Page 27 of Safe
Now that we had his real name, seeing the extent of this kid's rap sheet made me fucking sick. One of the city's most wanted and unknown criminals had been right under my nose the whole time, living with my sister, and I'd been blind to it the entire time.
Part of me was pissed that Danielle never told me, but hell, if I were in her shoes, I probably wouldn't have told me either. I'd always been so overbearing, and now I couldn't help but think that my controlling nature had pushed her right into his arms.
Landon Fletcher was a ghost, nonexistent, barring a few forged documents with a spotless record. The bastard was clever. Changed his hair, grew some facial hair, added glasses, and some strategic tattoos. Just enough alterations that I never made the connection.
But Landon Rider? His real identity painted a very different picture: multiple counts of grand larceny, assault, drug possession and distribution, resisting arrest, obstruction of justice, and, I was almost positive, murder, though we couldn't prove it yet. Not to mention the new attempted murder charge I was so desperately dying to slap on his record. The list of charges seemed endless, and each new detail I read pushed the limits ofhow well I thought I could contain myself if the opportunity ever presented itself.
I obsessed over the crime scene file for hours, examining every detail, and still came up empty. I was good at my job, but this guy was better. He could be anywhere.
On instinct, I reached for my phone to text Danielle about dinner, a habit from our hospital routine, only to hear her phone chirp in my coat pocket. No more late-night hospital dinners. It hadn't even been a full day, and I already missed her. Those weeks in the hospital had given us more time together than we'd had in the past two years.
I packed up the files and stuffed them into my briefcase before heading home to an empty house. Never thought I'd see the day when I'd actually miss the sight of Cody sprawled on my couch in his underwear, playing video games with his mouth full of food. Today, I'd have welcomed even that. Coming home to a dark, empty, silent house was just another reminder of the exponential amount of weight on my shoulders to find Landon.
I didn’t sleep that night. The crime scene kept replaying in my head like a movie I couldn't turn off—finding Danielle there, clinging to life on the floor. The more I dwelled on it, the more pissed off I became, just lying there in silent agony. But I couldn't stop the flashbacks from coming, couldn't stop the waking nightmare.
I kept my gun in my hand all night. If Landon somehow discovered Danielle wasn't in the hospital anymore, I wanted to be ready. This time, I wouldn't fail to protect her.
After hours of tossing and turning, trying to fabricate a simple answer that wasn’t there, thinking about Danielle, wondering if she would stay safe, and pushing aside the reality that I might never find Landon, I finally drifted off to sleep, only to be startled awake by my phone not even thirty minutes later.
"Traser."
"It's Warren. Sorry to wake you up in the middle of the night, but I have some information you're going to want to hear. Meet me and the chief at Stumpy's Auto Center in twenty minutes."
I did a quick search on my phone. "Why am I meeting you at a junkyard?"
"Just get here." The line went dead.
I threw on some clothes and headed out. By the time I pulled up, it was 3 AM. Chief and Warren stood outside the lobby smoking cigarettes as they talked in low voices I couldn't quite catch. Beyond them stretched an endless field of junked cars.
Through the darkness between the first few rows, I could make out four figures with notepads, stopping at each car long enough to scribble something down before moving to the next. Whatever this was, it was big enough to drag more than just me out here in the middle of the night.
"What's going on?" I asked as I approached Warren, who was leaning against what looked like Liam’s car, though it was hard to tell in the darkness.
"The owner called the MVA today about an abandoned vehicle on their lot," Warren explained. "There weren't any plates, but when the MVA ran the VIN, it came back registered to Liam Rider. The owner recognized the name from the news and contacted us."
I glanced at the chief. "So, you think he switched it for one of these?"
"That's what we're hoping. The manager called in some staff to help, but there's a problem. Their inventory is all manual, and they've got over three acres of cars here. Finding out which one's missing could take all night."
I paused, considering the situation. Why would he wait this long to switch cars when he knew we'd be looking for him?
He must have realized we'd reached out to Liam for help. Was it just a coincidence that he dumped the vehicle the same day Danielle was released, or did he somehow know about it? And where the hell was it the whole time?
Warren looked at me cockeyed as he put out his cigarette, “What are you thinking, Alex?”
“Danielle was released today. Coincidence?”
The chief motioned to the owner of the lot. “Ma’am, do you remember when exactly this car showed up on your lot?”
She looked nervous. “I can’t know for sure. We have so many cars that come and go and stay. I can tell you for a fact it wasn’t here on Monday when we did our inventory. At first, I thought maybe one of the guys just missed it, but when I ran the VIN, that’s when I saw the name.”
“Okay, thank you, ma’am. I’ll let you know if we need anything else.” Chief turned back to me, “The important thing now is figuring out which car he took.”
He had a point, but I was still worried. At this point, Landon could be anywhere from California to right under our noses. The simple fact that we couldn’t find his car while Danielle was in the hospital was concerning.
Landon was two steps ahead of us the entire time, and we didn’t even know it. If he dumped it here this week, he’d been in town the whole time. Warren must have noticed my exhaustion because he squeezed my shoulder.
"Alex, go back home and get some sleep. We'll call when we find the missing car."
