She stops outside the door, displeasure on her face. “I’m not waiting in the closet.”
“It’s our only private room,” I say.
This woman isimpossibleto please, so I take her upstairs where Jackson is trying to sort things. He’s really so sexy when he works.
“Jackson, Detective Patel wishes to speak to us. I think she just likes to hear our voices.”
“That is definitely what it is,” she says dryly as she looks around before leaning against the wall. “Can I record our conversation?”
“So… if I were to sing a ballad, you’d have it in your notes for all time?” I ask.
“You can record us and Leland likely won’t sing,” Jackson says, which is rather disappointing if you ask me… oddly enough, no one does.
After going through the events of the night Cam was taken, she hits us with a real kicker. “Do you know Teo Barlow?”
Before Jackson can fuck this up with his inability to calmly lie, I ask, “You think he could have been a client here? I can shoot the name down to Cassel to check. We might not look like it, but we do keep good records of everyone who walks through that door. We don’t want our PI licenses revoked.” You know… the licenses we illegally acquired.
“I doubt he’s a client. He’s an influential man in the tech industry. His father Raul is a billionaire.”
“Oh, then I don’t think so, but we’ll still look.”
“One thing that’s a bit off topic… This Lucas man, I’ve looked into him. Supposedly, before he was incarcerated, he was a very influential man who dealt with some pretty dark characters. I mean, Lucas himself is a… very interesting character, yeah? So out of curiosity, I asked him if he’d ever had any interactions with Barlow’s business. Not the public side, but the side that he keeps hidden from the police.”
“What does he do?” I ask, irritated she drew Lucas into this. Can’t Lucas choke to death already?
Patel just smiles. “The night Cam went missing, you picked him up from the location he called from?”
“Yes,” I say, noticing she just keeps jumping around. She wants to make me mess up. First, she tries to fluster me by bringing Lucas into the mix, knowing that I hate the man. Then she wants me to recite a story I made up, hoping to make me fumble by throwing out random information to see if I can stay on top of my story.
“And you never went to the Barlow residence? Can I look at the GPS on both of your phones? Just for fun.”
“You have a strange way of having fun,” I comment. “Fun for me is a Friday night with me in a lawn chair parked in front of my fence that has my husband sitting on top. Best entertainment around.”
Jackson cocks his head. “I’m sorry, why do you want our phones? You think we went to this Barlow residence? Was it near where we picked Cam up? I mean, we were quite lost, so it’s possible we turned around in the wrong driveway.”
“Teo Barlow’s residence is two hours north of where you picked Cam up,” she says.
“Did something happen there?” I ask.
Patel just stares at me. She doesn’t want to believe our shit.
“Cassel, look up Teo Barlow!” I shout.
“ON IT!” he yells back.
I pull my phone out and pass it over so she can examine away. “I give you permission to look at it here, but not permission to take it with you. I need it, especially with everything that’s going on.” Does she really think I’m so sloppy? I evaded the police or anyone even knowing who I was for so many years by not being careless. “The van is older, it doesn’t have a GPS system built into it, but you’re free to look it over. I’m not sure what you think we’re involved in or why?”
Cassel peeks up the stairs. “Oh shit. It says that there were multiple people found dead there, including Teo Barlow.”
I pretend to be surprised. “You think I shot them? Is that why you’re here?”
She’s watching me, but what exactly does she hope to get out of me? My question is why she’d think we were there. Did the four guys they arrested crack? They must have. They’re the weak link in all of this. They know that they were hired to nab Waylon or Cam or both of them. They likely knew their names as well as ours. And they knew their client was Teo Barlow.
If they spilled, she’d know he was the one who took them. But that doesn’t mean we were the reason he and his people were killed.
“Were they the ones who took Cam?” I ask, and I realize that if I want to play my cards right, it’ll be best to get this nosy woman on our side. “Hold on. So the four men you arrested… did they work for Teo Barlow? Then the people in the other vehicle who shot at them… they took Cam from the Barlow crew and pulled over like they were doing an exchange. Do you think they were trying to hand Cam off to Barlow? Maybe do some kind of exchange with him?” I ask, just feeding into her lies, but in a way that will hopefully keep her busy for a bit. “Do you thinkwhen they lost Cam, they just kept going and killed this Teo Barlow guy?”
Patel passes the phone back to me. “If you think of anything, let me know,” she says, not engaging with me, but I can guarantee she’s listening.
