Not Our Daughter

Thirty-Seven

Burns was back inside El Paso’s FBI building and set up in a small conference room with his team. Three hours had already passed since his encounter with Cole Shipley, and their fugitives were nowhere to be found. And neither was the mystery guy. Security footage from other retail strips around the mall perimeter was being analyzed. But it was needle-in-a-haystack stuff and would probably take them days to wade through it all. More than a thousand people had fled the property all at once. Burns still couldn’t wrap his head around how everything had so bizarrely unfolded. If not for the unexpected appearance of the mystery cowboy, Burns felt certain they would have nabbed them at the mall.

But now he felt like they were starting all over again.

Agent Myers was situated at the end of a table, working his laptop, while coordinating with a team of other tech agents back in DC. Subway sandwich wrappers and empty Styrofoam coffee cups littered the tabletop. Burns was downing caffeine like it was the oxygen he needed to survive. Which felt like the truth right now, considering he’d gotten no sleep over the past thirty-six hours. Same with Davis. His right-hand man was running on fumes. Burns had already caught him nodding off several times while sitting in one of the conference chairs reviewing police reports on a digital tablet.

Burns rubbed his tight neck and continued to pace in a slow circle around the table. He wondered about Cole and Lisa’s next move. He had to believe they were still hiding out in El Paso trying to figure that out. It was a huge city. Their van had been thoroughly searched. Based off everything they’d discovered inside—the duffel bags of clothes, blankets, toiletries, food, cash, and so on—Cole had been dead set on Mexico. That had clearly been the plan all along. But now what? Now where would they go?

“Sir, we got something!” Myers announced.

This stirred Davis awake. He bolted up out of his chair.

“Morning, sunshine,” Burns said to him.

“Sorry, boss.”

They both moved in behind Myers. Sidewalk security footage from Winter Park was currently on his laptop screen. The tech agent had been working tirelessly, analyzing footage from around the concert last night.

Myers said, “This was taken from directly across the street from the city park exactly six minutes before the police officer called in his report that he’d apprehended Cole Shipley in the alley next to Deno’s Bistro.” Myers pressed play. They watched as a group of people moved down the sidewalk toward the camera. Burns could see a massive crowd behind them over by the concert.

“Boom.” Myers paused it. “Right there.”

Burns leaned in, squinted, and cursed. Same guy. Beard. Jeans. Cowboy boots. It was plain as day. “I’ll be damned. He was there.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Doesn’t necessarily mean he shot the officer,” Davis offered.

“Doesn’t mean he didn’t, either,” Burns countered.

Davis tilted his head. “You starting to believe, boss?”

“I don’t know what to believe anymore. None of it sits right with me. But I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t like that this guy appears in Winter Park right after we arrive there last night, and then he also shows up in El Paso today right after we get here.”

Davis furrowed his brow. “You think someone on our end is giving out information?”

“Maybe. Start privately checking back channels. But try not to step into a hornet’s nest. I don’t need more problems to deal with back at the home office.”

“I’m on it.”

“Do the same with online channels,” Burns told Myers.

“Yes, sir.”

Burns’s phone buzzed. He quickly answered it, listened for a minute.

“Are you kidding me?” he said into the phone, clearly exasperated. “Send me everything you’ve got ASAP.”

He hung up and slapped his hand down hard on the table.

“What?” Davis said.

Burns looked up, shook his head. “That was El Paso PD. Cole Shipley stole a vehicle at a car dealership two hours ago.”

“You can’t be serious. How?”

“He walked right in with a fake ID. Asked to take a test spin in a new Ford Explorer. And then he drove off the lot and never came back.”

“They’re sure it was him?” Myers asked.

Burns looked down when his phone buzzed again. “He’s texting me images right now.”

He studied his phone and then held it up to show Davis and Myers. It was a security camera shot taken from inside the main building of the car dealership. Cole stood in the lobby wearing a baseball cap, T-shirt, jeans, and running shoes, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world. Just a regular guy out car shopping.

“Meet Dillon Foster,” Burns said.

Davis shook his head. “I’ll give him credit. He’s got serious balls.”

“Sales guy said he encouraged Cole to take his time with the test drive, so he didn’t think anything of it at first. After about an hour, he started to get concerned and called the phone number Cole had listed. Turned out to be an inoperable number. But the guy kept waiting, hoping it was just a mistake, and he could still get the sale.”

“Two hours ago?” Davis asked.

“Yep. They could be anywhere by now.”