Shadow Of Betrayal (Margot Harris 4)

They started walking, looking for any sign of recently turned over sand. Margot didn’t really see anything.

“Unless he buried someone out here himself, I don’t get how Stickly could have found anything,” Brantley remarked as they walked.

“Maybe he followed them out. Maybe he didn’t find a body at all, just the location.”

“How did he find that? Like I said, it’s a good spot for this kind of thing, but it’s hardly the only one.”

“I don’t know.”

“You know, I didn’t know what I expected to find, but this seems like a whole lot of nothing.”

“Yeah, well, welcome to detective work. Sometimes you have to work your way through a lot of nothing before you get to something. Sometimes you only find the nothing.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s why I stick to busting up meth labs and bar fights, for the most part.”

“I’m guessing they wouldn’t drag a body too far from the car,” Margot said as she stopped walking.

“I doubt they went this far. You see anything?”

“Nope, not yet.”

“Odds are, we aren’t going to. I may have dragged you out here for nothing.”

“Don’t give up yet. You were the one optimistic enough to bring a shovel.”

“That may have been a serious miscalculation.”

Margot couldn’t really argue with him there. As she stood there looking at the sand, thinking about what could have brought Stick out to this location, she thought of something her sister had said.

“His phone.”

“Whose phone?” Brantley asked.

“Randy’s. Stick called my sister and asked about his phone the morning before he sent the email and got himself killed.”

“That’s the same morning he was seen going into Randy’s room.”

“Exactly.”

“So, what does that have to do with anything?”

“I’d bet he was asking so he could check if Randy had a tracker on his phone. If he did, Stick might have been able to track the phone’s location.”

“That won’t do us much good now. The battery is surely dead. In fact, it was probably dead then.”

“Was it? The blood seemed fresh enough you thought it was possible Stick was one shot.”

“Well, mostly I thought he was one doing the shooting.”

“Either way, the shooting was recent. Recent enough that Randy’s phone still might have a charge.”

“Seems like a long shot.”

“Yeah, except he sent the coordinates, which makes me think it paid off.”

“Assuming those actually were coordinates.”

“Yeah, well, for the sake of argument, let’s assume they were.”