Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 74749 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74749 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
“My office is back here. That’s where the camera equipment is.”
I follow Lennox as she follows him, having to stand in the doorway because the office is messy as hell and smaller than her office back at the station.
“Like I told the guy on the phone earlier, I didn’t hear about that girl until earlier today. I’m not real big on keeping up with any news, local or national. All of it is just so damned sad. Never any good news.”
“The tape,” Lennox snaps, making the man jump like a skittish feral cat.
He works on pulling up the video, relying on an ancient system of VHS recorders despite digital being the go-to technology for many years.
“Why exactly do you have this angle?”
The man’s eyes dart away, and I can tell he’s trying to decide if he’s going to tell the truth or lie.
“Don’t tell me the wind blew it perfectly to cover the bar,” Lennox warns, and I have to roll my teeth between my lips to keep from chuckling.
I may like a submissive woman in bed, but there’s something to be said for a female who isn’t going to take shit from anyone outside of that situation.
“I suspected my wife was cheating on me with someone at the bar,” he mutters, and I freeze, my mind going back to the woman I let suck me off in the bathroom a few weeks back.
“Was she?” Lennox asks.
He nods. “I confronted her about it, and she left.”
“When was that?” I ask, having to know.
Lennox snaps her head in my direction as if she forgot I was even standing here.
“Couple months ago,” he grumbles. “I never got back around to repositioning the angle. Sorry for the quality. The equipment is old as hell.”
He hits a button on a small remote and the video starts to play.
I try not to get distracted by the fact that whoever his wife is wasn’t the woman I hooked up with.
“You said it was the front of the bar,” Lennox says, noticing just like I have that the angle isn’t directly on the front door.
“The wind has blown it a little over time,” he explains on a whisper, as if he’s somehow going to get into trouble for his reasoning when she dared him to lie about that very thing earlier.
Her jaw clenches but her eyes stay locked on the screen.
I know when she sees me and Elizabeth Burr outside the bar on the very right edge of the screen. Maybe I should just be grateful this isn’t as good as the video from Jake’s. It’s not something I’m proud of, especially considering I can’t even remember a damn thing about that fucking night.
“I don’t think that’s the killer,” he says, pointing to the darkened outline of my body.
“I’m still not so sure,” she mumbles, making me clench my fists at her confession.
I split off from the screen but the camera angle is good enough to get the parking area. We watch as Elizabeth Burr is confronted outside of her vehicle.
“Why does it skip?” Lennox asks when it seems the man just appears from thin air.
“The equipment doesn’t record like a digital image. It’s got sixteen slots, and it records in stills, almost like pictures being taken. When it’s taking a picture from another camera, it’s not taking a picture from this one,” I try to explain.
Curtis points at me as if saying I explained it better than he could’ve.
“So there’s no way to tell where he came from?”
My guess would be from around the side after the motherfucker injected me with some kind of damn drug.
“I think that’s the same guy that was struggling with her against the side of the bar,” Curtis says, pointing to the outline reappearing on screen.
I note the thirty-four second change in time. Just over half a minute for a woman to be abducted from a parking lot, only to be raped and murdered the same damn night.
“I think they were working together,” Curtis supplies unhelpfully.
“When she got away from the first one, the other one jumped in. Look.” He points again, watching my shadowed form as I drop to my ass beside the SUV we drove to the bar that night. “Maybe you could question those guys. There’s a whole group of them. I saw on an episode of—”
“I need this tape, Curtis,” Lennox snaps.
“It’s yours,” he says, but she waves his hand out of the way before he can press the stop button on the remote.
“See those guys,” he says.
We watch as those I know to be Legacy, Stormy, and Bishop, leave the bar to find me near the SUV. They help me into the back seat and within a couple of minutes, they’re driving away.
“I’d like all tapes as far back as they go,” Lennox says, crossing her arms over her chest as if she expects the man to argue.