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“What did you find, Perez?”
The officer placed the paper on the desk, the ink not having even dried yet from the printer. There was a grainy photo in the center with an address typed in bold underneath it. “We tracked down the car.”
The sheriff grabbed the photo from her desk and gave it a once-over before handing it to me, her fingers flying across the keyboard. The picture certainly showed the same sun-pocked Honda that the video showed. In fact, it was the same Honda that my neighbor had described seeing by my house at the time of the break-in. It had been parked in a driveway full of run-down cars in various states of disrepair. A tower of spare wheels and a cluster of car parts sat next to a tarp that was likely used to cover the car.
“This is in the Blades,” I said, not needing to read the address to figure that out. The barbed wire fence and iron rods over the dirty windows already gave it away. “Do we know who lives here?”
Sheriff Mosley clicked her tongue. “Pulling that up—it was bought by an investor a year ago and left untouched.”
“Who’s the investor?” I asked.
“A company registered offshore. Looks like a shell company.” She looked up at her officer and dismissed him with a smile. “All right, thank you, we’ve got it from here.” She reached for her walkie, and I knew what her next move would be. In minutes, the place would be swarming with police, every inch of the house being searched.
“Wait,” I said. Mosley stopped, the walkie-talkie just a couple of inches away from her mouth. “Give me a fifteen-minute lead, Sheriff. If an entire army of cops shows up, they might end up either bolting or barricading themselves inside. Let me go in first. This could be the biggest lead we’ve ever gotten on the Pegasus case. I can’t let it go up in smoke.”
She considered me for a brief moment with her blade-sharp amber-brown eyes. I could see her weighing the options—weighing her trust in me.
“Fine,” she said. “Fifteen minutes and that’s it. Hurry.”
I got up as if my seat had caught fire. With the address in hand, I bolted out of the office and through the still empty police station. This was huge—this could be the break we needed. We could stop this terror and bring some justice to the victims already taken. The Pegasus had gotten sloppy, and his trail was laid out as if he’d dropped the bread crumbs himself.
A commotion erupted through the front doors. To my surprise, Colton Majors was being dragged in by two officers, looking completely fucked up. His face was swollen, and dried blood was caked across his lips and chin. He glared at me, and his face turned even redder.
“Damn, I wonder how the other guy came out of that.”
“Just fine.” Jason stood in the entranceway, blood on his shirt and knuckles but his face only sporting a few scratches and a cocky little smile. “Juuust fine.”
21
JASON QUILL
Bumping into Matthew was a pleasant surprise. I thought he’d be done talking to the sheriff by now. Colton was dragged past him and thrown inside of a booking cell, where two other rough-looking guys started to circle him like sharks smelling the blood coming from his likely broken nose. I explained to Matt what happened at the Library before he gave me a rundown on what they’d uncovered here.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked, completely shocked. “You’ve got a location?”
“Yes,” Matt said. He jingled the car keys in his pocket. “And we’ve only got fifteen minutes to search it ourselves before it becomes swarmed with police officers.”
“What the hell are we waiting for then?”
“I was waiting for you, duh.” Matt shot me a wink and grabbed my hand. “Ready to go catch us a Pegasus?”
My heart rate spiked and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. This was it. The moment we’ve been waiting for, the hunt was finally coming to an end. Matt and I had a chance to unmask the monster that had been terrorizing this community for months now.
“Let’s go,” I said, getting the words past my dry-ass mouth. I rarely ever got nervous working a case, but the stakes of this were undeniably high. There was very little room for error. My hand instinctively went over my concealed carry as we walked out of the station and straight to Matt’s car.
As we got in, Matt pulling out of the parking spot with the tires screeching, I was thrown back to the old days, when Matt and I did whatever we had to if it meant closing a case. We’d speed through the streets, we’d storm warehouses with very little back-up, we’d go deep undercover together and bury ourselves right in the center of enemy territory, all so that we could keep our streak going.
