Chapter 30 #2
“Okay.” The pieces started snapping together.
“What if he met with the handler, and they didn’t agree or wouldn’t make any promises?
Or… he didn’t trust the handler to follow through.
” I took a breath. “He’d go to someone who could make that happen.
Right? Would he go to the Pulaski County prosecutor? ”
Carter sucked in a breath. “Oh… fuck.”
My panic spiked. “What? Would going to the prosector be bad?”
“No.” His voice tightened. “He wouldn’t go to the Pulaski prosecutor.”
“But you know who he would go to,” I said, then forced my voice down. “Who, Carter?”
He hesitated long enough that my stomach twisted. Finally, he exhaled. “Mason Deveraux.”
“Mason Deveraux?” I asked in disbelief. “James said Deveraux hates him.”
“He does.”
“Then why would he go to him?”
“They have history,” Carter sounded like he hated admitting it. “It’s contentious, but Deveraux is fair—except for when it comes to Skeeter. He’s his blind spot.”
“And if Deveraux’s generally fair,” I reasoned. “Then James would expect him to drop Dani’s charges in exchange for the information?”
“Charges and more.” Carter’s tone softened. “Deveraux’s ambitious. It sounds like half of what’s on that drive could make his career.”
“But wouldn’t James’s handler lose his mind if he shared the information with someone else?”
“As big of a jackass as this person sounds?” Carter let out a humorous breath.
“Yeah, probably. But this is all speculation, Harper. All of it. We don’t know that he met anyone besides his handler.
For all we know, the handler took him somewhere after they met at the diner and made him power down his phone. ”
“So why the two hard drives?” I demanded. “And why hide it from me?”
“I don’t know.”
I gripped the phone harder. “What are the odds he met with Deveraux? Your best guess?”
He paused a beat. “If he met with someone other than his handler—and that’s a real possibility because of the dancer—then I’d put it at eighty to eighty-five percent.”
“So, now we need to track down Mason Deveraux.”
Carter burst out laughing.
“This isn’t funny, Carter.”
“I’ll say.” His laughter died. “What’s your plan? Call him like a mom asking if her kid can get his late ass home for dinner?”
He had a point.
“You can’t call Deveraux, Harper,” Carter said, all business now. “And even if James met with him, Deveraux’s never going to admit it. You’ll only make things worse.”
“I’ve got to do something, Carter.”
“Yeah. You stay put and go through the files.”
“That’s what I’ve been doing.”
“Then keep doing it. If he’s not back by midnight, then we’ll worry.” His voice went cold. “And I’ll start making calls at that point.”
“To who?”
“People who’d know if the Feds arrested him.” He paused. “Until then, we wait.” I didn’t answer fast enough, because he added, “Do not leave that hotel room, Harper. Promise me you won’t go hunting for his car or his phone.”
It wasn’t hard to guess what I wanted to do. But Knox’s people wouldn’t kidnap him. And if they killed him, they wouldn’t have bothered turning off his phone. The best use of my time was right here: digging through the files and taking notes.
“Fine,” I said, letting every ounce of my irritation show. “But if you hear from him, you tell me. Not like this morning, when he contacted you and you kept it to yourself.”
He was silent, then grudgingly said, “From here on out, you’re in the loop.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh, one more thing before I go,” he said absently. “Skeeter asked me to get you a new phone. It’s at the front desk, but I don’t want you leaving the room, so call down and ask them to bring it up.”
“A new phone?” I asked in confusion. “Does he think this one is compromised?”
“No, it’s a smartphone.” He paused. “With location tracking.”
I hesitated, my heart racing again. “When did he ask you to do that?”
“When he called asking me to send security to pick up Natalie’s family.”
Had he been planning to do something with a second hard drive before we met Dani and saw the video? Did that mean he wasn’t meeting with Mason Deveraux after all?
“He can see your location,” Carter said, sounding grim. “And so can I.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling numb. “I’ll call down. Thanks.”
We hung up and I called down to the front desk and asked them to bring up my package.
Ten minutes later, I had a new smartphone, which had already been set up and activated.
Carter’s and James’s current numbers were listed in my contacts.
I set up call forwarding on the number I’d been using in case my contacts called or texted.
I took a few moments to pace the room. I wanted to trust James, and I did, to an extent. But I wouldn’t put it past him to try to confront Knox behind my back.
I sat down in front of the laptop and looked at the map of his phone’s last location. None of the businesses on the corners grabbed my attention—he could have met someone at any of those places—so I expanded my search, gasping when I saw a bar two blocks away.
The Brick House.
The bar he’d told me that Razor frequented.
I cursed a blue streak, then called Carter.
“You heard something?” he asked.
“I know where he went.”
“How? Where?”
I drew a breath to try to calm my nerves, but it did nothing to help. “I looked at the map again and zoomed out a bit. There’s a bar two blocks from his vehicle. The Brick House.”
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” he asked dryly.
“Carter, that’s the place where Razor hangs out.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Before he left, I suggested we try to find Razor and see if he knew the location of the shipment. He said he couldn’t think about it right then, but we’d talk about it after he came back.” My temper rose again, but this time the anger was wrapped in fear. “He went without me.”
“We don’t know that,” he said, but he didn’t sound convincing.
I walked over to my bags of clothes. “It’s as good a place as any to start looking.”
“You are not to leave that room,” he growled.
“Try and stop me.” I hung up and pulled out a pair of jeans, a black tank top with multiple strings crisscrossed across the back, and a black jacket. I quickly changed, ignoring the three times Carter called and his five texts telling me he was going to send security to keep me in the room.
I was pretty sure he was bluffing, but I wasn’t going to press my luck. I texted back that he was right, and I was going to wait. I doubted he believed me, but it might buy me some time.
I applied some dark eye makeup, which took longer than I would have liked since I didn’t have much experience. I stuffed my hair back in the wig cap, tugged on the blond wig, and applied red lipstick. When I looked up at my reflection, I barely recognized myself. This would work.
I strapped a gun to my ankle, then put another handgun and my shoulder holster in my backpack, along with an arsenal of bullets. If I found out Razor had done something to James, I would stop at nothing to find Knox and end him.