Page 60 of Hero's Prize

“I’ll come inside and get a shot of them and run them through my system,” Lincoln said. He’d been quiet on the comms unit so far. Small talk wasn’t his forte.

“Be discreet, Linc,” Derek told their cousin.

“They’ll never know.”

Colton had to admit, Lincoln was right. He had some sort of pen that was able to take a digital photograph. He walked by the women as they were still figuring out where they wanted to sit and then walked back out the door.

Lincoln walking in and then deciding to leave without saying anything to anybody actually wouldn’t tip off anyone from Oak Creek as being unusual. He did that sort of thing all the time.

Lincoln was Lincoln.

Colton was careful not to stare at the women. He didn’t want to do anything to tip them off. Lilah, Theo, and Derek were in much better positions to observe.

“So far, it doesn’t look like either of them is taking much interest in Colton,” Theo said.

“Just keep an eye on them,” Callum said. “There’s a couple who just parked and are on their way inside. Using the date as a disguise would be a smart play, so don’t write this woman off just because she’s with another man.”

Callum and Lincoln were out in a van in the parking lot so thatLincoln could utilize his computer system on images of anybody unfamiliar. It wouldn’t definitively tell them if they’d found the stalker, but Lincoln had set up parameters in his system to provide them details that would be useful.

“Somebody else get me pictures of the couple while I’m running these two women,” Lincoln said. “I need eighty-seven seconds to finish and get the info.”

Nobody doubted that when he said eighty-seven seconds, he meant it exactly.

“I can get them,” Lilah said. “Hold and I’ll send it.”

She signaled over to Bear so that he walked to her, then pulled out her phone like she was taking a selfie of the two of them. Colton had no doubt that her camera was actually facing the direction of the couple and she was getting the shot she needed.

“Okay, I’m fairly certain we can eliminate these two women. Neither of them has any social media accounts—public or private—that are associated with Colton. Neither of them has been at any of his stunts or gotten caught on camera, nor does either of them have travel records to anywhere he’s been in the past two years.”

“This is so fucking illegal,” Callum muttered.

“Technically not,” Lincoln argued. “All I’m doing is searching what people have made public. It’s amazing how many details of their lives people post on the internet without thinking about the ramifications. Now, I can slip into illegal territory if you guys want me?—”

“No.” They all said it at the same time.

“I didn’t think so.” They could hear Lincoln typing on his computer at a speed faster than most humans on the planet. “Looks like the couple is relatively clean too. The guy has watched a couple of Colton’s bigger stunts—including the avalanche—but not enough to raise any red flags.”

Colton sipped slowly at his beer and talked to a few townspeople who came over to him throughout the next hour. He kept the conversations short, not wanting to scare away anyone else wanting to strike up a conversation, but it didn’t seem to matter.

The team found a couple more people who Lincoln put through his system, but none of them fit the profile nor had any seeming attachment to Colton. Moreover, none of them seemed to pay him any attention at all.

It was getting close to eleven when Colton finally decided to shut it all down. There was no point in making the bar stay open later just to continue this.

“I’m calling it,” he said into his comms. “If she was coming, she’d have been here by now. Either she didn’t show up at all, or she got spooked somehow.”

“Probably got spooked by a grown-ass man wearing a child’s shirt,” Lilah said.

Callum ignored her. “I concur. I’ll have one of my deputies monitor those two women who came in at first since they best suit our profile. But my gut says it’s not either of them.”

“My software says that too, which is better than any gut.” Lincoln’s tone dripped defensiveness—the concept of trusting a “gut” was completely foreign to his computer of a brain.

“Regardless, just to double-check,” Callum said.

One by one, everyone took off, keeping the ruse in place in case they happened to still be watched, no matter how unlikely it seemed.

Colton wasn’t sure what he was going to do now. The stalker was still out there, and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it.

CHAPTER

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