“And you have no idea how big a deal that is.”
“Does it matter?”
Her sigh turned into an ‘ugh’ sound. And she grabbed the mug again. “Anyway, Maverick has a huge following so yes, I think it will get to all the right people. Especially Franklin. But I’m going to do some pushing mechanisms to try and make the posts go viral. If I can get the algorithms correct, we’ll be golden.”
I did have some reservations, but at this point, it was an excellent option.
While it was possible to get DNA from a fingerprint, I wasn’t holding my breath. And the fingerprint itself I could bet would prove useless.
“Are we ready?” Reese asked, peering up at me with a quizzical look on her face.
“Do it.”
As soon as she made a few keystrokes, she held up her hand for a high five. “Finally, I feel like I’m contributing to rescuing my sister.” I grabbed her fingers, squeezing.
“Like I said. We’ll find her. What now?”
“Now, I wait and tweak. I need to babysit everything for a little while.”
“I’m going to make a couple phone calls.” I’d already sent a text to the others about the change in my residence, which had pushed Chase on edge, his return text even using an angry emoji.
“After you do, I need to contact my father. Can we get my phone back?”
“You forget that your name is now associated with a crime, which means your things were collected and shoved into an evidence box. You can use my phone later. Okay?”
Her wide doe eyes reminded me just how dangerous of a position we were in. But she nodded, the trust evident on her face.
I hoped that it wasn’t blind trust I couldn’t honor.
As I headed to my bedroom, I dialed Jackie’s number. I was taking a risk in contacting her, but at this point, I needed some inside help from the police.
“Detective Abbott.”
“Jackie. It’s Kendrick.”
“Kendrick. I wasn’t certain if I’d hear from you.”
“How’s Denise?”
Her sigh was heavy. “I put her on a bus and sent her back to Missouri.”
“The police wouldn’t give her protection.”
“Nope. I tried but with no real case, there was no way to make it happen.”
“Jackie. You need to listen to me. While I can’t go into details, you need to keep our conversation for your ears only and ensure that there’s nothing on file about your visit.”
“I already told you there wasn’t. What’s going on?”
“This is much bigger than we originally believed.” I moved toward the bedroom window, peering out at the street below. The sidewalk and the boardwalk area were always crowded, no way of knowing for certain if my identity had been discovered.
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re going to need to trust me, which means in doing so you can’t trust Darren.” The chief of police was balls deep. That I was certain of.
“Whoa. Hold on. Let me go outside.”
As she pulled away from the phone, I moved to the safe I’d had installed in my closet, including a false wall.
