Off Course, page 16
Becs considered apologizing, but she wasn’t sure what she would be apologizing for. No, she hadn’t always been a pessimist, but years of being let down by her ex-husband had put a sour taste in her mouth when it came to her expectations of other people. By not letting them in, Becs could usually avoid those moments when she would get her hopes up, only to have them crushed again.
She briefly wondered how Evan had breached those carefully constructed walls in the first place. It wasn’t like he was a particularly friendly guy. He avoided her like the plague and had since pretty much they first started working together. Becs had mistakenly believed they’d been building a friendship forged over their love of their kids. She’d been wrong there, too.
“When we get back to the hotel,” Evan said casually from beside her, “I’ll talk to Slade and Atticus. See if I can bunk with them tonight. I’m sure we can figure something out.”
“You don’t have to do that. There’s plenty of room. The couch folds out to a bed. I can—”
“It’s necessary,” he barked, cutting her off.
Becs felt her frustration; it began seeping into her bloodstream, heating her skin. There was a good chance her face was red because that was what happened when she got upset. She was a redhead, and her fair skin reflected every ounce of her emotions, whether she liked it or not.
“Whatever you need to do, Evan,” she said through gritted teeth. “Whatever you need to do.”
Chapter Sixteen
Slade felt like a caged lion at the zoo.
He hated hotel rooms. He’d once spent almost four whole days locked up in one with Jennifer, the two of them unable to keep their hands off each other. It had been early in their relationship. Back when he was just a kid, really. The good ol’ days, he liked to refer to it. Back when he’d been stupid enough to believe the woman loved him.
Speaking of Jennifer…
His phone was blowing up again, but he’d silenced it earlier in the day when they’d been with Brantley and Reese. No matter what he told her, Jennifer wouldn’t stop texting. At first, when she’d started messaging him months ago, Slade had been blindly hoping that she’d realized the error of her ways. It had taken him about thirty seconds of talking to her to realize she was up to her old games. His ex-wife was no longer happy, and she was looking for a way out.
Slade hadn’t given her the opportunity to use him as an escape route. Not this time. Despite their near knock-down drag-out, Jennifer wasn’t taking no for an answer. She mistakenly believed Slade would eventually take her back.
As if.
Ten years ago. Most definitely.
Five years ago. Maybe.
Now. No fucking way.
He would be a fool to believe Jennifer was anything more than a self-centered bitch looking out for only one person—herself—and using everyone around her as a source of entertainment.
That was what Slade had been for her. A puppet she could maneuver however she wanted. Someone she could get to do things for her that no one else would do. Hell, he’d done things with her that he’d never fathomed doing, period.
In some ways, Jennifer had changed him. He’d opened his eyes to other possibilities because of her. He seriously doubted she knew that.
“You gonna answer that?” Atticus asked from his spot on the couch. He had his foot propped on the cheap wooden coffee table, the remote in his hand, and aimed at the television.
“No.”
“You ever considered blocking the number?”
He had. In fact, Slade had blocked Jennifer’s number on more than one occasion. But he’d always removed it, fearful Jennifer might one day need him for something. As much as he hated her, he cared about her well-being, and well, the truth was, Jennifer wasn’t exactly mentally stable. He worried that one day she might ask for the help she truly needed.
It was another lie he was telling himself in his effort to pretend his marriage hadn’t been one giant waste of time. Although he liked to blame Spencer for his marriage failing, his brother wasn’t the only one at fault. Jennifer was the one who was always seeking comfort from someone. She claimed she’d never gotten it from Slade, hence her reasons for running into the arms (and beds) of numerous other men. For the longest time, Slade had thought he’d done wrong by her, that he hadn’t given her what she needed.
But the truth was, he’d tried. He’d really tried to make Jennifer happy. The problem was she would never be satisfied. Didn’t matter who she was with; Jennifer was not going to be content with her life because she was searching for something that wasn’t out there.
Atticus’s phone chimed.
On Slade’s return pace toward the window, he glanced at the man, watching as Atticus looked at his phone, smiling as he did.
“Please tell me that’s not my brother,” Slade grumbled.
“It’s not.”
“Yeah, right,” he muttered.
Atticus’s head snapped up, his eyes narrowed. “Why would I lie to you about that?”
“I don’t know. Why do you lie about anything?”
“I don’t.”
“Right.”
“What’s your problem, man?”
That was a damn good question. One Slade didn’t have an answer for. He knew the kid didn’t deserve his wrath. The other night at Moonshiners, after Slade had confronted his brother, he’d thought Atticus had left with him. He hadn’t been surprised. What little he knew about Atticus James made Slade believe him to be a liar and a cheat. He would do whatever was necessary to get his way.
He’d learned he was wrong a few minutes later when Atticus came back inside, alone and angry. Wrong about Atticus leaving and wrong about his initial assessment of his character. Atticus wasn’t a bad guy, but Slade had been expecting the worst from him since the beginning.
Of course, there could be an entirely different reason Slade was trying to paint Atticus with an unflattering brush, but he wasn’t about to go there.
Slade should’ve been relieved that Atticus had seen Spencer for who he was and didn’t make the mistake of learning firsthand, but instead, Slade merely felt guilty for getting in the way of someone else’s happiness. Who was he to determine whether Atticus could find what he was looking for with Spencer? But he hadn’t seen past his blind rage.
Or jealousy?
No. Definitely not that.
“Look,” Slade said, stopping near the door to the bedroom. He put his hands on his hips. “I’m sorry for gettin’ in your business the other night. If you wanna hook up with Spencer, that’s your decision.”
“It is,” Atticus countered. “But I’m not talkin’ to Spencer. I haven’t seen him since that night. I don’t intend to.”
Slade nodded, not sure he believed him but sane enough to realize that wasn’t Atticus’s problem.
It was his.
***
“Holy shit,” JJ muttered as she stared at her computer screen. “Holy holy shit.”
“Is everything okay in there?” Baz called from their home office.
“Yes,” she said, her eyes glued to the information on the screen.
“Find something?”
More than something. JJ had found … well, she wasn’t really sure what she’d found, but it was definitely something.
Toggling between screens, she went to her notes app and clicked the search icon. She typed in the name of the high school Decker went to.
“Oh, my God,” she muttered when she realized she was right.
“Okay.” Baz’s voice was moving toward her. “I think it’s time to share with the class.”
She grinned and looked up at him. “Did you know Decker Bromwell attended the same high school as Kylie Walker?”
He frowned. “And that means what to me?”
“Well, for starters, they’re the same age.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she amended with, “Or they would be if … you know.”
If Kylie hadn’t died.
“And that means what?” Baz asked.
“They went to the same high school. They were the same age. They would’ve been in the same grade.”
“Probably. But that still doesn’t mean they knew each other.”
“I knew everyone in my high school,” JJ countered. “In every grade.”
“True. But you went to school in a small town. One with only one high school.”
“So?”
“Is it a public school they went to?”
JJ glanced down at the screen. “Yeah.”
“Some of those schools have close to two thousand students.”
JJ flipped screens and typed the school’s name into the Google search bar. She chewed her lip as she skimmed the results, then clicked on one that showed the number of students per school for all Dallas schools.
Baz was right. The school had a little over nineteen hundred students with a student/teacher ratio of 17:1. So maybe they hadn’t known each other. But it was still strange, right? Definitely not a coincidence because, according to Brantley, coincidences didn’t exist.
“What exactly does that connection do for us?” Baz asked.
JJ looked up at him, processing the question. She didn’t have an answer because … well, because it didn’t really do anything, did it? A connection between Decker and Kylie didn’t mean a thing. Not at this point, anyway. Maybe it would have a couple of years ago when they’d been searching for Kylie’s killer. But now … now it was merely one of those things that caught your attention.
With a sigh, JJ relaxed. “You’re right.”
“I’m not trying to be right,” he said, perching on the arm of the couch. “If you think that’s a lead, by all means, follow it.”
“No. It’s not. I mean, it’s not like I can call Kylie and ask her where Decker is.”
Even as she said it aloud, the information still felt important. Was Kylie the reason Decker had joined the task force? He’d come on about the time they were looking for Juliet Prince. Maybe they had been friends back then. Perhaps he’d been looking to avenge her death like a lot of other people.
“I’m gonna take a shower,” Baz told her as he stood tall. “Care to join me?”
Smiling, JJ set her laptop aside.
No way could she say no to that.
***
“I don’t know how this could get any fuckin’ weirder,” Brantley grumbled from his chair in their hotel room.
After spending an hour in the park, allowing Tesha to play off-leash for a little while, they’d come back to their hotel room for a breather. Atticus and Slade had done the same, checking in via text message a short time ago. Brantley had informed them they didn’t have any additional information from JJ or Z, but they would let them know when/if they did.
“You’re talkin’ about Decker, right?”
His gaze shifted to Reese. “Yeah. What did you think I was referrin’ to?”
Reese grinned. “With you, there’s no tellin’ sometimes.”
Brantley smiled, forcing some of the tension from his shoulders.
Evan and Becs were apparently on their way back after an interesting, although not enlightening, conversation with Saoirse Kavanagh. It was looking more and more like Decker had played them. He was out there somewhere, likely doing something he shouldn’t be doing while they were wasting time and money hunting for him.
At least, that was what Brantley was hoping. He honestly didn’t want Decker to be in trouble, but he intended to give the guy a piece of his mind the next time he saw him.
“What’re you workin’ on?” Brantley asked, glancing in Reese’s direction. He was sitting at the small desk with his laptop open in front of him.
“Just checkin’ in with the team. I messaged Darius and Luca earlier to see how they were doin’ with the hotel search.”
“Lemme guess? Nothin’.”
“Nope. He said they’ve got a search runnin’ on all hotels and motels in Manhattan, but so far, nothing’s come up. He could be usin’ an alias.”
True. Or he could be somewhere else entirely.
“They could spend a year researchin’ hotels in this city,” Brantley muttered. “If Deck’s off the books on this one, I doubt he used his real name.”
“Luca said he asked Z if he knew of any aliases that Deck used, but he said no.”
Brantley frowned. “For someone so worried when he called us, Z doesn’t seem to be providin’ much intel.”
Reese shifted, twisting his upper body in the chair and peering over. “You’re right. He’s not.”
“What’s that look for?” Brantley asked, noticing the shift in Reese’s countenance.
“I’ve just got this feelin’.”
“About Deck?”
Reese nodded. “I went into this fearin’ he was bein’ held captive somewhere and that it was our duty to find him.”
Brantley knew Reese’s reaction was based on personal experience. He’d been held captive years ago, missing for eighteen months after he’d been captured in a failed training mission. A training mission of all fucking things.
It was understandable that Reese would resort to that way of thinking after that. It was also understandable that Z would expect his brother to react that way. Had that been Z’s intention? To send them off course? Here they were, seventeen hundred miles from home, searching a city with too damn many people for one person without a whisper of a trail to follow. It was like finding a specific needle in a stack of needles. There was no chance of them finding Decker without some sort of lead. All the ones they’d had—the Kavanaghs—had netted them nothing.
“What’s on your mind?” Reese prompted.
Brantley shook his head. “Nothin’.”
“Don’t lie to me. What were you thinkin’ just then?”
Brantley didn’t want to tell him he was starting to question Z’s motives. He had nothing to base it on, and making an accusation like that could cause problems.
“Brantley.”
Because he couldn’t outright lie to Reese, he said, “I’m just wonderin’ why Z sent us out here with nothin’ to go on.”
“You think he had an ulterior motive?”
Brantley shrugged. “It might’ve crossed my mind.”
“He doesn’t seem all that concerned,” Reese mused. “He did when he called us Sunday mornin’. But not so much anymore.”
Perhaps Z was merely good at hiding his concern. Could be he was exhausting every avenue, and they were meant to focus solely on their mission.
“The part I’m havin’ a hard time with is what’s his goal?” Reese said. “What does sendin’ us out here do if we’re not meant to find Decker?”
Brantley was wondering the same thing. And he had the same number of answers as Reese. A big, fat none.
Chapter Seventeen
When Becs returned to her hotel room, she texted Brantley to let him know she was available if something came up. She didn’t bother telling him that Evan had gone to Slade’s room to see if he could find a place to sleep. That was Evan’s problem, not hers. And at the moment, she wanted to do anything that would get her mind off Evan and the argument they seemed to be in the middle of.
So until Brantley had something for them to do, Becs wanted to run a few things, see if she could find something in New York that would’ve drawn Decker here. And she wasn’t referring to the tourist sights.
She took a seat at the small desk in the room, pulled her laptop out of her bag, and plugged it in to charge. She logged in and found one of the message threads the team used to suss out ideas. Everyone was on it. Luca, JJ, Holly, Darius, and Elana. Jay had been on it before, but he’d left when he was promoted—his terminology, not hers—to investigator.
Promoted.
The word made her roll her eyes.
Based on what she’d seen today, she wasn’t sure the job was a promotion. It was simply different. More boots on the ground versus fingers on the keyboard. They were all doing the same thing; they merely had a different method of doing it.
She typed up her message and hit send.
Becs: Has anyone checked Decker’s credit cards? When was the last time he used one?
There was a good chance no one would answer her for a while, so she went to Google Maps and pulled up Manhattan. She skimmed the main attractions that showed up first. The Empire State Building, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Those were the first things she noticed. Times Square. The Plaza, Union Square, Hell’s Kitchen. They were all familiar names, which was likely why she honed in on them first. Anyone who watched television knew those names.
Didn’t mean Decker had come here for that.
Her messenger app dinged, and a banner came across the top of the screen.
Luca: I haven’t checked his accounts. Don’t have the info. I can get it if needed.
Becs didn’t respond since he hadn’t asked a question, and she’d learned that he wasn’t much for small talk. One time, she’d messaged back with a thank you after he answered her question, and she saw him shake his head. She’d done it to be polite and to ensure JJ knew she’d gotten his message since JJ was technically her boss. If Becs had known Luca would think she was an idiot, she would’ve kept silent.
Needless to say, she’d learned her lesson.
She continued to scan the map, clicking transit to see the subway lines. She started at the southernmost tip and began moving north. The financial district, Tribeca…
“If I ever go, I’d want to see the memorial site.”
Holly was the one who mentioned the 9/11 Memorial when they’d been talking about places they wanted to visit. Becs wasn’t sure what had gotten them on the subject, but she recalled it had been her, Holly, Decker, and Darius. Holly said she wanted to go to Las Vegas, and Becs had mentioned always wanting to visit New York City. Holly brought up the memorial. Luca had firmly stated he had no desire to visit a big city, and Darius had said that Hawaii was more his thing.
