Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
“On the other hand, we’re a little short on leads,” she said. “Unless that phone has a treasure trove.”
I thought about the way Maddox had said Emily Shaw’s information had appeared curated. Anyone with the chops to do that probably wasn’t careless with their phone.
“I’ll keep all that in mind,” she said, which I knew meant she’d be checking her email and her socials.
Smart for the case, but I still didn’t like it. “I have some ideas of where we go next, but I need a few hours in the office before I’m ready to talk about it.”
That was mostly true. I had some thoughts I wanted to run by Ryder. Questions for Maddox.
I expected Sylvie to press, but she let it go. I glanced over to see if she was asleep, but her eyes were alert, watching the road as we drove through the night.
“Tell me about the case,” I said. “The one where the police used you.”
“They didn’t use me. You make it sound bad,” she said. “I was there. I was going to do what I was going to do. And they needed the help.”
“Fine,” I agreed, though I didn’t like the idea of the police putting Sylvie in the way of a killer. What we were doing wasn’t far off, but it wasn’t exactly the same either. “Tell me.”
And she did, her clear, warm voice filling my SUV as she told me of a girl—fifteen, pretty, good student, lots of friends—and the boy who decided she belonged to him. I heard in Sylvie’s voice the passion for justice, her anger that this girl had lost her life so young.
I wondered what her podcast was like, because I kind of got it. It wasn’t my thing to listen to people talk for hours on end. But Sylvie’s voice, the way she told the girl’s story—this wasn’t about clicks or sponsors for her. Or if it was, only a little. This was about justice.
In my business, things were rarely black or white. We didn’t work in service of finding right from wrong. We worked for clients. Sometimes, nobody on a job was the good guy. Sometimes, the answers to our questions were all bad. But all of us liked it when things were a little more clear-cut. And I could see why this kind of work would attract somebody as fierce as Sylvie Calloway.
She went on to tell me about the case that had gotten her obsessed in the first place—the waitress who disappeared.
“We still haven’t found whoever killed her,” Sylvie said, “though some tips came in to the detective on the case after the season of the podcast aired.”
“What do you think happened?” I asked.
She let out a long sigh. “I think it was a crime of opportunity. I think whoever did it wasn’t local. I think she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And those—those cases are really hard, unless you have DNA.”
“And do they?”
“Some,” she said, “but the evidence wasn’t handled correctly. It happens more than it should. Not bad cops, necessarily, just…there’s a lot of evidence, a lot of storage issues.” She shrugged. “The system’s not perfect. Genetic genealogy is doing a lot these days. People have been caught from DNA that was stored in the seventies, so there’s hope, I think, with some of these cases. It’s just a waiting game. Eventually, we’ll get answers. But so far, for Carol Stevens, we’re still waiting.”
“So that was it?” I asked, expecting it when her eyebrows flew up in surprise.
“What do you mean, that was it?”
I wasn’t trying to minimize Carol Stevens’s story, but I had a feeling there was something deeper that drove Sylvie. I couldn’t help thinking of my own reasons, but Sylvie had mentioned her parents, and the tone left me thinking all was well there. So, what was it? I wanted to know, and we were stuck in this car with plenty of time to kill. “Carol Stevens put you on the path of looking for answers for murdered women.”
Sylvie nodded. “She did.”
“What got you interested in cases like Carol Stevens’s in the first place?” I pushed.
Chapter Ten
ELI
Sylvie let out a long breath, pulling her leg up to brace her heel on the seat and picking at a smear of dust on the knee of her jeans. She looked out the window, watching the dark trees whip by, before she said, “You’re smarter than you look.”
“Should I get some glasses?” I joked, and she rolled her eyes, a faint grin stretching her mouth.
“Oh, God. You pulling off the hot professor look? No, thank you. You’re hot enough as it is.”
I fought the urge to preen under her praise. I didn’t generally put a lot of thought into what I looked like—not from that angle. How I fit the job, whether it was undercover, or I needed to give a certain impression—I thought about that stuff all the time. Suit versus construction vest versus T-shirt and jeans, and how would that play on a job? I’d never had trouble attracting women, so I figured I had to be good-looking enough, or at least not repellent. I knew how to listen and take my time in bed, which usually paid off with the opposite sex. Hearing Sylvie say I was hot—that was an entirely new kind of thrill.