CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Hannah looked around the street one last time before walking into the coffeehouse.
But in order to ensure that her stalker didn’t follow her there, Wren had done as Kat instructed, first hopping into a rideshare right in front of her building. Kat had followed in her car while Hannah stayed behind to watch what the mole man did.
He was still sitting on the bench across the street when Wren left and had flagged down a taxi to tail her.
Hannah did the same, only she told the driver to stay with the mole man’s cab.
Kat had Wren switch to another rideshare a few blocks later, which would drop her near the coffeehouse. Kat stayed with her the whole time.
Meanwhile, Hannah watched as the cab the mole man was in tried to keep pace with Wren’s vehicle.
Unfortunately for him, he was well behind her and got stuck at a light as her car turned left and disappeared from sight.
By the time his cab reached the street where he’d last seen Wren, she was already in the second rideshare. He had lost her.
Still, he had his cab circle the block just in case he could find her walking on the sidewalk. Hannah’s cab stayed a few car lengths behind him the whole time.
“Are you stalking your ex or something?” her cab driver had asked playfully.
“Something like that,” she told him.
Eventually, the mole man’s cab headed off in the opposite direction from The Perfect Pour, seemingly giving up. At that point, Hannah directed her driver to take her to a diner just up the street from the coffeehouse. She gave him a generous tip and hopped out.
As she walked to the place, she kept an eye out, just in case the mole man had doubled back.
But he was nowhere in sight. She gave one last glance up and down the street, then went inside.
Kat and Wren were seated at a booth in the corner, out of sight from anyone who might look in the window from the outside. Hannah joined them.
“I assume Wren lost him if you’re here,” Kat said.
“He got stuck in traffic,” Hannah explained. “Never even caught sight of the second rideshare. We’re good.”
Wren was visibly relieved.
“Kat said you uncovered some information on the guy but wanted to wait until you got here to share it.”
“I appreciate that,” Hannah said with a smile. “Shall we dive in now, then?”
“Go for it,” Kat said. “You found this stuff. You should break it down.”
“It wasn’t actually me,” Hannah admitted, turning her attention to Wren. “A friend of mine at the LAPD did me a solid. He works in their research department, and even though he’s busy with another case, he took a moment to look into this.”
She put the soda bottle the mole man had tossed in the trash at The Greenery. It still had the powder she had used to dust it, making his fingerprints visible.
“What’s up with that?” Wren asked.
“Our guy drank from this,” Hannah told her. “I was able to dust it for prints and send the images to my research friend, who searched the fingerprint database. A name popped up.”
She pulled out her phone to show Wren what Jamil had sent her.
“Our mole man is Elton Quaid,” she said, displaying a mug shot of a man who was clearly the same one they’d been following all day.
“It looks like he’s been arrested,” Wren noted.
“He has,” Hannah told her as she flipped through the other photos she had in which Quaid didn’t look quite as squirrelly.
“Three times, in fact. Once for assault. Twice for trespassing, both times at someone’s home.
It looks like he got the leg injury that has him shuffle-walking while trying to leap a fence at the second house.
The cops found him crumpled on the grass. Do you recognize the name?”
Wren shook her head.
“What about the face?” Kat asked. “Now that you can see him without the disguise, do you recognize him?”
“Not really,” Wren said. “Maybe he looks vaguely familiar. But that could just be from the last few days on the street rather than anywhere else. I wish I were more help.”
“That’s okay,” Kat told her. “We know his name now. And his address, his job. We can dig into his social media history. We know about his criminal record. We’ll figure out what this is about and find the best way to deal with it.”
Hannah nodded in agreement.
“Like Kat said—now we’re the ones stalking him.”