Page 55 of Tough as Steele

“Ask Sierra to have the handwriting compared in the letters to the note on Mimi’s pillow too.”

Londyn made the request, and after listening, said goodbye to Sierra. Londyn lowered her phone from her ear. “Sierra’s on board with the requests. She’ll be here in thirty minutes. I’ll get a uniformed officer out here to protect the scene and let Sierra in so we can move on.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll grab the blood swabs from my car.”

She lifted her phone to tap the screen, and he stepped outside. Dolly was still on her porch, but she’d taken her curlers out and was fluffing brassy red hair.

He hurried to his vehicle and slid behind the wheel before she saw him and started another conversation. The inside of his car was warm from the sun, chasing out some of the chill he continued to feel over Mimi’s abduction. He grabbed the swabs but took a minute in the quiet of the car without any distractions to recap everything they’d learned and plan his next move.

Wigg’s prints had been found in Mimi’s car, and he was their main suspect. Gaskin had been murdered at Wigg’s house. Wigg had escaped, opening fire from his souped-up pickup truck. Jessica had lied about her real identity, and she was missing. She’d gotten a love letter from Gaskin, proving she knew him and was connected to him.

Did she know Wigg too? Why had Gaskin been murdered, and what was his connection to Mimi’s abduction? And what about Charles? Did his assault charges make him a strong suspect?

The answers to those questions could tell them where to find Mimi, but Nate was nowhere close to finding the answers.

With the swabs, he climbed out and headed into the house, thankful Dolly had gone inside.

“We have a patrol officer on the way,” Londyn told him right away.

He held up the swabs. “We need to decide our next steps after we turn this place over to Sierra.”

Londyn’s phone rang. “It’s Bristol. She probably wants to talk about Gaskin’s murder.” She answered the phone.

Nate stood waiting, wanting to make things move faster.

“Putting you on speaker, sis.” Londyn tapped the screen. “Go ahead.”

“You need to come back here,” she said. “Detective Easton is being pretty chill about everything. I’ve persuaded him to share details on this scene with you, if you reciprocate with what you know about Gaskin’s connection to Mimi.”

Londyn looked at Nate. “Sounds too good to be true.”

He nodded. “I say we go. He might have found something at Wigg’s place that will blow this investigation out of the water.”

14

The hum of tires under Nate’s car nearly lulled Londyn to sleep. She wanted something to eat for lunch but wanted a nap even more as they passed the seventeen-hour mark and the clock beat down on her like the sun. This certainly wasn’t Londyn’s first all-nighter on the job. She frequently spent the first twenty-four hours of an investigation awake, as those were the most important hours in a murder investigation too. Any investigation for that matter.

She didn’t much like their lack of progress on this case while Mimi’s timeline raced toward the twenty-four-hour mark.

She turned to Nate. “Do you feel like we’re spinning our wheels? Just reacting to things as they come up instead of making a plan?”

“Sort of, but our actions have to be fluid to handle every situation we find ourselves in.”

“Like coming back here,” she said as he turned into Wigg’s driveway.

“We’ll pick Easton’s brain, and then we can regroup and formulate a plan based on what we learn.”

“We can meet at my house, and my family can update us too,” she said, but her attention shifted as they arrived on scene and memories of the shooting rushed back. A shudder racked her body. “Have you had someone shoot at you before coming here? Wait. Stupid question. Of course you have. SEALs are fired on all the time, right?”

“Not if we’re running our mission according to plan. But yeah, it happens when an unknown crops up.” He looked like he was going to say something but then clamped his mouth closed.

Once again, he really didn’t want to talk about it. Mr. Silent. Because he wanted to be that way, or because he couldn’t share the information? She suspected it was a bit of both. He stopped the car, having to park a long hike from the crime scene tape due to all the county vehicles filling the drive.

She unbuckled her seatbelt. “You ever take a bullet?”

He tapped his thigh. “Right here. Two of them. And in my spine. Thought I might never walk again. But God brought me through it.”

The vision in her head was replaced by one of him lying bloody and dying. A sharp pain took her breath for a moment. She’d seen a fellow patrol officer die on scene. Saw her brother’s bloody body when she found him. And this pain trying to steal her breath was similar to that.

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