Chapter 45
Zane
Pete took out his phone as I gunned the Cayenne’s engine and then braked hard before the last turn leading to Hawk. He was calm and collected, unlike that pussy O’Connor. “We’re almost there,” he said into the phone.
Jordy and his camera magic was our only hope of finding Peyton. We all knew the time it took was a function of how many eyeballs we had on the screens. Lucas had called in Duke and Constance. Terry was still with Yates, and Winston was covering Zamora.
After Joe waved us into a parking space, we sprinted upstairs.
“I’ve got the car and the license plate,” Jordy said as soon as we reached his command center with all the screens. He pointed at the top-center monitor.
“Where are they?” I demanded between breaths.
“Don’t know yet.” Jordy brought up a map with a red dot on it not far from my house. “I can only tell you where they’ve been. So far, he’s going north.”
Duke and Constance were both sitting to the left, scrolling through footage.
“LAPD is east,” Lucas mentioned.
My gut clenched. It was as bad as I’d feared. O’Connor was not taking her where he’d said he was.
“She’s resourceful,” Constance said, throwing me a reassuring nod. “Last time, she found a way to get us a message.”
I nodded, appreciating her support.
Jordy pointed. “Zane, you take this station, and Pete, you’ve got that one. I’ll feed you footage. Yell if you spot the car.”
We both got to work.
“Got one,” Duke announced a minute later. “Forget it. It’s not them.”
The problem was that the city was overrun with white Teslas and every time one of us found one, it took time to slow down, zoom in, run it forward and back, until we could rule it out or not.
After half an hour, we’d tracked them three miles.
I slammed my fist on the table after another white car that was the wrong one.
Pete halted his video. “Calm down and concentrate. She needs you at your best.”
“We don’t have the time for this. She doesn’t have the time. Jordy, think, man. There’s got to be a faster way.”
Jordy spun in his chair. “Since she’s not carrying a phone I can track, this is all we’ve got.”
Peyton
I heard the voice through the fog. “You moron. You shouldn’t have hit her so hard.” It was O’Connor.
“She deserved it,” Buzzcut argued.
“Yeah, you’re a moron.” That sounded like Shorty.
“And if you’d killed her, it would have ruined my alibi.” As my neurons came back online, the implication of that hit me.
They planned to kill me, just not yet.
My head throbbed as I cranked open first one eyelid and then the other. People came slowly into focus as the cobwebs cleared. Rays of sun through one window illuminated dust floating in the air of this dark space.
Buzzcut flipped a light switch. Nothing happened.
I lifted my head slowly. They’d laid me on a moldy couch.
“Ah, you’re awake,” O’Connor said as he waddled toward me. “You and this watch have caused me more trouble than you can imagine, Miss Clarke.”
I sat up fully. This couch smelled like it had dead rodents stuffed in the cushions. Nausea threatened to overtake me.
He held a watch.
I rubbed my empty wrist, confirming that it was my watch—Cassie’s watch, the one Lucifer had been after. “What’s important about that?”
He turned it over in his hand. “This is mine.”
That didn’t compute. Lucifer had said it was his.
“Halligan thought he was quite clever holding this over my head, but it didn’t save him. Giving it to his victims before he took them, and retrieving it after killing them was his sick insurance policy in case he got caught in the act.”
I coughed trying to wrap my head around the contortions. Lucifer had taken the watch from O’Connor and given it to Cassie, intending to take it back, but her giving it to me had put me in Lucifer’s crosshairs. It didn’t make sense.
O’Connor ran a hand through his graying hair. “If he ever was caught, with one of the women he told me it would be my problem to spring him or this watch would implicate me”
“You got him in the end, didn’t you?” Keep on talking, you walking piece of shit, even if this makes no sense.
“Yeah.” He patted his jacket. “When Smith and Wesson speaks.”
Shorty giggled. “People listen. Right, Pops?”
O’Connor smiled. “That’s right, Son.”
Pops? My heart skipped a beat. Then I saw the similarity. Shorty was a younger skinnier version of the detective—same hair, similar nose and ears. “Too bad you didn’t catch him earlier.” Keeping him talking. Use up time.
O’Connor sat down on a dusty chair. “Oh, I did catch him after the second victim. That was the magic of it. Then he had to go and fuck up the perfect deal.”
“Why the hell you tellin’ the bitch anything?” Buzzcut bitched.
O’Connor turned on the big man. “Because she won’t be telling anybody.”
I couldn’t control the shivers that ran through me.
“And you wouldn’t fucking appreciate the beauty of it,” the detective added.
“Yeah, shithead,” Shorty spat.
“Who you calling names, weasel-breath?”
O’Connor smiled in Shorty’s direction. “But you do, don’t you, Simon?”
“Sure do, Pops.”
“You’re too stupid to even know you’re stupid,” Buzzcut scoffed.
Shorty, rather Simon, looked to Buzzcut and then to his father. “Is it time yet?”
O’Connor nodded. “He’s served his purpose.”
Simon drew a gun.
“What the fuck?” Buzzcut yelled.
Bang, bang.
I flinched at the deafening noise.
Buzzcut fell back against the wall and slumped to the floor, wheezing. The gun he’d pulled out too slowly clattered to the ground beside him. “You—”
Simon walked up to Buzzcut and fired again. “Now who’s stupid?”
Shivers racked me.
The big man’s open eyes stared blankly at the ceiling.