Page 26 of But For You

“Yeah, a guy I know in Phoenix recognized Turner from the picture I had sent out and shot me a text on my phone that’s not registered to Marshal Kage or Sam Kage.”

“Why is that important?”

“Because no one in the department monitors that phone.”

“You have three phones?”

“Yes, J.” He smiled at me.

“Man, how easy would it be for you to have an affair, huh?”

He squinted at me. “Really? That’s where your brain goes?”

“Sorry.” I smiled sheepishly. “But so, when I send texts to you … with pictures … they could look at that?”

“In theory, yes. But if anyone gets shocked over our private texts … fuck ’em.”

“Oh God,” I groaned.

“Are you blushing?”

“Sam!”

“You are,” he said, chuckling. “That’s adorable.”

“Don’t—get away from me!” I yelled, swatting his hands away. “Answer the question!”

He cleared his throat. “Okay, so I got a text message and a picture of Turner that my contact took.”

“Oh shit.”

“Oh shit is right.”

“And so what does that mean?”

“That means,” he said, leaning forward, hands on my knees, “that I have to go to Phoenix and find my missing witness.”

“Okay.”

“Because if the witness that was taken from my team is actually alive and well and living there,” he went on, “I need to find him and bring him in so we can have a talk and clear things up.”

“Like figuring out who took him and why.”

“Yeah, the why is important,” Sam assured me. “I mean, I’ve checked the Turner case a million times to try and figure out why anyone would go to all that trouble to tamper with the marshals office for such a small-time bust.”

“So, you’re thinking … what?”

“I’m thinking that Andrew Turner knows something about somebody that has shit to do with the case he was actually involved in. I think there’s another story.”

“So, he’s blackmailing somebody scary?” I asked.

“I would think so. I mean, for sure somebody bigger than his old boss in Vegas, yeah. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“The boss in Vegas—did anyone ever question him?” I was trying to put pieces together in my head.

“He turned up dead two weeks after Turner went missing.”

“So, technically, there’s no one Turner would be running from?”