Page 40 of Just Now

He walked out of the office, on a mission to find out.

“Mr. Gaynor?” he called to the owner, who was now bustling around the grill, supervising orders. “We still need to speak to Cody McGovern.”

Gaynor checked his watch, looking surprised.

“He was supposed to be in today,” he said. “He was supposed to be in at six p.m. but I see he’s not here.”

The receptionist glanced around. “Cody called earlier. He said his girlfriend was sick and he had to stay home to help her. Shall I call him and tell him the police need to speak to him?”

Cami and Connor exchanged a glance, and she knew, with a flash of excitement, that this could well be their suspect.

“No.” Connor shook his head, and Cami could hear the thinly veiled urgency in his voice. “Don’t call him. But please give me his home address. We’ll take a drive and speak to him there.”

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Connor felt the pressure bearing down as he sped to Cody McGovern’s house.

Night was here. This was when the killer would pounce. And he knew they were lagging behind. The next hour would be a critical time.

Back in the diner, he’d had to make some tough decisions, knowing there was a strong chance that the killer was Cody McGovern, and that he needed to get face to face with him as soon as possible, and before he could be warned.

But at the same time, there were urgent jobs to do at the diner. The access to the customer information needed to be checked and also, the regular customers who’d been there at the time the victims were there needed to be identified.

He had to triage the situation in a way that would allow them to be most effective. After putting together the best course of action in his mind, he’d shared his plans with Cami.

“I’m going to say, at this point, we split up,” Connor had told her. “I’m going to have to check Cody out and see if this story is true. But since we also need to check the customer records and look at the regular clients, I think you should stay and do that, because it’s your area of expertise. You happy with it?”

He knew he would be the one going into the bigger danger. If Cami stayed in the back office to do the checking, he thought it was acceptable for her to work on her own.

Cami had nodded, her expression determined.

“I’ll get started right away,” she’d said.

He remembered the way she’d warned him as he left.

“Be careful,” she’d emphasized.

“You, too,” he’d replied.

They were dealing with someone deadly and unpredictable and, as yet, this person was unknown to them. This had to change. Two victims had been bad enough. But three?

Shaking his head, trying to rid himself of the voice inside telling him he’d failed, he went over everything they knew about the case so far as he drove.

Three women, who’d all been customers at the Zesty Kitchen, and who all lived alone. There had been subtle signs of forced entry, though no forensic evidence, so the killer must have sneakily found a way in and disabled alarms if he needed to.

Unfortunately, Connor knew, finding a way in was all too possible. People were innocent. Very few locked their homes up like Fort Knox if they considered their neighborhood to be safe. There usually was a way in to be found, through a convenient window or forcing the back door.

Maybe he ruled out those with very tight security. Putting himself in the killer’s shoes, Connor guessed that was what he would have done. He would have scouted out their homes and decided whether it was possible to access them.

As he drove, he wondered what kind of person Cody McGovern was. Was he the killer? What kind of motive could he have for these crimes?

He hoped that if it was Cody, he’d be able to confront him and arrest him quickly.

At that moment, his phone rang.

It was his boss, Fraser, on the line, and Connor knew that Fraser would be demanding answers. Checking the GPS and moving into the fast lane, he took the call.

“Connor, what’s the status on the case?” Fraser’s voice was urgent.

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