine. I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner, but I’ve been working on the digital footage we recovered from Hernandez.”

“What did you find?” she asked.

“There were ghosts of several deleted files, and I’ve been working to resurrect them.”

Tell me our luck is turning around… “So you have something?”

“Nothing yet. I’m still working on it. If I get something, I’ll call, not text.”

“Okay.”

“You bet.” With that, Briggs ended the call.

“The guy sounds exhausted,” Trent said.

“I think everyone would be with the hours he’s pulling to get this done.”

“So what now?”

A reasonable question, but one she didn’t have an answer for. “Let’s head back to Central and review everything we have. You never know, something might flag with another look.”

FORTY-FOUR

Amanda and Trent split up the two case files. He took Paul Archer, and she worked on Abigail McGee. There still wasn’t any word from the lab on the results of the blood in that room, or even an update on that blue fabric found near Paul’s body. She could follow up with CSI Blair, as Amanda heard she and Donnelly were working today, but if they had something, they would have called her. After all, they were committed to finding the Archers and locking Hernandez up for life too.

As Amanda sat looking at a photo of Abigail from the crime scene, she focused on the gunshot wound. Her earlier epiphany crystalized. She set the picture down, got on her computer, and started typing.

All they had to do was build a case against Hernandez, and they’d get a search warrant for his home. He might finally see that his power was limited and want to make a deal. A lighter sentence for information on where the Archers were. It might be the only way she could get the evil monster behind bars.

She found a slew of felony charges brought against him that made it to trial and reviewed the associated court files. After a couple of hours, pages deep into a trial from fifteen years ago, she found something. “Trent, come here.”

He joined her in her cubicle. “Success?”

“I’m not sure, but there’s this…” She pointed at her screen.

Trent leaned in to read the court’s transcript and was pulling back a few minutes later. “Oh.” He faced her, putting their noses mere inches apart. A waft from his woodsy cologne caught her off guard. But it didn’t seem she was the only one impacted by how close they were. Trent was deep-diving in her eyes.

He has to feel this too, right? She tried to free herself from the pull she felt toward him. No one was around. There was nothing standing between them except for Kelsey and Carter and the jobs they wanted to keep… their partnership. Her heart was racing. The memories of kissing Trent in the past were resurrected and breathing fresh air. Push it aside! She faced the screen. “Right, so he walked from murder charges, but he was accused of killing a man with an HK45. And they take…”

“Forty-five-caliber ammo,” they said together.

Trent cleared his throat and stood to full height. “Anything more said about the gun?”

She brought up the logged evidence and scanned through. “Just that an HK45 was recovered, but ballistics could not match it to the round in the victim. But what if there’s a clue in all of this for us? Does he prefer an HK45? Or, in the least, a gun that fires forty-five-caliber ammo?”

“I’d love to say we got Hernandez, but we’re still a long way off.”

Amanda knew he was right and slumped back in her chair. All they needed was for something to break. They all knew Hernandez was a killer, that he’d either disposed of the Archers’ bodies or he was keeping them alive and captive somewhere. The latter preferred, the former more likely.

“Every minute that goes by…” Trent snapped his mouth shut.