Baz couldn’t help it, he stared at JJ’s face, watched as she smiled, eyes glittering. Clearly she wasn’t bothered by Luca’s flirtatious manner, but Baz would honestly admit he didn’t care much for it.
She was laughing merrily when she said, “Not in this lifetime, you old coot.”
“Well, then if you ever meet her, send her my way, will ya?”
“I wouldn’t do that to any woman, Luca. You know that.”
Baz turned away, reminding himself he had no right to be jealous and he had absolutely no say in who JJ flirted with.
“I talked to Brantley,” JJ explained. “He said we should get started without him.”
“Hit me, woman. Whatcha got?” Luca asked.
JJ went on to explain what she’d learned from Dante about the woman she referred to as Katherine King, who she was insistent was Juliet Prince.
“Brantley told me he had the phones they were usin’ at their hideout,” JJ told Luca. “All we need to do is find out her IP address, trace it, and see where she was messagin’ from.”
“Easy-peasy,” Luca agreed.
Baz took a seat and fought the urge to roll his eyes.
Two hours later, after JJ and Luca had worked their magic, the entire team was watching while the Grand Rapids Police Department went to the Lakeside Motel to find Juliet Prince.
He hadn’t believed it was possible for them to track her so easily, but they were absolutely certain that was where she’d been as of three o’clock yesterday afternoon, when she’d sent the last text to Marcus asking him how things were going.
“Please, God, let her be there,” JJ muttered to herself, her shoulder brushing Baz’s as they watched a live feed from the scene.
On the screen, a SWAT officer walked up to the door, knocked. When there was no answer, he motioned for someone to come over. A short, middle-aged man stepped over, swiped a key card, then was ushered back out of the way.
The next couple of minutes were chaos as they rushed the room, checking under the bed, in the closet and the bathroom. But it hadn’t taken but a second for everyone to realize that the room was empty.
If Juliet Prince had been there, she was gone now.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Friday, January 8, 2021
One week after the showdown at thewarehouse, finding Dante, and ending up with another dead end on the whereabouts of Juliet Prince, things had returned to normal.
Well, as normal as they could be, considering.
After they’d secured Dante Greenwood, returned him to his parents, Brantley had given him one night to recover before relaying the details of what had really happened to Gerard and Katrina. A discussion that went exactly as Brantley had predicted it would: not well at all.
Needless to say, Brantley was not on Governor Greenwood’s good side. The man did not want to believe his son had masterminded—a term Brantley used loosely when referring to Dante—the kidnapping in an effort to extort one million dollars to cover his gambling and drug addictions. Evidently, Dante had taken out a “loan” with his bookieandhis dealer and had been unable to cover the balance and interest of either. When Marcus had been sent to collect the gambling debt, Dante had been able to appeal to his greed, coming up with the plan that would net Marcus five hundred thousand as payment for helping and allow Dante to pay off his debt with the other half.
When asked why they’d decided to cut off his finger, Dante had explained that hadn’t been the plan. He’d insisted Marcus had gone completely crazy and chopped it off in a fit of rage when he really did take Dante hostage. Of course, that tale had lasted all of five minutes, because Dante’s pain meds had kicked in and he revealed, with a spooky smile, that he’d been the knight in shining armor and had sacrificed himself in order to keep Marcus from raping JJ while she was unconscious.
Such afuckinggentleman.
But the worst part had come when Brantley asked Governor Greenwood how he wanted to proceed with Dante’s charges. In no uncertain terms, the governor informed him he would be handling Dante’s punishment personally and there was no need to share the details with the police. Marcus Harris would go on record as having kidnapped Dante, assaulted JJ, blown up her house, and attempted to blackmail him. And since Marcus was dead, there was no one to argue those facts.
Awfullyfuckingconvenient.
That had been the icing on the cake for Brantley, and he had refused to listen to any more. Probably the reason he hadn’t gotten as in depth as JJ had with his questioning. If he had, perhaps he would’ve been the one to uncover Juliet Prince’s part in all of this. But like usual, they’d been just a little too late to catch the woman in that shitty motel in Michigan.
He’d managed to get Governor Greenwood to agree to hold off on cutting off their access, using the excuse that they needed it to find Juliet Prince. After he’d explained that she had played a partial role in Dante’s scheme, the governor had given them until the end of the month.
In truth, it hadn’t done much more than buy Brantley some time to explain to Reese and the team what was going on.
