“You’re on.”
They hung up and Hutch, with Hannibal loping at his side, went to get his laptop.
He took it back to the kitchen table, and after a few scratches behind his ears, Hannibal slid with a groan to lie at Hutch’s feet.
Hutch opened the laptop, the search engine, and he began.
The thing was, fifteen minutes later, he had nothing.
Not that first thing.
There was an actress named Mabel Adams.There was a teacher and principal from Horace Mann in Boston who wrote books on educating kids with special needs named Mabel Ellery Adams.There was an artist who died in 1957 named Mabel Adams.There were obituaries for a variety of other dead women named Mabel Adams.And a variety of live ones who were not the Mabel Adams he picked up at The Link and followed home to fuck.
No pictures.No social media accounts.No blue ribbon awarded at some junior high school track meet.
He dove deep and…
Nothing.
He had no social media, but he had a business, he had a website, he had a past, and unfortunately, that shit either had to be on the Internet or just was.
“The fuck?”he whispered, fifteen pages deep on the search engine results.
On page seventeen, Hutch made another decision.
He nabbed his phone, thumbed through the contacts and hit go.
Lee Nightingale answered on the third ring.
“Hutch, brother, it’s been a while.”
Lee Nightingale was the best private investigator west of the Mississippi, maybe east of it too.He and his crew had three branches in three cities in three states: Denver, LA and Phoenix.
He could find anybody, no matter how good they were at hiding.
And he could find out everything about you, no matter how hard you worked to keep it buried.
“You know that marker you owe me?”Hutch asked.
No hesitation.“Yeah.”
“Name’s Mabel Adams.Address on her rental, four four five oh County Road Ten, Misted Pines.My guess, late twenties, early thirties.Five eight.Lean but stacked.Brunette.Hazel eyes.”
And she gives phenomenal head.And I swear to fuck, when she watched me play, I wasn’t sure anymore if it was me or her who wrote my songs.She went toe to toe with me, maybe not knowing I was a former SEAL, but she couldn’t miss I could handle myself, and she had the balls to do it all the same.Oh yeah, and I pulled some seriously stupid shit with a Post-it note when I left her beautiful naked body, thick, soft hair and knockout face in her bed.
“How much you want?”Lee asked.
“I want it all.”
“Give me a few days.”
“You got it.”
“Later, brother.”
“Later, Lee.”
They disconnected, Hutch put down his phone, then he headed out to put more dogs through drills.
