Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Friday morning, I sit in a chair next to Slater, boots propped on the desk, ankles crossed, phone in hand. The surveillance booth hums around us. Monitors flicker. Radios crackle low with day-shift chatter. Everything looks normal, but it’s not. Nothing is.
On my phone screen, Ashlynn’s asleep in my bed. Her red hair fans across the pillow, one arm stretching into the empty space beside her–the space I left twenty minutes ago. I watch her, my jaw tightening.
She was adopted.
A fact she never shared. Based on the way her shoulders tensed, the way her voice flattened, she doesn’t just avoid it–she buries it.
What made the little girl who grew up without a family pretend she still doesn’t have one?
What happened in that house? And how the fuck was I never able to find her, even with access to closed records and back channels that don’t legally exist?
My thumbs pinch the screen, zooming in on her face.
I’ll find out tonight.
Slater glances sideways at my screen, then back at the monitors in front of him.
“She still asleep?”
“Yeah.” I exit out of the app, pocketing my phone when Maverick enters the room, followed by Elias and Nick.
Maverick doesn’t waste time with greetings.
“Alright Slater, what do you have?” he asks, pulling up a seat next to me.
Slater points to one of the monitors in front of him. Grainy footage fills the screen of the top floor of the parking garage. We’ve all seen this a hundred times, so he isn’t pulling it up for no reason.
The jumper.
Nick steps closer, stuffing his hands in his pockets watching intently.
“We’re running out of time,” Slater says. “We’ve got less than two weeks before the county cremates the body. He didn't have an ID. No phone. No next of kin. If we want anything else from him, we need to get it now.”
Elias folds his arms. “Autopsy?”
“Clean,” Slater replies. “No defensive wounds. Nothing in his system. But–” He rewinds the footage. “This is where it gets weird.”
The screen shows the man walking toward the outer wall of the parking garage. Then–a concrete wall that divides the parking lot partially blocks the angle. The camera catches him climbing to the ledge, then he’s gone. No struggle visible. But the blind spot is big enough to hide one.
Nick leans forward slightly. “Slow it down a little.”
Slater does. Frame by frame. Right before the fall, there’s a small flicker of movement, a shadow on the ground that doesn't match the man about to jump. It’s not clear enough, and that’s a problem.
“What about the other cameras on that level?” Maverick asks. “Were you ever able to catch anything on any of those?”
Slater shakes his head. “The feed is still intact, but the angles are wrong. Not only that,” he pauses, pointing to a different screen. “This is from the exact same time from the floor below.”
My eyes bounce back and forth between monitors. The feed from the floor below is perfectly clear. No grain. “Someone jammed the cameras.”
Slater nods. “Signal was disrupted. Short-range electromagnetic interference. Just enough to fuzz the lens without triggering a system alert.”
“He didn’t jump,” Nick says quietly.
My molars grind together. Someone took advantage of that blind spot. Close enough to touch him. Close enough to make sure.
“That’s not all.” Slater pulls up another monitor. The missing bartender. The van speeding around the corner, then disappearing.
“Remember how the van ghosted off city cameras?”
Maverick doesn’t look away from the footage. “Hard to forget.”
This time, Jeremy pulls up yet another camera view. “It didn’t ghost.”
“No fucking way,” Cole mutters. The room goes still.
“Commuter lot four,” Slater says.
Against the back fence, as far from the cameras as possible, a low hanging tree covers the roof of a van. A black van. The black van. The time stamp shows two nights ago, at eleven thirty.
“What’s happening here at eleven thirty at night?” I cock a brow turning toward Mav. His jaw ticks.
“Security shift change,” Jeremy answers.
Jeremy fast forwards the footage. Gone by sunrise. No one walks across the lot. No one steps out of a bus and goes to it. There one minute, gone the next.
“They brought it back,” Elias shakes his head.
“Or it’s not the same one,” Nick says. Everyone’s head turns in his direction.
“A decoy,” I add.
Nick nods. “Get you focused on the wrong vehicle. Have you chasing your tail while they sit right under your nose.”
“Making it that much harder to track down their location,” Maverick lets out a sigh.
“Do you have anyone at PD working this with you?” Nick turns to him.
“The cops around here are fucking useless. I met with the detective that was supposed to be looking into the jumper. Showed him the footage of her being taken. Last I checked, they had nothing.”
“I can answer that one for you too,” Slater announces. “Someone else hacked the DOT cameras. Put it on a six-minute loop. That’s how the van just fell off the radar.”
Silence settles thick for a long, tense moment.
“I’m already working on getting a couple cops in my pocket.” Nick rolls his neck. “They’re not mine yet, but they will be. I’ll make sure they stop dragging their feet.”
“The jumper and the girl,” Nick starts, rolling up his sleeves. “They’re not random.”
“They’re tied,” I grind out.
Elias nods but says nothing.
Maverick looks around the room. “Whoever’s doing this is comfortable here.”
“And patient,” Elias adds.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I already know who it is. Ashlynn. I stand.
“Cole and I will hit the morgue tomorrow.” Cole rolls his eyes, muttering a fuck before nodding. “Let’s lock down lot four. Let them know, we know.”
My hand presses against my pocket where her name lights up my screen. A slow smile pulls at my mouth.
“Let’s make it uncomfortable.”