The break they needed came sooner than Nate could have hoped. Unfortunately at the expense of two lives. Klay had sent Buck home promising to call when, if, they found anything. Thirty minutes later he fielded a call from an SkPD patrol officer. A Skagit resident had reported an abandoned car in her neighborhood. Almost any other part of the county and no one would have bothered to call it in, but the shiny late-model white sedan had been left parked on a street in the high-end Soldiers Hill area.

The uniformed officers who’d responded to the call happened to be the same two who’d brought Miguel in for questioning less than forty-eight hours earlier. A gruesome scene unfolded. Instead of being vacant but for abandoned stolen goods and the random trash car thieves leave, there were two bodies in the trunk. The couple, a man and a woman, had been shot and then stuffed inside. Although the warm weather had not been kind to the corpses, neither officer threw up on the crime scene. A win.

The county medical examiner believed they had been killed elsewhere, transported by car, and then abandoned. The scene was still being processed, but one of the responding officers had found a piece of paper in the glove box with the address of the house where Miguel’s wallet was found.

“Since your friend’s wallet was found there, I thought you would want to know…” Officer Terrance shifted from side to side while he spoke, uncomfortable under Adam Klay’s intense focus.

Terrance had recalled that Miguel’s alibi had been a federal officer and thought it was worth notifying Klay’s office. He was probably going to get hell from his commanding officers over it. Now SkPD was back out at the burned-out rental house and treating it as the original crime scene.

The SkPD’s working theory was that the fire had been set to cover up evidence of the murder of Penny and Morris Devaney, who’d made the ill-fated decision to embark on a last-minute holiday. The discovery was only hours old, and detectives had yet to investigate the victims’ background, but it seemed unlikely a youngish couple from Idaho would have any enemies in Skagit.

“It seemed pretty convenient to me that Ramirez’s wallet happened to be at the scene; there likely was more than just an accidental connection. And now you’re saying he is missing?”

“Oakes is behind this,” Nate said. “I know he is.”

“Oakes?” Terrance asked.

“Ramirez’s stalker ex-boyfriend,” Klay answered grimly.

“Oakes,” Terrance repeated thoughtfully. “Is he local?” He hadn’t blinked at the mention of a boyfriend. Not that Nate cared what other people thought, but it was a pleasant surprise.

“No,” Weir interrupted; he’d slipped back into the room without Nate noticing. “He’s in the area now, though,” he continued. “Justin Oakes was a detective with the Spokane Police Department until last September.”

“We’ve been having a rash of break-ins at vacant vacation rentals in the area,” Terrance said. “Thought it was kids for the most part. Probably was, sometimes, but you think maybe this Oakes guy has been doing the same thing? Staying under the radar by using these places?” He paused, then added, “I called back the owners of the one where Ramirez’s wallet was found.”

Something about how he said that made Nate take notice. “And?”

“This time I got the husband. They’d had a late cancellation, like we heard from the wife, but the Devaneys called after that, and he hadn’t put their info in the system yet. Then he forgot because his wife came home and they got into an argument; he ended up staying with friends for a couple of days, didn’t hear about any of this until today.”

Nate was thinking out loud. “So the victims showed up unannounced? And Oakes was there?” They all believed Oakes had murdered the couple. Everyone’s faces were grim.

“Was the property online? Like one of those places people can search for, rented by the owner and not a third party?” Klay asked.

“Yessir.” Terrance nodded.

Nate turned to Weir. “I think he’s got a way of figuring out what homes are vacant. Can you?”

“Dude, it’s like taking candy from a baby. Most of these sites have no real protection.”

“I think I didn’t hear that,” Terrance said.

“Yeah, no.” Klay broke his silence, adding, “Thank you for bringing this to our attention. You let me know if you get any flak about it.”

Technically there was no reason for the feds to be involved in this murder investigation. Klay knew that Nate was going to involve himself anyway. Right at that moment, Nate really appreciated Adam Klay’s devotion to those he called family. It seemed that somewhere along the way Nate had become part of that group and hadn’t realized it.

“Just a sec,” Nate called to the departing officer. “Can you get us a list of the residences that have been reported as broken into? I’m wondering if there is a pattern or if he chooses at random. May help us narrow down where he is.”

Terrance agreed to email a list of the homes that had reported a robbery or minor damage from what they assumed were teenage vandals. Nate and Klay were sitting back in the small conference room a few minutes later when Nate’s phone chimed with an email notification. Together he, Weir, and Klay looked at the list.

“I’m thinking he wouldn’t go to a place more than once… but what if he had a place he really liked? He’s a stalker; what if he was shopping for the perfect home?” Weir asked.

“Mmm. Yeah, maybe.” The biggest problem was, there were several hundred vacation rentals in the region. They were operating on the assumption that Oakes was in one of them and that he maybe had Miguel with him.

So far there had been no sightings of Miguel. After he’d eluded Buck, Miguel had disappeared. He didn’t have any credit cards to track, no cell phone… nothing.

“We need to interview staff at the train station, bus depot… probably not the airport. Hopefully he went to one of those places and didn’t hitchhike. Miguel pays with cash, right? I bet if someone sold him a ticket they would remember; it’s not that common anymore,” Weir stated, matter-of-fact.

Weir went to the train station and Nate took the bus depot.

 

The depot was busy. Several buses were loading up for departure, and Nate had to wait until the ticket seller was free to talk. Nate flashed his badge, and the man gave him a panicked look. Whatever wrongs the little man was up to weren’t Nate’s problem right now.

“We’re looking for a man who probably paid cash for his ticket. Sometime in the last two days.”

“Lotta people pay cash,” the man muttered. His name tag read, “Rex W.”

Nate shoved the printout of Miguel that Weir had given him before they parted. “This man, do you recognize him? He may have bought a ticket sometime in the last two days.”

“I was off the last two days.”

Nate wanted to reach across the counter and strangle the man. “Who was working? And are they available?”

“Robert or Magda, probably. Robert’s off for the next couple days. Magda, she’ll be in tomorrow. What’s this about anyway?”

Nate wrestled Robert Green’s and Magda Lewis’s phone numbers out of Rex and left the bus depot. Green only lived a few blocks away in a small, rundown bungalow. Nate was welcome to stop by. Green greeted him at the door.

“May I ask a few questions?” Nate asked after flashing his badge.

“Sure.” Robert turned slowly, leaving Nate to follow him inside.

Robert perched on a grim couch in the tiny living room, surrounded by what looked to be decades of newspapers and magazines. The stacks were precarious, and Nate wondered that the man hadn’t been crushed by them. He remained standing; sitting would have been impossible anyway.

“Sometime in the past few days, did you sell a ticket for cash?” Nate unfolded the printout of Miguel and showed it to him. “To this man?”

Robert nodded, not taking his eyes from the pixelated photograph.

“When?”

“Maybe yesterday afternoon.” He looked up at Nate, eyes wary. “What did he do?”

“Nothing. He’s missing, and we are trying to retrace his steps.”

“Mmm.” Robert hummed, as if he had heard that story before, too many times to count. “I sold him a ticket to Portland and then to Eugene.”

“Did he seem nervous or jumpy?”

“Boy, that describes most of the folks coming to buy tickets. But, yes, he did seem jumpier than most of my customers. So the other police officer who was looking didn’t find him?”

Dread, fear, worse, washed through Nate, leaving him wobbly. “Other officer? What did he look like?”

“Well, I’m not so good with faces, you know, but the other officer struck me as…” Robert stopped, seeming to need to find the right words, “hard. Mean. He was very impatient. I was glad to be behind glass. When I told him I’d seen this man,” he indicated Miguel’s picture, “go toward the restrooms, he didn’t even thank me, he just turned and left. Nearly knocked over someone behind him.”

“Do you know if the first man ever got on the bus?”

“No.”

Nate’s stomach twisted painfully.

“No, he didn’t. The driver waited as long as he could, but you gotta understand he had connections to make.”

Miguel was still close, possibly still in Skagit. That was what Nate heard and tucked away. And that creep Justin Oakes had him. Nate knew it. He’d known it before; now he was certain. He was also certain that time was not on their side. Whatever journey Oakes had been taking, obsessing over Miguel, following him to Skagit… it was coming to an end, and Nate was very afraid for his lover. He almost wished Miguel had been able to get away, to disappear again. At least he would be safe from Oakes.

No, a little voice said, Miguel would never be safe from someone like Justin Oakes. Oakes had decided Miguel was his; he’d given up too much of his life—lost his job and the respect of his colleagues. None of which was Miguel’s fault.

Oakes’s endgame was very final, of that Nate was sure. If Oakes was willing to kill an innocent couple, he would take both himself and Miguel out before allowing himself to be apprehended. Where the hell were they?