jasper
Present day
Day 89
“Lotte, it’s me… I know where she is.”
I heard a whoosh of breath escape her lungs. “I’ll be right there.” The words came out in a rush before the line went dead.
I jogged down the stairs to the front door to unlock it for her. She had a key, but this couldn’t wait. I was jumpy as hell and I needed to talk to someone.
She burst through the front door only a moment after I sat down at the dining table, Parker was right behind her by the sounds.
“J?” she called out.
“In here.”
She came flying into the living area, her red hair a wild mess around her tiny frame.
“You found her?” she asked, her shoulders rising and falling with the exertion of having run over here. Her eyes were wide and brimmed with tears.
This was the first time I’d witnessed just how affected Charlotte was. She was as beside herself as I was.
“I know where she is.”
Parker appeared behind her. “Thank fuck for that. Maybe you two can relax now.”
Lotte laughed almost hysterically, the tears I’d seen in her eyes now spilling down her cheeks.
“It’s not that simple, not yet anyway.”
Parker had Lotte in his arms now, wiping away her tears and hugging her close.
God, I miss my girl.
I was dying to have Hannah close and hold her tight.
“I know where she is in theory, I just couldn’t tell you where that location is geographically, even if my life depended on it.”
Which it does.
“I think you need to start from the start,” Lotte replied softly.
I gestured for them to sit.
“I had a dream… it was like I was reliving a conversation we had when we went on vacation a couple of years back. I could see us talking. She was talking about her grandmother and the house she inherited when she died.”
“Huh,” Park mused. “So getting written off actually did help.”
“Oh my god,” Charlotte whispered. “The beach house… of course…”
“You know about it?” I demanded. “Do you know where it is?”
I was suddenly hopeful. If Charlotte had heard about the house, then she might have known where it was.
Right now, this was the best shot I had.
She shook her head. “I found the letter from the lawyer… it was when we were packing up to move out of our apartment. She told me about her grandmother and that she’d been left the house, but she changed the subject so quick, I’ve always meant to ask her about it, but you know, life got crazy and I forgot.”
“I never asked her anymore about it either.” I rubbed my temples in frustration.
“What do we do now?” she whispered.
“I’ll go find a map.”
“Fuck that, I’ll just ring Tyler.” Parker reached for his phone. “We’ll see if he can narrow it down.”
Shit…
I glanced at Lotte. I didn’t want to be the one to say it and risk hurting her feelings, but I was backed into a corner.
I was pretty confident that Tyler was in on Hannah’s plan. People didn’t just disappear off the face of the earth like this – not of their own free will.
“Don’t.” I told him at the same time that Charlotte said, “No.”
I looked at her in question. I knew why I didn’t want to ring Ty, but I had no idea what she had against the plan.
“I think he knows more than he’s letting on,” she told me, her tone apologetic. “He’s been acting really weird anytime I call, and let’s face it, Hannah’s a lot of things, but tech-savvy is not really one of them… she didn’t do all this on her own.”
I nodded. “Agreed.”
“Maybe someone else helped her?” Parker offered.
“If she’d had someone else help her, then Tyler would have figured it all out within fifteen minutes and made a real show of it too,” Lotte told him.
“Exactly.”
She was right. Having my thoughts backed up by someone that trusted him implicitly only reinforced my theory.
“Alright then, Starsky and Hutch,” Parker drawled, “if Ty is a no go, then what now?”
I smirked. “Ty isn’t the only hacker out there, right?”
“You wanna hire a hacker to hack the hacker?” Parker probed.
“Genuis.” Charlotte grinned.
I grabbed my cell off the counter.
“Jasper,” he answered on the first ring.
“Hey, Sammy, I need a favour.”
“If it’s about that damn cat, I don’t even want to know.”
“Oh c’mon, you love her really.”
“Get on with it, Jasper.”
Fair call.
“You’ve still got contacts in the FBI, right? I need you to do some digging…”