he was considering her idea or just remembering better times. Whatever it was, when he looked back at her, she knew immediately that he’d made the wrong choice.
“I can’t,” he said. “I have clients who need me. I have elderly parents and a sister with kids. They could be put at risk if I run. If I pretend none of this happened and just lead my regular life, maybe these people will leave me alone. Even if they take me out, that’s where it ends.”
Jessie nodded. She could tell there was no point in pressing him further.
“Give me your phone,” she told him.
He handed it over without asking why.
“Here’s my number,” she said, adding it to his contacts. “If you change your mind, call me and ask me if Milly’s personal effects are available to be picked up. Tell me where to have them dropped off. That’ll be the sign for me to have a team pick you up immediately.”
He looked at the number, then back up at her.
“Thank you,” he said. “But I won’t be calling. I’ll walk you out now.”
He led her back to the side gate, unlocked it, and opened it slightly.
“Think of it as your emergency SOS call,” she pleaded. “Good to have it, even if you don’t need it.”
“That’s sweet,” he said resignedly. “But we both know you’re already talking to a dead man.”
She managed to wait until he’d closed the gate and she’d walked down the block to order her rideshare before losing it. She kicked a brick wall and even though her foot stung, she did it again. She wanted to scream and if she hadn’t been on a residential street, she would have.
Jasper Otis was getting away with everything, including destroying the life of a man who’d just lost the woman he loved. She couldn’t allow it. No matter what it took, she had to stop this guy.
She managed to calm down a little by the time her ride arrived to take her to Central Station. But as she sat in the back seat, turning everything over in her head, she felt the heat rising up her neck again. She seethed in vengeful silence.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
By the time Jessie got to the station, she was ready to blow.
She stormed through the bullpen, heading down the back hallway to see what progress Detective Gaylene Parker had made on the sex trafficking case. If it wasn’t sufficient, she was ready to ream the woman out.
But before she got there, she heard Karen Bray call out to her from the other end of the hall.
“Jessie. Didn’t you hear me?”
“What?” she demanded, reluctantly turning around. “No. Can’t it wait?”
“No. Jamil has some major updates. You need to come to Research.”
Jessie forced herself to remain calm. Refusing to check out what Jamil had uncovered because she was focused on something else more pressing would only raise more suspicions. She needed to keep Karen from asking too many questions for her own sake. Besides, whoever had stolen that thumb drive was probably watching her closely too. If she barged into Parker’s back office, it would be a pretty big tell as to what was on her mind.
“What has he got?” she asked, pretending everything was normal as she followed Karen back to Research.
“I’ll let him show you,” Karen said. “He did the heavy lifting. But I should warn you, you probably won’t like it.”
Of course not. Why should anything go my way today?
She followed Karen into Research, where Jamil was studying one of his monitors.
“What have we got?” she asked.
“You want the good news or the bad news first?” he asked.
“Your call, Jamil.”
“Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t know what you’d consider good or bad. So I guess it doesn’t matter.”
“Still waiting, Jamil,” she reminded him, trying not to sound too testy.
“Right,” he said sheepishly, getting down to business. “So as Percy Avalon apparently told you in his interview, he and his band did perform an extended impromptu set for much of the night. We’ve found multiple uploaded clips from at least at least five fans. Using those, I was able to piece together his timeline pretty conclusively.”
“What does it show?” she asked.
“They started the set at twelve fifty-six a.m.,” Jamil said, showing her a timeline he’d created on a second monitor. “They didn’t wrap up for good until four oh-two a.m., though they did take several breaks in between. For most of the break time, they just hung around the area, doing a lot