“Sorry.” She hadn’t realized she’d stopped moving.
West stood in the hallway, stirring a cup of coffee and frowning. His gaze locked on Marissa’s throat.
She adjusted the hooded sweatshirt, but his eyes simply moved north and stuck to the abrasions on her cheek.
“Blake, Marissa.” He nodded. “Can I get you anything?”
“No.” She cleared her throat to sound more confident than she felt.
“All right, then let’s get started.”
* * *
BLAKE FOLLOWED WEST into the thick of the crowd where a half-dozen men and women handed him files and reports. He flipped through the slew of information looking for something to prove the man he was after was the same one who’d gotten away from him five years ago.
Marissa took a seat at the desk’s edge and watched the group. Her head moved back and forth with each new voice, following every word. Blake could practically hear the line of questions compiling for their drive home. He grimaced. Not home. Back to the hotel where they were staying because she was a victim in need of protection.
“This is everything from the traffic cams?” he asked, turning a few grainy photos toward West.
“No. Those are everything we have from the surveillance camera outside the bank. We don’t have traffic cams or face recognition software, hell, half the town still comes to the library to use the internet. We’re lucky to have those shots.”
“Right.” Blake rubbed his burning eyes. “So, we think he drives a pickup.”
A deputy nodded. “An unfamiliar pickup was spotted outside the northern forest gates around the same time Miss Lane flagged down the man who drove her here. We asked around about the truck, and when we learned it was seen on Main Street, we contacted the bank to review the footage.”
“Thanks.” Blake gave the picture a careful examination. The entire windshield was in shadow, probably the worst photo he’d ever seen. He couldn’t even see the grill from that angle, let alone a license plate.
He clenched and released a frustrated fist at his side. Marissa lifted her gaze from his hand to his eyes. She didn’t miss anything.
“Agent Garrett?” A woman in jeans and a Doctor Who T-shirt jogged up the aisle in his direction, bobbing between desks and around staring agents. “I’m Cora from tech. I came in as soon as they called. I’ve been here all night. Sorry about the...” she motioned to her outfit, then shook her head and continued. “I traced the text back to a burner phone. The phone was left on and dropped in a trash receptacle outside the national park. We recovered the phone. No prints, but it’s a really basic phone.”
“That’s not a surprise,” he said. “People don’t buy basic phones for personal use. They want bells and whistles. Criminals buy basic so they can use them for something like this.” He turned his attention back to the stack of useless intel gathered on the desk.
“Agent Garrett,” Cora continued.
He dragged his most polite expression out and waited.
“I called every store in Cade County selling phones like the one we found. Most said they’d check their inventory against the stock and let me know. The guy at the truck stop diner on Deer Run Road said he sold a phone like this yesterday at three o’clock. He remembered the time because it was the end of his shift. The man paid with cash, but the truck stop has a camera watching the register.”
Blake’s spine went rigid. A spike of hope rammed through him. “Tell me he’s sending a picture of the man who bought that phone.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How soon?”
“Anytime. He’s looking through the footage now.”
West leaned against the corner of the desk beside Blake. “Maybe take a load off until we hear something new,” he suggested, spinning an unopened bottle of water in his palm like an Old West gunslinger. “You’re so tired you can barely stand there without swaying.”
“He didn’t sleep,” Marissa tattled.
“Wait,” West said. “Why don’t you put a pin in the nap and take a shower first. Isn’t that what you had on yesterday?”
Blake snatched the bottle from West’s hand and cracked the lid open. “Thanks, I’m fine.” He took long deep pulls on the liquid, realizing then that he’d become dry as the desert.
West fanned a hand in front of his nose. “Feel free to splash some of that on you if you want to.”
Blake finished the bottle and walked away from the crowd. West followed. Blake shot a look over his shoulder, where Marissa continued to watch from her seat. “He could’ve killed her.”
“But he didn’t,” West said, not missing a beat. “She’s tough, and she’s smart, and he didn’t get her.”
Blake nodded. He’d give Marissa that. She was one of a kind. “If he had, it would’ve been on me.”
West crossed his arms and locked Blake in his steady gaze. “He didn’t, and it’s not.”
“Agent Garrett?” Cora’s voice carried through the stream of white noise.
The Garretts moved instantly toward her. “What do you have?” Blake asked.
“I just heard from the truck stop, and it looks like we’ve got a match.” She turned the large digital tablet in her hands to face them, and Marissa gasped.
“That’s him,” Marissa pointed, moving to join them in the room’s center. “That’s the man from the lake this summer.”
Chapter Five
West marched forward, holding the digital image above his head to face the other officials. His voice boomed through the instantly silent room. “This is Nash Barclay. Get his name and face on every news channel this side of the Mississippi, and we need it done now. Right now. Talk to bus terminals and the highway patrol. He might be driving an old Ford pickup, plates unknown. We want sightings only, no civilian apprehension attempts. He’s dangerous. Drive that point home.”
The room scrambled into action.
Marissa caught Blake’s sleeve in her fingertips. “It’s him?”
“It’s him,” Blake answered.
An uncomfortable mix of fear and victory beat through her. She’d hoped Blake was wrong, that some other,
