“What do you mean she’s missing?” Gamma asked. “She was fine yesterday afternoon.”
“Yeah, she was in the kitten foster center. Happy as usual.”
“Her boyfriend reporter her missing at 9:15 p.m. last night. They live together, you see, and he—well, I can’t go into much detail, but I thought you ought to know.”
“And we’re not suspects.”
“No. The circumstances are specific,” Detective Crowley said.
“Please explain what that means,” Gamma said, and held up a hand when Crowley looked ready to deny her. “Don’t tell me you can’t divulge information. This is my assistant you’re talking about. I deserve to know what’s going on.”
Detective Crowley hesitated. “Last night, at approximately 9:00 p.m., Hannah Greerson went outside to take out the trash. She didn’t return.”
“Are there any clues? Any signs of what might’ve happened to her?” I asked.
“The only information we have at the moment is that a black SUV was seen circling her home an hour before. Her neighbors noticed it.”
The black car again! Now, the NSIB and Grant couldn’t deny what was going on. They’d have to be on the lookout for the truck. That was all there was to it.
But was there a connection to Kyle? And what about Jordan’s body?
“Poor Hannah,” I said, at last.
“We’re doing everything we can to find her. Rest assured, Charlotte.” Detective Crowley patted me awkwardly on the shoulder.
“Thanks,” I said.
Detective Crowley said his goodbyes to us then left the inn. Gamma shut the door behind him, her right hand balled into a fist, knuckles white.
“This is too much,” Gamma hissed. “First Jordan and now Hannah?”
“We’ll find her,” I said. “Don’t—”
“Find whom?” Brian strode toward us, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “What did Crowley want?”
“To tell us that Hannah’s missing.” My stomach jolted saying it.
Brian’s face fell. “I’m sorry. That’s—”
“It was the black SUV again,” Gamma put in, quickly. “The one Charlotte told Grandpa about. Now, he’ll have a reason to be on the lookout for it.”
“Oh. I’ll text him.” Brian brought out his phone right away and input a series of innocuous words—all code words—that would tell Grant exactly what we’d found. He sent it off. “There. We’ll have a response soon enough. This isn’t good news, but it’s something. A lead.”
I wanted to scream, “I told you so” at the top of my lungs, but I held back. That wouldn’t improve my relationship with Brian, and it certainly wouldn’t change anything regarding the investigation or the NSIB’s objective.
A text reply came through on Brian’s phone and he lifted it, frowning.
“What?”
“It—uh… Grandpa’s responded that they have everything under control and that the SUV is not an issue.”
“Not an issue?” Gamma asked, coolly. “It was seen outside Hannah’s home an hour before she went missing. And It was witnessed circling the medical examiner’s office before Jordan’s corpse went missing. How is it not an issue?”
Brian shook his head, clearly without an answer. Even he had to be perplexed by this.
What got to me was how brazen this SUV and the person driving it had behaved. If it was Kyle, surely he would be wary of being discovered by the NSIB. But if it wasn’t him then who? Who would have the wherewithal to straight up kidnap people and steal bodies?
“I’m sorry about Hannah,” Brian said, after a beat. “But I’m sure Grandpa knows what he’s doing.” My ‘stickler for doing the right thing’ boyfriend left us, dipping out of the front of the inn rather than returning to the kitchen.
Likely, the prospect of breakfast with my angry grandmother wasn’t the most exciting.
Gamma glared after him. “Meet me downstairs after breakfast,” she said to me, then made for the kitchen and the tempting smells of frying chicken and roasting coffee.
She had a plan, and I had a feeling I knew what it was.
17
It had been a month since we’d entered the armory, and I had to admit, it felt so darn good to be back in here. With the NSIB withdrawn to a safe distance, we could enter it without risking its discovery. The rows of shelves containing ammo and tech, the two stands holding full body armor, and the casings on the wall that held guns, reminded me of what it was like to feel in control again.
My grandmother sat in front of her touchscreen desk, tapping away, intensely focused on the task at hand. “We can’t break in,” she said, “but we can tail him at the very least. Corner him and confront him. We’ll use this.” Gamma beckoned for me to join her.
I walked over to the desk.
Gamma had tapped the screen and brought up an image of a spinning syringe. “Truth serum.”
“Truth…”
“Serum, Charlotte. Truth serum. It’s designed to lower the subject’s inhibitions making them more susceptible to answering questions.”
“Yeah, I know what truth serum is, just… if we had this, why weren’t we using it before this? On people who were suspects.”
Gamma pursed her lips at me. “Charlotte, you realize that this is incredibly expensive. I’ve only got one syringe, and I’ve been saving it for an emergency. This is the emergency.”
I nodded. “You want to use it on the doctor, don’t you? The medical examiner.”
“Yes. He’s the only missing link.” Gamma lifted a hand and started ticking facts off on her fingers. “We’ve already cleared Kayla and Josephine Wart of the crime. Hannah is missing, which means she’s most likely not the killer, though she didn’t have an alibi to speak of since she went home before Jordan was last seen.”
“Yeah.”
“Jordan’s body went missing from the morgue at the medical examiner’s office, and Dr. Briggs acted suspiciously when we questioned him.”
“And called the police on us afterward,” I said.
“Precisely. I have a feeling he knows more than he’s letting on. Specifically about this black SUV he mentioned.” Gamma tapped a few buttons on the screen, and a cool female voice announced that the freezer had been unlocked.
My grandmother rolled back on her chair, rose and walked
