Page 79 of Chasing Creed

“I gotta go.”

“Ryder, wait.”

“Jason just came in with something. I gotta go.”

“Wait, it can’t be—” But he was already gone.

Pakula was back. As he sat down, he asked, “What’s going on?”

“Ryder and his crew found Amanda Davidson, the Charlotte from Starkville, Mississippi.”

“I thought he didn’t know about the list yet.”

“He didn’t.”

53

Florida Panhandle

Jason stood in the open doorway of Creed’s loft apartment. He held something up in his hand by two fingers, his arm outstretched as if the item was something disgusting, and he didn’t want it near him. It was enough for Creed to hang up on Maggie.

“What the hell is that?” he asked Jason.

“A GPS tracker. One of the expensive ones. Fully waterproof with real-time location, a full year of battery life, and a serious magnetic base. Scout found it attached up in one of the tire wells of my Jeep. Back passenger side.”

“Wait a minute. What?”

“The guy spying on Brodie. Up in the forest. I got to thinking about whether someone could have followed us. But I’m pretty sure I would have noticed. Five hours is a long time.”

Jason came in and handed the device to Creed. It was small, about three-inches round. The black, hard case was splattered with mud. It would have been well camouflaged up in the tire well.

“Scout was alongside Grace when you trained her for electronic storage detection. I’ve been working with him a little here and there ever since Benny said drones and GPS trackers are being used more and more by drug cartels. I took him to my Jeep and asked him to show me Tippo. He found it in less than five minutes.”

Tippo was the word Creed had used with Grace. If a dog was trained for multiple detections, it was necessary to give the scent a name. That way the dog knew which scent the handler was asking to find. Tippo was for TPPO, the acronym for triphenylphosphine oxide. The chemical compound coated electronic devices’ internal circuit boards to keep them from overheating. Trained K9s could smell the chemical even if it was encased in waterproof plastic or buried in mud.

“So, he didn’t even need to follow you and Brodie.”

“Bigger question is, what does he want?”

“Are Colfax and Benny on their way?”

“Picking up pizza and beer in an hour.”

“Does Brodie know?”

“I haven’t told her anything. Yet. She’s going to be there with us, though, right?”

Creed’s knee-jerk impulse was not to include Brodie. Of course, he just wanted to protect her. But after his conversation with Maggie, he realized that’s exactly what she had been doing with him. Trying to protect him. She didn’t want him going off, circling the wagons. Taking on a killer.

“Yes,” he finally told Jason. “We include Brodie.”

“And Sully.”

“Sully? No, wait a minute. We already have too many people who could get hurt.”

“He already knows, so you probably won’t be able to stop him from helping. If it wasn’t for Sully, we wouldn’t have even known about this intruder.”

Jason was right about that. Maggie certainly hadn’t been ready to tell him. That knot tightened in his stomach. It wasn’t right. She should have told him about that list as soon as they found it and saw the label “Charlotte.”