Page 210 of Midnight Curfew

He could’ve alerted my father. He’s spent enough time here to get acquainted—and seduced—by the St. Carmen way of life.

Anything is possible.

But I doubt it. I wouldn’t get any joy out of seeing a Jaeger turn on their family.

My father paces back and forth. “Where is it?” he barks at me.

I stand next to the wall, Anna-Katherine just behind me as the officers loom behind their counter, frozen.

I know it’s not Grady. He got the truck for me and could’ve put a tracker in it. My father would know where it was.

It was a gamble to trust Grady, but I think he’s had enough of my father’s bullying. As long as his hefty tips keep coming in, he doesn’t care who they’re from.

“You said it was here,” my father addresses me.

“I lied.”

Anna-Katherine shifts behind me, and I see his eyes flash to her. I steel my body, ready to move if I have to.

He walks away, drifting around the lobby, and I glance back at my sister, seeing her fist gripping Dallas’s pocketknife hooked to her belt loop.

Reaching around, I press my finger under her chin, lifting it till her eyes meet mine.

“You helped him,” my father states clearly. “Someone here helped him. He would’ve needed cops to keep the Jaegers from killing him.”

“We don’t have the items,” Grady assures him.

“Who does?”

“We don’t know.”

“It was loaded onto a truck, and he took the truck.”

I dart my glare to Elijah Fabre. And that’s who’s reporting to my father.

They all know I took the truck and hid it, but he’s being extra helpful, isn’t he?

I’m having him fired when this is all over.

“Then bring up the street camera footage,” my father says.

They move as a group, Grady logging into a computer, Townsend on another as they scan the footage from last Friday night.

“You know I really have to hand it to that family.” My father pushes back his jacket and slides his hands into his pants pockets. “Sitting on top of that kind of leverage, and what do they do with it?” he gripes. “Nothing.”

They didn’t do nothing. They just didn’t build a hotel like he would’ve. There’s more security in no one knowing your hand.

“That entire community never had what it took to thrive,” he keeps going as they search. “All the more reason to clean them out and get them the fuck off the land. Sitting on prime real estate and what are they doing? Squatting.”

Reaching behind me, I take Anna-Katherine’s hand, feeling her squeeze mine.

“You see here?” Grady calls out.

My father stalks over to the counter as the officer twists the monitor around.

From here, I observe several street views, cars moving in black and white.

“He takes the truck from us.” Grady points from one view to another. “Travels down Glades Avenue, and that’s as far as our surveillance goes.”