“What is it?”
“That’s him,” he said, pointing to a slender man wearing a baseball cap in the surveillance video. “That’s Dylan Kitts on the pier right now.”
That explained Eric’s reaction. Partially.
“Do you know him?” Tayla asked.
“No. I didn’t even know he had a cousin. I’m just telling you what the search found.”
Tayla’s mind raced with all kinds of what-ifs. “Okay, hang on. At the very least, this confirms that the guy on Gus’s video, Dylan Kitts, is also at the pier tonight. He either hired Gus’s killer or knows who did.”
“And he’s the WhiteRock director’s cousin.” Rowan sounded miserable. “Look, Tayla, I’m an IT guy. I’m very good at what I do, but I . . . I don’t know what to do with this. I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“And you can’t radio Jason. That’s what you would be doing right now, right? If Eric hadn’t taken your headset?”
Rowan looked like he was going to be sick. “Yeah.”
“What we need to know is whether or not Eric is being upfront with Jason, Leland, and Knox about this right now. If he went to the pier to cover up his cousin’s involvement, they could be in danger.”
Tayla took out her cell phone. “I could call Jason on the sat phone.”
Rowan scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, that might work. But he’s not going to be looking at it if there’s stuff going on. And I guarantee you it’s muted.”
“Might as well try.” She retrieved the piece of paper Jason gave her on the first day—wow, that felt like weeks ago—and punched in the number. It rang for what felt like forever. No one answered. She knew she shouldn’t be surprised, but it made her worry even more.
She looked at her cell again, trying to decide what to do. “Maybe I should text Jason.”
“I wouldn’t text anything about Eric on the sat phone. That phone belongs to WhiteRock. Eric might try to use the phone tonight and see the text. He’d eventually see it at some point anyway.”
“But we wouldn’t have to say we suspect Eric of anything in the text. You send the text. Just update Jason on what you found—that the guy in the baseball capis the same guy from the video. You don’t have to mention that his name is Dylan Kitts.”
Rowan shoved both hands through his hair again. “Okay, but they may already know it’s the same guy. They saw the video and they have binoculars.”
Rowan’s focus snapped back to his screen. “We have some movement.”
“What’s happening?”
“Just what we thought. The other men are back. They’re loading crates onto the boat.”
Tayla replayed Eric’s behavior over and over in her mind. He absolutely recognized The Sea Queen and his cousin, Dylan. But he pretended he didn’t.
She watched the camera feed on the laptop next to Rowan’s. She checked her watch. She prayed. She watched the screen some more. She was so focused on the screen in front of her—half-expecting something horrible to happen—that she hadn’t noticed Rowan donning his laptop headphones until he tapped her on the shoulder.
He removed his headphones, disconnected them from his laptop, and motioned for her to look at his screen. “Check this out.” He turned up the volume.
“This is one of my security camera feeds from the side parking area.” He pointed to an image on the screen. “This is from a few minutes ago. You can see Eric walking to his car. He’s talking on his cell. You can hear him when he gets closer to the camera.”
He played the clip.
She watched Eric slow his pace as he neared his car, holding his cell phone to his ear. At first, she couldn’t understand anything he said. Then, very clearly, she heard, “No, you don’t! You have no idea what you’re doing! Three of my men are watching you right now. They’re hiding in the cliffs by the pier. You need a distraction. You need to—”
He shut his car door.
“Rowan,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“I’m driving out there.”
