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“Penny for them?” a voice asked from behind me, and I jumped out of my skin.
“Asshole,” I muttered as I spun my chair around to face Slater. “Haven’t you heard of footsteps?”
He gazed down at me, eyes twinkling, unrepentant. Slater was on Emmy’s Special Projects team, a US Marine with an infectious grin who could flip from wisecracking to deadly in a heartbeat. Sniping was his specialty.
“According to our fearless leader, footsteps are for pussies.”
I spotted the box of donuts in his hand. “Are you stealing our snacks?”
“I was sent to hunt sugar. Want one?”
“Did Toby take the secret hoard of junk food out of the third-floor stationery cupboard again?” I asked, helping myself to a bear claw. Last month, he’d replaced the post-Christmas candy selection with healthy eating posters reminding us that to eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art. Emmy had shrugged, told him she was dumb as fuck, and pulled out a candy bar she’d stashed in her pocket. So in revenge, he’d taken all the soda too.
“We have hummus and four kinds of cracker.” Slater grimaced. “You okay? You look kinda pensive.”
“Another cold case.” Old mysteries were fascinating, but after the last one nearly killed me, I’d become a little more wary about working them. “A missing woman with two possible avenues of investigation.”
“And you don’t know which way to go?”
“Exactly.”
“Would it help to talk it through?” Slater checked his watch. “I have an hour before I head to the airfield.”
“Going somewhere exotic?”
“Not really. A security audit in the Hamptons.”
“That sounds pretty nice to me.”
“Guess it’s better than downtown Kabul.” He dropped into the seat next to me and took a bite out of a Boston cream. “Talk to Uncle Slater.”
I paused to gather my thoughts and then laid out the facts of the case as I knew them. Slater was smart and had no skin in the game, and I hoped he’d be able to offer an impartial opinion.
“So, you have Dan saying the key is in New York, and the victim’s grandma saying the problem lies with the Manassas PD, and you don’t know who to believe?”
“In a nutshell.”
“And what does your gut tell you?”
“Before I spoke to Chelle La Rocca, I was ready to go to New York, but now I’m second-guessing myself. I mean, she knew Kaylin better than anyone.”
“But she’s not an investigator. You are.”
“I’m still new at it.”
“It’s true you don’t have much experience, but you’ve got good instincts. Dan wouldn’t have hired you otherwise.” He started on a cruller because calories weren’t a thing a man like Slater needed to worry about. “Did Kaylin have a credit card?”
“Uh…” I consulted the file. “Yes, she did.”
“The hotel in Manassas sounds like a shithole. A rent-by-the-hour dump. If you were a young, ambitious woman, what would make you stay there for over a week?”
“Not much,” I admitted. There were dead roaches in the crime scene photos. “I’d have to be running from something even worse.”
“Or someone.”
“Exactly.”
And knowing what I did now, that Chelle believed her granddaughter was alive, I figured there was less chance Kaylin had happened across a random psycho and more chance that her nemesis had caught up with her. She’d run again, burrowed in deeper this time, and she wasn’t coming out until the coast was clear. A sigh escaped. It would actually be easier to investigate the Manassas cops—at least I’d have a starting point. But in my heart of hearts, I thought Chelle La Rocca was wrong about them.
