“What’s your instinct telling you?” he asked while I listened to the click-click of his keyboard over the connection.
“John Clark,” I spit. The name tasted dirty in my mouth.
“Then I’ll dig into him first.”
“Call me in an hour to check in. And don’t forget to run Paisley’s credit cards and check her phone history.” I could practically hear Benji roll his eyes. That was all pretty standard stuff, and he probably didn’t need me to tell him to do it. But I wasn’t taking anything for granted, and lucky for me, a prospect’s job was to shut up and do whatever a patch told them to do.
“Sure, man,” he agreed, doing a decent job of keeping his annoyance out of his tone.
I hung up and dropped into a wooden chair with a plastic-covered cushion and back. It would take my brothers at least four hours on their bikes, and there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d be able to sit around and wait that long. Besides, if I didn’t stay busy, I was just going to get angrier over the fact that Paisley hadn’t contacted me when she realized she was in trouble.
After getting around the hotel’s firewalls, I did a little magic that would keep me from leaving any evidence trails wherever I went digging. The first place I broke into was the prison server where they housed the records.
When we were done scaring the living shit out of John Clark, I’d known we couldn’t leave the innocent girl he’d had put away rot in prison. She was only guilty of dating a fucking douche, who turned out to be a murderer.
So, I’d done what I do best and searched every nook and cranny of the internet until I found the information I needed to get her released. John had tried to delete everything, but it’s almost impossible to truly wipe anything out of cyberspace. I’d gathered up as much evidence as I could find—holding up my end of the bargain and leaving John Clark out of it—and sent it to the District Attorney’s office
The records confirmed that she’d been released a few days ago. It wasn’t like she knew there’d been a suppressed witness, so I was almost positive she wasn’t the one who’d sent Paisley on the run. Still, I shot off a text to Benji to look into Sarah’s activities since she was freed.
Scouring traffic cams in the area wasn’t a fast or easy job, and I was so engrossed in it that I didn’t notice the time until a hard rap on the hotel room door got my attention. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure who it was, and considering what I was up to was illegal, I shut off the displays on my computers and stalked over to the door rather than just yelling for them to enter. When I swung it open, Dax, our sergeant at arms, and enforcers, Dom and Nova, stood outside looking like a mother’s worst nightmare. All three of them were badass motherfuckers, and I was damn glad to have them by my side.
I stepped back to allow them in, then shut the door behind them and returned to the table to get back to the surveillance cams.
“What do you know?” Dom asked.
I filled them in on everything I’d learned. My only interruption during the time alone had been a couple of texts from Benji about John Clark’s recent activities, which seemed to revolve around a local gang who ran coke. And not because he was busting them. But he hadn’t found a trace of Paisley. I was trying not to panic, but the longer we went without finding her, the bigger chance that she was in the wind and lost to me.
The guys used the facilities and ordered some food while I continued to search. Finally, I hit pay dirt. I’d missed it on the surveillance cam in Paisley’s parking lot because John was driving a different car, one that wasn’t registered to him or a rental. He’d also lost some weight, and his hair had a hell of a lot more gray than the last time I saw him. He’d shown up at Paisley’s a few hours before I’d come to check on her. He hadn’t stayed long, and he’d looked fucking pissed when he stalked out to his car. At least he hadn’t been dragging my girl along with him.
I scoured the lot for Paisley’s little silver coup, but as I’d thought, it was nowhere to be seen all night. If she’d left in her own car, it had to have been parked somewhere else. There were a few spots along the road on the side of the building, but there were no cameras that covered that small area.
I’d checked the footage at most of the local gas stations, but there was a mom-and-pop shop—the Penny Station—a couple of blocks away that had a single pump and a small convenience store. Unsurprisingly, they had a dinosaur of a security system. “Who the fuck still uses videotapes?” I muttered. It was brilliant in one way because they were unhackable. But I highly doubted that they were using them in a strategy for security. My guess was they were just old as dirt.
There was a laundromat across the street that had a camera, though, and I scanned through it as quickly as I could. About two hours after John had departed her building, Paisley’s car had rolled into the Penny Station. She’d filled her car and gone inside for approximately seven minutes, then returned to her car and headed north on the highway.
Now that I had at least a time and direction, it was easier to follow her through the traffic cams. Eventually, she slowed down and turned into
