“Uh, totally.” Switching to a safe subject, I point out what appears to be the firing mechanism. “Can I assume that these are point and shoot?”
“Yep. It barely weighs anything but is more destructive than the rifles.” Silas pops his brows. “I have the best toys.”
Dad narrows his eyes at Sy in the rearview mirror. “Are you saying Pocket doesn’t know you took those from the armory?”
Sy answers by way of a bone-chilling grin and shows Holmes the contents of the case. They exchange a fist bump and Dad shakes his head, though he can’t seem to help his smile. “Okay, that does look like fun.”
Dad’s phone notification goes off just as he’s putting the SUVinto gear. He hands it to Holmes as he backs up. “See what Jake has to say.”
Holmes pulls up the message. “Looks like whoever took Truett pinpointed his location by hacking into a tracker already on his vehicle.”
Silas and I exchange a guilty look.
Dad is a bit more philosophical. “And now we know why we don’t use Uncle Mads’ trackers to stalk our boyfriends.” He grimaces. “Though Ryder is gonna be high-pissed that someone managed to hack it. I wouldn’t wish her digital retribution on my worst enemy.”
Ryder is Uncle Mads’ digital security specialist, and let’s just say middle age has not mellowed her. When she found out some gross older guy at Harvard tried to spike my iced coffee with a date-rape drug, she erased his entire existence.
Asshole didn’t even have a birth certificate after she was done with him.
A shiver runs through me. “Fuck.”
Dad laughs, and we head out of the garage, following the blinking light on his display, Baba’s SUV right behind us. Truett is already miles away, and I take heart when Dad puts the pedal to the metal.
Still, the gridlock on Mo-Pac won’t let us close the gap fast enough to stop my brain from spiraling, and time plus my imagination is a dangerous combination.
“Whatcha thinkin’ about, son?” Dad asks, zooming around some asshole going slow in the fast lane.
“I keep going back and forth between imagining what they’re doing to True and wondering what Brantley was thinking right before he was killed. Was he scared? Was he even aware he was about to die?”
“They’re driving too fast to be doing anything to Truett,” Dad says. “He’s probably not a very cooperative victim, I assume, so any danger he’s in at the moment hasto do with them reacting to whatever he’s throwing their way.”
Holmes then adds, “As for Brantley, they ambushed him and his detail, so whatever happened was very quick. Truett said it looked like they were trying to stage the scene. If it were our team, given his history of drug abuse, we’d have injected him with something to make it look like he OD’d. He’d have passed out pretty quickly.”
“Wimberley found an eight-ball laced with enough fentanyl to kill a rhino,” Sy says, looking out the window.
Dad looks over at Sy. “How do you know that?”
“I read the briefs.”
Dad seems moderately impressed, which is an improvement on how he usually regards Silas.
That reminds me… “I haven’t seen anything on the news. What happens if this gets out?”
“It won’t,” Dad answers with a lot of confidence.
Sy turns from the window, looking like a raptor in those sunglasses as he sends me his version of an encouraging smile. “Wimberley’s good at keeping things out of the news.”
“But what about witnesses?” I ask. “We had an all-out gunfight on a residential cul-de-sac with multiple helicopters flying overhead.”
Holmes answers this one. “Between the suppressed weapons and the fact that our rifles sound like a street sweeper to most civilian ears, there wasn’t a single call to 9-1-1.”
I hesitate to ask my next question, but I have to know. “And Brantley’s dad? Was he informed?”
“Aunt Hedy gave him the news personally,” Dad answers, looking like he’s swallowed something rancid. “For now, we’re letting him believe that he OD’d.”
As much as I hate Preston Whitaker, nobody deserves to lose their son. That bifurcated sentiment—feeling sorry for a man I despise—stays with me as the miles roll by.
One thing I know for sure is that Preston Whitaker will not take the death of his son lying down. He’s a shitty father, sure, but if he ever learns that his son was murdered, he’ll bring down an army on anyone who harms his family. Overwhelming force, no stone left unturned, destroyed beyond recognition. Hell, he wouldn’t stop there. No, he’d make it look like?—
