Page 85 of Smith

Instead, she’d let me disengage.

I did what I should’ve done from the second Cash started down this path. I ignored him.

“Tell me about George.”

“You’re a stubborn fuck,” Cash complained.

There was nothing to say to that so I said nothing and waited him out.

“My gut says the guy has nothing to do with what’s going on and that was before the latest break-in happened while I was face to face with the guy. He didn’t hide he loved his dad, is still messed up he’s passed, but had no sentimental feelings on the house. He grew up in that house but for him, it’s the people who lived in that house who were important to him, not the structure. I think part of the falling out he had with Billy has something to do with his sister, Brittney.”

“There were pictures of Brittney in the attic. Presumably Billy took those pictures without her knowledge.”

“Which confirms my theory. He didn’t outright say it but he skirted the issue. Billy had the hots for Brittney and George wasn’t happy about it. Let’s just say, Billy wants us to find him before George finds out Billy took creepy-ass polaroids of his sister.”

Cash was wrong. George finding Billy and beating the shit out of him would be better than me wringing the asshole’s neck for fucking with Aria.

“With the cops involved, that’s out of our hands.”

“Then we all better brace, because if the cops inform Brittney about the pictures and ask her about them, she’ll call her brother. My take is as soon as he disconnects that call he’ll be on his way north to pay his old pal Billy a visit.”

That could be a problem.

“Is Kira monitoring his moments?”

“My guess is yes. Layla called Zane after we left George’s yesterday.”

We were running out of time.

“If George comes up here, he’s gonna blow this for us. Billy will know he’s a suspect.”

“Agreed. So we have today to scout the lay of the land and we come back tonight and take him in.”

Not ideal. But it would have to do.

Thankfully the last thirty minutes of the drive was spent shooting the shit about nothing. Such was Cash’s way—smack you with whatever truth he felt you needed to hear then switch gears like it never happened. And since I was in serious denial about Aria, that worked for me.

“Red Tesla,”I muttered as we pulled down Billy’s street.

Across the street, two doors down from Billy’s house in the driveaway of a white house with black shutters, in a neighborhood that was tidy but very firmly middle class sat a red fucking Tesla. The car stood out like a beacon among the pickup trucks and older sedans that fit with the mid-income houses. That Tesla was likely out of the price range of ninety percent of the people who lived on that street.

“And the last piece of the puzzle clicks into place,” Cash returned.

My cellphone vibrated with an incoming call.

Jonas.

“I see it,” I said by way of greeting.

“We’ll circle the block before hitting up that storage facility on fifty. Easton wants to see if there’s anyone in there we can talk to.”

To make the left turn into the residential area off route fifty, we’d passed a U-Haul self-storage center. We knew fromchecking the map before coming that the storage center’s back parking lot butted up to Billy’s backyard. All he’d have to do was walk across his lawn and he could access that center and store whatever he wanted if he was so inclined.

My stomach churned at the thought of what he might want to keep safe in a storage unit.

“We’re stopping to talk to the neighbor,” I told Jonas.

“Copy. Out.”

---