Page 92 of Amber Gambler

That was the waitressing gig Maggy mentioned? Good Lord. How had we not put it together sooner?

“Looks that way.” Carter hit the pause button. “But…Frankie…it’s not a crime to have dinner with your uncle and the proprietor while a future missing person serves you drinks in a room full of witnesses.”

A growl was the most polite response I could articulate.

“Harrow wasn’t going to recall a kid who waited on him while those three were doing whatever the hell they were doing that night. He never even looks at her. But Armie would have known her. He hired her. Even if he couldn’t recall her name off the top of his head, he had this footage to remind him.”

The mention of the footage shifted my ire back to Armie and away from Harrow.

“But—” she mashed play before I responded, “—it wasn’t Armie who went after her later that night.”

On screen, the restaurant emptied, leaving only the staff. The waitresses were chatting and laughing one minute then waving goodbye the next, thanks to Carter hitting fast-forward. “And then there were two.”

Audrey and an older woman waited on the outside benches together.

The woman left first, after a man pulled up and honked once.

Audrey was old enough to drive, but she didn’t own a car. Headlights flashed over her, and she smiled. She rose, thinking it was her ride, and gathered her things. The driver must have called out. She froze, and, with a visible tremor, glanced over her shoulder.

A split-second later, she ran, her hair whipping behind her.

Lyle slammed into her from the back, knocking her sideways and out of view of the camera.

“There’s more,” she told me as the picture remained frozen, except for the timestamp ticking past. “She hit her head on the edge of a bench. She was unconscious when he carried her to his car and loaded her in the trunk. We lost him after he backed out and hit the road.”

“She must have seen or heard something that made her a liability.”

“That’s all I can figure, but I’m leaning toward heard. I’ve watched this a dozen times and nada.”

The blinking numbers sank in, and I double-checked them. “This was the night before Lyle died.”

“Ghosts have a poor grasp of time, right?”

“Yeah.” I hated to admit it. “They do.” I shook my head. “Mr. Collins is so persistent. I believed he was an outlier. That he was more in tune with the living world because of his guardianship of his granddaughter, but now I’m not so sure.” Had he remembered our last scheduled meeting? Or had it been a coincidence and he only showed upafterhearing about theasrai attack? “If I’m wrong about him, and we can’t trust his sense of self-awareness, this changes everything we thought we knew about the timeline of Audrey’s disappearance.”

“This proves Audrey was already missing the night Lyle and Armie died.” Carter dragged a hand down her face. “Mr. Collins approached you more than two weeksaftershe vanished.”

“If Lyle kidnapped Audrey, and Lyle is dead, then who’s been hunting the other girls?”

“Only one of the three men there that night is still alive.”

“Harrow,” I agreed, chest tight as I realized she was right.

Odds were good Lyle killed Audrey as soon as he took her. I almost hoped that was the case. If he decided to lock her up until he could dispose of her, and then he was shot the following night, Audrey would have starved to death by now if dehydration hadn’t killed her first. It was a horrible way to die.

“IfHarrow is involved, andifhe knew Audrey was a threat to them, andifLyle didn’t get a chance before he died to tell Harrow their leak had been plugged—” Carter spread her hands, “—then…”

“Harrow might have been searching for her,” I finished for her, hating how much sense it made.

“Either he didn’t know about the cameras,” she mused, “or he didn’t know where the recordings were kept.”

“He would have destroyed the equipment if he’d known there was damning footage on there.”

“He might have gone hunting her armed with only the few details he recalled from that night,” Carter suggested. “Lyle might have told him the girl had to be eliminated but not whether he succeeded, leaving Harrow to cover their tracks.”

“That’s a lot ofifs,mights, andmaybes.” I needed a minute to catch my breath. “This is Harrow.”

As pissed as I was at him, I wasn’t ready to slap a serial killer label on him without more proof.

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