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Nico sighed. There was no point sugar-coating it. “It’s true.”
“Oh, my god.” Her voice broke.
“Annie, did you see Colin Rowe in the restaurant during your shift?”
“Sure, he was there, but what’s he got to do with anything? Kyle is the one you should be looking for. I just knew that bastard wouldn’t let her walk away so easily, not after the public smack-down she gave him. Oh, this is bad. This is really bad. What are we going to do?”
She was spiraling, and he didn’t have time for it. “I can’t explain it to you right now,” Nico said, a little terse, but she’d have to forgive him later. “We’re looking for Kyle, but I need you to tell me everything you can recall about Colin. Was he alone? Who served him? Did he approach Lexie in any way?”
“He was with a woman,” she said after a long pause. “They were in for drinks. I covered the bar for Wade while he was in the back. As far as I know, Lexie never spoke to either of them.”
“Did you recognize the woman?”
“I’ve seen her around. Pretty sure she’s a teacher at one of the schools.”
“Do you remember seeing them leave?”
“Yeah, they left together not long before I finished. By the look of things, it seemed like they were taking the party elsewhere, if you know what I mean.”
“Who settled the bill?” he asked.
“What does that matter?”
“Who?”
Annie growled, as if annoyed by his line of questioning. “She paid.”
“Cash or credit?”
“Credit card.”
Bingo!
Frank—who’d overheard the entire conversation—slapped him on the back. The trail just turned from frigid to red hot.
Nico hung up with a promise to keep Annie updated, then put a call in to Seth with instructions to coordinate a search for the local schoolteacher, using Wade’s customer transaction records to learn her name. It took less than fifteen minutes to find her information. Another ten to converge on her home address. Five to discover her and Colin naked in bed together, innocent and oblivious to anything but their own lust bubble. And one second for another promising lead to turn to shit. Nico went numb. He barely heard the commotion going on around him as he walked away from the scene on rubbery legs. The gun he’d planned to point at Lexie’s abductor hung slack at his side. The hope in his heart that he’d find her and that she would be alright dashed in an instant.
How could he do this? How could he find her if he didn’t know where to look? How could he save her if he didn’t know who to save her from? And, most disturbingly, how could he ever forgive himself if he failed?
What followed was something of an out-of-body experience; Nico recognized what was happening but did not actively participate. The squad brought Colin in for questioning, during which Nico stood silently in the corner, hearing but not listening, absorbing but not caring. Seating him in the holding cell alongside Logan Hayes, their suspect tally now sat at two of four. Wilde called again with news that Bryan Fowler had been found dead execution style on the mainland, a clear message from his former crew that snitches do, indeed, end up in ditches. Three suspects down. Nico should have felt relieved. He didn’t. If anything, he only felt more lost. They’d checked the ferry logs, the traffic cams, put out a BOLO and exhausted every available resource to track down number four; Kyle Garrett, the most unlikely serial killer and yet the most likely to want to do Lexie harm. It was a cruel joke, not knowing what kind of monster he was facing off with; the drunk and angry kind who might hurt her out of jealousy, or the mass murdering kind who would torture her for sport. Perhaps both. Problematically, Kyle had an alibi for the night Darcy Walsh was killed, but it wouldn’t be the first time law enforcement had been fooled by an elaborately planned rouse.
The clock on the wall moved faster than it ever had before, its hands gliding around and around, mocking his inactivity with every revolution. Results from the puddle of blood wouldn’t be in until morning. At two a.m., Frank sat a strong cup of black coffee in front of Nico and ordered him to drink it. When the caffeine hit, he stood and ran anxious hands down his face. He’d never felt so overwhelmed in all his life. He was drowning in it: the unknown, the what-if’s, the anger. He scanned his eyes over the giant whiteboard filled with crime scene photos, maps, mug shots, post-it notes, and relevant scribbles of information about the case. He looked at each victim’s picture, took in their smiling faces, candid moments of their lives captured at times when they never knew what horrors awaited them further down the track. Sara Riley. Isabelle Moss. Darcy Walsh. And most recently, Lexie Bowen. Her photo had been hesitantly pinned up thirty minutes ago as another possible victim. Nico’s hands itched to tear it down.
Frank had moved away and was talking quietly with West, who’d finally made an appearance after Zoe did exactly what Nico had told her to, which was to basically annoy him into coming. According to the two of them, Kyle was nowhere to be found. They’d searched his apartment, his parent’s beach-side mansion, all the local watering holes—nada. In between more threats to sue the department, his mother had let slip that Kyle went in search of Lexie earlier in the evening, a fact that not even West could easily ignore or dismiss as coincidence, though it did prompt him to share that he’d gone to see Kyle after the rock-through-the-window incident to talk some sense into him. “He gets it now,” he’d told Nico. “I made sure of it. He gave me his word he wouldn’t bother her anymore. We even started arrangements with his parents to find a good rehab facility.” Nico didn’t believe it for a second, and for the first time, West also seemed to be asking himself the same question the rest of them had been asking from the beginning: was Lexie’s ex-husband capable of murder?
Nico stepped back a few paces, so he could see the board in its entirety.
Come on, give me something.
The thought came and went like a soft scent on the wind, then his attention was caught by the sound of Cora’s voice announcing she’d brought fresh chili and cornbread. The smell set Nico’s mouth watering. He watched the team gather around it.
“What are you doing here, Cora?” he asked. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“I am as much a part of this team as you are,” she said, thrusting a serving of food into his hands. “Just because I don’t carry a gun on my hip, doesn’t make me useless.”
“I never said that.”
“Oh, I know. You wouldn’t dare. Now, eat.”
