Page 63 of Missing Justice
Chapter Twelve
It was well past midnight when Taylor left her office in the J. Edgar Building, heading for home. Mer didn’t seem to care what time it was since her voice on Taylor’s cell reached similar levels to the karaoke singer from the cold case conference last weekend.
“I need your report by eight a.m.,” Meredith said. “Not a second past.”
“I’ll have it to you.”
That would be a minor miracle, but what the hell. She was already in deep shit. At this moment, a slight exaggeration with her boss was the least of her worries.
And she was damned tired of Mer’s lack of faith in her.
Damned tired, period.
She needed a finger of scotch and eight—no, make that twelve—hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Not gonna happen.
She had a case to solve and a deadline to meet. She’d have to sleep when it was over.
By then, she’d probably be out of a job, so there’d be plenty of time for catching up on her ZZZs.
Matt didn’t want her to stay at her place tonight, but she’d be damned if she let someone scare her off for a second night.
Ditto on the not gonna happen.
She’d already had the security system company upgrade her alarm, and added motion sensors to all the windows. If anyone paid her another visit, she’d be waiting for them.
“Did you interview that woman, yet?” Mer continued. “What did she say? The birthing center is a dead end, isn’t it? I told you it was a waste of time.”
Oopsie. After the brainstorming party at the armory with Grey, Taylor had been anxious to keep digging and Matt had dropped her off at the Bureau so she could check in with her team and update them on the investigation while he went to check in with his bosses. Taylor got the feeling from the little he’d said about the situation they were none too happy that he was mingling work and pleasure with her.
Tough cookies. All these procedures and rules clamped down on their investigation when a child’s life might be hanging in the balance. For that, she’d risk it all.
No hesitation.
The parking garage was hot and humid even though the outside temp had dropped into the 70s. Her car was one of the few left on Parking Level C and her heels clicked on the concrete floor, echoing around the gloomy space.
The paperwork on the employees and military records of silver truck owners had been extensive and convoluted. Hours of weeding out possibilities Grey, Mitch, and Matt provided had narrowed it down to fewer than ten leads. More than manageable. “I’ll have all of my findings in tomorrow’s report,” she told her boss. It was the best she could do considering she hadn’t interviewed Dottie yet.
Mer went off on another tangent and Taylor tuned her out. Matt had promised to meet at her place in twenty minutes to go over her list. She didn’t plan on getting much sleep tonight anyway since her 72 hours were almost over. Unfortunately, she couldn’t line up interviews until morning, but maybe if she went over the ten solid leads she had with Matt, she could reduce them further. Come morning, she and Matt could divvy them up and go to town. She had already primed her team for a 7 am meeting where she would lay out her plan of attack like a football coach going over the team’s playbook. The only thing she had yet to decide was whether to do a man-to-man defense or zone blitz. That would be determined on how many solid leads she and Matt decided on tonight.
If she ever got Mer off the phone…
Keys in hand, she passed the center pylon with a big C on it and spotted her car in the end slot. Another long, brutal day, but her adrenaline was pumping. They were close, so close.
“Mer,” she interrupted, “I really need to go.”
Her eyes burned from too many hours staring at her computer screen and she wished she had an extra hand to rub them. But with her briefcase in one hand, keys and travel mug in the other, and the phone tucked between her ear and shoulder, she fought back a yawn and blinked the irritation away as best she could.
“AD Cunningham will be at our meeting. Don’t let me down, Sinclair.”
Her vision blurred for a second, the shadows around her car seeming to stir and ripple. She blinked again and pulled up short, her adrenaline-fueled limbs getting another jolt.
Someone had just crawled out from under her car.
A man in black rose quickly to his knees, then jumped to his feet, eyeing her through a black ski mask.
“Taylor?” Her boss’s voice seemed far away. “Did you hear me?”
