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I clicked to the next video.
“This business with the Kings. Be honest with me. Are they a threat?”
“You need to talk to Dies.”
“I’m talking to you.”
I clenched my teeth. “We don’t know,” I answered honestly, doing what my father wouldn’t if only to keep anyone else from a senseless death.
My gut twisted. “We have reason to believe they may come after us.”
“How undermanned are you right now?”
“More than we should be.”
He pushed up from his knees and stood. “That’s settled then. You did the right thing, son. This conversation will stay between us. You have my word.”
I tapped the spacebar, pausing a video just as a dark colored jeep came driving up to the fork in the road. I squinted, zooming into the still frame to see a shock of blond hair catching the moonlight. I checked the timestamp. It fit.
But the footage was grainy as fuck.
Whatever ancient system this gas station was using needed upgrading fifteen goddamned years ago.
Damien asked something, but I was beyond hearing him, clicking through the footage frame by frame as the topless jeep took the turn, not toward Thorn Valley, but toward Edgewood and Lennox.
It’s him.
Holy fucking shit, it was him.
The frozen frame of his face in side profile was unmistakable. But then where was AJ?
I played the footage back a second time. A third.
On the fourth, as the Jeep bumped over a pothole in the road, I caught a glimpse of exposed skin.
I took a screengrab and moved it over to the software I’d purchased last year for cleaning up footage this shitty. I zoomed. Enhanced. Waited for the pixilation to even out.
And there she was.
Slumped over in his lap, her hair fanned over most of her face. That and the dark dress she wore concealed her almost entirely from the view of the camera.
“AJ…” I breathed, my heart pounding as my mind raced to work through what I could do with this.
This was the thread.
Now all I needed was to follow it and unravel everything. If this footage existed, there would be more. I just needed to follow the road. Every business nowadays had video surveillance for liability purposes. I just needed to go bang on every door from this point south. Follow his path south.
It would take time I didn’t have, but it was something. Finally fuckingsomething.
“Grey,” Damien pressed, and I knew it wasn’t the first time he’d tried to get my attention. “What did you find?”
I turned the screen to face him. “It’s her.”
His brows drew down as he analyzed the image. “Do you have a frame with the plate number?”
I’d already taken a screenshot of it. I brought it up and showed him. Damien nodded and pulled out his cell phone, typing something. “I’ll see if my contacts can find the owner.”
“It won’t be the guy,” I said. “He’s too smart for that.”
