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)
A cold flutter in my gut told me this case might be more than I could handle. The more I dug in, the more I was simultaneously attracted and repelled. Attracted because I loved a puzzle, and repelled because there were too many pieces missing in this one. Too many dead ends. It was either a waste of time or I was in over my head.
I was okay with wasting my time. That happened. Not every case that caught my attention could sustain a season of podcasting. Sometimes I had to move on because there just wasn’t enough. Maybe Emily Shaw was one of those. But something told me there was more. And I wasn’t ready to give up yet.
Emily Shaw had lived a quiet life in the suburbs of Knoxville, Tennessee. She’d worked from home and hadn’t been living in her townhome long before her car had blown up with her in it. But I’d gone to her prior address and found a neighbor who’d traded cookie recipes with Emily and had mail she’d left behind after the move. She’d said Emily had planned to come back and pick it up, but she never did. And in that mail, I’d found a bill from an unpaid Peach Pass toll, which told me Emily had been in Atlanta only a few days before she’d died.
I thought I might know why, because along with the bill, mixed up in the stack of junk mail, there’d been a handwritten note. On it were the two scrawled letters, SS, a street address with no city or state, and a phone number with an Atlanta area code. I’d looked up the phone number. It was the main line for a company called Sinclair Security. Their website told me they handled high-end security, protection, and problem-solving. I didn’t know what the last meant, but once again, I got the feeling I was in over my head.
It didn’t help that ever since I’d seen the neighbor, I’d been getting phone calls. Hangups, always from unknown numbers. Twice, I’d gotten out of the van with a crawling sensation between my shoulder blades, as if there were eyes on me. I’d received threats before; it came with the territory. But nothing that had seemed legitimately dangerous.
This felt different. Emily Shaw’s murder had me spooked.
I didn’t want to give up on finding answers for Emily. But if I couldn’t get anything out of Sinclair Security when I went to see them tomorrow, I might have to move on. I had one more episode of my last finished season, the fourth. I hadn’t found answers for the young mother I’d been investigating, but I had dug up a few things the detective on the case thought might get them a new search warrant for their prime suspect. My listeners were going to love it.
But season five was supposed to be Emily Shaw. And if I couldn’t find anything solid in the next twenty-four hours, I was going to have to let this go. There were a lot of great true crime podcasts out there. If I couldn’t deliver a season five in time, my audience might move on, and I’d be back to ramen and wondering how I was going to pay for gas.
I rolled my shoulders back and stood, glad, as I often was, that I was only average height and build. If I’d been tall, the van would have been a nightmare. But as it was, I fit almost perfectly.
My stomach rumbled, clenching almost painfully on the nothing inside. That was it. I couldn’t think straight without a burger and a milkshake. I wasn’t going to figure out the course of the case or my career tonight. I was going to eat a good meal, come back to the van, tuck myself in for a good night’s sleep, and start the day fresh in the morning by getting Sinclair Security to tell me why Emily Shaw had their number.
Grabbing my backpack, I shoved my phone in my pocket and pulled on my raincoat, flipping up the hood. Ready, I made my way to the front of the van, sliding into the driver’s seat and reaching for the handle.
I let out a huff of annoyance when I realized a big box delivery truck was double-parked beside me, blocking me in. The passenger door wasn’t an option; a tree just on the other side that would stop it from opening wide enough for me to get out. I eyed the space between the side of my van and the box truck. It would have to be enough. I was starving, and they could be there for an hour or more.
Wrapping my fingers around the edge of the door as I eased it open to keep from crashing it into the side of the truck, I wiggled my way out into the dark, closing the door behind me. I squeezed my body down against the side of the truck and ducked around the front, crossing the street, jogging through the light mist toward the burger place I remembered from earlier in the day.