Page 128 of Hidden Nature

“No problem. I’m going to be late tomorrow.”

Elsie sent Sloan a worried look. “You’re not working another double?”

“No, no. I need to go to Uniontown after work, talk to somebody. It’s just something I’m working on.”

“Cop thing.” Drea offered Theo more potatoes. He took them. “Do the cop thing, Sloan. Entertain us.”

“Yeah, it’s good,” Theo agreed. “You did me already. Do Nash. Make him a suspect.”

“What am I suspected of?”

“Armed robbery. That’s a good one. Come on, Sloan. You did me, and we’re kind of a set.”

“Fine. Suspect is Caucasian male, early thirties, six-one, about one-sixty-five, brown and brown.”

“That’s hair and eyes,” Theo said helpfully.

“I got it.”

“Suspect is currently clean-shaven—that’s a change,” she added. “No visible tattoos or piercings. Suspect has a small, crescent-shaped scar below left thumb. Last seen wearing black jeans, dark green cashmere sweater, black Frye lace-up boots. Suspect fled the scene in a black 2025 Ford F-150 King Ranch with rear tow hitch, Maryland plates Echo-Charlie-Tango-four-six-zero.”

She took a sip of wine, magic eyes smiling at Nash over it. “Suspect is armed and dangerous.”

Theo let out a cackle. “Cool, right?”

“I’m going with spooky.”

“She could always do it,” Drea put in. “Even when we were kids. Somehow, it never gets old.”

Sloan just shrugged. “It’s a handy skill considering my line of work.”

Nash picked up his own wine and studied her over it. “I bet.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Before she drove to Uniontown, Sloan got the okay from O’Hara, and laid out her reasoning with Travis.

“I want to talk to Tarrington’s coworker. He’s the third I found that fits a pattern. Unexplained disappearance, vehicle left in a parking lot, no trace of the missing. Then you have the three locations, no more than an hour to two hours apart.”

“With no known connections or similarities in the MPs,” Travis added.

“That we’ve found as yet. The coworker, Adam Rusk, is the only one who saw anything. And the timing, Cap? That’s one of the elements that stuck with O’Hara, too. Rusk states he left work no more than five or six minutes after Tarrington, and he talked to a woman in the parking lot who wanted directions. She got in a white or light-colored van parked beside Tarrington’s car.”

“Rusk thinks it was parked there,” Travis reminded her, as he’d read the file, too.

“So I’ll talk to him.”

“I’m not going to tell you no, Sloan. It’s your own time, and I know you’re invested in the Anderson case. Our jurisdiction ends at the state border.”

“Understood. I’m just asking questions. Cap, if Tarrington had another crisis, why did he talk to coworkers about taking his kid to a monster truck rally? When they checked his apartment, the tickets were on the fridge. He’d gone out and bought juice boxes, had theweekend marked on the wall calendar with a big heart. But he comes out of work, and instead of getting in his car, walks off and poofs?”

She paused a moment. “When Detective O’Hara cleared me, he let me know he didn’t feel the walk-away either.

“And the dentist? Rigsby has his weekly roll with his midlife crisis, gives her important earrings for Christmas, and she gives him—she states—a pair of silver cuff links. But he leaves his Mercedes in the motel lot and, again, poofs?”

“You make a case.”

“All evidence indicates abduction with Anderson. It’s the same pattern.”

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