Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead(Finlay Donovan #2)(75)

“I didn’t leave him much of a choice.”

“Assuming he takes the website down, what do we do next?”

“We have to find Theresa and Aimee before the police do.”

“You really think Aimee is FedUp?”

“She has to be. She has the means to hire someone like EasyClean, she hates Steven, and the timing of the ad makes sense—Steven had just dumped Theresa. Aimee’s best friend was alone behind bars, and she could more easily pin Carl’s murder on Steven if he wasn’t alive to defend himself.” If I was right and Aimee was FedUp, then finding her was the key to solving all our problems. We could recover my lost phone, get rid of our piece of Carl, and use what we knew about Aimee’s involvement in his murder to persuade her to contact EasyClean and call off the job. The plan would have been perfect, if I only knew where to start.





CHAPTER 34


I woke up early the next morning to find my van parked in my driveway and a message from Nick on my phone, letting me know he’d left the keys under the floor mat. I shuffled outside in my pajamas and slippers to grab them, waving to Officer Roddy’s daytime replacement before pulling the van into the garage and closing it inside.

As I was settling down at the kitchen table with my first cup of coffee, there was a hard knock on my front door. Peeking through the kitchen curtains, I spotted my sister’s car. I closed my eyes and uttered a swear. It had taken less than twenty-four hours for the gossip to find her. With a sigh, I flung open the door.

“Hey, Finn!” Georgia clapped my shoulder as she pushed her way inside. “Get the kids ready to go.”

“They’re already ready to go. Vero’s taking Delia to school.”

“She’s not going to school. I’ve got the next two days off. I’m taking the kids to my place.”

“Your place?” I asked, immediately suspicious of her enthusiastic tone. “Why? I mean … not that I’m complaining, but you do realize there would be diapers involved.” I followed her to the kitchen as she helped herself to a cup of coffee and a handful of dry cereal from the pantry.

“Nick called me this morning. He told me that someone wants to off your ex-husband. And while I imagine the list of candidates must be pretty long, he’s got some theory that Feliks Zhirov is connected to the whole thing. Something about a post he found online.”

The ad. Nick must have found the forum last night. Georgia shrugged, popping a handful of Cheerios in her mouth and talking around it. “Nick’s got good instincts. If he’s worried enough to put an officer on your house, then it’s probably smart to have the kids stay somewhere else for a while. Nick’s got his partner covering Steven’s place and he can’t afford the manpower to put another rotation at Mom and Dad’s, so he suggested I keep the kids for a couple of days until he can get the whole thing sorted out.”

“And that’s all he mentioned?” I asked cautiously.

“That and some tirade about a website disappearing from the internet this morning. He seemed pretty worked up about it.”

The forum. Feliks must have had his people take it down overnight.

It was done. We’d done it. Now all we had to do was track down Theresa and Aimee before Nick did. “Do you know where Nick is now?” If he’d gone home to get some sleep, that would buy us a solid head start.

“He’s chasing down a lead on that missing CI he’s been looking for.”

I set down my coffee. “He has a lead?”

Georgia shrugged. “Sounds like it. He hung up before I had a chance to ask him about it. You know how he gets.”

I knew, all right. Enough to know Nick definitely wasn’t home sleeping.

“I’ll go get the kids.” I excused myself from the kitchen and raced up the stairs, nearly knocking Vero over where she stood eavesdropping in the hall. “Did you hear that?” I asked, dragging her into my bedroom. “Cam probably still has copies of everything he found on that women’s forum. If Nick finds him and gets his hands on those files, everything we risked last night was for nothing.”

“We have to find Cam before Nick does,” Vero whispered.

“But Nick said Cam hasn’t been at home or at school.”

Vero shook her head. “When someone’s in trouble, they don’t hide where they’re supposed to be. Not at home, not with family. They lay low with a friend. Or maybe an accomplice—someone who has just as much to lose if they’re found.”

Like Aimee and Theresa. Or Vero and me. She’d moved into my home right after we’d buried a body. “Who would someone like Cam hide with?”

“Pack up the kids,” Vero said, grabbing a hoodie from my dresser drawer and tossing it in my hands. “I’ll wait for you in the Charger at the playground. Get rid of your sister and leave through the backyard. I’ve got a pretty good idea where to find our missing hacker.”



* * *



An hour later, Vero banged her knuckles on the counter in the tech shop. Derek sat behind the register, staring at his phone.

“We’re looking for Cam,” Vero said brusquely.

“Don’t know him,” Derek replied without looking up.

“Last time we were here, you gave us his card,” I reminded him. “You told us he could help us fix a network problem.”