Page 49 of I'll Be There
The voice, a mid-tenor, bore a slight accent and stirred something inside Conner, a familiarity that he couldn’t place. His heart thundered against his chest.
“No, just the girl,” Micah said.
“Good. But—he met her, right?”
Romeo was coming toward the door, and Pete slid off the stool, as if to head him off.
“Yep, he was there.”
Conner held his breath.
“I knew it...he just couldn’t let it go. Okay, sit tight. I’m on my way.”
Micah reached over and hung up. Pete opened the door and Romeo came in.
Silence.
“Who was that?” Conner couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Pressed his hand on the counter as the familiarity rushed over him, clicked in. “I know that voice.” He turned to Micah. “It’s P.T. Blankenship—my brother’s case handler.”
“What—?”
“Yeah. Clearly he didn’t know that Danny was dead, so...but what did he mean when he said he was on his way?”
“You don’t think...” Reuben said. “He couldn’t be coming here, could he?”
“Let’s find out. We have his number...let’s hope his phone has GPS.” Conner sat back down at the table. “This is probably where you guys need to walk away, disavow any knowledge of what I’m about to do.”
“What, hack into the FBI or something?” Pete said.
“No. It’s an anonymous site on the dark web where you can plug in anyone’s cell phone number, and it pings cell towers until it comes up with a last-known call. Then it triangulates it with two others and gives an approximate location. But the dark web is...well, sort of like the black market.”
“I am so in,” Romeo said.
Conner glanced at him as he typed. “Not a word to John Christiansen.”
Romeo nodded, and Conner pulled up the site, plugged in the number, his gut churning. “Why would Blankenship send someone to kill Blue? Or me? I thought—he was supposed to be tracking down Justin’s killer.”
“Or...he’s trying to track down Justin,” Micah said quietly. “Blue seemed pretty sure Justin was still alive—”
“He’snotalive. I asked—he was shot, his body burned by the Sons of Freedom. I couldn’t believe it so I asked Blankenship for the autopsy. He gave me dental records, and the autopsy showed the broken leg he’d gotten in the car accident our parents died in. It was him.”
“Maybe he’s after something Justin knew,” Pete said. “You said Blue had a thumb drive, right?”
“She told us in the hospital that Justin thought that maybe the Sons of Freedom secretly worked for the government, or at least had a government contact that benefited from their domestic terror attacks.”
“You think...maybe that contact was Blankenship?” Reuben asked.
Conner looked at him. “I’ve been calling him for years, asking for information. And for years he’s shut me down. Maybe it’s because if I dig a little, I’ll find something he doesn’t want me to know.”
His search finished and alerted to a GPS ping. He loaded in the lats and longs and pulled up a map.
Stared at the round red dot, blinking even as it moved.
“He’s in Minneapolis.”
Micah leaned over his shoulder. “And heading north.” He gave Conner’s shoulder a squeeze. “He’s following the phone’s GPS.”
“Which means, he’s on his way to Deep Haven.”
