I checked my phone as I waited. My cousin Kelsey had texted twice, just asking if I was alive and well. I responded that I was fine, but busy working a case. She didn’t need to know I only worked a few months a year these days. She’d worry. And the last thing I needed was my older cousin flying down to check on me, or worse, calling Uncle Hank so they could talk about me behind my back.
Uncle Hank wasn’t really an uncle but a cop who’d taken us under his wing when we first moved to Florida. Since Kelsey had left, Uncle Hank and Aunt Suzanne had fully infiltrated my life. I both loved it and hated it. It’s a nice feeling to have people care about you, but at the same time it feels invasive and smothering.
Headlights turned onto the road behind me and a black-and-white patrol car pulled up alongside my truck. I pulled my wallet from my bag, flashing my badge toward the officer driving. He drove onward without stopping to ask why I was dressed like a junkie and sitting in a rotting pickup at the edge of a subpar neighborhood. Guess he had better things to do.
Deciding I’d waited long enough, I tugged on a pair of nude-toned gloves, set my phone to silent, and grabbed my crossover handbag from the narrow space behind the passenger seat. Inside the bag were all the supplies I needed other than the gun which was already clipped on my waistband. The safer move would be to leave and return when he wasn’t home, but playing it safe was boring.
I slid out from the truck and jogged past several houses before ducking behind my target’s carport. Now taking my time, I walked the perimeter of the small rectangular house, keeping my distance from the windows. All the lights were off. I crept up the front porch, picking the lock with the tools from my bag. When I stepped inside, I was greeted by a low growl, only a few feet from where I stood in the pitch-black room.
I knew by the sound of the growling that the dog was large. I should’ve been scared. I suppose a normal person would be. But dogs liked me. Maybe because they sensed that I wouldn’t hurt them. Maybe it was because they were curious as to why I wasn’t afraid. Maybe it was because I carried treats. Moving cautiously, I sat cross legged on the floor and pulled a dog treat from my bag. I held the treat out, palm up, in front of me.
With my hand stretched out into the blackness, I waited for the low growling to stop and the snuffling sound to move closer. In less than a minute, the dog had taken the treat and continued to sniff me until his snout was snuffling my hair. I scratched his big block-shaped head and behind his ears. He laid a front paw on my lap, leaning his big body against my chest, nearly knocking me over as I patted him.
“Good boy,” I whispered as I slid on night vision goggles and glanced around the room.
The front room was an unkept sitting area with an old couch along one wall, stacks of empty takeout on the table, dirty socks on the floor, and a thirty-inch TV in the far corner. The next room back was a small kitchen with a hallway on the far side. Based on the stacks of paperwork and files on the kitchen table, I wouldn’t need to venture down the hallway.
I fed the large dog, a rottweiler by the looks of it through the night-vision goggles, another treat as I climbed up from the floor. He followed me over to the table where I sifted through the pictures of Evie and read the background information the man stalking her had. She grew up in Georgia which I already knew based on her faint Georgian accent. She’d moved to Miami about six months ago and took a job at the club shortly after settling. Evie lived alone in a small condo building in the better part of Little Havana. She was taking marketing classes at the community college, and based on the surveillance photos of her eating out and going to the local coffee shop, she didn’t seem to have many friends. Her living such an isolated life seemed odd. Unlike me, Evie had a friendly, outgoing personality and was quick to make people feel at ease. So where were her friends?
I picked up an application from a private investigator’s office, Spencer Investigations, which I found completely uninspiring for a PI company name. The application appeared to have been completed online using PDF field inputs. The next page was a printout of the receipt for a credit card payment. The amount paid was listed as a down payment with a hefty final payment due upon a missing person’s whereabouts.
I flipped back to the application and read the description of the missing person which fit Evie to a T, but named the person as Genevieve Lawrence. Shit. Evie wasn’t being stalked by this guy. Someone had hired him to find her. And by the looks of it, that someone had deep pockets and was very motivated, which in my book was worse.
Deep into reading the paperwork, I was startled by the ringing of a cellphone lying on the table
