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“I can shoot her a warning, if you like,” he offered. “Grab her for a conversation and let her know we’re onto her.”
I waved him down with a flick of my hand, not raising my eyes from the paperwork. “I’ll handle it.”
“Better handle it soon, because the rumour mill is whirring like fucking crazy. There’s not one kid on campus not talking about it.”
I shot him a look. “I’m well aware of the urgency.”
And I was.
It was simmering deep. Distaste at Rebecca Lane’s ignorant flouting of our confidentiality agreement was fit to burst, all the messier now my irritation with the college boy prick was spiking on top.
She was even more fucking stupid than I’d anticipated. The ignorant bitch hadn’t yet responded a single word to my text message.
I brushed it aside for the moment.
“What about the Emmerson girl’s sister?”
Lance leaned forward in his seat. “I had to dig pretty deep. Delve back through her family records and search potential links this whole county over. She was a slippery fish, that one.”
“And?” I prompted. “Did you come up gold on anything worth shit?”
“Gold isn’t quite the word I’d choose for it,” he said. “Phoebe Kate Emmerson. Five years older than her sister. The girl’s into drugs, both dealing and snorting. Page ten. Check it out.”
I flipped forward and sure enough the face that greeted me on page ten was obviously related to my dirty little prospect. It looked old. Some standard job agency snap clearly photocopied a few times over.
It didn’t matter. The similarities were clear enough. Same shapely lips. Same cheekbones. Same haunting gauntness I’d been so taken by in the moonlight.
She lived in the nearest shithole city along the coast. Her address was some upper apartment in the dregs of a seedy backstreet from the looks of it. Apartment 10c. The photo of the communal hallway spoke volumes.
Lance filled me in as I stared. “I got there at the crack of dawn, just in time to see her crawling back from whatever fucking shithole she was crawling from. Her nose was bleeding, crusty all over her top lip.”
“Drugs or assault?”
He shrugged. “Hard to call it. She was off her fucking tits though, and so was her cock of a boyfriend. Dean Woolston, his name is. Been inside for battery, theft and public disturbance a few times over. Late forties. Looks ready for the ground from the state of him.”
The picture of them on the street spoke volumes. His face was a pockmarked canvas of worthlessness, clothes fit for a fucking bonfire and nothing more.
It was the image of her that held my gaze. The similarities between the sisters were too pronounced to ignore. Her hair was greasy but similarly coloured, her skin blotchy but pale like Paige’s.
I remembered the insightful slip on Paige’s application. I’m a student on limited income, with needs. For my sister.
No fucking wonder if said sister was drugged up to the eyeballs.
“Debt?” I asked Lance and he took a breath.
“I’ll get onto finding out, but I’d imagine so. Their place is a shithole. Any cash in their bank account and they’d be long up and out of there.”
Mystery solved.
No wonder Paige was seeking a decent payday. Drug rehabilitation facilities worth shit don’t come cheap.
I dropped the paperwork down on my desk as a ping sounded from one of my contacts. It flashed up bold in the corner of my laptop screen.
Bingo!
“Get onto it,” I told Lance. “I want everything you can get on all three of them. Keep a solid eye on the sister. Put someone else onto it if you need to.”
“Will do,” he said, and got to his feet.
I waited until he was out of sight before I called up my latest piece of information. The message contained a link to Paige’s telecoms history. There was a gratuity bar looming before it let me through to the report. Greedy cunts always milked everyone dry.
I made sure I was generous enough to have them jumping to attention when I called on them next.
The report was comprehensive, everything from her call history through to her data usage and text messages. I scanned through the call log first. A few short dials that I imagined were connected to voicemail. I took a note of the number then scrolled through to text messages.
Nice to meet you in daylight, Paige Emmerson, said one from a few hours earlier. Beach boy, no doubt.
Messages to her sister followed, begging for news without a single response. Too busy snorting coke with her loser boyfriend, no doubt.
It was the ones before those that had my stomach tightening in a beat. My pulse tightened along with it as I soaked in the back and forth text details.
Please, please meet my sister before you go through with the sixty days. I really want you to hear about it first-hand before you’re all in. It would mean a lot. I won’t be able to sleep easy if you don’t.
