“I know what you’re thinking, and it’s a bad idea. Not with cops around, Vaughn. Get home,” Garrison warns.
With the phone clamped to my ear, I wave at Zach and blow a kiss at Bee as I leave. She makes a shooing motion and yelps as she topples out of her chair. Zach, moving fast, reaches in through the hatch, snags her leg, saving her from a hard fall.
I use my shoulder to push the front door open as a beaming Bee offers Zach her beloved barbecue chips.
Garrison is probably right. Now is not the right time to go sniffing around for answers about where Resa might have come from.
“You’re not listening to me, are you?” Garrison asks.
“Sure I am.” I turn down the street, toward the parking lot. “You were saying something about needing to wear black for the party.”
“I was saying that I’m involving Resa in the Jerome Walker case. She seems interested enough to have taken the file up to her room.”
My steps slow. “That case has the potential to turn heavy.”
Heavy as in dark. Or dead. An omega on his way to a heat clinic going missing, especially now, is not usually a sign of something good.
“No. I don’t think he’s involved in that,” Garrison says.
I don’t push him about it. His instincts are the reason Lucas Security is the best. From the moment he conducted the interviews, he was certain that whatever happened to Jerome Walker had nothing to do with Asylum.
I believe him.
“But that doesn’t mean he’s not wound up in something else.”
“He’s alive. We just have to find him. Has Resa spoken to you about needing any help with her Dexter Pieter case?” he asks.
“She hasn’t asked, but I said I’d help her.”
After I found Resa breaking into the computer room and she’d admitted she wanted to speak to Dexter Pieter, the first thing we talked about was how we could help her without overwhelming her with our presence.
Someone abducted her from a heat clinic, and the first thing she wants to do now that she’s free is talk to the big man in charge. None of us needed to ask why. She has info she wants to pass on, and we intend to make it happen.
Thing is, we’re striking out as well. The man is hard to find.
I eye the cop car on the other side of the road. "Did Rune have any luck getting to Dexter?”
“No. But he’s still trying. He sent Cian down to see if he could get information face-to-face. No one is talking down there. At one point, they threatened to escort Cian out of the building.”
Shit.
I’d have thought the former owners of a billion-dollar investment company could get an interview with the man in charge. It looks like Dexter Pieter does not want to be gotten to. By anyone.
I hesitate at the entrance to the parking lot. I have my weapons on me. If I can find whoever was keeping Resa, surely that would be the quickest, easiest way of making Resa safe? Right?
“Have you got to your car yet?” Garrison pointedly asks, proving he knows me far, far too well.
Mentally sighing, I veer into the parking lot, unlock my car with a beep, and get in. “Sure.”
“Now, what exactly is going on down there?”
No one is in the parking lot but me; still, I lower my voice. “Cops are in the alley across from Ever Safe. Bee said they found blood but no bodies, so it looks like the people after Resa are professionals. Maybe hired by one of the alphas involved in Asylum.” I recall what happened in the alley. Two men in all black with guns pointed at Resa. “Whoever cleaned up the scene wouldn’t have taken the bodies unless they had to.”
Garrison is silent for a beat. “They must have had something identifiable about them. Or…”
“Or?” I prompt when his voice trails off.
“We’re about to go head to head against one of our competitors.”