“I’m not leavingtomorrow.”
“Damn skippy.” She scratched the back of her head, glaring at me. “Can you at least finish out your current open cases?”
I rolled my eyes, knowing that had been her main concern all along. “I’d be happy to finish out my cases.”
“Can I assume there’s an email in my inbox right now?”
I pulled up my phone right then, opened my Draft folder, and hit Send. “There is now.”
“Mother. Fucker.”
Despite all of the cursing, the corner of her mouth lifted ever so slightly. “Do you even know what you’re going to do?”
“Travel,” I said, keeping it vague. “See the world.”
“What part of the world?”
Maybe, if I were lucky, the non-extradition country of Jesse’s choosing.
“I’ve never been to Europe, figured I’d start there.”
“Luckybastard.”
“They still haven’t found the body.”
Ronnie had taken to coming by my desk with the latest gossip about the Travis case, like I was her buddy instead of her direct report. I knew it was because I was leaving, and even though it weirded me out, I was glad I didn’t have to snoop for the information.
“What body?” I asked through a mouthful of burger, even though I damn well knew the answer.
“Jesse Travis’s body. The diver said the passenger window was only halfway down, but as best they can tell, he was able to make it out.”
I swallowed thickly, lowering my burger.
“Halfway down? How the fuck did he get out?” I asked, remembering how cold and haunted Jesse looked when I opened my door.
Ronnie pulled up her phone, thumbing through several screens before setting it on my desk. I gulped. There sat the empty SUV at the murky bottom of the greenish black water, lit up with powerful underwater lights, the bottom of the dam visible through the muck just a few yards away.
“That oil rig diver was able to help get the Rangers and the uncle to the surface. The uncle wasn’t in his car, but she found his body nearby. Next to another dead body.”
I turned to her, shocked. “Holy shit. Who was that?”
“Some old guy who’d gone missing last year,” shesaid, raising her brows. “God knows how many bodies are down there.”
We both shivered at the thought.
“Here,” she said, pushing her phone closer. “Clean your hands and thumb through the photos.”
I set the mangled burger on the greasy bag and grabbed a wet wipe from my desk drawer, carefully cleaning the meat juice from my hands. With the smell of chemical lemons in my nose, I picked up her phone, immediately zooming in on the murky photograph, specifically the half-open window.
Having had my hands on his body in the most intimate ways, I knew firsthand Jesse was trim, but not that trim. No wonder he was so bruised from head to toe—he had to have been desperate to get out of a gap that small.
“Holy shit,” I repeated, nausea rising.
“Yeah.” She rubbed her hands together. “The bloodhounds found Jesse’s scent on the shoreline and followed it into the woods.”
“Really,” I said evenly, glad I’d packed a go-bag.
I was pretty confident that no one suspected a connection, but my grandfather always said that if youstayedprepared, you never had togetprepared.
