“You’ll call me if there’re any developments, won’t you, Detective Kemp?”
“I have your card right here, Mr. Shaw.”
They disconnected.
Useless.
Shaw tried the cooling coffee. One sip before his phone hummed again.
“Mack.”
“Get to your computer,” his PI instructed.
He pulled the unit toward him and powered up, his router too.
After a lengthy thirty seconds he said, “I’m on.”
“Check your email.”
The first message was from her. Attached was a screenshot of an Instagram photo. The image was a selfie: a smiling Hannah Merritt, in stocking cap and sweatshirt, gazing at the camera.
The time stamp was about forty minutes ago.
“I thought all their social media was closed down.”
“It was. And it probably took the girl sixty seconds to make a new account.”
Looking over the picture he said, “The background.”
“Exactly.”
That edge rose within him, what he felt when he was after deer or elk and had spotted fresh tracks left by what would be dinners for the next week. Or uncovering the first solid clue that led to a kidnap victim.
Shaw studied the image closely. You could see a town water tower, painted blue—to make it slightly less of an eyesore. There were five letters visible:HILLS.
Mack said, “In your part of the state, north of Ferrington, it has to be Thompson Hills. I pulled Google Earth shots. The picture was probably taken in the back parking lot of the Sunny Acres Motor Lodge. It’s not a chain. Allison could pay cash and give a fake name. Claim she’s on the run from an abusive spouse or lost her ID. A clerk’d bend the rules.”
Shaw typed the motel’s name into GPS.
He was twenty-seven minutes away.
42
Room 306 of Sunny Acres was claustrophobic and funky smelling. Yet, Allison Parker thought, the ladies were making a pretty good go of it. The fragile peace that had emerged this morning was enduring.
The food was on its way. A Disney sitcom glowed from the big-screen TV, one of those that was mostly for kids but had been seeded with somewhat more sophisticated humor for parents forced to oversee.
Parker’s heuristic plan was to stay here for two days and if Jon wasn’t caught by then they’d continue north to their safe house. She texted the owner now, and received back:
Ready and waiting. Keep me posted. Take care...
While they ate, she checked the news on her phone. Nothing about Jon.
She called her lawyer to see if he had learned anything. No answer. She didn’t leave the burner’s number and said she’d call him back. She was irritated that she hadn’t heard from him. He was supposed to be her lifeline to status reports.
Parker opened her laptop and reviewed the deck she was working on. She could be humorous in front of a crowd and always articulate and organized. Marty often tapped her to give presentations to investors and potential customers. Small modular reactors were as complex as equipment got and Parker was known to have the gift of translating the impossibly complicated to layperson understandable.
Would Jon’s escape affect her appearance at the meeting next week?