Page 6 of Wicked Love
“All of the places where we’ve found evidence related to my dad,” I said. “Those documents we can’t even read are the only things that tie Beckett to any of the rest, and even that evidence is shaky. He was getting a delivery from the trucking company. He might not be any more involved in the business than that.”
Logan grunted abruptly. I thought he was making a wordless objection to my point until I glanced over and saw his attention was completely focused on his laptop screen.
“The camera’s down,” he said.
All of us immediately gathered around the armchair where he was sitting. The window open on the screen was totally blank other than the small wordsNO SIGNALin the middle.
“Which one’s that?” Slade asked.
Logan opened a different window, which showed the same thing. “This is at the office building where the shell corporation was located. Both of the feeds are down—the one in the hall outside and the one by the front entrance. That’s got to mean someone found them and purposefully disabled them, not that one got bumped by accident or something.”
Dexter considered the screen as avidly as he had the trucking company documents. “When did they cut out? Do you think Beckett went looking after we confronted him?”
“Let me see…” Logan skimmed back through the recorded footage and found the last section where there was actual video showing. The time and date stamp in the bottom corner was just after eight last night. One feed went black, and then the other followed a minute later. It definitely looked like someone had gone and found both.
“The cameras at the seafood market are still running,” Logan said. “No one’s discovered those yet.”
A sinking feeling pulled at my stomach. “Thisreallydoesn’t make sense. They were disabled before you accused Beckett. And if he’s at the center of this conspiracy and someone found those cameras pointed at a key site last night, wouldn’t they have reported it to him? Shouldn’t he have realized we were on to him?”
Slade cocked his head. “Maybe he did. He must have already known we were poking around, or he wouldn’t have gone after your mom or our office to try to threaten us into backing off.”
I threw my hands in the air. “But he seemed totally confused when you guys confronted him this afternoon. Like he had no idea what you were talking about.”
“Maybe he’s just a good actor,” Logan muttered.
“Then wouldn’t he have come up with a better story? He wasn’t prepared at all for the accusations you threw at him or the questions I asked. We didn’t shove any real proof at him. It shouldn’t have been hard for him to come up with a fake explanation that would make it all seem reasonable if he’d known in advance that the subject might come up.”
Logan snapped his computer shut, his expression stormy. “Or he just wanted you to think that. You can’t let your emotions get tangled up in this, Maddie.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “Like your emotions aren’t? I’m sure you’ve been champing at the bit for an excuse to hate Beckett from the first second I mentioned he existed.”
He scowled at me, but he didn’t deny it.
Dexter cleared his throat and rested a tentative hand on my shoulder—just for a second, but his touch was rare enough to send a heated shiver through me before he withdrew it.
“The only solid connection we do have between Beckett and Maddie’s dad is the employee who told us about it,” he said. “We’re not getting anywhere with the records we have here. We should see what else we can find out about that guy. Maybe if we track him down, we can convince him to go to the police with what he knows or hand some real evidence over to us after all.”
Okay, that was a plan I could at least partly get behind. I nodded, shooting Dexter a grateful smile. “How would we do that?”
Slade tapped his lips. “The only place we saw him was by the trucking company.”
Logan sprang out of his chair, aggressive energy radiating off his brawny frame. “Let’s head back there then, and see if there’s anything we can make use of in the area.”
We tramped down to the parking lot and piled into Logan’s car, Slade sliding into the backseat next to me. He reached across the seat to twine his fingers with mine, but tension hummed through the air. All of us were on edge as we waited to find out if this course of action would finally get us somewhere.
Logan drove swiftly along the darkened roads. “It’s just up here,” he said as we approached the trucking company. He leaned forward to squint at the storefronts nearby, lit up by the yellowed glow of the streetlamps.
“There,” Dexter said, pointing at something beyond the windshield. “That convenience store has a security cam out front at an angle that probably caught the other side of the street.”
“Perfect.” Logan pulled over to the sidewalk just down the street. “Let’s check it out.”
I’d been around the Vigil guys enough that I didn’t bother to questionhowwe were going to manage that. Their methods weren’t always what you could call legit. Or legal. But they did get the job done, and right now, we needed answers.
Dexter had already pulled out his lock picks before we’d made it around the side of the convenience store to its back door. He made quick work of the lock and nudged the door open. The interior of the store was dark and silent, no one around this late at night.
“No other security system,” Dexter murmured. “They probably can’t afford anything much.”
“Makes it easier for us.” Slade slunk down the hall and paused at a room just before the larger area up ahead where I could see shelves lined with merchandise. “I think this is the manager’s office. There’s a computer.”
