Page 70 of Hero's Prize

Colton didn’t know whether to smack the kid or laugh at him for being such a wiseass. But he didn’t need to ask him any more questions to know that this was probably going to be a dead end.

“Was it a woman?” he asked.

Jeremy shrugged. “I couldn’t tell by the texts.”

“How did you get paid? Electronically?” Lincoln asked.

“No, actually, there was cash in the bag with the stuff I was supposed to leave on the truck.”

Lincoln grimaced. “I was hoping our stalker had paid him through some sort of app—I could’ve traced that, no problem.”

Jeremy looked over at Callum. “Like I said, I really didn’t think this was something illegal. Yeah, I got a little spooked when you guys started chasing me, but I wasn’t trying to get into trouble.”

Callum looked over at Colton while rubbing his neck. “Technically…”

“Yeah, I know,” Colton responded, knowing what Callum was going to say. Jeremy was right that he hadn’t actually broken the law.

“Do you still have the text that started this whole thing?” he asked Jeremy.

Jeremy pulled out his phone. “Yeah, right here.”

Lincoln reached for it, and none of them protested. “Give me a couple hours with this phone, and I’ll see what I can find. But it looks like it was a third-party app that hides identification, so I’m not terribly hopeful.”

“I’m going to take Jeremy back to my office, and we’ll go over this again,” Callum stood up, pulling Jeremy up by the arm. “If anything comes of it, I’ll let you know.”

Colton handed the older man the knife, and Callum led the kid off in the direction of his car, the kid whining the whole time.

Colton began walking back toward the Eagle’s Nest with Theo and Lincoln.

“She somehow knew this was a sting,” Theo said.

Lincoln was still studying the phone in his hand. “Either that or she has always used someone else to deliver the messages.”

Colton shook his head. “That’s possible, but I’ve always felt like part of her MO was to deliver them in person. To try to get as close to me as possible. At least, that’s what it felt like until I got to Oak Creek, when things started to take a turn for the more vicious.”

“She doesn’t like that you’re here,” Theo said.

“Seems that way. And I don’t want to be bringing trouble to the people I care about the most. Maybe it’s time for me to leave, at least until this is settled.”

But hell if that was what he wanted. But what he wanted didn’t matter. Making sure Ella was safe was what mattered.

“Maybe,” Theo agreed. The other man knew what it was to need to keep his loved ones safe. His wife Eva had had her own stalker who had nearly cost her her life. “But why don’t you see if Callum or Lincoln can get any further info first? Let’s take the kids on the wilderness adventure—there’s no way some stalker is going to find you there. When we get back in a couple of days, maybe we’ll have more info to go on.”

Colton wasn’t very hopeful, but neither was he going to back out on Bear and those kids. Everyone had really been looking forward to this, especially Marshall. Colton couldn’t renege now and miss it.

But no matter what, this stalker was going down.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FIVE

Colton arrived at the Linear Tactical property the next morning with gritty eyes. It had been a long night. He’d been in touch with both Callum and Lincoln multiple times as any sort of update came in.

Unfortunately, all the updates tended to lead nowhere when it came to the identification of the stalker.

Jeremy Ritter was pretty much a punk kid who didn’t know his ass from his elbow. The thought of making a couple hundred dollars had been enough to not ask many questions.

Electronics hadn’t helped either. As far as Lincoln could tell—and that was pretty damn extensively—the communication to Jeremy had come from a burner phone as well as a third-party app. That meant it could be pretty much anyone, anywhere.

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