CHAPTER 31 JERRY #2
Ari raised an eyebrow. “Are you telling me that the rumours you disposed of an ex because he was a traitorous bastard aren’t true?”
No, they were true. Unfortunately. But at least Jez had never married Bastian, and now she had Cole, who was a walking green flag of a man. Mostly. He wasn’t averse to a little breath play, but that was a good thing.
“Fair point.”
“It’s nothing to do with men.”
“She has a dog? Baking skills?”
“Empathy. She has empathy.”
Maybe Jez would have that too if she hadn’t spent so long dealing with fallout from the worst parts of human nature.
“Good for her.”
“She’s a nice person. Perhaps too nice.”
“You mean she’s actually a bitch, but she hides it under a saccharine veneer?”
“No, I mean she lets people walk all over her. Although there’s a toothpick of a spine lurking beneath the surface—I did not see that blog post coming.”
Jez checked her phone. “Forty thousand likes and counting. The ex-husband is melting down in the comments.”
Hadn’t the douche ever heard of dignified silence? Figured that he was a lawyer—those assholes got paid by the word. Unless they worked for a nonprofit like the Justice Project, which once again led Jez back to the big question—why had Raelene Holtz filed that petition?
Levi wasn’t innocent.
Was he?
Could Justin be the devil in disguise?
Jez just didn’t see it.
But she also hadn’t seen the attack on Ruby coming, and as Ari had so rudely pointed out, she’d had dubious taste in men until she met Cole. And okay, yes, that was a valid observation, but she knew evil.
She’d been living in the shadows for close to a decade now, and Justin was no cold-blooded killer.
Could he lash out in self-defence? Sure, anyone could—just look at the recent Nolan-related incident.
But that wasn’t what had happened in Ruby’s bedroom.
Levi was the weirdo, the misfit, the prescription drug addict.
Out of the two men without alibis, he was the one who must have murdered her.
Right?
Jez gave a frustrated groan and slid lower in her seat. “I’m sick of this. I just want to go back to shooting terrorists. You know where you are with a run-of-the-mill religious zealot.”
“There’s something we’re missing here.”
“No fucking kidding.”
“There are three scenarios for Amie. One, she was abducted by a stranger. Two, her disappearance is somehow connected to Levi Sykes. Three, she left of her own free will. There are still several factors that lean toward option three—Justin said there was no obvious evidence of a scuffle in the parking lot, there’s a possible loan shark issue, her car is still missing, and she was probably pregnant.
And I know just how much being pregnant can mess with your mind, especially if the baby’s father is being a dick. ”
“The scuffle thing isn’t a factor. Zapping a target with a stun gun is a piece of cake.”
“I’m not sure she was stun-gunned. If someone did snatch her, she had the wherewithal to lob her purse into a bush.”
“Her abductor could have done that.”
“You think? Why would they leave evidence behind?”
“Because they didn’t want to get caught with it.”
In truth, the purse worried Jez. In that scenario, an amateur would have taken it.
If they were smart, they would’ve tossed the phone, but purses often contained valuables, so amateur criminals tended to keep the rest to go through later.
They’d pocket the cash and maybe a souvenir from the victim, then dump the rest in a ditch somewhere.
But a pro? A pro would have discarded the lot. A woman like Amie might be carrying a hundred bucks, two hundred max, which wasn’t enough to risk compromising a job over. And a purse could contain a second phone, or AirPods, or an AirTag in the lining.
And then there was the Estonian account. Through her job, Jez had access to a thousand slush funds, both cash and bank accounts, mostly financed by government bucks that had fallen into budgetary black holes. They sat dormant all over the world, waiting for an emergency to arise.
From Echo’s description, the account that paid Amie sounded very much like a slush fund.
But why would a slush fund be funnelling money to a glorified receptionist?
Jez glanced at the screen again, at the pair of one-percenters chilling outside the Justice Project.
It wasn’t unheard of for a man to quit working for Uncle Sam and join a motorcycle club.
Jez knew of a guy who’d done exactly that.
Quit the Phantoms—aka Point Team Charlie—after a job turned to shit and started a new life in his dad’s MC.
What was Hawk doing these days? They should look into that, just in case.
“You think Amie was abducted?” Ari asked.
“I’m sixty-forty on that. If we consider the other scenarios, there are almost three hundred million vehicles in the United States, and she was driving a black Toyota Corolla.
It won’t stand out, especially if she’s been smart and switched the plates.
And the loan shark thing—we’d be talking at least two loan sharks.
Because if one of them abducted her, he’d therefore know precisely where she was, so he wouldn’t swing by her apartment to put pressure on Sophy. ”
“He was threatening to take Amie’s stuff, not looking for her.”
“Still, he’d be dumb to show up at her fucking home.”
“Plenty of criminals are dumb. A guy tried to rob the AnyBet sports bar last month, and he wrote the holdup note on his hotel keycard wallet. The cops arrested him a half hour later in his room at the Nile Palace.”
“If someone snatched Amie, they were either incredibly lucky or incredibly smart. They had a tiny window to grab her while Justin got into his truck, and they managed to pull off the abduction without being spotted.”
“Or maybe Justin was the lucky one? Because if Jessalyn hadn’t shown up at his place with her dog, he’d be the prime suspect.”
The two women looked at each other, and puzzle pieces clicked into place. Fuck.
“He was supposed to be home alone,” Jez said. “Most nights, he was home alone. Even before he split with Melanie, she spent most of her time in New York.”
“Damn. I mean, it’s possible. Plausible, even. But isn’t kidnapping a woman to frame him slightly dramatic? And what would the real culprit get out of it?”
Jez nodded toward the screen. “I bet you ten bucks that when Amie shows up, she’ll be dead with a pentagram on her chest.”
The colour drained from Ari’s face. She might be Choir-adjacent, but she worked in a strictly investigative capacity. She wasn’t running around with a gun. In fact, she’d probably left her semi-automatic at home again.
“Are you serious? You think Levi hired someone to kill Amie so he could point the finger away from himself?”
“Come up with another scenario that fits.”
“I can’t,” Ari said finally. “But even if our theory is right, we’re still no closer to finding Amie. Or pointing the finger at Levi.”
“One of us needs to go back to Reverence and answer the next question—if Justin was going to hide a body, where would he put it? I’ll warn you now—he’ll get into a snit when we ask him.”
“Then you can go.”
“Let’s flip for it.”
Jez fished her lucky silver dollar out of her pocket. The coin had been a gift from her father, and it went everywhere with her. Light glinted off the metal as she tossed it into the air.
“Tails,” Ari called.
Jerry caught the coin. “Heads. Have fun in Reverence.”
Thanks, Dad.