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“Can I talk to you alone?” Chad asked.
“What?” Ally snapped. “Why? He’s a sick bastard, Chad, if you think he’s going to be any help to us, you’re wrong.”
Chad didn’t reply.
The DI lowered his voice to a murmur. “Ally, can you wait outside the door?”
“No. That’s not happening.”
“DS Coulson. Outside.”
Chad widened his eyes at his blunt delivery. He clutched the phone harder as he heard the screech of a chair and the slam of a door.
“She’s gone. What is it Chad?” The DI said.
“I want your permission to visit Vincent.”
“What?”
“Shawn is in danger, and that’s on me.”
“No, it isn’t—”
“I didn’t wait for Tate to come home, I asked Eleanor to show me his bedroom, and now he knows we’re on to him. I might have forced him into doing something drastic. And if he drives Shawn off somewhere and…” Chad didn’t finish. “I need to know I did everything I could to find him.”
“What do you hope to get out of Vincent Whitehall?”
“We know Tate’s been visiting him, and according to his mother, they’ve struck up some kind of bond, at least from Tate’s point of view. If Tate’s been getting these letters, he must’ve been sending some, too.”
“You’re proposing?”
“You call Wiltknot, and set up a visit with Vincent and me while officers search his cell for Tate’s letters. If Tate runs, there might be something in the letters that’ll tell us where he’s running to.”
“You’ve been suspended…”
“You’re going to have your work cut out trying to find Tate, and bagging and tagging evidence from his house. And we know his method is quick and he dumps the body even quicker. This is just another avenue, it might lead to nothing, or it might help us understand Tate’s motives and give us a clue of where he might go.”
“I could send another officer—”
“I’m not too far from Wiltknot.”
The DI let loose a weary sigh. “Are you up for this, Chad?”
He tightened his hold on the phone. “Yes. I am.”
Chapter Eighteen
Vincent Whitehall wasn’t the first serial killer Chad was going to speak to—not by a long shot—hell, he lived with Romeo and had gotten used to the occasional remark that lacked all empathy, the line said for shock value.
He suspected Romeo did it on purpose to drink in his reaction for a thrill.
Serial killers were his prize, his opponent, but Vincent Whitehall was already convicted, he’d already come up against the justice system and lost.
Chad shouldn’t have felt nervous when he pulled up outside Wiltknot, but it crept into his veins. Being around Keeley had left him hypervigilant about his nervous tics.
Fast heart rate, a flash of heat in his skin, curled toes in his shoes.
The sight of razor wire and the clunk of the gate was enough to make Chad doubt himself. The DI had asked if he was up for it, and he replied with a valiant yes, but confronted with the prison, his confidence vanished.
