Page 101 of Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad World

“Eddie has a property in Houston Heights,” Rodrigo said.

“Isn’t that where the ADA said they’d spotted him earlier?” Katrina asked.

“Yeah.” Noah sounded deadly.

Evan brought up the records. “He’s got an old Victorian in what looks like an exclusive gated community. Lots of space around it.”

“I don’t know,” Rodrigo said. “If he was spotted there, the cops know where he is. So why risk having Annabelle taken straight to him?”

“Arrogance?” Harris suggested.

“It looks pretty isolated.” Evan stared at the Google Earth images. “It’s got a massive garden, lots of old trees, and looks like there’s a couple of outbuildings too. From the fences and cameras, I doubt the cops could get close enough to see what’s going on in there unless they walked up to the front door and knocked.”

“I think the cops are more interested in the fighting that’s breaking out all over the city,” Rochelle said. “The situation’s apowder keg. If it were me, and I knew where Eddie was located, I’d put checking on him on the back burner until I’d dealt with everything else.”

“He’s changing lanes,” Abasi said, “taking an outer lane, maybe getting ready to exit.”

As the radio went silent, Evan pictured their vehicles negotiating the traffic to stay with the van. On one of his screens, he could see the crammed traffic on the I-10. Nothing was moving very fast at all. Another screen displayed the past few hours’ video surveillance, which he kept glancing at to see if he’d missed anything.

But Evan kept returning to what happened to Annabelle in that small office. How had the tech drugged her? Why hadn’t the ADA noticed? If only they’d had a camera in there.

Then it hit him.

Therehadbeen a camera in there.

For a brief time, the secure audiovisual equipment had been up and running. Maybe long enough to capture some imagery that might help the team. All he had to do was hack into the video feed’s cloud storage—the unhackable cloud storage owned by the district attorney’s office. And he had to do it within the next couple of minutes. Hell, it was worth a try. And Rochelle had already told him that their situation merited all the hacking he could do—or something like that…

Evan cracked his knuckles and spun his chair to face the separate computer set up beside his. He could try to hack the DA’s secure server while watching the traffic camera footage and glancing at the surveillance video. He was a multitasker. It’s what his generation was born to do.

As he reached for the keyboard, something struck his arm with such force that it sent him flying from his chair. His head connected with the corner of his desk as he fell.

For one awful second, he thought he saw someone standing over him with a gun.

And then he saw nothing at all.

The Benson Security vehicles followed the DA’s audiovisual van at a reasonable distance, waiting for it to signal which exit it planned to take.

It was all happening too damn slowly. But they couldn’t rush it. They couldn’t risk spooking the driver or running the vehicle off the road. Annabelle’s life depended on it.

“Something isn’t right,” Rochelle said. “I keep coming back to the timing of things, and something isn’t adding up. It’s sitting there, niggling at the back of my brain, but I can’t quite grasp what’s annoying me.”

Noah struggled to concentrate, but he knew from her tone that this was important. “What do you mean?”

“The detectives both received calls telling them that violence was breaking out all over the place, and they were worried the city was on the verge of full-blown gang warfare.”

“Yeah,” Noah said while inside, he screamed for her to hurry up.

“Then, Margaret Grant comes in to say that Annabelle was helping them pack up because the DA’s called them back to the office.” She frowned. “Next thing, Violet’s shouting about not being the tech guy’s porter. Why didn’t Annabelle help carry the case down the stairs?”

Noah clenched his jaw before replying. “Because she was in the case.”

“So, in the minute or two that the ADA was out of the room, the tech managed to drug Annabelle and stuff her into the case? It doesn’t seem like enough time to do all that.”

He stilled, staring at her with every ounce of focus he possessed.

“He’s taking exit 767B toward Watson.” Abasi’s voice came over the radio.

Rochelle slid across the lanes to follow.