Brett
“Brett Cage,” he said into his phone the following morning, having answered without looking at who it was. Everyone had stayed through the night again, sleeping in shifts, working through the evidence, including the short document the profiler had given them on kidnappers. His stomach churned as he read it.
“Brett, it’s Brady. We’ve found something that we believe belongs to Felix.”
His heart almost stopped. “What is it?”
“Clothes.”
“Clothes? Are you sure?”
Brady hummed. “Not certain, but from what was with it, I’m pretty sure.”
Brett tried not to be impatient with the commissioner, but it wasn’t easy. “Which is?”
“His watch.”
Swallowing hard, he swallowed down the urge to curse and throw his phone—he wasn’t Dominic, after all. “Where?” Brady gave the location. “I’ll be there soon.” He hung up and explained what Brady had found to those in the room. “Eric, Owen, I need you with me. Sam, can you bring up this location and see if there are any cameras, CCTV, anything like that which could give us an idea of who might’ve left it?”
“Sure.” Sam turned back to the computer he’d been at all the previous day and night.
He headed out with Eric and Sam, but Maddox stopped him. “Can I come?”
Brett hesitated, still not wholly convinced that the man wasn’t a spy in their midst, but regardless of whether he was, he couldn’t keep him in Sec HQ indefinitely. “Fine.”
The four of them strode towards the car, Brett allowing Owen to drive instead of himself.
“Did Brady say what was there?” Maddox asked, leaning forward a little between the seats.
Brett shook his head. “Nothing but what he’d found. It could be a field or someone’s back garden for all I know. We’ll have to wait and see.”
He also wasn’t convinced they were Felix’s items. Yes, Felix had a rather unique watch, but it wasn’t the only one in existence. His uncle had given it to him not long before he’d died, and Felix had worn it ever since. It wasn’t cheap, hence the uniqueness, but others had one as well. He’d know when he saw it, though. There was a particular scratch on it that Brett knew had happened when Felix had protected Oscar one of the first times. Oscar’s house had been attacked, and Felix had to get him out, and Felix had dragged his watch against the wall. After he had recovered from it—a day’s rest ordered by Brett—he had been rather proud of the scratch.
Owen parked the car on the edge of the property line, a fence dividing the road from an expanse of land. It was huge, surrounded by trees, but there didn’t seem to be anything built on it, as the grass was easily up to their knees.
They went over to where they could see Brady. Brett stopped a short distance away.
“How close can we come?”
“They’ve processed everything, so you’re good,” Brady replied, putting his phone in his pocket.
Brett stepped closer to him and paused as he looked down. They stood just on the inside of a crop circle-style flattened area, and in the centre was a pile of clothes. He didn’t need to see them up close because he could tell they were Felix’s. They were what he had been wearing when he disappeared.
“The watch?”
Brady handed it over. “It’s not working.”
Brett studied it, finding the scratch. “It’s definitely his,” he murmured. He looked at another section of it. “It’s not broken. He stopped it on purpose.”
“How do you know?”
“Because this type of watch has a specific way of working, and unless you know how to do it, it’s not easy to stop it. Obviously, unless it’s broken. But…” He fiddled a bit. “As you can see, it’s still working.” He held out the watch to show the second hand starting its journey around the face, but then stopped it again.
“Why did he stop it then? What was the point?” Maddox asked, leaning closer.
Brett considered his answer carefully, his instincts roaring at him that something wasn’t right. “Maybe the time was relevant to something that happened to him. The time they removed it from him, or the time he took it off. I don’t know.”
He couldn’t put the pieces together, but he allowed the watch to go back into the evidence bag. He would request it back once they’d finished with it, if only to give it back to his family.