Cupping her face, he studied her. “How are you feeling today, anyway? I didn’t get a chance to ask earlier . . .”
Earlier . . . as in when they were having sex and then he was giving her the cold shoulder. And was she imagining it, or had there been more than a hint of guilt in his voice? “Mostly just achy. And my side hurts. But I took ibuprofen and it’s manageable. You?”
The small smile brought out his dimple. “About the same.” Man, the combination of those harshly handsome good looks and his sweet concern was a real heart-stealer. And the more time she spent with Nick Rixey, the clearer it became that he was stealing hers. It had started before the sex, but clearly their closeness this morning had amplified everything she was feeling for him. The admission made her stomach flip-flop and her heart race and her knees weak—it was just . . . overwhelming in the midst of all this other chaos.
“Learn anything?” Beckett asked when he rejoined them. Nick filled him in, and Beck nodded. “Marz might be able to find that ATM withdrawal.”
“Good point,” Nick said. He fired off a text.
She huffed. “If we could go to the cops, they could get a warrant or a subpoena or whatever it is they need and get the bank to just give them the information.”
Nick frowned. “Yeah. It sucks, but until we know more, we gotta assume someone on the inside is helping the bad guys, which means for the time being we have to consider the police unfriendlies.”
“I know. Where to now?” Hard to believe she and Charlie were caught in a situation where she couldn’t trust the police. What the hell had Charlie found?
“I did the block up that way,” Beckett said.
“All right. Let’s head back the other way, then.”
“Oh, did you put one in that bus stop shelter over there?” she asked, pointing.
Beckett held up the stapler. “This doesn’t work in plastic or metal.”
“Finally, a problem I can fix.” She rooted in her purse and found the roll of clear tape she’d brought. “Ta-da!”
Beckett arched a brow. “You got a cold beer in there, too?”
She chuckled and passed him the tape. “Don’t I wish.”
Tape in hand, Beckett jogged across the street and taped a flyer to the inside and the outside of the shelter. For the next half hour, they hit up more cars, poles, and shelters. A barber agreed to tape the flyer in the window of his shop, and a pastor let them post it on the community bulletin board inside his church.
“Hold up,” Nick said, his phone buzzing in his pocket. With a quick scan of the relatively empty street, he pulled it out and answered on speaker phone. “Marz, this is Nick. You’re on speaker.”
“Hey. I got something,” Derek said. Becca looked between the men with wide eyes. “The ATM was a dead end. I managed to dial into it, and it was pretty easy to bypass the remote authentication system and override the machine’s firmware, but that only lets me record current and future transactions, not past ones.”
“Marz, I didn’t understand half of that, but you’re killing me here,” Becca said.
The man chuckled. “Oh, sorry. I get carried away. I got into Yellow Cab’s dispatch records. Man, their firewall was seriously weak. Anyway, there have been three pickups from that convenience store in the past two weeks. Two dropped off to residential addresses and one to a motel.”
Nick nodded. “Text me the addresses?”
Pause. “Done. They’re all near you, so it shouldn’t take long to check them. Hey, you all have enough hands? I forgot something, and Easy said he’d get it.”
“That should be fine, but send Shane our way.” Becca met Nick’s gaze, wondering why he’d asked for more help.
“Roger that.” Marz hung up.
“Why did you ask him to send Shane?” she asked.
“Because we have specific addresses to check out now. If we happen upon the location where Charlie’s being held, I want us to have more backup.” His phone vibrated with an incoming text message. “Our first solid lead,” he said. “Let’s check them out.”
Becca’s stomach churned with equal parts dread, anticipation, and hope. Wherever you are, Charlie, we’re coming. Just hang in there a little while longer.
BECCA’S HOPES WERE hanging on by a very thin thread with a frayed spot in the middle. After ruling out the two elderly ladies who lived at the residences on Marz’s initial list, they were on their way to a third motel. Apparently Charlie had been moving around a lot. What the hell made him so afraid? Any other time, she might’ve written it off to his paranoia, but given that someone had kidnapped and tortured him, he’d clearly behaved completely rationally.