Those thoughts rambled around inside her head while their actual conversation revolved around safe topics until finally, her appetite left her. A fourth of the burrito remained, and she tossed it, rinsed the plate, and put it on the rack. Cole joined her and put his plate away too.
Then he crossed his arms, leaned against the counter, and peered down at her. “Now that we agree on how nasty the weather is but how magical it makes this place, and we both agree that Hawk and Remi are magical together and that they’re good for each other, let’s talk about the topics we’ve been dancing around.”
“Okay.” She’d let him ask the questions.
“What’s in Michigan?” he asked. “I mean, besides the obvious. Anything else you can tell me?”
“Pop selling his shop and giving me the money reminded me about the boxes of stuff in my apartment back in Michigan.”
“What happened to your stuff?” Cole asked.
“I’d given my landlord the rent money I owed and told her I was leaving because I was in danger. I left in a rush. Left everything behind. When I contacted her again, I learned that she’d hired a service to clean it out. She didn’t waste any time getting it ready to lease. But fortunately, my friend Becky had stopped by and got some of the boxes.
“I’d told her everything, and she convinced me to listen to my mother’s instructions and urged me to leave. I wason the run, and so I never looked back. I’m hoping Becky still has those boxes. I hadn’t asked her to do that, but now I’m glad she did.”
“Didn’t you contact her?”
“I decided it would be safer for everyone if I waited. Eventually, I would ask her to send the boxes to me if I thought it was safe. About another year passed before I tried her cell number, and it belonged to someone else.”
“You mentioned she’d moved in with her parents. Did you try to call them?”
She released a slow breath. “No. I started to, but then I stopped myself. They didn’t need more drama in their lives. I didn’t really need the boxes.”
“But now you feel the drama is worth it. If your friend still has the boxes, what do you hope to find in them?”
“What someone was looking for at my apartment.”
“Okay, it’s worth a shot. We can meet with Rick—Detective Wilson—and then we need to get out of there and get to a safe place. Stay on the move. If we find nothing new, we might consider heading to Nevada where Gemini Aerospace is headquartered and where Mason Hyde worked.”
“That’s a good idea. Has Allison learned anything about my mother’s true identity yet?”
“After me, you’ll be the first to know.”
****
Hours later, Jo tried to get comfortable in the slim window seat of the flight to Michigan. She was the lucky one to get to look out the window at utter darkness. Now and then, she spotted a star above. Sometimes a few lights grouped together indicating a small town, but the flight across the northern states was completely black at night. Maybe she should take Cole up on his offer of a sturdy shoulder on which to lean her head and sleep.
Instead, she rested her head against the seat back. She didn’t feel like leaning or relying on anyone while she traveled through the dark of night, stalking the danger before it caught up to her first.
27
Jo hated the red-eye and loathed the three-hour layover in Philadelphia before they finally touched down in Detroit. Now they were in Michigan, and the blue skies belied the cold thirty-five degrees. They rented a car, and Cole stopped around 11:30 a.m. so they could grab an early lunch and coffee up before their drive to Lansing.
“Thanks for this. I need coffee if I’m going to function. That was a rough night.” She dug into her scrambled eggs, then looked up at Cole. “You?”
“Same. Do we know where we’re going?” he asked.
“You know, you don’t have to pretend I’m controlling this investigation.”
“I’m not pretending. I’m letting you take the lead. I don’t know what I don’t know.”
“After the rough night with little sleep, I can’t begin to understand what that means.” Other than she was in trouble if she couldn’t understand.
He snorted a laugh. Cole. Actually snorted. Then he finished off his eggs and bacon. “You’ll figure it out.”
Done with lunch, this time Jo took the driver’s seat because,as Cole put it, she knew her way around, having grown up in Lansing. She drove northwest from Detroit toward Lansing, which would take them about an hour and a half and put them in Lansing around two. Much later than she wanted to start the fact-finding part of her day, but flying across the country was never easy.
She and Cole talked about life in general terms. She shared with him about her life in Michigan. How she’d gotten her BA in studio art at Michigan State University, then had worked and trained with Mom on the forensic side of things.
