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Of course, according to Jericho’s report, Buckner was rich so he would likely hire minions for that sort of thing. Still, he’d personally met with Gavin. They had proof of that with a photo, so maybe Buckner had done hands on with the explosive device as well.
Sanchez’s phone rang, and he stepped aside to take the call. Bree was about to walk to the CSIs to talk to them, but Davy stopped her.
“Let me see Buckner’s picture again,” Davy said.
Surprised, she studied him as she brought it up. “You think you might know him?”
Davy shrugged, took her phone and zoomed in on the face. “I’m not sure. The bald head was throwing me off, but he sort of resembles some guy I saw with Tessa.”
Rafe’s head whipped up, and his gaze zoomed in on Davy. Bree didn’t miss the look in his eyes. Not jealousy. At least she didn’t think it was. Or maybe that was wishful thinking.
“Sort of resembles,” Davy emphasized. He stopped, sighed. And cursed. “Look, it might be him.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “Please tell me you knew that Tessa was seeing other men after you went off to college.”
“I knew,” Rafe confirmed without hesitating even a second. “You think she saw Buckner?”
“Or someone who resembles him,” Davy said, the frustration edging his voice. “Hell, Rafe. It’s been nearly twenty years, and after you left, Tessa saw lots of men.”
“Did sheseeyou?” Bree asked.
Davy’s hesitation said it all, but she waited for the verbal confirmation. “Once. Just once,” he repeated, shifting back to Rafe. “And it wasn’t planned or anything.” He paused again and did more cursing. “Look, Tessa got into some dangerous shit.She’d go to bars, drink too much, and pick up strangers for sex. Did you know about that?” he asked, directing the question to Rafe.
“I heard some gossip. I never confronted Tessa about it because it was pretty clear to me then that we weren’t going to stay a couple.”
That seemed to level Davy out some. “All right.” He repeated that several times. “Okay, so one night I was in a bar in San Antonio, and I saw her making out with this guy. He got rough with her, was pushing her around, and I stepped in. Long story short, I ended up getting her out of there. She didn’t want to go home and face her dad, so we went to my place. And we had sex,” he tacked onto that in a mutter.
“Was the man she was with possibly Buckner?” Rafe asked. Again, he didn’t seem affected by all this personal garbage he was hearing about Tessa.
“No. I’m sure of that. Nothing about Buckner matches any of the description I remember about that guy in the bar. But I was at a party about six months later, and I saw her with a man who could have been Buckner. With hair,” he emphasized. “He definitely wasn’t bald and not quite so bulky looking as he is in the picture.”
A person’s appearance could change a lot in eighteen years, especially since Buckner would have only been in his early twenties back then.
“Six months later,” Rafe muttered, taking out his phone. “How soon was this before Tessa disappeared?”
Davy’s forehead bunched up. “Not long. Maybe a month or two.” He shifted to Bree. “That could be in the statement that I gave your dad when he investigated Tessa leaving. I think I mentioned the last time I saw her was at a party and that she was with some guy. I might have even given a description of him.”
Both Rafe and she got to work. Her, texting Millie to have her pull up those old files. Rafe was sending a text, too, probably to Ruby or someone else on his team. Maybe one of them would be able to find some proof that Buckner had indeed known Tessa. That way, it would free up Rafe and her to do the leg work, such as tracking down Buckner for an interview and possible arrest.
In her mind, he’d just moved up from person of interest to a solid suspect.
“I’m going to call Detective Malley at SAPD and ask him if they can do a check on Buckner,” Bree said once Rafe had finished his text. “I don’t want him to rabbit on us and fly off to some country where he can’t be extradited.”
She turned to say her goodbyes to Davy and Sanchez, who was still on the phone, but the sound of an engine stopped her. Bree looked up the road and saw the minivan speeding toward them.
Emphasis on speeding.
The driver was going way too fast, especially for such a narrow road, and it wasn’t a vehicle Bree recognized. Still, there were a lot of investigators in and out of the scene, and for a moment, she considered it could be one of them.
But only for a moment.
The van crashed into the back of the cruiser, not wrecking either the van or the cruiser but hitting it hard enough to make a loud noise. It seemed in the same motion, a tall blonde woman bolted from the driver’s side. She immediately lifted a handgun.
And fired at them.
The shot blasted through the air, and the woman ducked back behind the van, using it as cover while she sent another bullet their way.
Rafe took hold of Bree, pulling her to the ground, but she had already been heading in that direction anyway. She hithard and felt the impact in every bruise she’d gotten from the explosion.
A third shot blasted into the ground just inches from Bree’s head, and a fresh round of pain knifed through her. It took her a moment to realize she hadn’t been hit by a bullet but rather a small rock that the bullet had kicked up. It’d slammed into her forehead.
