“Sure. What’s your point?”
“My point is,” he said as we both came to a stop at a light, “it makes more sense that it’s a forensic countermeasure. Same car, different look every time they have to roll it into a shop.”
Oh, I saw what he was saying. “You’re saying that the cars are the same, but they’re painted and stripped and redone every time they fuck up.”
“It would explain why you couldn’t keep up with the car, despite your mods,” Scout said as he took off at the green light. “I did some searching around, placed a few phone calls, but there’s no one shop in Bryersville that deals in mods of that sort of nature. Not upfront anyway. So someone is most likely doing those mods themselves. My current running theory is that the car shit Jasmine was talking about is code in and of itself, and I think every time the ring comes to the law firm and tells them that they fucked up, the law firm provides the funds for whoever works with the ring to strip and redo those cars.”
“So you think the law firm is plastering their logos on those cars in order to provide more of an alibi in case the cars are pulled over or caught in any fashion?”
“Would you think a law firm like that was part of a sex trafficking ring when you’re being pulled over for speeding?”
We pulled into the parking lot of the in-home care facility before Scout got off his bike.
“Thanks for doing this,” I said.
Scout took off his helmet and looked at me. “What?”
“I’m not saying it again.”
He grinned. “What did you say, Ghost?”
“Shut up.”
“Was that… a manner? Did you… did you use yourmannerson me?”
“I will slit your throat.”
He pointed at me and smiled. “You used your manners. She’s wearing off on you. Hard.”
I flicked him off before a random thought occurred to me. “Hold on a second.”
Scout whirled around with that cheeky smirk on his face. “What? Ready to argue some more? You know you’re terrible at it with me.”
I stuck my hand into my pocket and tossed him a couple of the small cameras. “Place one facing the window in his room, and the other one facing his bed.”
He looked down at the cameras and then back at me. “Do I need to do anything once I place them?”
I shook my head. “Just press the little black button on the side of it and suction them anywhere. Just need a view of his bed and the window in his room.”
He curled his hand around the cameras and wiggled his eyebrows at me. I took out another one of the cameras and pinged it right off his fucking head, but all he did was he laugh his way into the care facility. And while I sat on my bike, I thought about everything the man told me. Scout had a point, you know. His theory about the logo-vehicle shit made afucktonmore sense than that advertising bullshit that Jaz thought they were talking about. Hell, the advertisement shit was just their code in those meetings. My heart went out to…my woman.
Scout called her my woman.
A grin spread across my face at that.
Scout took a little while longer, but when he emerged, he gave me two thumbs up. I watched him jam his helmet onto his head. I watched as he practically leapt back onto his bike. I was about to tell him that his deciphering was a job well done and that he was most likely right about those cars being nothing more than chassis that got stripped down and redone every time the trafficking ring did something dumb as fuck.
Like chasing that woman to our doorstep.
But Scout’s voice invaded my thoughts. “So I found out something interesting while there.”
“What?” I asked. “What did you find? Is her father all right?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah. He’s fine.” Scout paused before he continued. “He’s also dying of cirrhosis of the liver.”
Oh. Holy. Fuck.
Jasmine’s father was an alcoholic.
