Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 140604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 703(@200wpm)___ 562(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 703(@200wpm)___ 562(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
“What?” Garrett was so confused. “Olivia has nothing to do with some grocery store.”
Ruby waved him off. “It’s a long story, but here in small towns those stories don’t die. They simply sink into the collective consciousness until they’re legends.”
“Wait,” Keane said. “That’s him. That’s Stephen.”
There was a rustling sound, and for a long moment Garrett prayed this was all one big mistake and Olivia walked in healthy and whole.
Then Keane’s voice came back. “I think you need to meet me at the station house. Fast.”
Garrett was already on his feet.
Twenty minutes later, Garrett stood outside the interview room watching the lanky man in the chair as he yawned.
“Has he said anything?” Garrett asked.
Keane had given him a hug when he’d run in, but there wasn’t time for comfort. They needed to figure out where Olivia was.
What had she already gone through?
“Not much. He says he doesn’t know anything,” Keane replied. “Morgan thought coming down here might open him up a bit.”
Ruby walked into the interview room. Gabe had given them a ride in so Ruby could work on her laptop and Garrett could make a painful phone call.
“Do what you can, Garrett,” Jack Barnes had said, sounding grave but resolute. “Remember there will be time to panic later. Right now she needs you calm and cool. Let Ruby do what she does, and I’ll have some people working on it from Dallas.”
Calm. Cool. He needed to listen. The truth often hid.
“I think I’ve got some footage,” she said as Morgan took a seat, too.
Stephen Gunderson sat up. He was still in his uniform and looked bored with the process. “I told you. I showed her the aisle she was looking for and then I went to check out a customer.”
“Good. Then you’ll have a receipt for the time we’re talking about,” Morgan said, her face an impassive mask. “Ruby, you can look that up, right? Stephen, let me introduce you to Ruby Lockwood. She’s a private investigator and excellent with a keyboard.”
For the first time restless energy stirred around the manager. “I don’t have some fancy system.”
Ruby didn’t look his way, simply kept staring at her laptop screen as she typed. “You use an inventory system that’s tied into the point-of-sale system. Old but reliable. Also easy to slip into. You didn’t register a sale for the fifteen minutes before or after we think Olivia was taken.”
He frowned as though figuring out this wasn’t going to be as easy as he thought it would be. “You can’t do that.”
“Of course I can,” Ruby replied simply. “I have a warrant and everything.”
Garrett had been busy. So had Jack Barnes. He’d told Jack exactly what they legally needed to ensure the evidence they found would hold up. Jack had made some calls, and Ruby was now a consultant and Morgan had her warrants.
“Morgan put out BOLOs on Jessica Fellows and Martin Gladen,” Keane said, his eyes still on the two-way mirror and the view it offered them. “You identifying that watch worked wonders. Ruby managed to figure out only a hundred were sold in the US, and only a couple in Dallas, including to Martin Gladen.
“Good. I assume they’ve put out something about Olivia.” They were keeping each other calm. It was easier now that they were physically together.
“Yes, but they could be anywhere by now,” Keane replied flatly. “They could be on their way to Dallas or Austin, or they could head for the Louisiana border.”
It was frightening to think how easily she could disappear. “How could they plan for this? They couldn’t have known where she would be this morning.”
“Unless they put a tracker on her cell phone,” Keane said with quiet certainty. “That’s why they shoved it into the truck we were driving. It wasn’t to set us up. That was a bonus. I bet Gladen shoved it into the car because he wanted to be able to track her. Hell, maybe they’ve been tracking her for a while now. They could have done it at any time when we weren’t looking.”
“I don’t know anything,” Stephen swore.
Ruby turned her laptop around, showing him the screen. “You don’t know this woman? She walked into your store five minutes after Olivia did. See. You waved to her. Or were you telling her where to find Olivia?”
Stephen’s face turned a florid red. “That’s Jess. We went to school together. Of course, I know her. Know her way better than Olivia since she was too rich and fancy to think about attending a public school.”
Keane growled a little. “They bullied her. Of course she didn’t want to go to school with them.”
“They’ll use any excuse to hurt her. If she had gone to school with them, it would have been something else,” Garrett muttered under his breath.
“And do you always greet your friends by gesturing them to the back of the store?” Morgan asked.