“Maybe, maybe not. Seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
“The battery will be dead in seconds.” She picked up a charger plugged into a port in the truck and held it up to her face, squinting at it in the dark cab. “This’ll work.”
Once she’d plugged in Brett’s phone, she folded her hands in her lap, around Wyatt’s pacifier. “I’m so scared for Wyatt. Why is that baby so important? Whoever took him can’t possibly believe Wyatt is Brett’s son, right? Brett is now dead. If those two thugs who were looking for Brett found him and killed him, what interest could they have in Wyatt? They presumably got what they wanted.”
“Let’s look at the other possibility. Wyatt is Lanier’s son and Brett was telling the truth—Jaycee and then Brett were looking to blackmail Lanier with this knowledge.”
“I can’t believe I ever trusted that man...took money from him.” She leaned her head against the window and bumped it against the glass once. “But if that’s the case, Lanier’s in the clear with both Jaycee and Brett dead. Why would he need Wyatt? Nobody else is going to blackmail him. Nobody else needs to know Wyatt is his son.”
“I don’t know what the guy is thinking.” Nash poked at the phone charging in the cup holder. “Maybe he told Brett. I think his phone is sufficiently juiced.”
Emily pinched the phone between her fingers and tapped it. “We lucked out. He doesn’t have a password.”
“Check his texts first.”
Emily touched her fingertip to the message icon and scanned the sparse numbers. “This must be a burner phone, like Jaycee’s was. None of these messages have names associated with them, just numbers, and he has no contacts stored.”
“Probably why he didn’t bother with a password. Can you figure out who he’s texting?”
“He doesn’t have many messages and not a lot of history. Either it’s a new phone or he’s been deleting them.” She swiped at a few of the messages. “These texts are pretty cryptic—nothing like ‘Let’s blackmail Lanier’ or ‘I’ll meet you at the border.’”
“Damn. Thought I’d hit the jackpot with that phone.”
“It was a good idea.” She tapped the photos, but apparently Brett hadn’t been interested in taking any pictures of his son. She scanned a few of the standard apps on the phone, her gaze tripping across an unfamiliar icon with footsteps on a blue background.
She opened the app, which launched a map with a red dot positioned on it. With her fingertips buzzing and her heart racing, she enlarged the map on the phone.
She squealed and twisted in her seat, shoving the phone in Nash’s face.
He jerked the steering wheel. “Whoa! I’m driving here.”
“You did hit the jackpot, Nash. I know exactly where Wyatt is.”
Chapter Sixteen
Nash gave Emily a quick glance from the corner of his eye. She’d taken Luna’s hippie-dippie, new age pronouncements a little too seriously. “What, you’re communing with Wyatt now and he’s sending you his location through the airwaves?”
She poked him in the arm with the phone...hard. “Look at my face. Would I be this excited without good, logical reason?”
He peeled his gaze from the dark road ahead and shifted it to her face for a peek at her glowing eyes and smile that practically reached from ear to ear. “You’re serious. What did you find on that phone? A clue?”
“Better than a clue. Remember how Brett tracked us to Tombstone?”
“Jaycee had put a GPS tracker on Wyatt’s car seat.” His fingers flexed on the steering wheel. “But we removed it and Wyatt’s not even in the same car seat.”
She tapped her head. “You’re a little slow tonight, Dillon. I’ll put it down to the late hour and the desert driving. Brett obviously thought that was a good idea because he put another tracker on the car seat from DCS.”
“You’re sure?”
“He has an app on his phone. It’s live and it’s tracking something heading up north to Phoenix.”
“Something.” His heart slowed its thudding. “How do you know it’s Wyatt’s car seat or even Wyatt?”
She twisted her mouth and studied the phone’s display. “What else would he be tracking? He used it to find us in Tombstone, and it must’ve given him the idea to do it again in case someone grabbed Wyatt—he just didn’t figure he’d be too dead to make use of it.”
“Okay, that makes sense. If the GPS is attached to the car seat, we can lose Wyatt as soon as whoever has him switches car seats.” He wagged his finger at the phone. “Can you tell where he is in Phoenix?”
“You mean, can I tell if he’s at Lanier’s home or office?”
“Exactly.”
“He’s not at Lanier’s office, at least not the one I went to. I’d have to look up his home address to see if he’s there, but if he knows the Pima County Sheriffs are looking to talk to him, I doubt he’s going to have Wyatt at his home.”
“Espinoza said Lanier was out of the country. I wonder if that’s even true. He could’ve had his office lie for him, or he lied to his office.”
“But why, why, why?” Emily pounded a fist on her knee with every why. “He could let it all go right now. I’m certainly not going to suggest DCS do a paternity test on Lanier. I don’t care whether or not he’s Wyatt’s father, and I’m certainly not interested in blackmailing him.”
“Does he know that?”
“What do you mean?” She tucked her hands between her knees. “You think he sees me as a blackmail threat? He wouldn’t have hired me in the first place if he thought that.”
“When he hired you, it was under false pretenses. The way he’s acted the past few days by not contacting you, he can’t keep up the ruse as the concerned father anymore. He realizes by now you’re not buying his original motive.”
“Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t know what he wants—and that worries me.” She ran her finger along
