Her phone was in her hand before she reached her car.
Still on for dinner tonight?
Kevin’s reply came fast.Turkey meatloaf Thursday. Wouldn’t miss it.
She typed back:Good. I need to talk to you about something.
Three dots appeared. Disappeared.Sounds serious, everything ok? You seemed off just now.
I don’t know. See you at 7.
She pocketed the phone, glanced once more at the station doors, then made herself walk to her car like everything was normal.
Even though nothing was.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Wyatt’s kitchen table was a mess of coffee rings and paperwork he hadn’t touched in three days. The laptop sat open in front of him, screen casting a blue glow across his hands. His phone was propped against a half-empty mug, speaker on.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” His mother’s voice was tight, the way it got when she was trying to hold something together.
“I’m fine, Ma.” He wasn’t. His fingers moved across the keyboard, pulling up the program he’d written five years ago. Back when paranoia was just good sense. “Are you?”
“Don’t lie to me, Wyatt. Not about this.”
He exhaled through his nose. The ghost user ID initialized, a string of code that would make his access look like routine system maintenance. Someone running a check on server protocols. Nothing suspicious. Nothing that would ping Sam’s radar.
“The body they found,” he said. “It’s the one from my trunk.”
Silence on the other end. Then: “You’re certain?”
“Same clothes. Same everything.” His jaw flexed. “It’s only a matter of time before they match fibers from my car.”
“Oh, Wyatt.”
“Yeah.”
The program finished loading. He was in. The case file sat there, waiting. All he had to do was click.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” his mother said. “Your father.”
Wyatt didn’t answer right away. A car passed outside, headlights sweeping across the window. He froze, hand hovering over the trackpad. The light slid past. Just a neighbor coming home late.
He forced himself to breathe.
“Of course it’s him,” his mother continued. Her voice went flat. Resigned. “No one else would do something like this. Put a body in your trunk and then move it. Make you find it twice.”
“He wants something.”
“He always wants something.”
Wyatt clicked. The file opened. Pages of reports, photos, forensic data. He started scrolling, scanning for anything that might tell him what his father was after.
“He’s brutal, Wyatt. You know that. I know that.” She paused. “Whatever he wants, he won’t stop until he gets it.”
“I know.”
“So what do we do?”