Page 64 of Her Devoted HERO

“What did you tell them?” Sanchez asked.

“I told them my profile had been hacked.”

Sanchez laughed. “That must have gone over well.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“And Ms. Wright?” Sanchez prompted.

“She was the one woman I didn’t blow off. She wrote the funniest damned response. I couldn’t pass her up.”

Warren leaned forward. “Did you tell her that it was a set-up?” he asked menacingly.

Great, she’d managed to find another protector.

“Yep, I fessed up on our first date. She rolled with it. Another reason that I’m keeping her.”

Sanchez grinned. Warren looked disgruntled. Well, the man would just have to deal.

“Could you please get back to the point that Archer tapped her phone. Are you saying you have a recording of the call? Do you know where it originated?”

Dex pulled out his cell phone and prided himself on not slamming it down on the table. “You can listen to the call right now. Kenna did her best to keep him talking, but when you listen, you’ll figure out he was planning on saying everything he did.”

“He meant it to last as long as it did.” Sanchez rolled his head.

“Listen for yourself.” Dex played the recording. He was satisfied to see that both detectives let themselves show anger when Austin was threatened.

“Let me guess, when you traced the phone, it was a burner,” Warren said disgustedly.

“You got it in one,” Dex agreed. “Clint was on it when it came in. But the area he was able to triangulate it to was pretty fucking large. It was smack dab in the middle of the five, eight-oh-five and fifty-two freeways.”

“That doesn’t give us anything.” Warren slammed his binder shut.

“You listened to the recording, you heard how short it was. Could you have done better?”

Warren opened his mouth, then shut it.

“No, we couldn’t have done better,” Sanchez admitted.

Dex’s phone vibrated. Austin’s name came up on the screen. “I need to take this.”

The cops nodded.

“Yo,” he answered.

“Dex? You need to get here now.” The kid sounded wrong.

“What’s going on? Are you all right? Is your mom okay?”

“Dex! Please man.” He heard the kid swallow. He put his phone on speaker. “You gotta come to Rosalie’s. I got an e-mail. I can’t let Mom see it.” Austin’s voice stuttered. “Dex. He killed her.”

Dex didn’t think he heard him right, he was talking fast in the end.

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t watch it all. It’s a video. It came to me from school. He’s hurting her. Bad. Get here!” The last was an order. “Mom can’t see this.”

Then he choked out again. “I don’t know what to do...There was so much blood.”