Page 25 of Ryder
“Reacher has me benched right now.”
He nodded. “I know, but I also know you like to be kept informed. So, uh… in terms of updates…” He glanced across at the prospect mopping my floor.
“You almost done over there?”
He glanced up, white-blond hair hanging in his eyes.
“Uh… yeah. Let me just get rid of the bedding, and I’m done.”
I grimaced. “Jesus, sorry.”
He shrugged, leaving the room with the mop and bucket, and returning to strip the bed, taking everything away with him.
“So fucking glad I’m not a prospect anymore,” Ice muttered, getting up to close the door, before he settled back in front of his screen.
“Okay, so the phone that messaged you is local. I’m not going to bore you with details as to how I know that, but the short version is that it’s been pinging off several towers all night, telling me the user is in a specific part of town. Now, before you go leaping into action, first off, you’re still on lockdown, and also, we’re still talking about a large area, so you’d be going in blind anyway.”
“So it’s useless information, is what you’re saying?” I sipped my coffee, wishing I’d used less toothpaste, so it didn’t taste so fucking minty.
“Charming. I work my ass off all night, and all you pricks do is dismiss it.” Yeah, I’m definitely the prick this time.
“Sorry. So how can we use this information?”
He smirked. “I’m tracking that phone, so when it pings to show movement, we’ll get an idea of that person’s movements, and it might give us something more. In addition to that, I was able to hack some camera footage.” I winced, imagining more footage of my… assault.
“This was from a camera owned by a business at the entrance to that alleyway. The camera only catches part of the alleyway, but I was able to backtrack through their uploaded footage, and caught the car that drove through there twice, during the night in question. The number plate was for a stolen car. It also doesn’t match the one that dropped you off. She’s good.”
Great. I had to be kidnapped and raped by a clever bitch.
“We have footage of the car coming here?”
He shot me a withering look, clicking the mouse as he worked, while he talked.
“Of course, dipshit, but the prospects, even though they let the bitch in without question, like fucking morons, they also took down the number plate, in case we needed it. It was another stolen car though. The person who dropped you off was blonde,but the, uh… person in the video was a redhead, so we have to assume she’s using disguises to throw us off.”
“No shit.”
“Do you have to go to classes to learn to be such a wise-ass? Just wondering. Because while you were catching some quality Zzz, I’ve been up all fucking night working on this for you.” He was a cranky bastard in the mornings.
“Sorry. I’ve not been myself since this happened. Gee, maybe I need a shrink.”
“You need something. Now, the only other thing I have so far, is this…” He turned the laptop around, and showed me a still photo. It was really poor quality, clearly taken from CCTV, but it definitely showed me leaving that shithole of a bar with some blonde chick on my arm. Her face wasn’t all that clear, her clothing was slutty, and she was smiling. That was as much as I could get from it.
“You gonna run around town showing that to people? Because there’s a guy out there who’s not gonna wanna see my face right now.”
Ice smirked. “Yeah… so I heard.”
“You heard about the guy we chased down an alley?”
He nodded. “I hear you gave the guy a bit of a beating.” Oh. Yeah, that part’s fine, so I shrugged it off.
“Homophobe. Deserved a kicking.”
Ice shrugged. “Not really interested in him. I’m more interested in this bitch.”
I sipped my coffee for a few minutes, letting him work in relative silence, apart from the occasional gurgle from my poor stomach.
“So anything else we can try?”
