A white Honda pulled up to the pump closest to the road. A young woman got out of the car to pump gas, her head visible over the roof of the sedan. When she was done, she left the car where it was and headed into the convenience store.
Another car pulled into the station, this one a silver mid-sized SUV. This time I had a clear view — the pump was on the side exposed to the camera — of an older man in hiking clothes. He got out to pump gas while a middle-aged woman sat in the passenger seat on her phone.
And then, the black SUV appeared, rolling into view at the pump closest to the store, no license plate on the front.
“Isn’t that illegal here?” Vigo asked. “Not to have a front plate?”
“Yep.” I didn’t trust myself to say more.
“That has to be them,” Jagger said.
I didn’t have to look at him or Vigo to know that their gazes were trained on the footage like mine.
The SUV came to a stop and I caught movement through one of the windows, then waited to catch a glimpse of the driver.
Vigo and I came to a realization at the same time.
“Fuck,” he said. “The car’s blocking our view.
He was right: the SUV was tall enough to obscure whoever was pumping gas behind it.
I waited, letting the video play, hoping whoever it was would go into the store.
The young woman came back into view as she exited the store. She crossed the pavement and got into the white Honda, then pulled away.
The older guy got into the silver car and a pulled away a couple of seconds later, quickly disappearing from view.
Come on,I thought, watching the black SUV, willing the driver — or anyone else who might be in the car — to go into the store where the camera would get a clear view of their face.
A minute later, the black SUV pulled away from the pump. I expanded the image and focused on the license plate, but something was smeared across the numbers.
“They fucking smeared mud on the plate,” Jagger said.
I backed it up and tried again but he was right: the plate number wasn’t visible, and I watched as the SUV drove through the parking lot and disappeared from view.
On its way to Old Mountain Road.
On its way to Cassie.
“Fuck!” The desktop monitor shook as I shoved the desk.
“He got gas,” Vigo said.
“Obviously.” I was seeing red, consumed by rage and frustration.
“He got gas,” Jagger repeated slowly.
And then I knew what they were getting at.
I turned to Griggs, standing near the door to the office like he was hoping for a clean getaway. “Are the transaction records stored on this desktop?”
“What transaction records?” His gaze shifted away from me like a kid who’d gotten caught hiding the cookies he’d just stolen out of the cookie jar.
I stood, clenching my fists. Beating the shit out of him would go a long way toward making me feel better. “You really don’t want to fuck with us right now. Or ever.”
He opened his mouth as if to say something else, then sighed, like he’d thought better of it. “Yeah, they’re on the computer’s POS terminal.”
I sat back down and started opening files until I found the POS terminal. After that it was just a matter of navigating to the 12th and copy-pasting the transaction data from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.
