Chapter 24
Just hold on.
Ben
“Rewind it.”
Fitz goes back and replays the video of a man dragging a cat she clearly thought was Joan Wick across the sidewalk and into the alley.
He hits her with a stun gun, then throws her into the back of a waiting open trunk and speeds away.
The cat, who isn’t Joan Wick, limps away.
Five seconds later, I appear. She was just fucking kidnapped when I was less than twenty fucking yards away.
He threw her in the trunk of a car and took her.
The vehicle speeds away, and all I can think about is how scared Annie must be. What the prick plans to do to her. Who the hell is he?
“Again,” I bark at Fitz. “From the beginning, exterior four.”
He pulls up a different view, and we watch again as this motherfucker throws Annie in the trunk of his car and speeds away.
“Again, side by side of four and six.” I take a step back and chew on my thumbnail as I watch my nightmare playout in front of me. “Stop. Rewind seven seconds. Stop.”
Then I see it, him, what I knew all a-motherfucking-long.
“Poe.” I fume. “I fucking knew it.” I put my fist through the wall and swallow the shards of glass lodged in my throat.
“You gotta give me something, man.” Parker says.
“No shit.”
“Working on confirmation.” Fitz opens another screen, and photos flash so quickly they’re a blur, then a still frame with a thin green line around the guy’s face. The program is computing and working to make the image clearer, but I don’t need it.
I know that face. “Fuck me. I should have killed him when I had the chance.”
“Me, too,” Parker growls.
“I’m missing something. What am I missing? How did he find her?” I spike my fingers in my hair and release a frustrated breath.
“What do we got?” Drew asks as he rushes into the control room.
Fury has no place in a rescue mission because that’s what this is now. I’m taking slow, controlled breaths, trying to keep myself calm as I let my mind work.
I walk out to the hallway and pace, lacing my hands behind my neck as I try to make it make sense.
What the fuck am I missing? I stared into that bastard’s eyes and told him what would happen if he even so much as looked at Annie again.
Did he take that as a challenge? Was he getting back at me, or was my instinct right?
How did he find her here? Was he following her? Tracking her?
No. Fitz made sure to sweep her car and apartment for tracking devices, everything was clean…but there was one thing we didn’t check.
I snap my fingers and hurry back into the crowded room. “Fitz. Can you search for a device signal in my apartment that’s not yours?”
“From here? Depends. What am I searching for?”
“Some kind of tracker he could have put on Joan Wick’s collar when he took her.”
“Damn.” Shep whistles.
I shake my head. “Actually no. Park, go see if you can find anything on her cat’s collar.
” He tears out of the room without hesitation.
“Fitz, pull up this guy’s old parking tickets, he had hundreds of them.
Locations and dates on as many as you can.
” I go to my laptop and open the document I have on Annie.
Since I’ve had that twisted feeling Vito wasn’t the answer to everything, I’ve been trying to figure out what I could have missed, so I made a timeline of her whereabouts the last several years.
“Can you compare these with his parking tickets?”
“Yeah, I just need a couple of minutes.”
I chew my thumbnail and tap my foot anxiously.
“Oh shit.” Fitz enlarges a graph that shows what I suspected. “This isn’t a coincidence.”
Poe’s been following her, watching. His tickets align with her schooling, are down the street from her home, and are near her place of work.
But if he got parking violations, he wouldn’t have been in his car, so what was he doing?
Watching her from a different vantage point, binoculars, a camera lens… camera.
“Holy fuck.”
“What?” Parker asks.
Something I was always suspicious of, something I confronted him about, something I knew he was lying about but couldn’t prove. “What was the date Phil Farrow initially queried Lawless for protection services?”
He shares his screen, and I watch as he zooms through files and data. “March eighteenth.”
“Pull up the pictures that were left on Phil’s desk. Scroll. Stop. Zoom in on Annie’s nightstand, the word-of-the-day calendar. What’s the date?”
It seems to take forever, but the pixilation finally clears: March 23rd.
“Phil called us before the pictures were even taken.” I state the obvious, and the mood in the room shifts to even more stifling.
“Which means he knew they were going to be taken. That’s why we never found evidence of someone leaving them on his desk because there was none.
Phil set it up. He hired someone to take those pictures of her. Why, though?”
Drew speaks up. “Would we have taken the case without proof that her life was in danger back then?”
My jaw sets, and I shake my head. “Dad was the one who arranged it, but at that time, no. We didn’t have the staffing.
” It makes sense. “Phil paid Poe to take those pictures…Poe became infatuated with Annie, and after the trial, he kept his eyes on her. When Phil died, he moved across the hall from her.”
Drew bobs his head as his neck gets red. “Profile fits.”
“He’s either gonna take her somewhere he thinks she’ll be safe…
or bring her back to where his obsession began…
when he first took those pictures.” I clench my jaw, forcing myself to stay focused.
Annie’s life depends on it. “Find out who the current owner of her old house is, pull up everything you can on Poe’s residences past and present, and locate any family land or properties. ”
Hold on, Blue. I’m gonna find you. Just hold on.