Locke 2 (Blackwater Boys #4)

Thirty-Nine

Kali

I warily looked at Jem as we stood outside of his truck. He’d called me out here soon after Locke and Conor had left this morning. We’d had a big breakfast. I was still recovering from all that bacon.

“What’s going on?” I croaked, rubbing my queasy stomach.

“What do you mean?” he returned, rounding the truck.

“Where are we going?”

“We’ve got to tighten up loose ends.”

“We can do that with Locke and Conor, can’t we?”

“Oh, they’re going to be gone for a while. This is something we can do without them.”

After the beat down at the club, I wasn’t sure Locke would be merry about me knocking on doors without him. Though he did appear content this morning, and I was starting to believe he truly wouldn’t stop me from doing what I wanted, even if he disagreed with it.

We slipped into Jem’s truck, and he put us on the road, heading in the direction of town.

“This folder has the timeline before Lenny’s disappearance,” Jem said, handing me a folder with papers inside. “Flip through it and see what jumps out.”

I took the folder and opened it, going through the timeline. We’d really gotten through most of it, though.We didn’t speak for a few minutes. Mostly because I was not buying Jem’s story.

“Anything pop up?” Jem asked me, looking raptly at me for an answer. Red flags soared. Jem was not a chirpy dude, and he would not be staring so intently at me like what I had to say mattered so damn much to him.

I shot him a suspicious look. “Jem, what’s really going on?”

He had the audacity to feign ignorance. “Nothing, Kali. Why would there be something wrong?”

I raised the folder and shook it. “We went through most of the timeline. We questioned the neighbours and the landlord. We got a record of Lenny’s absences from the school. We got the information out of Keenan. We found the truck Tammy disappeared to. We’re closing in on the shelter she might be at. Then Locke got a hit on Arthur Ambrose employing those ex-convicts…” My words trailed off as realisation hit me. I glared at Jem. “He went to Ambrose, didn’t he?”

Jem shot me an innocent look. “Did he?”

The last few days had been full on. I’d spent a lot of that time with Jem. I was present when him and Conor went around the neighbourhood, gleaning what was seen when Tammy left. Neighbours were adamant that the boy had truly been in the truck, but he hadn’t been waving like the first neighbour had described.

We learned that the reference was a woman named Sheila who worked at a shelter that belonged to Ambrose. Sheila was questioned, too, but she said she’d had no sighting of Tammy in any of the Georgewel shelters. That was when Locke began to search wider, discovering there were other shelters Ambrose owned outside of the town. In the next town over, they discovered an abandoned truck outside a motel matching the description she had left in, but Tammy wasn’t there, and neither was Lenny. When questioned by staff, they said Tammy had checked in, but she wasn’t with a boy. So between her leaving in her truck and going to that motel, something happened to Lenny.

We were getting close, following her trail. Locke was certain he’d find her very soon, but they needed to keep looking. He focused on the shelters Ambrose owned because if she had run out of money, she’d be going back to those shelters.

And now, Locke was finally moving in on Ambrose.

“I thought he wouldn’t do it without me,” I fumed.

“I think we have a very important job to do also, Kali.”

I let out a sound of disgust. “Would you quit it already? I’m not stupid, Jem. He sent us on a wild goose chase so he can beat that old man around.”

Jem pulled the truck over. We were in the middle of town, next to the coffee shop that sold baby Jesus tears. Jem looked at me and this time his face wasn’t all innocent. “Ambrose wasn’t just employing ex-convicts, Kali. Some of these guys are really sick.”

“The Hole sort of sick?”

He nodded. “Yeah, the shit they went away for was stomach churning. If your Santy Claus was so sweet, how could he justify employing molesters in some of these places he’s opened up?”

I mulled that over. “What is he planning to do to him?”

Jem just looked at me and said nothing.

I sighed. “Jem, what if he’s wrong about Ambrose?”

“Do you really think he is?”

No, I had already accepted that Ambrose was most likely the monster. Every lead led to him.

Jem gestured to the folder. “Look over the timeline and see what jumps out.”

“We’ve gone through it all.”

“No, we didn’t. How about the yard people that weren’t very yardly?”

I rolled my eyes. “Uh-huh.”

“We can also grill the aunt again.”

“I don’t know what to grill her about. She’d seen Lenny at the start of October.”

“Yeah, he’d gotten sick.”

I looked down at the timeline. “He saw Dr Jeannette Kensington. She’s someone we haven’t spoken to.”

“Where does she work?”

I pulled out my phone and searched her up. When I saw the address, my heart skipped a little beat. “She’s just down the street here.”

“Why’d you say it like that?”

“Like what?”

“All breathless-like.”

Now it was my turn to feign ignorance. “I don’t know what you mean, Jem.”

He shot me a suspicious look as he drove the car down the street a little further down. He pulled up in front of a nice little house. “In there?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Want me to come with you?”

“That’s okay. You can just chill here. I might be a bit.”

His eyes narrowed on me. “Alright. I’ll be right here. But, Kali, keep in mind she might not say anything.”

I nodded. “I know, but it’s a small town, and everyone’s really friendly here.”

The notion of that made Jem scowl. “If it doesn’t go your way, we can visit the doctor after hours, if you catch my drift.”

Oh, my God. “It won’t come to that.”

But his dark smirk said otherwise.

I swallowed back a curse and gestured to a store across the street. “They sell your favourite ice cream drumsticks there. Go out and buy one. Have a relax.”

Before he could say anything else, I jumped out of the car and hurried into the doctor’s office.