Unlike Darnell, Vaughn wasn’t ready to end his shift just yet.
He contacted dispatch himself, got the cell phone data from the anonymous 911 call.
The phone pinged three towers in Hopewell. Two in the city, one northeast in the farmlands. Not far from the barn.
Vaughn spent the next two hours driving around, not really sure what he was looking for. Maybe someone holding a sign saying, “Hey, look at me! I’m the Gasman!”
He spent about half of this time on Snydertown Road. Even visited a place called Stonybrook Meadows Farm.
Vaughn eventually decided that Darnell was right: it was time to go home.
Hell, he might even have a drink.
Unlike his partner, he deserved at least one.?
?Chapter 20
Ivy’s head waspounding. Her tongue thick and rubbery.
Something was beeping.
Heart monitor, probably. She’d drunk too much and had been admitted to the hospital. Stomach pumped. IV drip installed.
No... she’d gone home with Mr.Finance. He’d drugged her. Him and his buddies had run a train on her. Dropped her off at the side of the road, clinging to life.
Ivy knew that neither of these were true, but she couldn’t stop her hands from roaming all over her body. Gently prodding, probing.
Nope, none of that happened, and the beeping wasn’t a medical device.
It was her fucking phone.
She reached for it, knocked it off the bedside table. Groaned. Rolled over. Grabbed it. Hammered blindly at the screen.
It stopped making noise.
“I hate you, Abs.”
She squinted at the screen. There was a single text message from her friend. She frowned, deleted it. Then Ivy closed her eyes.
Wait.
She had work today.
Fuck.
Ivy grabbed her phone again, opened one eye just wide enough to see the time. Paper width.
It was after eight.
Shit.
Ivy sat up. Waited for the world to stop spinning. Gagged. Swallowed. Waited some more.
When vomiting all over herself—her outfit from last night—transitioned from a certainty to a mere possibility, Ivy finally got out of bed. New data, Bayesian statistics at its fnest.
She had to get moving, had to get to work.
Ivy stumbled to the bathroom, grabbed a face cloth. Wet it and scrubbed.
