“You’ll never guess who I bumped into again.”
“Hang on.”
She heard muffled voices, followed by quiet.
Nicole glanced across the street at the restaurant on the corner. She looked up and down the block, just in case David was arriving late, too. She didn’t want to look like a maniac racing to the restaurant to meet him.
“Okay, what’s this?”
“Emmet, listen, I can’t talk long but I had to tell you, I just interviewed Liam Shaunessy again.”
“Who’s—”
“The guy from the beach with the teal green truck. And the dog and the kid and the toy airplane. And get this, he has video.”
“What?”
“Video. This guy was with his kid flying a remote-control plane they got for Christmas, and he took a video, and in the background you can see Aubrey’s car.”
“You’re joking.”
“No! It’s right there on video. And not only that—” She stopped at the corner and jabbed the crosswalk button. She wanted to sprint across, but there was too much traffic.
“Nicole?”
“You won’t believe this, but you can actually see a man getting out of Aubrey’s car. He gets out of the driver’s seat. I’m thinking maybe he had her in the front with him already. Maybe he took her somewhere private and had started staging the scene? And then he drove to the beach and repositioned the body and—”
“Wait, wait, wait. You’re saying it’s the perp?”
“Yes. It’s right there on video! It’s Aubrey’s car. I mean, the footage is from a distance, but you can see—”
“Where is it?”
“On the beach. Where we recovered the vehicle.”
“No, I mean, where is this footage?”
“I emailed the clip to you and to Brady. Check your inbox. And I got the witness’s info. He’s coming in first thing tomorrow morning to give us a sworn statement.”
“Hang on. Let me pull up my email.”
“Emmet, it’s from a distance, but this is huge. We can place this guy at the car as he’s dumping the body—”
“Okay, I got it. One sec, let me open it.”
The walk sign turned green, and Nicole jogged across.
Brakes squealed. Horns blared. Nicole whirled around to see a silver truck grille coming straight at her.
Her heart skittered.
“Watch out!” someone yelled.
Nicole lunged for the sidewalk. The truck swerved. Screaming, she dove for the hood of a car.
***
The scream turned Emmet’s blood cold.