AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A lazy grin lifted his mouth. “They go to the school to pick up their kid.”
Or he’d looked up their residence. Not exactly giving me the warm fuzzies. That and the fact that he’d managed to find out so much private information within minutes by texting someone.
“We can drive by the LaRues’ house, but other than peeking in their garage windows—presuming they have any—we won’t know if they took Eddie’s Jeep.”
His eyes darkened, his face looking even more intimidating swathed in shadows. “Leave that to me.”
I put a hand on my hip. “You think I’m going to let you go rogue on this unsuspecting family?”
“Who the hell said I was going rogue?” he demanded. “I’ll make some calls. Do a little snooping.”
“I don’t like the sound of this.”
“Do you want to go over to the LaRues’, who I’m sure live in a nice, respectable neighborhood, and skulk around the house peeking in windows?” He gave me look of pity. “I’m sure Chief Larson would love any reason to stick you behind bars.”
“Um…I could say the same about you.”
He laughed. “Just leave it to me. Let’s go.”
My heart sunk as we headed out the front door. Eddie was my best possible source of a lead, and if he was truly missing or dead…
Malcolm made a half-hearted attempt to close the front door. As I descended the front steps, tugging off my gloves, I realized I needed to do a more thorough investigation of the break-in.
“I’m checking the back,” I called out as I walked across the driveway and turned on my phone’s flashlight again, stuffing the gloves into my left pocket. Since the grass was about eight inches tall, I could see where I’d trampled it to get to the side door of the garage, but I could see another set of footprints swinging wide of the house. Why hadn’t I thought to look?
Damn, I was getting sloppy.
I didn’t want to add more prints, and the light from my phone wasn’t cutting it, so I called out to Malcolm to bring his flashlight.
“What did you find?” he asked, holding it out as he joined me.
“Footprints.” I flicked the light back on and pointed out the ones close to the house. “These are mine.” I swung the beam over several feet. “Those are someone else’s.” Some of the imprints were pointed toward the house but others were smashed. Sections of the grass looked trampled by something that had been dragged.
“I think they wrapped him up in something,” I said, my heart sinking, I spun around and headed back inside the house.
I started searching the hardwood floor in the living room. “Dammit,” I exclaimed in frustration. “He was such a neat freak I don’t see any signs of a rug.”
His voice was hard. “You think they rolled him up in a rug?”
“Maybe.” I headed to the back door and started to pull a fresh glove out of my pocket.
Malcolm reached around me with the cloth he’d stuffed into his own pocket and grabbed the doorknob and turned it.
“Unlocked,” I muttered under my breath.
“Fucking amateurs.”
“Could be a good thing in this instance.” Trying not to crunch the glass on the floor, I headed out the doorway and down the two concrete steps onto the patio. The yard was small, about twenty feet deep before it shifted into woods. I swung the flashlight to the right of the patio, looking for the footprints.
A clear set of prints could be seen running close to the house from the corner, heading toward the patio. Based on the size, I guessed them to belong to a man wearing dress shoes.
“Bingo.”
“What?” he asked behind me.
“Male dress shoes or loafers.” I pointed to the prints.
“How can you tell?”
