So now Devon and I are on the offensive.
I knew Mr. Smith had more evidence against me, but I didn’t want towait until I was sitting across from those detectives to find out what it was, so I’m forcing him to burn it now. He thinks he’s going to scare me by sharing the rest of what he has on me with the police, but I’m glad I’m flushing it out while I can still do something about it. While I still have a chance to run if I need to.
“How soon before you have Mr. Smith identified?” I ask.
The detour to Oxford had three purposes. First, I wanted to look a bit unhinged. Wanted Mr. Smith to feel like I was out of control and worry about where I would go next. It’s harder to anticipate a person’s next move when they are acting erratically.
Second, we needed to determine how clients get in touch with him. I knew Coach Mitch would only have one person to turn to when I came knocking.Hello, King Harvest.
And lastly, we still don’t have Mr. Smith’s true identity, and we need that more than anything else. By discovering the fan site and Mr. Smith’s username, Devon is backing his way through the system, hoping to find something that will lead us to him.
“I’m close,” is all he says and I don’t push for more.
He pulls out the handwritten pages I left for him under the Twinkies yesterday. “It’s not your fault he killed the woman and James.”
I nod even though I should have known he’d go to those lengths and I should have said more to her that night before she left. Warned her in some way.
“You still think we should bail?”
He takes in a deep breath then lets it out while his eyes scan my face. “I’d rather bail and regroup than continue down a path that leads to you either being thrown in jail or killed.”
I’m shaking my head before he finishes. “Bailing now doesn’t save me from either of those options.”
The ding from the computer behind him interrupts whatever he was going to say. An alert has him changing the screen to show he’s finally gotten into the Atlanta PD system.
“I’ll pull up the file on Amy Holder and we can see what they’ve got.” A few images fill the screen, and Devon says, “According to the dates of these entries, these images were uploaded a month before you got to Lake Forbing, so they have to be the ones that supported the material witness warrant.”
We both move closer to the screen to get a better look.
“This pic of you dragging Amy from the car is not your finest moment,” he says.
“It couldn’t be helped.”
He continues to click through the images. “You do a really good job of angling yourself away from the camera. Did you know where your shadow was?”
George is rarely the one who follows me around during jobs unless it’s a particularly important one like when I was on my own for the first time for the Coach Mitch job. Being my shadow has a lot of down time and I’m sure he’s got more important things to do. Most times I can pick out who’s watching me, but other times, like that night, I couldn’t. It was too dark to see anything farther than three feet away.
Shaking my head, I say, “No. I mean, in most of these situations, I had a good guess of where they would be... where I would be if I was the one watching.”
“Okay, here we go. New images were just added to her file, so let’s seewhat Smith sent in. You must have really pissed him off. He didn’t waste any time.”
The note attached to the pics makes it look like it was sent by a detective from another department who stumbled on this critical piece of evidence while investigating another case. And while Devon could probably wipe it from their server right now, Mr. Smith would just resend it later. Best to leave it in play.
With a few keystrokes, we can see the latest piece of evidence against me.
It’s a video.
He pushes play and there I am.
Chapter 21
Present Day
It’s late afternoon when I pull into the motel parking lot. I see Ryan pacing back and forth in front of the open window of our room, phone to his ear. He ends his call then steps outside as soon as I’m parked.
Before I can shut off the engine, Ryan is at the car door.
“I kept trying to call you.” I can tell he’s agitated I ghosted him all day.
