14
“I’ve got him.”
The tense conversation ground to a halt, and shame hit me that I had forgotten Colby was listening in.
“I’ve got him,” she repeated, her voice squeaking as it rose. “I’ve triangulated his cell phone signal.”
How we leapt from tracking Parish’s computer to his cell flew over my head, but Colby was in her element.
“Where is he?” Clay whooped with glee. “Let’s nail that bast—” he cleared his throat, “—bad man.”
“I have his coordinates.” Colby gave us all a second to pull up map apps. “Ready?”
We all grunted agreement, eager to punch in the numbers and find where the case took us next.
Before we finished, I could tell Asa and I weren’t going to like the answer.
“He’s here.” I pinpointed our location on the map. “In Tupelo.”
“About a quarter mile away.” Clay narrowed it down. “He’s moving in the opposite direction from you.”
“He sicced Mom on me.” I pivoted toward the signal. “Then he watched to see what would happen.”
Either she killed me, I banished her, or…I delivered the director’s own personal boogeyman to him.
“He was gambling on you being in contact with Saint.” Asa worried one of his earrings. “You were the bait, and your mother was the trap. Saint won’t rest until he’s collected all her bones, and there’s no telling where they’re hidden.”
“That narrows the scope,” Clay agreed. “Parish now has a grid where your father will eventually strike.”
“He must have taken Mom’s bones from wherever the director was hiding them.” I kept an eye on the directions Colby sent to lead me straight to Parish. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the director locked them in a box under his bed.”
To learn my parents, both my parents, might have been beneath my feet for all those years made the dark yearnings within me stir with a hunger for vengeance against my grandfather and the atrocities he had committed in the name of building his legacy.
A legacy that had ultimately rejected him, time and time again.
“We need a plan.” Asa strode beside me. “We don’t know if Parish is working alone.”
“That might be why he liberally sprinkled so many teams in the surrounding area rather than let us do our thing. There are dozens of agents within a two-hour radius of you.” Clay grunted. “That means he’s got all the backup he needs.”
“We find where he’s holed up,” I gritted out, “who he brought with him, and we wait for backup.”
Our lives were tied, Colby’s and mine, and I couldn’t throw hers away because I didn’t want perspective.
“You’re going to wait for little ol’ me?” Clay tittered in a falsetto. “Why, I’m positively flattered.”
“We’ll be there in ten.” Colby updated us. “We’ll meet you beside Bistro Americana.”
“Mmm.” Clay made a happy noise. “I wonder if they serve steak frites with béarnaise butter? Or mussels with caramelized fennel and leeks? Maybe an elegant smoked whitefish tartar with herb oil?”
“You’re getting close.” Colby spoke over Clay’s ramblings. “I’ll switch to texting for stealth.”
The call ended, and I forced myself to breathe in and out.
We had directions. We had backup en route. We had our ringleader.
“It’s all right to be angry,” Asa said from beside me. “At Parish, the director.” He hesitated. “At Saint.”
“He didn’t even look at me.” I mashed my lips together, but the words kept coming, pried out by the fascination roiling through me. “Once he saw her, that was it. I ceased to exit. He only cared about her.”