“Looking for me?” I said.
It took him a second to get his bearings. Then he tried to act all cool and nonchalant and menacing, which would have been more convincing if he hadn’t had a smear of maroon sauce under his nose.
“You have something of mine,” he said.
“The only way you’d know that—and know how to find me—is if you activated the tracking on it.”
He didn’t admit to anything. “It’s mine. I want it back.”
“Talbot Creative owned that phone the second you tried to take video with it. There were signs up warning you about that…if you’d come in the proper way.” I glanced out the window. “Oh, look. The cops.”
Diego blanched when he saw one of Cobb County’s finest rolling through the square. Deputy Butch—who nurtured a slight crush on me and was happy to oblige my request for a drive-by—crawled his cruiser past the shop, his buttermilk complexion shining even through the tinted glass. Diego did not bolt. He seemed to want to, though, so I gave him points for steadiness.
I propped my elbows on the tabletop, steepled my fingers. “It’s like this. I’ve got no skin in this game. But I do have access to everything you have on that phone. Pictures. Texts. If you’ve got tracking turned on—and you obviously do—I’ve got a guy who can tell me everywhere you’ve been over the last six months.”
He wiped his mouth and tried to look nonchalant. He’d gnawed the ribs down to bone and gristle, practically licked his plate clean. My stomach growled again, and I cursed under my breath. So much for intimidating.
“You know how this works,” I said. “You tell me what I want to know, I make sure you get your phone back. Eventually.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“Because it’s the only deal you’re getting.”
He came to his decision abruptly, leaned forward. “Addison’s in trouble. She has no clue how bad Nick Talbot really is. He was in some workshop she led for people in recovery, activated her savior complex big-time. I warned her about that, but she didn’t listen.”
Betsy Ann sauntered by with a sweet tea and fries for me, raised a questioning eyebrow. I nodded and she left, dropping a heavy glare on Diego as she did.
I picked up one of the still-sizzling fries. “You and Addison met at the Iowa program?”
“Yeah. She graduated before I did and moved down here for an adjunct job, started volunteering at the rehab center. We tried the long distance thing, but it didn’t work. We stayed friends, though, and swore if we ever got to L.A., we’d—”
“Wait, you and Addison were dating?”
“Dating? We were living together.” His eyebrows lowered. “If Nick told you different, he’s lying. Fucker lies about everything. Lying fucker.”
I chewed another too-hot fry and tried to think fast. This did not jibe with my previous information. Which meant that either Diego was lying, or Addison had sold Nick a fairy tale. I watched as Diego rattled the ice around in his empty glass. He didn’t look deranged today, just heartsick.
I reached for the ketchup. “Tell me how you found the base camp.”
“There’s this app. Star Track. It’s real-time, location-based.”
I knew the app. It claimed to supply notifications for specific celebrities, maps with directions to the location of said celebrities, links to every online gossip mag that existed, and an in-app search engine. It was a stalker’s virtual Swiss army knife.
“I had to find her,” he said. “Nick’s brainwashed her, just like the others.”
“The others?”
He looked frustrated. “Damn, you don’t know shit. Nick has a following. When he was in jail, when he was on trial, women wrote him. They proposed. They offered…whatever. They wanna make a bad boy good, you know what I’m saying? There’s literally hundreds of them in the Nick Talbot group.”
“That’s in Star Track?”
“Yeah. It’s how I…you know. Found him.”
So someone in the group had insider information. I made a mental note to myself: look up the Nick Talbot group. I unloaded too much ketchup on the fries and tried to still look serious. “Am I gonna find anything incriminating on that phone?”
He gave me a hangdog look. “I’ve got some pictures of Addison.”
“Pictures you took?”
“Yeah. Nothing creepy, just…you know. Her.”
“Did Addison know you were taking these pictures?”
“Some of them. I mean, we were together for almost a year.”
“But she doesn’t know about all of them.”
“No.” He looked at his lap, trying to tamp down the anger and humiliation, then raised his head. “You’re not one of them, are you?”
“One of who?”
“Nick’s people. You’re not paid to look the other way, are you?”
“I’m not paid for anything.”
He nodded, bit his bottom lip. “All right, so do what you have to do with the phone. But I had to try. Addison’s in danger. And she won’t talk to me anymore, so…I had to do something.”
His eyes were pleading. Behind the counter, Betsy Ann dumped a flat of silverware in a plastic bin, creating a racket, letting me know she was there if I needed her.
“I’ll do what I can about the phone,” I said. “But you gotta stay the hell away from Addison and Nick in the meantime. I don’t care what happens.”
“Whatever. Just make her understand. Please.”
My cell phone beeped, warning me that it was time to hit the road. I wrapped a napkin around my fries as the cruiser snaked through the square again. Deputy Butch, protecting and serving.
“I’ll do what I can,” I said.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The gym where Trey taught was old-school iron and sweat. I spotted Finn in the parking lot waiting next to her Jeep. She was back to what I was beginning to think of as her template look—jeans and tee, no makeup, hair sticking up in blondish points.
“Hey,” I said. “How’s Nick?”
“He’s at home today, resting. The doc says he’s fine.”
“Any results on the tea?”
“That’s gonna take a while.” She looked at me over her sunglasses. “You said you had Diego’s phone?”
“Yep.”
“What
