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But other than that small amount of information, Ames hadn’t been very helpful. The old woman knew what she was doing.
Which was so fuckin’ scary that I was still terrified.
“Where is she?” Tatum asked. “Where did your husband take her?”
The old woman, who we’d learned over the last twenty minutes was named Thelma, glared at the officer in front of her. “I’m not telling you.”
“You will,” Tatum said. “If you want me to think that you’re cooperating.”
“I’m not cooperating.” She shook her head in disgust.
“Anybody go talk to Ames’ husband?” Johnny asked curiously.
“I did,” an officer said. “He’s obviously not responsible for any of this. When I questioned him about his whereabouts, he claimed he wasn’t even at dinner with his wife.”
Everything was a complete and utter clusterfuck.
“Jesus Christ.” I groaned, rubbing my fingers over my tired eyes.
“At this point,” Tatum said to our group at large after he had an officer transport Thelma to a cruiser, “it’s best to just get eyes out there and look for the car. We have the make and model of his vehicle, the likely destination from Ames, and a description. I think that’s our only hope for now.”
That fucking sucked.
It sucked so freakin’ bad that I wanted to scream.
That wasn’t enough.
That poor little baby was probably freakin’ terrified, and there wasn’t a single damn thing any of us could do but look for her.
“Let’s go,” Sin urged, catching my hand.
And that was how we began looking for a little girl, a needle in a haystack.
CHAPTER 21
It’s already tonight? What’s next? Tomorrow?
-Blaise to Sin
BLAISE
“Someone reported seeing a car that was similar in make and model to the one we’re looking for on 1968. Since we’re closest, we’re going to head that way,” Sin said as he placed his phone back into the little holder he had for it that was sticking out of his air conditioning vent.
I looked at him curiously. “We’ve already checked out three of those. What are the odds that anyone is even helping at this point with their ‘leads?’”
Because honestly, it was getting frustrating.
A ‘black car’ is not a ‘blue car.’
An elderly white male is not a young twenty-year-old Korean dude.
Hell, the last one we’d run hadn’t even been the right gender of a child. Which was obvious in the way the little kid’s mohawked hair stood on end as he walked with his dad through Lowe’s.
He grimaced. “Anything is better than nothing at this point, in my opinion.”
Agreed. Though, it was getting disheartening. It’d been over three hours since that little girl had disappeared, and the more time that passed, the less likely it’d be that we’d find her.
However, without these leads, we’d be just driving around aimlessly.
What a mess.
“How far is 1968 from…” My breath left my body when I saw the car.
The exact make and model of the one that we were looking for.
It was stopped in a Wendy’s drive-through, and there was an elderly man driving.
“There,” I breathed, pointing.
Sin cursed and pulled his phone out of the holder, calling it in immediately.
“Closest law enforcement officer is eight minutes out,” a woman’s clear voice said. The dispatcher that’d been helping coordinate efforts from the main dispatch station all night. “Follow. Get as close as you can without drawing suspicion. Do not engage.”
So that was exactly what we did.
We followed the old man to the parking spot two away from him and watched and waited while he slowly ate a hamburger and French fries.
Sin even went in and ordered a couple of apple pies just so he could get a better look at the car in question.
He came back five minutes later with two in his hand as he closely studied the car next to us.
“Does he fit?” I asked once he got inside the cab of the truck, trying to get a better look without openly staring.
“Yes,” Sin answered instantly, carefully adjusting his cut to better lay on his shoulders once he got settled. “Pretty sure it’s him. Though I don’t see any child with him.”
My belly rolled at the news.
I hated saying what I had to say next.
“Maybe she’s in the trunk,” I whispered.
As abhorrent as the thought was, at least that would be a better alternative than her already being delivered to whatever man was buying her.
“Why is he just sitting here?” I asked curiously. “Do you think this is where he’s meeting the buyer?”
That was answered moments later when a man pulled up in an expensive-looking SUV.
“Fuck,” we both said at the same time.
That’s when the slimiest looking man I’d ever seen got out of the SUV with a grin on his disgusting face.
There was a gleam in his eyes, too, that made me want to vomit.
I almost wished that this wasn’t the kid, because a man that looked that excited about a kid being delivered to him was the purest form of evil.
