Page 154 of South of Nowhere

“You want to take a guess?”

“I don’t guess.”

Starr was looking past him at the suited man. “At last. The woman he was with? She’s gone to the john.”

Shaw took a last hit of coffee and wiped his face. “TC?”

“He saw her too. He’s looking our way.”

Shaw, Starr and McGuire rose. The two cops met in the middle of the bar. Shaw hung back. He was here mostly as what Starr had described as a “strategizing consultant.”

Starr hit a button on her phone.

She was dialing the number that a self-described “geek” in the Olechu County Sheriff’s Department Technical Services Division had managed to extract from Foley’s broken burner. It had been one of the “right away” passcode situations, not the six-figures-of-years one.

For a moment nothing happened, as the signal went from Starr’s hand to the stratosphere or beyond and back down to earth.

Then it landed—in another phone, one that sat in the suit jacket pocket of the large man who was hunched over the table Starr and McGuire stood near. He hesitated a moment, put down his fork and pulled the mobile out. He flipped it open, barking, “It’s about time you—”

Starr drew her pistol and stepped quickly toward the table, aiming toward the man’s chest, while McGuire, who was wearing blue latex gloves, lunged and ripped the phone from the man’s hand.

Patrons froze, patrons scattered.

Starr took center stage. “Theodore Gabris, you’re under arrest for homicide and conspiracy to commit homicide. We have a warrant to seize all electronic devices in your possession.”

The man gaped. “What?”

“Please stand up and put your hands behind your back.”

“This is bullshit! I didn’t do anything. Nothing at all!”

“Stand up. Hands behind your back.”

The real estate developer rose fast, his chair falling backward. His reaction changed from shocked to huffy. Disgust filled in at the edges. “You’ve got the wrong person.”

He was one of those people for whom misfortune was always someone else’s fault.

“I’m suing you. You’ll lose your job.” Then he gasped when he saw Shaw, realizing the Mr. Stone from Silicon Valley interested in a Windermere home was not who he’d seemed to be.

While TC McGuire went into the phone and disabled the lock to keep it open, Starr nodded to Shaw. “Do the honors with my cuffs. I want to keep him covered.”

He did as asked, and it was a good, efficient job, which included a double lock. In the reward-seeking business, he mostly zip-tied people. But he had experience with cuffs too.

Mostly on the receiving end.

But a skill is a skill, however you learned it.

69.

That Debi Starr and TC McGuire had acted alone in Theo Gabris’s takedown had indeed ruffled some feathers, just as she’d predicted.

Colter Shaw, Starr and Han Tolifson were in the office of Olechu County Sheriff James Barrett, who looked to be around forty-five.

Also present was County Supervisor Prescott Moore. Dorion had described him as “pudgy,” but that had been based on a video call, and Shaw knew the camera fattened you up some. He didn’t look too bad in person.

As for Barrett, he was as stiff and scrubbed as his uniform.

This was not a criticism. Law enforcers who were part robot were among the most efficient. Shaw tended to be suspicious of the absent-minded, the grinners, the backslappers and the whiners who wore badges.

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