Tex made a scoff of acknowledgement. A sound that echoed endlessly in Squish’s head.
“You got a picture of this girl?”
“Negative.” He’d been too busy avoiding her.
“Anything you can tell me that might help track her down? Did she say where she was from or where she went to school? Did you notice a regional accent or speech pattern? Any tattoos? Birthmarks? Did she have a favorite sport, or sports team?”
“No. Nothing.” He hadn’t realized until he’d tried to find her just how secretive she’d been. He knew nothing about the woman.
For someone who’d been so set on catching him, she’d been damn stingy with her own history. Of course, he hadn’t exactly welcomed her conversations. He hadn’t given her reason to share her background. If she’d tried, he would have shut her down hard. The less he’d known about her, the easier it had been to adhere to his hands-off policy.
“It sounds like she saw the bastards who took Lucky. Maybe she saw where they took him.”
It took a few seconds to pick out Tex’s words. They were wavering in and out of range like someone shouting into the wind.
“Yeah.” Squish swallowed hard. Finally, Tex was on the same page. Finally, there was a glimmer of hope.
“Maybe the guy who crushed the tracker was our traitor,” Tex said, an ugly edge creeping into his voice. “It fits with our theory that you boys were betrayed.”
“You still haven’t figured out who the fucktard is?” Squish asked, then winced at the accusation in his own voice.
“Not yet.” A cold front iced Tex’s voice. “Everyone—and I mean everyone—who could have accessed that data is squeaky clean. No sudden deposits in their bank or stock accounts. No offshore accounts. No suspicious new purchases. No phone records or email accounts that raise flags. No secret identities with secret accounts and credit cards. Fucking. Squeaky. Clean. Every damn one of them.”
“You’ll find him.” Squish had no doubt of that.
“You bet—ass—will.”
Tex’s voice was breaking up. A bad sign. The disjointedness wasn’t because of a bad phone connection, either. More like Squish’s synapses were on the fritz.
He needed to end the call, like now. Falling unconscious during the convo wouldn’t do him any favors.
Tex might send one of the boys over to check on him.
Thankfully, Tex signed off soon after, and then it was just him, with his icepack and the encroaching darkness. As he fell asleep, he prayed. He, who never prayed, prayed that Tex would find Mandy, and she’d lead him to Lucky. And that when they finally found him, his buddy would still be alive.
Amanda Wilde—aka Amanda Reynolds, aka Amanda Rose, aka Melissa Talbot, aka the dozen other names she’d lived under during her twenty-eight years of life—peered through the sliver of glass down at the parking lot below.
Jacob’s truck was still squatting there between the white lines like a grumpy gray hulk. Rather like its owner. Most days, Jacob shed a black cloud of habitual grumpiness.
A shiny silver Prius zipped into the space next to the truck and a bird-like figure thrust open the driver’s door and climbed out.
Shit!
It was Kathy Stertz, the biggest busybody and second biggest gossip in the condo complex.
Mandy’s heart stuttered. She hastily stepped back from the bedroom window, letting the curtain fall back into place, until it covered every inch of the glass. Hopefully Kathy had been so busy looking for a parking place, she hadn’t seen Mandy’s face in the window, or the twitching of the curtain.
This particular unit was supposed to be empty as its owner was somewhere in Seattle tending to her cancer-stricken daughter.
If Kathy saw movement at the window, she’d warp on up to the third floor and bang on the unit’s door. When no one answered, the damn woman would probably head straight to the building super.
Mandy grimaced. The super was a slimy, disgusting man. His involvement in the situation would be bad. Very bad—for Mandy. She’d repeatedly turned the man’s advances down, which had left him on the peeved side of surly when it came to her. If he caught her living here without authorization, he’d probably try to blackmail her into sleeping with him, and when she refused, he’d turn her over to the police.
And that, she couldn’t afford.
She winced at the thought of what her sisters would say if they had to bail her out of jail. And that was assuming they managed to get to her first.
Were her fingerprints still flagged? And if they were, would those old ones even match her prints of today? She’d been a child when they’d escaped, barely eight years old. Surely her childhood prints wouldn’t match her adult ones.
Chewing worriedly on her bottom lip, she stepped farther back from the window as if Kathy could see her through the curtain.
Maybe she should have taken a page from Giulia’s messed up playbook and burned the pads of her fingers until nothing but shiny scar tissue remained. Although such drastic measures seemed likely to catch notice and lead to exactly the kind of attention they were trying to avoid.
Besides, there were other ways those inhumane cockroaches from her childhood could track her down. Giulia and Kaylee had warned her about age progression facial recognition software and DNA databases during those heated arguments before she’d left the compound.
They’d also warned her that they wouldn’t race to her rescue if she got into trouble.
Of course, they’d all recognized that for the lie it was. They were family. They might argue and fight, but they’d never abandon each other. If she got caught, her sisters would drop everything to help her, no matter how pissed they were, just as she wouldn’t abandon them.
Which wasn’t necessarily a good thing, because if she were arrested, and brought those white-coated vermin back into their lives, the fall out would engulf all of them, not just her.
Maybe she should take some precautions. She quickly dragged her suitcase onto the bed and packed up the few items lying around the room. If Kathy did start pounding on the door, Mandy would slip out and flee the complex while the other woman went to collect the super.
Of course, Kathy could bypass the door pounding and go straight to the super immediately, but Mandy doubted she’d do that. She’d want to make sure Dolly hadn’t returned early. Still… maybe she should take off while she had the chance.
Except…
She glanced at the window and sighed. She wasn’t ready to abandon her quest yet and this unit had the perfect view. It looked right down on the parking lot. She could keep an eye on him from here—or at least on his truck. And stalking his truck was as good as stalking Jacob since he wouldn’t go anywhere without it.
Besides, Dolly would benefit from the unauthorized occupation of her home. Before leaving, Mandy would drop an envelope full of cash, along with a note of apology on the kitchen counter—just as she’d done at the Pattersons’ condo when she’d fled their home.
Once she was all packed and ready to take off at a moment’s notice, she edged back up to the window and parted the drapes a sliver. Kathy must have vacated the parking lot by now, and it would only take a second to check on Jacob’s truck.
It was still there, the dull gray darkening to the color of an old bruise beneath the twilight wash of the setting sun.