4. Vince
4
VINCE
What felt like hours later, I finally finished the report on the skip we had just picked up. Admittedly , it may have taken me longer than usual since I spent a considerable amount of time looking into the website with the cat logo. I finally had my first clue in years, but the website provided no additional information that was useful, so I gave up and went back to my report.
A knock at my door had me looking up to see Wade leaning on the door jamb.
“You found her,” he said, grinning.
“Uh, the skip was a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound man with a mustache. Definitely not a her ,” I told him, wondering why he thought the skip I’d caught was a female.
He smiled. “ No , I mean you found your missing girl.”
I was confused, and he must have seen that on my face.
“Your cat letter girl who ghosted you,” he said, and my body tightened.
“Ruthie came by when Archer and I were going over some new clients, and she said to move one of the website businesses to the top of the list because you thought you might know the owner. We were curious since you hadn’t brought it up when Archer originally asked, so we pulled up the website,” he said, and I realized he had seen the same thing I had. “ The cat logo is the same one she used to put on your letters and why you got that stupid pussy tattoo.”
I rolled my eyes at his comment, which he had made numerous times before. I was also not surprised since he knew how much those letters meant to me. Even though he and Jack used to give me crap, they knew that letters from home could be your lifeline in the tough moments.
“Thought you gave up looking for her.” He said it like it was not a question, but it clearly was.
He knew I’d spent months after we got home to the States looking for her and trying to figure out who she was. I’d always hated things that weren’t solved, closed, or resolved. It was why I was good at hunting people down like my dad was. The mystery of not knowing bothered me. It was also why shows like Unsolved Mysteries and Cold Case bothered the hell out of me.
“I did give up,” I told Wade .
“I guess fate has decided otherwise,” Wade said with a grin.
“What are you now? A walking Hallmark card?” I basically grunted at him. “ I get you’re in love with Ellie , dude, and I’m happy for you, but not everyone else needs the romantic voo-doo speech.”
I didn’t need him trying to make something out of nothing, especially since she was the one who stopped communicating. In my last letter, I told her I agreed to switch to email since she would be graduating soon and wanted to keep the conversation going, and then she stopped. Her . Not me.
“I’m not trying to marry you off, dumbass,” he said, grinning even bigger now like he knew something I didn’t, and I didn’t like it. “ I know you like your puzzles, and you likely won’t rest until you solve this one, so we’re offering to help.”
“Who’s we?” I asked just as Archer came around the corner with two Oreos stuffed in his mouth.
“Us, the two smartest people you know,” Wade said, pointing at himself and Archer , who was smiling with a mouthful of cookies.
I snorted and shook my head.
“I don’t need your help, but thanks,” I told them.
“We know you don’t need it, but you’re going to get it anyway,” Archer said. “ I put Axel on it since he’s a whiz at the computer stuff. And Dane can help, too.”
Dane Enderson and Axel Skarsg?rd were two of our other newer hires. They came recommended by Wade’s sister. Both were great with tech work and computers.
“Jack wants in on this too, but he’s gotta finish up his stakeout of the cheating husband, and that could be a couple of days, so we’ll fill him in when he gets back,” Wade explained.
I rolled my eyes at them. Sometimes , they meddled worse than a bunch of grandmas. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I took it out to see it was the cop I’d handed Oklahoma off to. I answered and put it on speaker so Archer could hear since I had a feeling I knew what this was about.
“Hey, Parker ,” I said, and Archer and Wade both looked up.
“Vince, thanks for dropping off my latest prison guest,” Officer Parker quipped in response.
Parker and I went to high school together, though he was a couple of years older than me. After graduating, he went straight to the academy, and I went into the Army . He often worked with my dad when he brought in skips, so we’d stayed in touch over the years, and he was usually my go-to person when I needed to drop off one of his “runaway inmates.”
“I hope he decided to be chatty this time and give you what you needed,” I told him, knowing they were hoping he was the weak link in his local gang of drug dealers.
“He’s chatting alright, but not about what I need,” Parker said, and I knew what was coming, which was why this call was on speaker. “ He’s claiming police brutality from you, even though you aren’t an actual officer.”
“I got a dash cam and two cameras from businesses nearby where I caught him that would prove otherwise,” I explained.
“I figured,” he noted. “ I know your dad taught you better than to screw up something so simple, but you know I gotta call and ask.”
“I know, man. It’s fine. Do you need me to send the camera feeds over to you?” I asked, not offended at all since my dad went through this a lot too. It was just part of the business. When these men, and sometimes women, were backed into a corner after having skipped court dates or broke parole or whatever, they would grasp at any straws they could to get free.
“I likely won’t need anything else unless this goes to trial, but I’ll let you know if that changes,” he said. “ Since this was his third strike anyway before he bailed on his court date, the judge is likely gonna throw the book at him. He definitely won’t be getting bond this time, so his buddies won’t be able to bail him out.”
“Figured as much,” I replied.
“I will warn you though. The Crimson Vipers are not a group to take lightly, so until this gets all squared away, watch your back,” Parker warned me. “ Alright , well, never a dull moment around here, so I gotta get back to it. Holler if you need anything.”
Never a dull moment, indeed.