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Burns’s new wife works as a florist at the place where I’ve been ordering all of my flowers for Ava. As a favor to him and for all of his help, I thought I’d throw a little business Angela’s way. Ava likes flowers—and she loves the little additions I throw in—but that doesn’t explain why she would risk leaving the penthouse without telling me just to go smell some roses.
“Hang on,” I tell the cop. With Burns still on the line, I pull up the tracker app Tanner installed for me. When the address where Ava’s phone is at appears on my screen, I recognize it instantly. “She’s still there. Can you do me a favor and put her on the phone?”
“I watched her leave, but maybe she’s waiting outside for a ride. I’ll go check.
I hear the jingle of a bell, a door opening, the handcuffs on his belt jangling… and then, “I don’t see her.”
What the fuck does he mean,I don’t see her. “My app says she’s there.”
“Right, and my eyes say she isn’t.”
Asshole. Burns is the best cop on my payroll in the SPD, but he’s a fucking asshole. Hitting a button on my app, I signal it so that Ava’s phone will start ringing. It’s supposed to be used when she misplaced her phone in the penthouse, but this will work, too.
“I just made it ring,” I tell him. “Do your ears work?”
“Funny, Crewes,” mutters Burns. “Real fucking funny—hey. Wait a sec. I think I do. It’s coming from—oh.”
Oh? I don’t like ‘oh’.
As if he can read my mind, Burns breathes out, “You’re not gonna like this.”
“Where is my wife, Burns?”
“I think I found her phone.” Static as Burns shifts his. “It’s an iphone, blue case with apples all over it?”
Yeah, because she was a teacher. “Yeah. Where did you find it?”
And why isn’t Ava on the line yet?
I get the answer to that when Burns says, “In the street, just on the other side of a parked car. It’s here. She’s not.”
Each word echoes like a bullet to my brain.
In.Boom. The.Boom.Street.Boom.
It’s.Boom.Here.Boom.
She’s. Boom.
Not.
Boom.
I squeeze my phone so tightly, the glass enclosure creaks.
“Where the fuck is my wife?”
Burns doesn’t know.
And neither do I.
TWENTY
DAMIEN
AVA
Icome to with a scream. Eyes clamped shut, feeling as though I’ve been ripped out of a nightmare, I scream and I have no idea why I am.
