“You son of a bitch,” he seethed, glaring at me.
Wiping my mouth with my hand, I was surprised not to see blood on it. “I don’t think mom would like you calling her that.”
“Got a call from Jackson last night saying he’d spoken to Sadie’s dad and found out you’ve been getting reports this whole time. We all thought you didn’t have a clue what was happening, and all this time, you did. Fuck, brother, I haven’t even met her yet, and I’ve done more to help her than you have.”
Holding my hands out in front of me when it looked like he was going to punch me again, I snapped, “Yeah, and the reports all said she was doing okay and was being kept safe. I know ducking out like that was bullshit, but if I’d stayed, I would have been so stuck in my head that I would’ve missed something and ended up putting her life at risk.”
“Bull. Shit. Bull-fucking-shit! You fled with your dick up your ass because you got outed by a woman you didn’t remember fucking. There was no reason to do it like that, and there sure as shit was no reason for you to stay away after reading about the contact he’s been making with her and how fucked up it’s been.”
Holding a finger up, I jogged back to the truck to get the papers out of the bag. Opening the envelope that had them all in, I pulled them out and took them over to where he was still standing.
“Read those and show me where she’s been contacted and intimidated. Maybe you misheard what Jackson was saying?”
His eyebrows scrunched as he scanned the pages, one after the other. “I don’t know what to tell you, Elijah, but this is all bullshit. A lot’s been missed out of these reports, and I know I didn’t mishear Jackson because he’s been emailing me stuff for Remy to look into.”
Remy was his best friend, Remington Harper. Together they owned a small ranch where they bred horses. Remy had crazy hacking and computer skills, so he was the one we usually sent stuff to for answers, which would be why Jackson had been keeping them updated.
Licking my dry lips, I struggled not to lose my shit. “What did he find out?”
“Elijah, the last postcards he sent were sent from Heathrow Airport and had her school, her mom’s house, and the crossing where a drunk driver killed her mom. We managed to get a photo of him from his file with the police department where she’s from, and two nights ago, we got a hit on security footage of him. The reason the postcards were posted at the airport was because he was boarding a flight to here.”
Part of my body was filled with fire, the other part felt like it’d just been frozen over. “How? I saw Ned’s copy of his file, and it said he was out on parole and had surrendered his passport.”
He didn’t need to answer the question, his expression said it all.
The fucking bastard had gotten a fake one and changed his identity. It also meant he was in the States.
But how did he know where to go? The man wasn’t a hacker, he didn’t seem to have any sort of skills for that type of shit when we’d looked into him. Sure, he could’ve paid someone to do it, but he also didn’t have a lot of money behind him. Information like that wasn’t cheap.
Reading my expression correctly, Marcus ground his teeth together before he told me something that fucked me up even more.
“We found records of three calls made to a cell phone here, starting almost three months ago. Remy’s still trying to crack his email account without one of those annoying emails being sent to him telling him a new device has logged into the account, but we got the calls no problem.” I knew the email notifications he meant. They were handy when it was your account, but in this situation, not so much.
“Couldn’t he delete the email before Riley had a chance to read it?”
“That’s doable, but some people get notifications like that immediately on the screen of their phones or computers. If we delete it, he’ll realize that someone’s hacked it anyway.”
Fuck, but he was right.
“Have you traced who the number belongs to?”
“A woman called Shonelle Bell.”It was a seventeen-hour drive from where I’d been staying to Sadie’s apartment, but I did it with only three bathroom breaks along the way when I’d stopped to refuel. To give him credit, Marcus had kept up with me and had just pulled into the spot beside me in the parking lot for her building.
Jumping out, I sprinted to her front door and knocked on it as hard as I could, not knowing if she was in or at work. If it was the latter, I’d just get back in the truck and drive to Rebels. There’s no way I was leaving it any longer to see her and check for myself that she was okay.