Page 94 of Devil's Due

“Prez. It’s Stevie.” After telling him who’ve I’ve got in the room, I go onto explain what’s been going on.

“You think she went willingly?”

I shrug. Though he can’t see my gesture, he probably can hear the frustration in my voice. “Hard to tell. There was a note that she apparently dictated…”

“She got a phone? She could have texted you.”

Yeah. A point that’s been worrying me. She could have. “Her phone was left here. Presumably so we couldn’t track it.”

“You got Cad onto it?”

“Yeah, he should be talking to Mouse now. All we know is that she left with Lennox…”

“No. You don’t know that. That’s what the note said.”

My eyes meet Dan’s wide ones. Drummer’s right. “She wouldn’t have gone with anyone else.”

“Not willingly, no. Have you guys got security cameras?”

Dan gestures to himself and then the door. I nod. He gets up, presumably to go and ask Cad.

Dan’s back in seconds. “First thing Cad did was check the cameras on that side of the building but they didn’t show anything. The footage from the gate shows the car had blacked-out windows. We don’t know who was driving it.”

“Fuck,” Drummer and I say at the same time. “Lennox’s number in her phone?”

“I asked. Cad said no,” Dan inserts.

She probably hadn’t committed it to memory and put it on the burner. All she had was mine and the brothers.

“I don’t know what I can do from here that Demon and his brothers can’t,” Drummer gently admonishes me. I suppose he thinks it’s a betrayal that I’m not relying on my brothers in this chapter.

“There’s one thing, Prez. Devil. He in the US?”

“Devil?” He’s quiet for a moment. “Man’s as elusive as a pink elephant in heat. Last I heard he’d gone back to the UK. What’s on your mind? His contacts with the feds?”

“Be useful if he could check Lennox out.”

“Yeah. Okay. Can’t rightly remember if at this point we owe him a favour or the other way around, but we’ve done enough for him in the past that he might feel inclined to take a look. I’ll get on it.”

I thank him and am about to ring off—Drummer not being someone for unnecessary small talk—when he says, “I’ll do everything I can to find your girl, Beef. If you feel half for her what I feel for Sam, I’d be climbing the walls knowing she’s in the wind.”

It’s becoming easier for me to admit it. “I do, Drum. I do.”

I end the call and look at Dan. “Cad say he’s got anything useful?”

He shakes his head. “What do you know about the court case, Beef? You mentioned it was in a couple of months. Where is it? What court? I know two months is a long time, but if the marshals do the job that they should, she’ll turn up then for certain.”

Fuck me.He’s right. I look at him with new respect. We might not know where she isnowbut we do know where she’ll be in a few weeks. Won’t be hard finding the court details. They’ll be public record. Though is he proposing that I wait six or seven weeks before I find out whether she’s okay? If she’s even still alive? Could I sit on my hands doing nothing in the meantime? Nah. “I can’t wait, Dan.”

“No,” he agrees, “you can’t. But there’s another angle Cad and Mouse could search. See if the lawyers are still acting on the assumption she’s going to appear.”

If Mouse can’t hack into a court computer system, he knows someone who can. Cara.

“Good point, Dan.” I commend him while thinking what the fuck I’d do if her name had been removed from that witness list.

I feel like slapping myself around the face for accepting things at face value earlier today and being prepared to think I’d lost her. Even if she thought she was doing the right things, it would be all for the wrong reasons.

I stare at the new member for a moment. “How did you think of the court? You got experience?”

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