They carried on in silence until they reached the line of parked cars, when Jayla suddenly hissed, “That son of a bitch.” Then started saying something Chloe couldn’t catch – likely speaking to Erik over the comms they were both wearing.
Blinking the haze from her eyes, things fell back into focus, and Chloe spotted what Jayla had. A single red rose was perched on the windshield of Chloe’s car.
“I’ll get it,” Jayla volunteered.
A rush of heated anger chased away the chill and lent her a needed burst of strength. “No.” With determined strides, Chloe marched to her car.
Jayla, who’d kept pace with her, quietly reminded, “He’s probably watching.”
“Good.”
Grabbing the rose, she held it up and turned a circle, inviting Jackson’s eyes on her before she dropped the flower on the pavement and crushed it underneath her shoe. She looked around, her face set mulishly as she waited, practically daring Jackson to show himself.
He didn’t, but Chloe didn’t deflate. She kept her chin up, her shoulders squared as she told Jayla, “Let’s go home.”
Chapter Eighteen
Erik had followed Chloeand Jayla back to Chloe’s apartment building, but he didn’t go inside. As soon as they were secure and Jayla gave him the all clear, he drove back to the cemetery. Jackson Savoy had eluded him again. Had tried to traumatize Chloe with his little head gamesagain, and Erik was so pissed off he wanted to break things – namely, Jackson Savoy’s skull. But he couldn’t do that until he found him.
Savoy would come for the camera, and Erik would be waiting.
Not wanting to scare the visitors by marching through the cemetery armed for war, he grabbed his duffel out of the back of his vehicle. He’d prep once he was back in that wooded area. The trees, paired with the abundance of ground vegetation, would provide concealment. He was already wearing black, but he’d paint his face in camouflage as well, especially if this stakeout continued into the night hours.
Finding an ideal location that would afford him a view of the tree with the planted camera, as well as the approach, he hunkered down out of view and pulled his rifle case out of his bag.Assembling the rifle with practiced hands, he mounted a high-powered scope with thermal optics and checked the zero.
With a few deep breaths, he pushed his anger aside and found his center. He would be a patient hunter, and he would be rewarded.
For hours, Erik watched and waited. But for the occasional update from Jayla in his ear that all was well, bird activity in the branches above, and a few squirrels chasing each other through the trees, it was quiet. As darkness descended, a sense of anticipation filled him. The cemetery was closed. The moon was barely a sliver. Perfect concealment. This was when Savoy would come to retrieve his camera, and Erik would finally have him in his sights.
Patience, he reminded himself. Breathe.
Another hour… Two… His focus never wavered. Three hours… Four…
The shades of dawn were just beginning to lighten the horizon when Erik finally took a moment to stretch the stiffness from his body. He’d give it a few more hours, but he was beginning to wonder if he’d pegged Savoy wrong. That was an expensive piece of tech sitting up in that tree; he thought for sure the man would come to retrieve it. Did he know or suspect they were onto him? Or did he consider the camera expendable?
The latter had Erik questioning how Savoy was even paying for all this. Especially since Black Bay was monitoring his accounts, and Savoy hadn’t accessed them. Erik had seen the financials, and they lined up with a cop’s salary. He was not a wealthy man, nor didhe come from a wealthy family. They were solidly middle-class. He had bills, a car payment, and a normal amount of credit card debt. They’d dug years back, and there’d been no suspicious deposits, yet he’d purchased Chloe an expensive necklace, travelled down here under the radar, and had been able to acquire pricy, high-end tech.
Savoy’s darker nature may have come to light after Chloe had left him, leading to his suspension from the force, but he might have been dirty all along and just never been caught. Had he taken bribes? Pilfered crime scenes for cash or items he could sell?
Chloe had mentioned that she’d found the necklace in his belongings, and it should have still been in evidence, tied to Tyler Sinclair’s murder. Had Savoy been regularly taking things from the evidence lock-up? Treating it like his own personal one-stop shop? If that was how he’d gotten the camera, he probably would see it as disposable.
Frustration gnawed at Erik. His thoughts were irrelevant. None of that mattered. Regardless of how he was doing it, Savoy was still out there. He still had the upper hand, and Chloe was still in danger. They needed to regroup.
Erik jogged up the stairs to Chloe’s apartment, and when he reached the door, he heard muffled music. Was that Foo Fighters? When the door opened, the sound hit him full-on, as well as thelemony bleach scent of cleaner. Jayla, who’d opened the way for him, shot him a look before jerking her head toward the kitchen.
Chloe was kneeling on the countertop that was cluttered with dishes and food items she’d pulled out of the cupboards. Her hair was in a messy sort of knot, and she was wearing yellow rubber gloves, a sponge in hand as she belted out the lyrics to “Best of You” and scrubbed the shelving.
“She’s been at it since dawn,” Jayla confided. “She’s already gone through her closets, packed up things she wants to donate, and steam cleaned the carpets. I thought she was going to bite my head off when I told her she couldn’t wash the windows because she’d make herself a target.”
Chloe stopped singing long enough to bark, “Take your boots off!” before she picked up the lyrics once more.
Bending at the waist, Erik did as he was told and set the boots neatly on the mat by the door, next to a pair of Chloe’s shoes. “Is she okay?”
“She says she is. If I had to guess, this is her way of dealing with the stress.”
Erik nodded and looked around, not sure if he dared to sit anywhere. He was dirty from lying on the ground all night, his clothes were still slightly damp from the dew that had accumulated on him, and though he’d used a wipe to clean off the face paint, he was sure he probably missed some spots.
“Why don’t you head up to my place?” Jayla suggested. “You can grab some chow, shower, and get some rack.”
