Page 51 of Save Her Life

“Uh-huh.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Duane Novak would be getting comfortable in an interview room at the WFO while she was pulling into the driveway of Novak’s parents’ place. Elwood had made the mistake of telling her the agents’ names who were headed out there. She’d called Agent Gabe Radcliffe and got the address. This saved her the trouble of looking it up in the system and needing to defend the search to Elwood. As she and Brice had agreed, he was staying back at the WFO.

The property was in Alexandria, Virginia, twenty minutes from Washington. The house was a backsplit with an acre of land bordered by a six-foot-tall privacy fence. There was only one car in the driveway, and the exhaust was billowing plumes of white into the cold night air. Two silhouettes were in the front seat. Agents Radcliffe and Karl Shaffer must have carpooled, but why were they just sitting there?

She parked the fed car she was driving behind theirs and got out. There was a streetlight right out front, but she grabbed a flashlight anyhow. She rapped on the driver’s window of the other vehicle, and Radcliffe put it down.

“Why are you just sitting here?” she asked him.

“We finished looking around, Sandra, and there’s nothing that gives us probable cause to take things further,” Gabe said. “We were just waiting for you to turn up.”

“Well, thanks for that, but AD Rowe’s working on a warrant. Just curious, but are there any outbuildings on the property?”

Karl leaned forward in the passenger seat and looked over. “Two, both fairly large.”

“So a warrant’s coming through then?” Gabe asked. “My first time hearing of it.”

“Fingers crossed that we’ll have it any minute. But in the meantime…” She turned on her flashlight and cast the beam toward the front of the home.

“We’ll accompany you,” Karl said, tugging on his door handle and getting out.

Gabe shut the car off and joined them.

She led the way to an opened gate. “It was like that?” she asked her colleagues.

“Yes, it was. That’s why we could justify going in the yard. That, and seeing the outbuildings,” Gabe added, and she was grateful he didn’t elaborate on what he meant by that. Her imagination had already veered down that path. They would make a good place to hold someone.

There was an upper deck attached to the back of the house with steps down to the yard. To the side of it was a walkout from a full basement. She walked over there, but it was futile to think she could see inside. It was dark in there and out here. If she shone the flashlight toward the glass, it would just reflect like a starburst.

Her phone rang, and she flinched first, fumbled later, as she tried to fish it out of her pocket. She tucked her flashlight under her arm and finally got a hold of it. Elwood’s name was on the screen. “Tell me you have the search warrant,” she answered.

Gabe and Karl, who had turned their backs on her and started into the yard, stopped and turned around.

“I do,” Elwood told her. “It covers the entire property, including all structures.”

She pinched the pendant. If her girl was here, they’d find her, and it would all be above board.

“Where are you, by the way?”

“I’m…” Did she confess to being here? As Brice had pointed out, while he never told her to stay away, he didn’t exactly tell her to come here either. Surely, he could appreciate she’d want to be here when the warrant came through.

“You’re at the Novak property, aren’t you?”

There’s no fooling him…“I am.”

“How did you know where it was? I never told you, and I know you didn’t run a search, or I would have seen that.”

She might be imagining it but could swear she detected some amusement and pride coming through. “You told me you sent Agents Radcliffe and Shaffer, so I called them.”

Both their heads perked up, and she could feel them drilling her with their gazes through the darkness.

“But they’re not complicit in any wrongdoing,” she rushed to add.

“Neither are you, that I know of. Just tell me you didn’t cross the line.”

“You should know me better than to ask that.”

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