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Cassie rolled her eyes. Of course, a tattoo like that would stick out to a te
enage boy.
“Anything else?” Harris asked.
“No.” Armando sounded impatient now. “Can you please drop me off? If they figure out I talked, they’ll kill me.”
“You don’t know anything,” Harris reassured him. “I’m sure they’d be a lot worse to us than to you.”
The idea didn’t comfort Cassie, but she kept her mouth shut as she turned the next corner.
“Still—”
“One last question,” Harris said. “Where’s the truck?”
Cassie’s gaze flicked back to the mirror, and she saw Armando warring with himself.
“I can’t—”
“You need to tell us.” Harris’s voice was low now. Sincere. “It’s important. One of our friends, he—” She stuttered to a stop, then took a deep breath before she continued. “He was murdered, and we think it has something to do with that jewelry store. No reason to get you in trouble if you weren’t responsible. We just want to know why someone would want him dead. He was a good person, Armando, and he didn’t deserve to die.”
Something in Harris’s voice must’ve hit a nerve with Armando because a few seconds later, he was rattling off an address, and Harris punched it into her phone. It was perfect timing, too, because they had pulled into the Carreras’ driveway.
Armando shrunk down in his seat. Mrs. Carrera was already standing in the doorway, with twin looks of relief and fury warring on her face. “She’s going to kill me.”
Cassie turned off the child lock, and Harris leaned across Armando to push open his door. “I’d start begging for forgiveness, then.”
“You said you would take me wherever I wanted to go!”
“No.” Harris wore her best impression of a pre-school teacher handing out a tough lesson. “I said we’d take you wherever you needed to go.”
20
As suspected, Bob Sherman’s curiosity got the better of him. After Zbirak sent the text message with the image link, it only took the man another half an hour before he opened it. He proceeded to reload it three more times when the image of his mysterious package wouldn’t populate. It was more than enough for Zbirak to infiltrate the man’s phone and learn anything and everything about him and his movements around the city.
First, Zbirak connected the phone’s GPS location to his computer. Now, he could see exactly where Bob was and predict where he would go next. Then Zbirak logged into the man’s calendar. So many people thought technology was their saving grace.
It was only when Zbirak scrolled through Bob Sherman’s contacts that his plan started to form. It was too easy, given all the information Bob thought was safe for the keeping. But easy was good. Easy was smart. There had been too many mistakes so far, and it was time for Zbirak to correct them all.
If Bob Sherman knew where Rose was, Zbirak was about to find out.
The first order of the day was to ditch his current car for a clean one. Despite Chicago’s size and the unlikeliness of getting caught, Zbirak thought it’d be better not to take any chances. He used one of his many forms of identification, as well as a clean credit card, to rent a car for the week—a sleek black Jeep Cherokee that smelled like pine trees. As far as rentals went, he’d had far worse.
The next stop was downtown, around where Bob Sherman worked. It was a large building with the words Madison Investment Co. on the front in gold letters. It was a bit flashy for Zbirak’s taste, but Bob had done well at the company over the years, and he seemed happy. At least, as happy as one could be, working for a heartless corporate monster.
In fact, today was a big day for Bob, and Zbirak had to admit it couldn’t have worked out any better. He liked the phrase regression to the mean. It made him feel better about the future when everything else had gone to shit. Rose’s escape had been unfortunate, but the universe had to balance itself out sooner or later. And it looked like today would be his lucky day.
Bob had an important meeting at three o’clock in which he would get promoted. It had not taken long for Zbirak to find his way into the company’s email system to confirm that, yes, Bob would receive good news today. Text messages between him and his wife confirmed he was hopeful, albeit nervous, and that no, he would not forget his son had a play at six o’clock that evening.
Little Georgie would be portraying the donkey in the annual Christmas Nativity play. It was a role for the ages, he’d said. Their son’s big break. Bob would be there, camera in hand, no matter what.
Zbirak hoped that was true, for Georgie’s sake, more than Bob’s, but he had a feeling the rest of the evening would be spent in far less glamorous conditions. Then again, that was up to Bob.
Street parking was a nightmare, but Zbirak had an ace up his sleeve. He’d used his access to Bob’s emails to print himself a pass for the parking garage underneath the building. After that, it was just a game of patience as he found which spot Bob had taken that day. The area had filled up fast, but Zbirak managed to find one across from the man’s little navy-blue Hyundai Sonata.
An hour later, Bob sent off texts to his wife, his brother-in-law, and half a dozen friends. They all responded within a matter of minutes, congratulating him on his hard work. His wife was particularly graphic in how they would celebrate later that evening, and Zbirak gave them a few moments of privacy before he looked for any relevant information among the filth.
Then he went back to the emails. Publicly, many of Bob’s coworkers sent him congratulatory messages. Privately, several of them fumed at having been passed over for the promotion. Zbirak wondered if they would feel guilty for their jealousy and greed if Bob never returned to work. Once the police gained access to the emails, would any of them be suspects?
