“What’s that look for?” Brantley asked, noticing the shift in Reese’s countenance.
“I’ve just got this feelin’.”
“About Deck?”
Reese nodded. “I went into this fearin’ he was bein’ held captive somewhere and that it was our duty to find him.”
Brantley knew Reese’s reaction was based on personal experience. He’d been held captive years ago, missing for eighteen months after he’d been captured in a failed training mission. A training mission of all fucking things.
It was understandable that Reese would resort to that way of thinking after that. It was also understandable that Z would expect his brother to react that way. Had that been Z’s intention? To send them off course? Here they were, seventeen hundred miles from home, searching a city with too damn many people for one person without a whisper of a trail to follow. It was like finding a specific needle in a stack of needles. There was no chance of them finding Decker without some sort of lead. All the ones they’d had—the Kavanaghs—had netted them nothing.
“What’s on your mind?” Reese prompted.
Brantley shook his head. “Nothin’.”
“Don’t lie to me. What were you thinkin’ just then?”
Brantley didn’t want to tell him he was starting to question Z’s motives. He had nothing to base it on, and making an accusation like that could cause problems.
“Brantley.”
Because he couldn’t outright lie to Reese, he said, “I’m just wonderin’ why Z sent us out here with nothin’ to go on.”
“You think he had an ulterior motive?”
Brantley shrugged. “It might’ve crossed my mind.”
“He doesn’t seem all that concerned,” Reese mused. “He did when he called us Sunday mornin’. But not so much anymore.”
Perhaps Z was merely good at hiding his concern. Could be he was exhausting every avenue, and they were meant to focus solely on their mission.
“The part I’m havin’ a hard time with is what’s his goal?” Reese said. “What does sendin’ us out here do if we’re not meant to find Decker?”
Brantley was wondering the same thing. And he had the same number of answers as Reese. A big, fat none.
Chapter Seventeen
When Becs returned to her hotel room, she texted Brantley to let him know she was available if something came up. She didn’t bother telling him that Evan had gone to Slade’s room to see if he could find a place to sleep. That was Evan’s problem, not hers. And at the moment, she wanted to do anything that would get her mind off Evan and the argument they seemed to be in the middle of.
So until Brantley had something for them to do, Becs wanted to run a few things, see if she could find something in New York that would’ve drawn Decker here. And she wasn’t referring to the tourist sights.
She took a seat at the small desk in the room, pulled her laptop out of her bag, and plugged it in to charge. She logged in and found one of the message threads the team used to suss out ideas. Everyone was on it. Luca, JJ, Holly, Darius, and Elana. Jay had been on it before, but he’d left when he was promoted—his terminology, not hers—to investigator.
Promoted.
The word made her roll her eyes.
Based on what she’d seen today, she wasn’t sure the job was a promotion. It was simplydifferent. More boots on the ground versus fingers on the keyboard. They were all doing the same thing; they merely had a different method of doing it.
She typed up her message and hit send.
Becs:Has anyone checked Decker’s credit cards? When was the last time he used one?
There was a good chance no one would answer her for a while, so she went to Google Maps and pulled up Manhattan. She skimmed the main attractions that showed up first. The Empire State Building, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Those were the first things she noticed. Times Square. The Plaza, Union Square, Hell’s Kitchen. They were all familiar names, which was likely why she honed in on them first. Anyone who watched television knew those names.
Didn’t mean Decker had come here for that.
Her messenger app dinged, and a banner came across the top of the screen.
