Page 105 of Tasting Fire
“But the swatting incident? How would that persuade me to come back to Baltimore?” Emmy stared at Cash’s kitchen wall, trying to put the pieces together. “How would heknowsomething would go wrong on the call-out? That’s… that’s just crazy.”
“All I know is that a kid is dead, and a whole lotta shit started going down right about the time you moved back to Steele Ridge. Remind me to nominate him for Asshole of the Year if we prove he’s setting you up.”
“I’ll call his mother and see if I can track him down that way.” Emmy went to Cash’s bedroom and dialed.
Five minutes later, she returned to the kitchen, her body numb with knowledge. Cash might very well be right about Oliver. And if he was, she would find a way to let Oliver’s snotty, skinny ass languish in jail for the rest of his blue-blooded life.
“What?” Cash took her by the arms.
“Apparently Oliver has been in Charlotte since less than a week after I moved back to Steele Ridge. He’s doing some type of doctor exchange program with a hospital down here.”
“Son of a bitch.” Cash pulled her in for a rough kiss to the forehead, then slid the cooling omelet onto a paper plate. “That means we’re taking this to go.”
When it rained information, that shit poured in buckets. Before Cash could get a damn shirt on, Jonah called.
“Sorry it’s taken me so long to get back with you on the Call of Duty thing,” Jonah said, his tone full of frustration, “but fuck me, those kids close ranks when they even get a whiff of an adult poking around.”
Even though everything was one big mess right now, Cash laughed. “It’s hell getting old, ain’t it?”
“Shut up,” he said. “I got the deets you need. I was able to trace our 911 caller to an IP addy and get you an address. Take this down.”
Cash grabbed a pencil and some sticky notes from a kitchen drawer. “Shoot.”
After Jonah rattled off a local address, he said, “You know this info should go straight to Maggie, right?”
“Yup.”
“So I can assume you’ll do the right thing here?”
Cash smiled what he knew was a predatory smile and lied his face off. “Absolutely. Later, man.”
“Emmy,” Cash yelled toward his bedroom where she was getting dressed. “We need to make one stop before we drive to Charlotte.”
At the address Jonah had given him, they found a nondescript split-level home, probably built somewhere in the sixties or seventies. Yard was scraggly, but that was just spring growth inconsistency rather than a complete lack of care. The decades-old azaleas bloomed like fire along the perimeter of the home.
“Jonah originally said this swatter could be anywhere. Do you think it’s weird that he or she is local?” he asked Emmy.
“Not if this really was related to everything else that’s happened.”
He had no idea what they might be stepping into, so he’d shrugged into a shoulder holster and his Springfield sat heavy against his side. “I want you to stay behind me.”
His knock on the door was loud and should let anyone inside know from the get-go that he wasn’t to be fucked with. It wasn’t long until it creaked open and a middle-aged woman squinted at them with suspicion. “I already told you people that I don’t need any magazines and I’ve already found Jesus.”
“Not here selling anything, ma’am,” Cash reassured her. “Do you happen to play video games?”
That had her sinking into a hip-shot stance. “Do I look like I have time to sit down for hours getting sucked into some make-believe zombie apocalypse?”
No, but she obviously knew enough about the theme of the games.
Emmy stepped out from behind him and asked, “Then maybe someone else in your home?”
“Why’re you asking?” Her tone was hard with suspicion.
With a smile, Emmy said, “Actually, we’re with a group called Gaming Studs and are seeking out the best Call of Duty players all over the country. We’re putting together a big e-sports tournament in Raleigh—”
“E-sports?”
“It’s like Olympics for video games, Ma.” A kid—probably nineteen or twenty—swung the door open wider. He was at least a foot taller than his mother, but he wasn’t old enough to have conquered his acne or grow more than a scraggly patch of facial hair. “I play CoD.”
