Page 558 of Dark Love

“How long ago?” Shock turns back to the computer.

All eyes shift to Dahlia.

She shrugs. “Marlie was my first call after break. Which ended at about 10:45.”

“Got it.” His fingers start flying across the keys.

I set Dahlia on the bar, but don’t remove my arms from around her and Payne sets Imogene down on the stool next to us, giving her a bit more space than I can bear to give Dahlia at the moment. “While Shock does that, why don’t you tell us more about the phone call, Dahlia?”

Dyce takes a step closer, but I ignore her, keeping my eyes fixed on Dahlia.

“It was so painful to listen to her. At first, I thought she was mentally unstable talking about how no one believed her and there was a man following her around. She said it was a cop that was terrorizing her, but I couldn’t get the name.”

“Plant,” Dyce fills in the gap for Dahlia.

“How do you know that? How do you know anything about Marlie?” Dahlia isn’t asking me. She’s staring past me at Dyce.

“Because I’m Marlie’s lawyer.”

“You didn’t believe her. She said you didn’t believe her. How could you not believe her?” Tears fill Dahlia’s eyes.

I can’t let Dahlia vilify Dyce for something she didn’t do. “Dyce did believe Marlie. But remember that promise I made you make? I asked Dyce to do something similar.”

“You did?” Dahlia’s voice gets really small.

“I had to.”

“People could die,” she repeats.

“Yeah, Dahl.”

“I hate bad people.” She tucks her head into my neck.

“Got it!” Shock shouts. “And the phone number she called from. Let's see if I can get the location of the phone.”

“When she hung up, Marlie said she was a few blocks from his house. That she was going to get proof the Plant was terrorizing her.”

Could there be proof in his house?

“She didn’t need to get proof.” Dyce pulls something out of her pocket. “I have all the proof she’ll ever need. Including Plant showing up at the safe house she was hiding in up until today.”

Dahlia lifts her head off my shoulder. “Safe house?”

“Yeah. Even though I had to pretend to let the case go, I put Marlie in a safe house.” Dyce takes another step towards us. “He shouldn’t have been able to find her, but he did.”

How? This isn’t the first time Maddox has used a safe house. He knows how to hide a person.

That’s a question for later.

“Plant wasn’t the one that took her.” Shock’s hollow voice doesn’t bode well for finding Marlie.

A clear video feed of a street fills the wall.

There’s sound, but it doesn’t catch what Marlie’s saying on the phone as she walks by on the other side of the street.

Marlie isn’t running, but she’s not ambling down the road. Two seconds later, a man passes by the same spot. “Freeze that.”

“Freezing and enlarging,” Shock nods.

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