Chapter Eighteen
Rick
Devyn and Talia aren’t in the office when we look for them there. I’m not panicking yet, and Beau helps when he says, “Devyn would never put Talia in a dangerous situation. They’re probably talking to Tony Kelly again, getting a lead on someone else to question. Give them a little longer. In the meantime, I want to talk to the OSHA guy. Fucker. He knew there was something wrong with that crane.”
I pace around my office and scan the piles of paperwork sitting on the conference table. I don’t know what’s still here and what, if anything, Devyn took with her. “You want to look up Fred McAllister. Now? Tonight?”
Beau shows his teeth in an angry grin. “Why not? Why should Devyn have all the fun?”
“Because I’m hungry, and I want to wait for them to get back so we can go eat.”
“Devyn isn’t answering her phone. We could be waiting for hours yet.”
She wouldn’t need that long to pry answers out of anyone, but there’s no guessing when she’ll call it quits for the night. “Text Talia, then, and see where they are.”
Beau shoves his hands into his jacket pockets. “Can’t. We didn’t swap numbers.”
“For fuck’s sake.” I pull my phone out of my pocket and connect to Mack. “Where are you? Did Devyn and Talia talk with Tony Kelly again tonight?”
“Yes. Right now, we’re at a rehabilitation center in the east part of the city. Miss Scott went inside to talk to someone, and her sister is in the car waiting with me.”
“Who is it?” I hear Talia ask.
“Mr. Mercer,” Mack tells her, the phone away from his mouth.
“Okay. The second Devyn’s finished, bring them back to the office. We’re heading over to talk to someone ourselves. We’ll meet up here.”
“Got it,” Mack says, and disconnects.
“They’re at a rehab clinic, that’s why Devyn’s not answering her phone—she’s talking to one of the residents. Talia’s in the truck. She’s probably not up to facing something like that yet. While we wait, we might as well talk to that son of a bitch. He knew. He knew and cleared it so no one else would go looking, and I want to know who he’s working for.”
He grins. “That’s my man.”
I scowl. “Don’t do that.”
“What? Hey, Devyn thinks I’m smarmy. Do you think I’m smarmy?”
Shaking my head, I open my contacts app. Only McAllister’s work address is connected to his number. “We need his home address. We’ll grab it in the car.”
Beau drives, and I pull up McAllister’s residential address from the online White Pages. I needn’t have bothered. When his wife answers their front door, she tells us he’s still at the office. “He’s working what overtime he can for the holiday gifts. We go broke every year for the grandkids,” she says, smiling.
“Thank you, have a nice evening,” I say, backing up before I’m trapped in a conversation I don’t want to have.
Beau follows me to the truck, and we turn around and head for the local OSHA field office. Neither of us are strangers to the government building, and we park in the visitor’s lot. Several of the windows are lit up; McAllister isn’t the only one grabbing overtime before the Christmas rush. If I have it my way, he’ll be locked up this holiday season and eating turkey off a plastic tray.
After business hours, the doors won’t budge, but Beau pulls an ID card out of his wallet and taps it against the security pad. The light turns from red to green, and the lock clicks open. “Why do you have a keycard?”
“Some of us work,” he says.
“You’re a smart ass.”
“You’re lucky I am,” he says with a grin.
He’s not wrong. Scowling, I pull the door open, but I want to get in the last word. “Sometimes youaresmarmy.”
“Hey, that wasn’t called for.”
“No, but it was fun.”