"Yeah."
"Why?"
The stranger looked over with an annoyed expression. "You ask a lot of questions."
"Yeah, so? Why did you kill Wilson?"
"He deserved it."
Tristan's brain whirred again, struggling to put together the pieces. "Because of the missing girls?"
"Yeah."
That could mean a couple of things. Warily, Tristan asked, "Were you, like, taking out the competition or something?"
His companion scoffed. "No."
"Then why?"
"To stop him."
Some part of Tristan was relieved. "I only suspected Wilson was involved with their disappearance. Do you have proof?"
"Yeah. My associates found financial transactions that prove Wilson received money in exchange for girls. We're trying to shut down his operation."
Tristan's stomach lurched as the truth sank in, and his worst fears were confirmed. Wilson and his people probably took his sister. God, what were they doing to her? He wanted to vomit, to scream, to punch through the window, maybe even go back and blast another round into Wilson's skull, but he forced vengeful thoughts aside and instead tried to focus on how to get her back. If this guy could be trusted, if he was investigating the operation, maybe he could help find Natalie.
"I didn't have evidence he was involved. I was looking for it."
"I heard you back there. You think they have your sister?"
Tristan felt lightheaded from hearing the words out loud. He choked out a quiet, "Yeah."
"Fuck, I'm sorry. How did you connect him to her?"
Setting aside his conflicting emotions, Tristan shifted in his seat and angled his body toward the driver. He didn't know the man's name or where they were going. Logically, he should have been scared, but for some reason, he wasn't. Tristan recognized that this attitude oozed horror-movie victim, but he wouldn't think about that now, not if this guy could help save his sister.
"Okay, so Natalie went missing six days ago. She was walking home from a friend's at around nine at night. It was only a few blocks to our apartment, but she never made it home. The cops found her phone in the gutter but couldn't find any witnesses. After a couple of days with no leads, the case wasn't given priority, which was suspicious, but that's a whole other story. I was desperate and started investigating myself. I knocked on doors along the route and talked to anyone who might have seen her. When I came up empty, I figured I would look for similar cases that might provide clues, and I found three other teen girls who went missing recently. Not a lot to go on for two of them, but the other was a seventeen-year-old who disappeared three days before my sister. She was last seen leaving a bar with a guy just a couple of miles from our place."
"What was a seventeen-year-old doing in a bar?"
"The bartender said she had a fake ID. Anyway, so she leaves with this guy. Her friends walk off in one direction, and she walks with him in the other direction."
The man scoffed. "What kind of friends let a girl go off with a strange guy?"
"They're kids. They do stupid things. Didn't you ever do stupid shit when you were young?"
His rescuer snorted but didn't respond, so Tristan continued. "So, there's not much except warehouses in the direction they went. I watched all the buildings, and most seemed normal, trucks going in and out, you know? But one warehouse had no activity at all, even though I watched for a couple of days. So I broke in and …"
The man snorted again.
Tristan already felt annoyed with the sound, and he'd only spent twenty minutes with the guy.
"You broke into a warehouse?"
"Yes. Why do you say it like that?" Tristan asked, his hackles rising at his companion's skeptical tone.
The stranger's eyes scanned him, sizing him up. "You don't seem like the type, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised given where I found you."
