“It’s about a fifteen-minute drive from the police department,” Clay informs us matter-of-factly.
“And how long will it take us?”
“Approximately twenty-five minutes, unless something dramatic happens. Chief Turner should get to Courtney about five minutes after she gets to the warehouse, close enough that she shouldn’t have given up waiting and left. She waited eight minutes for Starling to arrive, she’ll wait at least that long for someone who is threatening to out her,” Clay states.
As he talks, his fingers keep typing frantically as his laptop screen flicks between Starling’s tracker location, the camera feeds around the warehouse, and the text messaging program he’s now using to send texts from Courtney to Tom, informing him that she has Starling and is taking her to the warehouse.
My heartbeat echoes in my head as I force myself to breathe. In and out. In and out. I refuse to allow myself to dwell on how scared Starling will be if she wakes up from the drug Evan injected her with before the police find her. I try not to think about how much her arms must be hurting from being tied behind her back or how many bruises she’ll have on her beautiful skin after she’s bounced around in the trunk of the car.
All I focus on is each mile that passes and how much closer to having my wife back in my arms I am.
NINETEEN
CHIEF TURNER
(Yes, you read that right.)
Of all theasshole rich kids I’ve come across, Sebastian Lockwood is one of the least obnoxious I’ve ever met. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not pissed at having to order one of my officers to come with me to check up on his wife, simply because she’s been out of his sight for fifteen minutes.
I haven’t spoken to the Lockwoods’ security guard that we have in holding personally, but I watched a little of the interrogation, because Sebastian’s parents and their equally obscenely rich friends have all donated a shit ton of money to the Greenacres Police Department in the last ten years. I’m not saying they own my ass, but if they call and ask for a welfare check, then you can be damn sure I’m going to send someone to do a welfare check.
This situation with the Lockwood kids’ security is a new one. Right now, the guy is facing multiple felony charges as well as a civil suit that’s going to make sure he can’t even get a library card, let alone a job or a mortgage in the future. He fucked up,and from what I saw while watching his interview, he knows it too.
What I, and the detectives who interviewed him, don’t get is why he took the pictures and videos in the first place. According to Tom Underhill, the Lockwoods are great employers. They pay well, the job is easy, and until a month ago, he’d never even spoken to Starling Lockwood, the woman he’s protecting.
Now I’d assumed she was a trust fund brat who’d never spoken to the guys who are paid to protect her because she was too stuck up to lower herself to talk to the help. But according to Tom Underhill, until recently they’d been covert security, protecting her without her ever knowing who they are.
I don’t understand why this guy would fuck up a cushy job like this with no real endgame in mind. He’s admitted that he took the videos and pictures with the intention of blackmailing the Lockwoods, but we can’t find any attempt by him to extort money from his employers.
My tech guys found proof of him uploading the images and videos to various porn sites, but nothing asking for money. The whole thing stinks. We know that Underhill isn’t working alone, but he refuses to say who his accomplice is. The messages we found between the two of them suggest that whoever he’s working with wants to go from blackmail to something a whole lot more dangerous. But whoever this person is, they know how to hide their tracks, because we can’t figure out who they are.
Opening my cell, I watch as the tracker in Starling Lockwood continues to move farther and farther away from Kingsacre University. Instead of heading toward the mall or the Lockwoods’ palatial estate, she’s moving toward an industrial area in South Acres that’s full of run-down warehouses and shitty factories.
“Do you know of any boutiques, bars, or restaurants that the wife of a millionaire would want to visit in South Acres?” I ask the officer who is driving.
“In South Acres,” he scoffs. “I can’t think of anywhereI’dwant to visit, and I’ve got about twenty-five bucks in my checking account.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured,” I say, more to myself than to him. “So why would she be going there?” Pursing my lips, I suck in a breath. “Hey, Hank, put your foot down. I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this one,” I tell him.
Eyeing me questioningly, Hank nods, and the cruiser lurches forward.
“It looks like she’s stopped moving,” I tell Hank five minutes later as we hit the edge of one of the most run-down parts of South Acres, where trash is piled in the street and there are more burned-out cars than there are ones with all four wheels still attached.
“Boss, this part of town is sketchy as hell,” Hank says.
“It sure is,” I agree, scanning the streets as we drive forward. Tapping my screen, I find the number I’m looking for, then hit call, lifting my cell to my ear. It’s answered on the second ring.
“Watkins, did you find out what type of car Courtney Ortega drives?” I ask.
“Her name is on the title for a silver Mercedes.”
“A flashy car like that should be pretty easy to spot if they’re together and in her car,” I say quietly to myself. “Thanks, Watkins.”
“No worries, Chief,” he says before ending the call.
“What the fuck is this place?” Hank asks, slowing as we turn a corner, still heading toward the location Starling Lockwood’s tracker has been for the last four minutes.
“Is this a dead end?” I question as we turn off the street and into an enclosed parking lot outside a deserted warehouse.The building is run-down, the roof tiles are hanging precariously loose, and a rusty sliding door is standing half open.
