Since she did owe Marigold a report in her “private investigator” capacity, she texted her.
Adam Johnson has been located. He’s currently heading to Concord Hospital in New Hampshire. Unconscious after being hit by car. Using the name Seth Baker.
Marigold quickly texted back. I’ll head there now.
See you there. We need to interrogate him about Jessie.
Ten-four.
Jack searched the back seat of the car while she sorted through the glove compartment.
“This car is registered to Kate Mansfield,” she said. “Looks like he borrowed it from his mother. No wonder there’s a crocheted dreamcatcher hanging from the rearview mirror. And that explains the reddish grayish hair in the trunk.”
“Kate Mansfield doubles as an Uber driver?”
“Maybe, to make ends meet? Maybe crafters have trouble competing with Etsy these days. Other than that, it’s pretty tidy up here in the front seat. How’s the back?”
“A pile of quilts. Maybe she was planning a delivery before Seth borrowed her car—or filched it. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
Poor Jack was sounding pretty gloomy.
“Hey,” she said gently over the headrest of the passenger seat. “It was a long shot. So what if there’s nothing in his car? We’ll head to the hospital next.”
“And if he doesn’t wake up?”
“Then we keep trying. One way or another, I promise you we’ll keep trying. This is what a lot of police work is, you know. It’s one step after another, often turning up nothing, until you find that one thing that leads you in the right direction.”
He groaned and dropped his head into his hands. “I should have stayed out of sight. We could have kept following him and he probably would have led us right to her. But no, I had to be a hotshot and go confront him like a jackass.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” she began, although part of her had thought exactly that when he’d charged into the cell phone store.
“Be honest. I didn’t listen to you. You’re an actual cop, and I just bolted into that store like I knew what I was doing. I should have stayed in my own lane.”
“Your lane is finding Jessie. I don’t blame you for wanting to confront him. Maybe it wasn’t a mistake at all. Maybe you learned something. Sometimes I do that during an investigation. I do something unexpected just to see what gets stirred up. You had him so panicked he ran into traffic.”
She stopped in the midst of looking through Kate Mansfield’s paperwork. “Hang on. What if he wasn’t running into traffic?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if he was running to something, not just from something?”
“Like what?”
Tina’s gears were turning now. “It’s been bugging me ever since I chased him, the way he just took off across the lot. Okay, bear with me here. The hospital was clearly a trap. Celine let her brother know that you had her phone. He lured us to the hospital parking lot with his pretense of needing a car. He probably wanted visual confirmation of our identities. Once he knew who we were, he signaled to the sniper to let loose. Probably that was the same guy who set fire to your Audi.”
Jack winced at that painful memory.
“But maybe he actually did need wheels. He can’t keep driving his mother’s around, especially if she needs it for her Uber moonlighting. Maybe that little strip mall is where he went to pick up a new burner phone and a new vehicle.”
Jack was slowly nodding. “So the car that Celine sent for him could be somewhere in this lot.”
“Exactly. I definitely got the impression he saw a safe haven in that lot and was running for it.”
She climbed out of the driver’s seat, impatient to get going. But Jack was busy tugging one last piece of clothing from the pile. Eventually he disentangled the item he was chasing, and held it up so she could see. “Found something,” he said triumphantly.
“Is that Jessie’s?”
It was a pretty suede jacket with a multitude of pockets in a stunning forest green color. Her mouth watered at the sight. Despite her penchant for black on the job, she loved beautiful clothes. If she ever took a vacation—a real one—she had a wardrobe wish-list ready to go.
