Page 113 of Keeping Kasey
“No, I don’t.”
James opens his mouth, but my phone rings, giving me the perfect excuse to ignore him and step into the hall. As soon as I’m away from prying eyes, I bring the phone to my ear and answer Ford’s call.
“Anything?”
“No, sir. There haven’t been any sightings or indications that she’s planning anything.”
“Keep an ear to the ground,” I tell him. “If there’s even the slightestwhisperof a sighting, I’d better be your first call.”
“Of course, sir.”
I hang up and finish the rest of my drink in one swig.
“You’re still having Ford look for her,” James says, and I curse under my breath.
“If I wanted you to hear my conversation, I wouldn’t have come out here.”
“So you can go behind my back again?”
“I didn’t go behind your back. I follow up on leads all the time without informing you first.”
“That wasn’t ‘following up on a lead,’” he says with a pointed look. “It was attempted murder.”
Attemptedbeing the operative word.
It wasn’t the first move made since the little liar fled two months ago, but it was the closest I’ve come to making good on the promise I made her when she did.
When Kasey first left, I followed the trail closely for a week.
She took a bus to Ohio and a plane to Tennessee before the trail went cold. The only reason I’d been able to track her that far is because the very security system she installed was able to pick her up via facial recognition by various security and traffic cameras. She must have figured that out by the time she got to Tennessee because the software didn’t pick her up after that.
Thanks to the investigation Moreno had Kade conduct, we had the location of Kasey’s apartment. I kept watch over it for two weeks before deciding she wasn’t going to come back.
I took advantage of the opportunity.
I had Ford—still bedridden in the hospital—take any pending investigations from federal agencies and frame Kasey for them. Matteo planted the evidence in her apartment, and with one call, I had five cases thrown off of me and agents swarming Kasey’s apartment. Of course, she’d hacked her own hard drive to wipe it clean before Matteo got there, but the evidence he planted was enough to get the feds off my back.
Conveniently, each of those cases was dismissed due tomissing evidence.
Exactly seven days after the raid on Kasey’s apartment, I received messages from fourteen families within my territory thanking me for the generous gift.
A gift I had no memory of sending.
Kasey took it upon herself to inform them that, as agesture to express my gratitude for their loyalty, I would be sending them a car from my beloved personal collection. She knew damn well that going back on agiftlike that would look bad to the other families.
I was forced to give awayfourteen cars.
I returned the favor two weeks later when I received a call from an associate saying he saw a girl who fit her description in Little Rock. I was there later that day, at the very motel she was staying at under a fake name.
I burned the place to the ground.
Unfortunately for me, she wasn’t inside.
I’m not sure how she knew not to come back to that motel. Not a single camera in the area picked up a trace of her, and my contacts confirmed that she never returned for any of her belongings.
Just as well, since I burned them to a crisp.
It’s been a month since, and I thought she would’ve struck back by now, but considering her lack of personal items, I suppose she has some rebuilding to do.
