“Some of those schools have close to two thousand students.”
JJ flipped screens and typed the school’s name into the Google search bar. She chewed her lip as she skimmed the results, then clicked on one that showed the number of students per school for all Dallas schools.
Baz was right. The school had a little over nineteen hundred students with a student/teacher ratio of 17:1. So maybe they hadn’t known each other. But it was still strange, right? Definitely not a coincidence because, according to Brantley, coincidences didn’t exist.
“What exactly does that connection do for us?” Baz asked.
JJ looked up at him, processing the question. She didn’t have an answer because … well, because it didn’t really doanything, did it? A connection between Decker and Kylie didn’t mean a thing. Not at this point, anyway. Maybe it would have a couple of years ago when they’d been searching for Kylie’s killer. But now … now it was merely one of those things that caught your attention.
With a sigh, JJ relaxed. “You’re right.”
“I’m not trying to be right,” he said, perching on the arm of the couch. “If you think that’s a lead, by all means, follow it.”
“No. It’s not. I mean, it’s not like I can call Kylie and ask her where Decker is.”
Even as she said it aloud, the information still felt important. Was Kylie the reason Decker had joined the task force? He’d come on about the time they were looking for Juliet Prince. Maybe they had been friends back then. Perhaps he’d been looking to avenge her death like a lot of other people.
“I’m gonna take a shower,” Baz told her as he stood tall. “Care to join me?”
Smiling, JJ set her laptop aside.
No way could she say no to that.
***
“I don’t know how this could getany fuckin’ weirder,” Brantley grumbled from his chair in their hotel room.
After spending an hour in the park, allowing Tesha to play off-leash for a little while, they’d come back to their hotel room for a breather. Atticus and Slade had done the same, checking in via text message a short time ago. Brantley had informed them they didn’t have any additional information from JJ or Z, but they would let them know when/if they did.
“You’re talkin’ about Decker, right?”
His gaze shifted to Reese. “Yeah. What did you think I was referrin’ to?”
Reese grinned. “With you, there’s no tellin’ sometimes.”
Brantley smiled, forcing some of the tension from his shoulders.
Evan and Becs were apparently on their way back after an interesting, although not enlightening, conversation with Saoirse Kavanagh. It was looking more and more like Decker had played them. He was out there somewhere, likely doing something he shouldn’t be doing while they were wasting time and money hunting for him.
At least, that was what Brantley was hoping. He honestly didn’t want Decker to be in trouble, but he intended to give the guy a piece of his mind the next time he saw him.
“What’re you workin’ on?” Brantley asked, glancing in Reese’s direction. He was sitting at the small desk with his laptop open in front of him.
“Just checkin’ in with the team. I messaged Darius and Luca earlier to see how they were doin’ with the hotel search.”
“Lemme guess? Nothin’.”
“Nope. He said they’ve got a search runnin’ on all hotels and motels in Manhattan, but so far, nothing’s come up. He could be usin’ an alias.”
True. Or he could be somewhere else entirely.
“They could spend a year researchin’ hotels in this city,” Brantley muttered. “If Deck’s off the books on this one, I doubt he used his real name.”
“Luca said he asked Z if he knew of any aliases that Deck used, but he said no.”
Brantley frowned. “For someone so worried when he called us, Z doesn’t seem to be providin’ much intel.”
Reese shifted, twisting his upper body in the chair and peering over. “You’re right. He’s not.”
