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He fires off a text to Zen, and then we head to his office.
Zen’s small office looks like a pawn shop for monitors and other electronic equipment. He’s already lookin’ for the information Tex asked him to look up by the time we slide through his door.
“Dylan Everett,” he muses out loud as he bangs away on his keyboard. “He was arrested for aggravated assault. They found a weapon in his vehicle. He already had a prior felony assault charge involving a deadly weapon and was forbidden by law from possessing a weapon, so he caught an extra charge for that. And the cherry on top was finding narcotics under his front driver’s seat, which he tried to blame on Linsey. But come to find out, the package only had his fingerprints all over it.”
“Stupid fucker,” I mumble under my breath.
“So, it was a little more than just the DV that got him a twelve-year sentence.”
Clearing my throat, I ask, “How in the hell does someone like that get released early?”
Tex is looking over Zen’s shoulder at the screen and answers my question. “Quite easily. He served exactly ten years of his twelve-year sentence and completed both drug rehabilitation and job training during his incarceration. He was released on supervised parole to a transitional living facility on the outskirts of Billings, Montana. As per the conditions of his parole, he’s not allowed to leave the state of Montana.”
“Is there any indication that he knows where Linsey is?”
Zen flips through several screens before answering. “I’m not seeing any contact attempts on record. The portal only listed an email address for Linsey.” He swivels his chair around to face me. “Now here’s the part you’re not gonna like.”
A feeling of dread washes over me because I don’t want this fucker anywhere near Linsey and Noah.
Zen pulls up a browser and starts flipping through tabs one after another. “The Gilded Fig’s website has her name and her photo prominently displayed, bragging about her being the only Michelin-starred chef in the county. Her classes are listed by time and place for the next three months. And that’s what I found inside of three minutes with one search engine.”
“That means that anybody who knows her name can locate her place of employment and the dates, times, and locations of her cooking classes,” I point out.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what it means. We need to set an alert on his parole status,” Tex tells him. “If he violates his parole by leaving the state, we need to know.”
“I’m already on it,” Zen says. “One way or another, we’re gonna track this asshole down.”
I text Linsey.
Me: I got news on the Montana situation. Can I come by this afternoon and talk?
Her reply comes back in under a minute.
Linsey: Yes. We’ll be home all day.
***
Her house looks different in the daylight. Zen did some checking up and it’s really her aunt’s house—that’s something that might work in her favor, assuming Dylan doesn’t know her aunt’s name. It looks just like something an older lady would own. It’s white with blue trim, shutters, and neat little flower beds along the walk. And there is that cozy little porch swing she was on last night. When I ring the bell, Linsey cracks the door open, looking more beautiful than ever.
She ushers me in, and we sit in their living room.
“Thanks for coming,” she says anxiously. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“Sure. I asked our club’s IT professional to look into your ex. We discovered that he has been released to a transitional living home just outside of Billings.”
She nods, looking emotional. “That’s my hometown.”
I get right down to it. “You know you’re easy to find online, right?”
Her eyes get big, and she states quietly, “I guess I didn’t really think of that. I can’t see why anyone in Billings, Montana would be looking at restaurants in Las Salinas.”
“Maybe not to book a meal, but if anyone searched your name, it’s there at the top of the page. But in any event, that’s related to your career, and you can’t hide. What’s done is done, now we need to make a security plan,” I tell her.
She begins quietly panicking. “Plan? We don’t even have an alarm. I never installed anything because Dylan was locked up, and as long as he was in jail, we were safe.”
“I understand your train of thought, Linsey. That made perfect sense when your ex was sittin’ in a jail cell countin’ scratches on the wall. But now he’s out of prison we don’t know what he’s gonna do. He might want to pick right up where he left off.”
“I had hoped that after a decade, he’d find better things to do with his time than start messing with my life again.”
