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“I deserve to be free. And if you can’t give me that, then the least you can do is leave me the fuck alone for a few hours.”
“Sweetheart...” Hawk implores, but I shake my head.
“I’m not your sweetheart. I’m not your anything. I’m just a girl you used to know. The sooner you realize that, the better.”
Chapter Fourteen
Evander
I frown at the screen, wondering if I fucked up somewhere. I retrace my steps, but the answer still comes up the same.
“What’s wrong?” Zig steps up beside me, staring at the information on the screen.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“Is it a lead on Avery?”
I shake my head. “Everything is a dead end so far, but I’ll keep looking. Nobody saw her check out. Nobody remembers seeing her come home after she was discharged from the hospital. No cameras caught her.” I sigh as my fingers fly over the keys once more.
“I’m still waiting on Paul to get back to me with the results for the prints he lifted, but at this rate, I’m not sure we’ll find anything useful. Whoever took her knew what they were doing.”
“If she was taken. I’m not saying I disagree with you. I’m just not willing to put all our eggs in one basket. She might have been forced to run and actively hide herself so she couldn’t be tailed.”
“I know. I feel like I’m close, but I’m missing something.”
“You’ll figure it out. You always do. Did you manage to reach Creed and Hawk yet?”
“No, and that’s what I was frowning about when you came in. The payment for their current job just hit the account.”
“Thought it wasn’t due until the job was finished.”
“It isn’t—or wasn’t—but I’ve checked it three times. It’s definitely been paid. In fact, it was paid four days ago.”
Zig shrugs. “Well, at least they paid. Makes a nice change not to have to chase someone for it.”
“True.”
“Let’s hope Creed and Hawk deliver then, because I don’t do refunds.” He slaps my back and walks away, leaving me to focus on work again.
I get a hit a little later on a rental car registered in Avery’s married name. I pull up the details and curse when I remember seeing the car parked outside the motel. I dismissed the vehicles because none were parked close to Avery’s room. Angry at myself for not thinking about it before, I call the motel and ask them to check if the car is still there.
While I wait, I shake my head at my stupidity. She came home from the hospital in an Uber, so I didn’t think about her having a car when I should have. Of course, she came home in an Uber. She went to the ER in a fucking ambulance, for Christ’s sake.
It dawns on me, then. Something else I’d missed. Standing, I stat to pace until the motel clerk comes back on the line.
“Hello, sir?”
“Is it still there?”
“It is. Is there anything—”
I hang up before he can finish and drop back down into my chair, my mind going in a million directions. Avery was shot at the diner. So, how the fuck did the rental end up back at the motel?
My fingers fly over my keyboard as I hack into the security cameras from the diner. They, like the motel, don’t have many—one on each of the entrances and exits and one that covers the parking lot. I go back to the morning of the shooting and watch it from there. I see a car pull in and watch Avery climb out. Her car is the only car in the lot for the first fifteen minutes before Creed and Hawk pull up in Creed’s car. I watch them laugh about something and head inside. Ten minutes later, another pulls up—the car containing the female shooter and her cheating boyfriend.
That reminds me, I’ll need to talk to Paul and find out if the cops did a follow-up interview with him.
My cell rings as I speed up the footage. The ambulance and police arrive and leave through the frames as I answer.
