back. Are you leaving now?”
“Yes, sir,” they said. “We’re going to load up and head back to Austin. It was an amazing trip.”
“Hope to see you again,” the ranger said, and then the hikers left the office.
“Excuse me,” Charlie said. “My name is Charlie Dodge. I’m a private investigator out of Dallas. I’ve been hired by the Dawson family to look for their son, Tony, and just wanted you to know I’ll be on the trail searching for him, too.”
The ranger shook Charlie’s hand. “Ranger Arnie Collins.”
“If I find anything, who do I contact?” Charlie asked.
“Cell service is bad here. You’ll likely need a two-way radio or—”
“I have a sat phone,” Charlie said.
“Then call the office,” the ranger said. “They’ll know how to get the information to the right people. Do you know the trail they took?”
“Yes. Did they discover anything during the search, or pinpoint a specific location of any kind?”
“No, and I was part of one of the search teams, so I would have known.”
“Okay. Thanks for the info.”
A short while later, Charlie left with a map of the trails and started on the same hike the boys had chosen. Even though he would keep an eye out all the way there, his first goal was to reach the same area where they’d made camp, and he was going to have to hustle, because his day was already half over.
Two
Wyrick had a good tailwind all the way back to Dallas, cutting almost fifteen minutes of flight time off the trip. Benny was waiting when she landed.
“Welcome back,” Benny said. “You made good time.”
Wyrick nodded. “Check her over and keep her serviced and ready. I’ll have to make a trip back to pick him up, too.”
“Will do,” Benny said, and as soon as Wyrick drove her Mercedes out of the hangar, he towed the chopper back inside and went to work.
She drove straight back to the office, changed into the clothes she’d left home in and stowed the jeans and work clothes. She’d washed the makeup from her face when she left, and she needed something more to hide behind than the red leather and black boots, so she added red eye shadow and black lipstick and called it good.
After making a fresh pot of coffee, she took a bear claw to her desk to make up for having no breakfast or lunch and went to work. The phone rang periodically. She took messages and answered questions while going through new email and paying bills.
It was late afternoon before she had time to dig into the social media aspects of the three boys. Since she wasn’t one of their “friends,” she was going to have to hack to research, but saved the hacking for home, where the security on her personal computers was impenetrable.
By the time she left the office, she was starving. She picked up Chinese on her way home, while keeping an eye out for Boyington and his black Lexus, but it was a no-show, which was a relief.
She got home, stripped and showered, then dressed in old sweats and a T-shirt. She took her food to the living room, turned on the TV and finally ate her first meal of the day.
Having Merlin for a landlord and living in the basement of his mansion was the safest she’d felt in years. Having Charlie Dodge for a boss wasn’t safe for her emotional well-being, but she’d already figured out her life wasn’t worth shit without him in it, so there was that.
* * *
Darrell Boyington was standing on the balcony of his penthouse, looking out across a city of lights. Dallas was the ninth most populous city in the US—almost four hundred square miles of city, with nearly a million and a half people within that area. Everything was big in Texas, including the state itself, and Darrell had earned his way to the penthouse in a most unique manner.
His sports bars were a cover for the hit man he was. And the only jobs he took were ones with a target that challenged him. It was easy to just walk up and shoot someone, but in this day and age of cameras everywhere, doing it completely unseen, unnoticed, and getting away with it was impossible.
So he came at his work from a different angle. He not only located his target beforehand, but he found a way to meet them face-to-face, making sure his face was familiar enough that they dismissed him, and then he followed them