Gabriel had a key to the lock.
Focused and energized, all the doom that had been building in Gabriel’s system over the last few days fell away.
He leaned forward with excitement as he pulled out his own computer, typing the name of the gas station into his satellite search.
There were only two in the tri-states area.
Now came the moment of truth. He began comparing the two images.
A two-station air pump, a weathered picnic table, a tree without leaves, possibly the oak.
Across the street and down about the distance of two blocks was the fast-food restaurant.
Gabriel’s heart was pumping with excitement, but he’d also thought he’d had a site, done three points of landmarks, and then something didn’t fit, and the find was a bust.
He moved the cursor around to look at the bathrooms, but they weren’t visible on this satellite image.
Here, though, where the sidewalk was blocked by the van in the witness's video, was a display of gallon-sized jugs of blue liquid.
Moving the witness video forward and backward, there was indeed the color blue up against that outer wall.
Gabriel looked up the second Tamra’s Pump and Go location. At a glance, Gabriel realized it looked nothing like the witness video. One wouldn’t be mistaken for the other.
“Bingo!” Gabriel said as he scribbled down the address.
The next step was to get special agents on site to evaluate Gabriel’s work for accuracy.
He scooped up the laptop that held the witness video and ran through the halls to the Joint Task Force wing, where he burst through the conference room door without knocking.
The team turned as he held up the laptop in one hand and flourished the sticky note in the other.
Finley jumped to his feet. “You’ve got it?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sommer
Thursday night
“Hey Abbie, did you know that Marna has been on three dates with a physical therapy guy?”
“I did,” Marna said, “but I started dry texting; I doubt it’s going anywhere.”
“Dry texting sounds like the opposite of sexting,” Abbie said. “Unless this is some referral to dry humping, which is kind of juvenile.”
Both women sounded exhausted while Sommer felt fine.
Usually they were the trail rabbits, but, since lunch, Sommer hadn’t had any trouble keeping up.
“Dry texting – replying without energy, very few words, then a slow fade.” Marna stabbed her walking stick into the soft soil at the edge of the trail.
“Or you could say, ‘This isn’t working for me’ and end it,” Sommer slowed to keep her distance.
Abbie pressed a hand against a tree. “Sometimes, I don’t notice shifts in my relationships because it happens gradually, then the leaves start to change color, and one day you realize that it’s the autumn of a relationship, right? That winter is coming. And before things become chilly, it’s good to have a conversation.”
“A poetic choice of words,” Marna said with a sniff and a heavy exhale. “I would have said ‘fall’ instead of ‘autumn’ and ‘bitter’ and ‘frosty’ instead of chill. Might be a regional thing, though. My imagery comes from my childhood in Maine.”
“What do you think happened?” Abbie asked.
