Page 55 of A Future To Remember

I could feel the tug of a scowl forming. “If you want to waste your breath, go for it.”

“Wearing a badge will advance your cause, Dutch. It’ll get you into places you maybe can’t get into if you’re not wearing one.”

“That’s why Oscar’s here.”

“You know as well as I do that splitting up is the most efficient way to investigate this going forward, and I can’t spare another agent to babysit you out there if you send Hernandez off on some lead while you tackle another.”

I shook my head but couldn’t help thinking he had a solid point.

“There’s also the issue of crossing jurisdictional lines here, my brother. You sent the Tahoe off to Salt Lake City—if they find anything, they aren’t gonna talk to you. They’ll go through Hernandez, and if you drive up there to check out a lead they’ve dug up, Hernandez will be the only one they let into the crime lab.”

I mulled all that over. Dammit. He had another solid point.

He didn’t say anything into the silence I let hang. He knew I’d break it soon enough.

“Fine, Brice. I’ll take my badge back, but only for this case. Once I find Abby, I’m out.”

“We’ll talk about that when the time comes,” he said. It was like he was trying to get on my bad side. “I’m overnighting your badge and emailing you some paperwork to sign, reinstating you. And I’m sure I don’t have to remind you to follow the law while you’re wearing the shield.”

“I’ll give it my best shot,” was all I’d commit to. I wasn’t making any promises where Abby was concerned.

“Guess that’s the best I can expect from you right now, huh?”

“You’d be guessing right.”

“Godspeed, brother. Find her and bring her home.”

I ended the call with Brice and headed inside the noisy bar we’d stopped at for dinner. I’d left Eggy in the truck, tucked around his blankets with some disposable, heat-activated hand warmers I’d picked up at a gas station to keep the pup warm while we ate. Before I’d left the truck to call Brice, I made sure Eggy was peacefully sleeping, and he had enough pain meds in his system to keep him out like a light until morning.

“What’s the word?” Oscar asked when I joined him at the high-top inside the restaurant.

“For starters, I’m your boss again.”

“You never weren’t, sir. At least not in my mind.”

I grunted. Oscar’s loyalty meant a lot to me, but I couldn’t let down my walls right now to admit it. The walls were the only thing keeping me functional. “Now that we have something to investigate, Brice is gonna get you square with some backpay, and Candice is headed here too,” I continued.

He held up his phone. “She texted me five minutes ago. She’ll be here in the morning.”

I nodded. “We should come up with a game plan,” I told him, nodding to the server who’d just dropped off a Mich Light.

Oscar swiveled the cocktail napkin in front of him over to me, and I saw that he’d been scribbling on it.

Pointing to it, he read the bullet points. “We should start with the gas station, see if anybody working that day remembers the guy. If we get lucky, maybe there’s video and a credit card we can trace.”

I nodded, but I wasn’t hopeful about that. It’d been six months. For all we knew, anyone working at the gas station that day was no longer there. Gas stations have notoriously high turnovers.

And Oscar was reaching if he thought there’d be video; we weren’t anywhere near a population center, and commercial centers this remote didn’t have the budget for security cameras, not to mention storage for said footage.

Still, we couldn’t afford to leave any stone unturned.

He pointed to the next bullet point. “Campgrounds. Gwen said the Tahoe was pulling a camper. This guy must’ve car-jacked Abby, rendered her unconscious, and hitched his camper to your rental. That means he had to ditch his old vehicle.”

I nodded. “The Tahoe’s plates were gone when it came out of the water. He probably switched out the plates, or just removed them altogether because who could see a license plate attached to an SUV pulling a camper?’

Oscar nodded. “Exactly.”

“You two ready to order?”