“I mean…aren’t we going to be on camera doing exactly that?”
“Well, no, because I turned off their cameras, didn’t you notice?”
“Jesus. I guess it’s a good thing you’re on the side of law and order. You’d make one hell of a criminal.”
“I will try to take that as a compliment.” She slid into the driver’s seat and hit the jackpot right away. A parking ticket had been tossed to the floor boards of the passenger seat.
“This car was parked for three days at this address in Harbortown.” She handed it to Jack, who was standing just outside the car, so he could check it out. “Do you know it?”
“No, it means nothing to me.” He handed it back. “What does the registration say?”
She rummaged through the glove compartment and retrieved the paperwork. “Holy shit.”
“What?” She heard excitement in his voice, the same that pulsed through her veins. This was what progress felt like.
“This car is registered to Benny Clyde, and the address is the same one on the parking ticket.”
“So Celine is working with the Clydes?” He frowned, shaking his head. “I don’t see it.”
“No. I’m thinking he reached out to the Clydes for a new vehicle, not Celine. Seth thought he’d lost us after the trooper stopped him. When he saw us at the cell phone store, he panicked because he’s not a practiced criminal. Went right for the car for a quick getaway. He was so rattled he didn’t notice the Volvo.”
She took a photo of everything, then extracted herself from the car, leaving the parking ticket where she’d found it. Her hope was that no one would ever know they’d been inside. “We should have time to check out this house before Seth wakes up. They’ll be running tests on him for a while.”
“Do you think Jessie could be at this house?”
She didn’t want to get his hopes up, but in her opinion, it was certainly possible. “I think we should check it out.”
He nodded, clearly trying to control his nerves, then gestured at the blue Honda. “What should we do with Kate Mansfield’s CRV?”
“We’ll leave it here. The tracker’s still on it. We might get a ping.”
34
Those squiggly lines…they reminded Jack of something. They had a nostalgic feel, as if they were an echo from the past calling to him across the decades. As Tina drove away from the strip mall, he closed his eyes, summoning the image again.
It brought to mind a sense of adventure, of daring. Exploration. The tang of salt air. Kneeling on the porch floor staring at a…
“It’s a map,” he said suddenly.
“Excuse me?”
“The piece of paper in Jessie’s pocket. It’s a coastline. There was one summer when Jessie and I wanted to walk around the entire shoreline of Sea Smoke Island, and my grandfather made us study the map first. We never did it, but I remember how intricate the coastline was. It looked exactly like that map.”
“You think it’s Sea Smoke Island?”
He shrugged. “I can’t say that I recognize it. Maybe it’s a different island, or even the mainland. But I’d bet anything that’s what it shows.”
“That fits in with our smuggling theory,” she said thoughtfully.
“Sure does. If we could superimpose this map over the outer islands, we could probably ID it.”
“Here.” She handed her phone to him. “Send the photo to Marigold. She’s lived on Sea Smoke her whole life. She might recognize that topography.”
As he was pressing send, her phone lit up with a call from Marigold herself. Tina nodded at him to answer.
“Officer Chen’s phone, Jack Finnegan here,” he said, putting it on speaker.
“Hi Jack. Where are you guys? Some shit just went down out here and I can’t get to the hospital to question Adam.” Her usual cheerful calm had been replaced with pure stress. “Can you go?”
