A Flighty Fake Boyfriend (Men of St. Nachos #2) - Z.A. Maxfield Page 0,59
slip between the sheets.
“Do you think you could help me remember to get a nicotine patch, or gum, or something?”
“Happy to.” He burrowed under the covers like a cartoon gopher snatching a carrot.
I caught his body to mine—my surprisingly solid, surprisingly strong, surprisingly dominant boy-man. I’d seen and done a lot of things, and I thought nothing could surprise me, then along came Epic Alsop.
Surprise, surprise.
Chapter Twenty
When I woke, the bed beside me was empty. I rolled out and hit the bathroom to piss and brush my teeth before looking for Epic. One of the fluffy bathrobes was missing. Presumably Epic had it. I put on the other.
I found him in the kitchen where he’d set the table for two with dainty mismatched china as if we were having Her Majesty to tea. An assortment of pastries and muffins sat in a wicker basket next to a very large thermal carafe.
He poured me coffee, leaving it black, and went back to reading the notes I’d made the night before.
“Morning.” I kissed his cheek.
His impish smile called to something inside me I didn’t have a name for yet. He’d arranged my notes in piles.
“So how does this work exactly?” He tapped one pile. “I see arrest records, applications for business licenses, news stories, missing person reports. How do you take all of this and find out anything?”
“Mm.” I sat down opposite him and snagged a carrot muffin with—it turned out—a cream cheese frosting center.
“Okay. So…” I wiped crumbs off my lips to explain the string-pulling—how all the little points of data I’d gathered formed a darker picture that I’d trained myself to look for over years of trial and error. “It’s best if I use an example of something that’s already been uncovered because the picture is clearer, yeah?”
I picked up a legal tablet and started making notes so he could see.
“A few years ago, three girls went missing from the same general area in Northern California. One was from Redding, one from Castella, and the third lived in Red Bluff.”
I pulled up a map of the area from Google on my phone.
“The three towns are along this particular stretch of the I-5 corridor.”
Epic gave a shiver. “When was this? I didn’t hear about abductions on the news.”
“No, you wouldn’t have. The cases originally weren’t considered abductions because all three women left voluntarily with men they were dating. Two of the women didn’t have family locally, so only their roommates and coworkers realized they were missing, but they had dead-end jobs. One worked as a waitress—”
“Hey.” He smacked my arm.
“Sorry, sorry.” I acknowledged his protests. “Forgive me. This woman worked in a casual-dining chain restaurant and was one of a large staff with lots of turnover. She was fairly interchangeable with other servers. One worked in a gas station convenience store.”
“Who reported them missing?”
“Their roommates got worried after a couple of days, but the police don’t hit the panic button over women who leave with a guy they’ve been dating for a while.”
“And the third woman?”
“Her parents reported her missing when she didn’t come home, but they’d had some pretty heated arguments with her about her boyfriend. It was assumed she’d left of her own volition.”
“So not a lot of traction because people run away with bad boyfriends all the time.”
“Right. And in each case, they’d been dating a while. Roommates both said the guy brought flowers, gave presents, took the girls out clubbing. The parents didn’t like their daughter’s boyfriend because he was a tattooed biker cliché, but they agreed he seemed to treat her well. On the face of things, it just looked like three girls had boyfriends their friends didn’t approve of, so they took off.”
“But I’m guessing that wasn’t the case.”
“It was in a way. Because in every case the “boyfriend” was the same man. Let’s call him Jack Leary, but he has several aliases.”
“Whaaaat?” Epic’s eyes widened.
“And bad boyfriend was the least of Jack’s crimes. He’d done several different stretches in prison—larceny, drug possession with intent to distribute, assault and battery, and kidnapping. Inside, he’d hooked up with the Aryan Brotherhood.”
Epic winced. “What happened to the girls?”
“That’s where the other data points come in. Once I connected all three women to one man, I started digging into him and his known associates. Several of his cohorts had arrests for weapons violations, assault and battery, attacks on women, rape, and kidnapping. I looked at where he and his pals lived, where they worked, any businesses they owned,