Eli hopped up in the van and pulled the door shut behind him. “I think I should just leave. You two can stay here with the girls. This has gone on long enough. I’m kind of ready to get off the ride.”
Matt whistled. “Are you sure?”
“I’m tired of always waiting for something to happen. Maybe it’s time to just let the other shoe drop. Get it over with. If they’re going to come for me, I probably have a better chance when I’m ready and waiting for it.”
Eli was just about ready to go back in the house when Matt suddenly hit a key and brought up one of the images from the video screen.
“There’s someone approaching the house from the right side,” he muttered.
Tank leaned over his shoulder and squinted at the image of the small figure creeping along the side of the house. He climbed over Matt and then opened the back doors of the van. “I’ve got it.”
Eli and Matt watched on the monitors as he crossed the street and then disappeared behind the house. A few minutes later, he reappeared dragging a small figure with him. From the size of the guy, it was only a teenager.
“He’s got him.” Matt slapped his knee triumphantly.
The back doors of the van swung open again. A burst of cold air flowed into the van as Tank climbed in.
“Look who I found sneaking around the back.” Tank yanked the small figure forward and when she pushed her hair back from her face, Eli instantly recognized her.
“Sasha? What the hell are you doing here?” He moved aside to make room for her and Tank. The surveillance van was only designed to fit two or three people at a time, so it was a tight fit. It wasn’t intended to be a party bus.
“More importantly, how did you know how to find Kay?” Tank slammed the doors of the van behind them and pushed Sasha down onto a seat.
“Ow! Let me go, you big bully!” She smacked him with her purse a few times before Tank reached up and grabbed it.
“I’ll tie you up if you don’t behave. I just caught you trying to sneak into a safe house. You’re lucky we don’t call the cops right now.”
Sasha’s eyes rounded with horror. “But I didn’t do anything! I was just trying to see if Kay is even in there. I had to warn her. Devin is looking for her, and it won’t take him long to figure out that I’m gone.”
Eli crossed his arms. “Explain.”
She shrank under his glare. “I was at home yesterday waiting for my boyfriend, Devin, to pick me up. We were supposed to be going to the movies, but then he called and canceled. He said he had a business meeting up north that he couldn’t miss. Well, I’ve been catching him in lies lately, so I didn’t believe him.”
“I’m going to need the CliffsNotes version,” Eli growled.
“I’m sorry. I’m just not exactly sure what all this means,” she wailed.
Matt put a hand on her shoulder and she instantly calmed. “Take a deep breath, Sasha, and start from the beginning. Your boyfriend suddenly decided to take a weekend trip, and so you followed him?”
She twisted the strap of her purse between her fingers. “Yeah, I did. He was pissed, too. I could tell he didn’t want to let me in the room. I was convinced he had another girl in there, but I was wrong. So I just figured I was being paranoid. But then this morning I found a slip of paper in the bathroom with all these words on it.” Her hand slipped into her pocket and pulled out a small scrap of paper.
“Long drive. Night. Dollhouse. Blue shutters. Gym. Dance. Snow. 116,” Eli read. “It’s just random words and numbers.”
Sasha shook her head. “It’s not random. Each of those words corresponds to something Kay said to me when she called. The first time she called, she told me how it was a long drive and you drove at night. She thought your house was so cute. Like a little dollhouse with blue shutters.”
“They’re descriptors,” Tank said. “He was pulling out keywords from your conversations to see if he could identify where she was staying.”
Eli turned back to Sasha. “Who is this guy? Does Kay know him?”
“No, they’ve never met. Not to my knowledge anyway. I’ve tried to introduce them several times, but he always has an excuse. He even met me at Kay’s apartment once. We were going to order pizza and watch movies, but he got a phone call and left before she got home.”
Eli closed his eyes. “And that’s how he gained access to her apartment to steal the figurine.”
Sasha nodded. “It must have been. He said he had to go to the bathroom. I never thought he’d take something.” She swiped at the tears on her cheeks.
“It’s not your fault, Sasha. What happened earlier today?”
She looked down at her hands again. “He told me he needed to go out, so I decided to follow him. He drove down this street, and I could tell he was checking out each house. When I saw number 116, the cute little dollhouse with the blue shutters, that’s when I figured out what he was doing. That he’d somehow figured out where she is. I went around the side of the house to look in the window, just to see if I was right.”