Deadly Coincidence (Brantley Walker Off the Books #4) - Nicole Edwards Page 0,100

Luca. “All we need to do is find out her IP address, trace it, and see where she was messagin’ from.”

“Easy-peasy,” Luca agreed.

Baz took a seat and fought the urge to roll his eyes.

Two hours later, after JJ and Luca had worked their magic, the entire team was watching while the Grand Rapids Police Department went to the Lakeside Motel to find Juliet Prince.

He hadn’t believed it was possible for them to track her so easily, but they were absolutely certain that was where she’d been as of three o’clock yesterday afternoon, when she’d sent the last text to Marcus asking him how things were going.

“Please, God, let her be there,” JJ muttered to herself, her shoulder brushing Baz’s as they watched a live feed from the scene.

On the screen, a SWAT officer walked up to the door, knocked. When there was no answer, he motioned for someone to come over. A short, middle-aged man stepped over, swiped a key card, then was ushered back out of the way.

The next couple of minutes were chaos as they rushed the room, checking under the bed, in the closet and the bathroom. But it hadn’t taken but a second for everyone to realize that the room was empty.

If Juliet Prince had been there, she was gone now.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Friday, January 8, 2021

One week after the showdown at the warehouse, finding Dante, and ending up with another dead end on the whereabouts of Juliet Prince, things had returned to normal.

Well, as normal as they could be, considering.

After they’d secured Dante Greenwood, returned him to his parents, Brantley had given him one night to recover before relaying the details of what had really happened to Gerard and Katrina. A discussion that went exactly as Brantley had predicted it would: not well at all.

Needless to say, Brantley was not on Governor Greenwood’s good side. The man did not want to believe his son had masterminded—a term Brantley used loosely when referring to Dante—the kidnapping in an effort to extort one million dollars to cover his gambling and drug addictions. Evidently, Dante had taken out a “loan” with his bookie and his dealer and had been unable to cover the balance and interest of either. When Marcus had been sent to collect the gambling debt, Dante had been able to appeal to his greed, coming up with the plan that would net Marcus five hundred thousand as payment for helping and allow Dante to pay off his debt with the other half.

When asked why they’d decided to cut off his finger, Dante had explained that hadn’t been the plan. He’d insisted Marcus had gone completely crazy and chopped it off in a fit of rage when he really did take Dante hostage. Of course, that tale had lasted all of five minutes, because Dante’s pain meds had kicked in and he revealed, with a spooky smile, that he’d been the knight in shining armor and had sacrificed himself in order to keep Marcus from raping JJ while she was unconscious.

Such a fucking gentleman.

But the worst part had come when Brantley asked Governor Greenwood how he wanted to proceed with Dante’s charges. In no uncertain terms, the governor informed him he would be handling Dante’s punishment personally and there was no need to share the details with the police. Marcus Harris would go on record as having kidnapped Dante, assaulted JJ, blown up her house, and attempted to blackmail him. And since Marcus was dead, there was no one to argue those facts.

Awfully fucking convenient.

That had been the icing on the cake for Brantley, and he had refused to listen to any more. Probably the reason he hadn’t gotten as in depth as JJ had with his questioning. If he had, perhaps he would’ve been the one to uncover Juliet Prince’s part in all of this. But like usual, they’d been just a little too late to catch the woman in that shitty motel in Michigan.

He’d managed to get Governor Greenwood to agree to hold off on cutting off their access, using the excuse that they needed it to find Juliet Prince. After he’d explained that she had played a partial role in Dante’s scheme, the governor had given them until the end of the month.

In truth, it hadn’t done much more than buy Brantley some time to explain to Reese and the team what was going on.

Now, as he sat with his back to the wall in a corner booth at the diner, his attention on the