Page 58 of Flesh and Fury

“Thank you,” Eoghan said, feeling very uneasy. He wasn’t an investigator but he knew enough to ask questions a fugitive hunter would ask. Gladys had taught him that. It sounded like there had been a struggle with more than one person in the bedroom around eight. If she’d been going about her day and doing laundry at seven-thirty, someone might have gone into her apartment and been waiting for her to return and attacked her. They might have then gone through her things, tossing the apartment and dropping books at around one. Even later on, perhaps under the cover of darkness last night, she could have been taken out of the apartment unconscious or God forbid, dead. So, while he’d been trying to reach her last night, someone had been here possibly hurting the chief.

The bottom line was, she’d most likely been found out by their mole and the betrayal was very, very real…

…and scary.

Chapter Eighteen

ARI

Eoghan was just finishing up with the neighbors when he peeked out of the apartment. His partner must have felt the weight of his stare because he looked up and nodded at the woman he’d been talking to. She smiled, reached out a hand, and shook his before dispersing with the rest of the neighbors as Eoghan tucked his phone away. He walked over to Ari, who stepped outside the apartment.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Ari replied. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

“It’s fine, Ari. I finished the interviews.” Eoghan smiled at him.

“Anything promising?” he asked, hopeful that someone saw something. Nothing inside the apartment had helped him pinpoint who might have taken Priest or if she’d been working on something they hadn’t been privy to.

“Well, I think I can pinpoint when she was taken,” Eoghan said. “One of the neighbors remembered seeing her in the downstairs laundry room at seven-thirty yesterday morning. After that, the lady who lives below this unit, says she heard thumps coming from her bedroom at around eight, a half hour later.”

“So, she was taken at eight which means someone may have gotten into the apartment while she was in the laundry room or she opened the door to someone?” Ari asked.

“That’s a possible scenario but I don’t think she was taken out of the apartment then,” Eoghan replied. “These units are too close and as you can testify to, the neighbors seem to be in each other’s business a lot. The downstairs neighbor reports that she heard more noises around one in the afternoon, five hours later. She said it sounded like objects hitting the floor and she almost came up here to investigate.”

“It’s a good thing she didn’t.”

“That’s what I told her.”

“So, you think Priest was taken out or forced out of the apartment later in the day or under the cover of darkness,” Ari stated.

Eoghan nodded. “That would make sense.”

“It would.”

They’d only just reentered the apartment, when there was a tapping at the door and they both turned to find the last person they expected to see standing in the doorway. Kellen McGillis was wearing his yellow hazmat suit with the hood tucked under one arm, looking just as smug and full of shit as he usually did.

He smirked at them. “I hope I’m not interrupting,” he said as he sashayed into the room. He was a devastatingly handsome man, but all Ari saw was a guy who was way too full of himself with a crappy personality. In fact, the last time they’d seen him, Eoghan had knocked him on his ass for making shitty remarks and outing him publicly. It had been an utterly crappy thing to do which is most likely why he’d lied to Priest about the incident, claiming that he’d slipped and fallen on his ass when she’d clearly seen what had happened.

“What are you doing here?” Eoghan asked.

“I’m here to help with the forensics. You know we don’t have a team…technically. I’m here to assist Doctor Patterson to determine whether this was a kidnapping or—” He glancedaround and whistled. “Wow, this is a mess. Maybe someone followed her home and robbed her.” He walked deeper into the apartment before stopping and pivoting to face them. “Then again, the boss might be on an unauthorized leave of some sort. Either way, it’s a big mess for us, right?”

“Fuck you, Kellen,” Eoghan said.

“Why would you even think she left by choice?” Ari asked, incensed. “Look at this place!”

Kellen shrugged nonchalantly, then turned, walking around the room, stopping at the pile of books and magazines in the middle of the living room floor. He stared down at them for a few seconds before turning to look at them. “Who knows why people do what they do. She’s been under a lot of pressure. We’re short staffed on marshals and she’s been putting in the work of ten men, staying late at the office, coming in on her days off, working early in the morning. She behaves like a machine. Maybe she snapped and went off on her own to do whatever it is she does when she’s not there.”

“That’s a really stupid observation,” Eoghan said. He pointed to the pile of books on the floor. “I suppose you think she trashed her own apartment before she left on this—how did you put it? Oh, yeah…unauthorized vacation?”

“Well, that’s a mystery,” Kellen said. He walked into the kitchen and looked at the open cabinets and the floor where the contents of canisters of sugar, flour, and coffee had been poured onto the floor as if someone were searching for something small inside them.

“If you’re helping Doctor Patterson, where is she?”

“Gathering her lab kit and probably trudging her fat ass up the stairs as we speak,” McGillis said. “A woman of her age and level of obesity doesn’t move as nimbly as say…me.”

“You’re a real ass, McGillis,” Eoghan said. “Whatever good qualities I ever saw in you are totally lost on me.”

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