Page 82 of Run for Her Life
“I wanted to leave Pineview Falls.” His face was somber. “The fire incident was suffocating. I don’t know why she wanted to stay, so we eventually called it quits. But we stayed in touch here and there over the years.”
“And when was the last time you saw her or spoke with her?” Zoe asked.
“Just two weeks ago.” He sighed and ran a hand through his thick locks of hair. “We started talking a lot in the last couple of months actually. She was just going through this rough patch in her marriage and postpartum and this and that, so I was being there for her.”
Aiden frowned. “You talked on the phone or email?”
“Facebook.” No wonder Zoe hadn’t found any correspondence between them. Social media records were notoriously difficult to obtain. After being stressed at home and work, perhaps Annabelle was seeking comfort in an old friend, maybe even old feelings were resurfacing. “Do you have any idea who could have done this?”
“We don’t know, Mr. Monroe,” Aiden said. “I was hoping you might have some useful information. Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt her?”
“No!” He sounded incredulous. “Everyone loved her at work. That’s where we met.’
“You worked at Harrington Group?” Zoe leaned forward.
“Yeah, I used to. We worked in the same department. We built code to run logistics, warehouse tagging systems, optimization software for global warehouse systems, that kind of stuff. She switched out of geo-routing two years ago, I think, right around the time I changed jobs. But she’s a trooper, eh? She stuck with that company and rose up the ranks.”
“Code?” An idea sparked in her. She showed him a picture of the code INV-W7-D4-1553. “We found this at one of the crime scenes related to Annabelle’s murder. Does this mean anything to you?”
He glanced at it, blinking hard. “It’s been a while but it looks like internal warehouse codes. Except they don’t actually exist. We used fake codes in testing so we wouldn’t interfere with real shipments. Dummy values. The format matches, though.”
Why would Jackie have this on her? “Can you decode it?” she asked desperately.
“Sure…” He frowned. “Normally, our codes would only go up to, say, W5 or D3. But here, it’s W7 and D4? It doesn’t match any actual warehouse. I think she repurposed our testing system to encode coordinates. We set a base value of 40 for latitude and 118 for longitude. Just to keep our test data separate from real-world numbers. So W7 means add 7 to 40, which gives you 47 degrees north. And D4 means add 4 to 118, landing you at 122 degrees west.” He looked up suddenly. “When you combine that with the trailing numbers—1553—it refines the location to a very specific point.”
Aiden was already looking up the coordinates. His eyes locked on Zoe. “It’s an old storage facility.”
FIFTY-ONE
The rain hadn’t let up once since they’d crossed the state line. It came in sideways now, blown by a bitter wind, turning the car windows into a blur of cold water and streaked light. Zoe sat behind the wheel, her body strung tight as she drove slowly through the slick roads.
The world outside was like a dream. Headlights glowed like fireflies and storefronts were washed-out shapes. The colors were fluid, like a brush dragging through wet ink.
“When is your inquiry?” Aiden asked.
“Right.” She averted her eyes. “I told Simon to hold off until we wrap up this case.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw his fist clench. “It’s too bad that you’ll never know why that prosecutor sent that letter to you. The shooting started immediately, yeah?”
She swallowed hard. “Within a minute of me announcing who I was.”
His eyes lingered on her. She felt it burn through her skin, through her lies. Did he know? She hid so much that she had no capacity for more secrets. “And Viktor just showed up and started shooting? I don’t understand. He hired Darren to keep tabs on you to make sure you didn’t go digging into yourmother’s death. You tell Darren to piss off. But why would Viktor show up out of nowhere and try to kill you?”
Blood crept up her neck and suddenly, it was stifling hot in the car. She couldn’t tell Aiden—not about Rachel’s involvement with Red Trigger. A hitman. Zoe herself had refused to let that information truly sink in. She held it at a distance, observing it through a thick sheet of glass, contemplating if this was something she could ever accept.
“Maybe my threat pissed him off. Maybe he realized that I wasn’t going to stop.”
“Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced.
Her phone chirped and she quickly glanced at it. “Can you check this? I think it’s from the cyber division. They were looking into Spector.”
Aiden scrolled through the email. “They traced it to half a square mile in Pineview Falls but couldn’t get the IP address.”
“Seriously? Why not?”
“VPN’s masking it. They’ll need warrants to dig into the ISP and get any account info.”
They reached the address and Zoe parked the car, sitting motionless as she stared at the building through the windshield like it might shift into something else if she just looked long enough.
