Keep Her Safe(128)

He struggles to maintain a neutral expression. With the faintest sigh, and then a lightning-quick glance around him, Dunn settles into the spare seat beside her. “You’re Gracie?”

It’s her turn to look surprised. “You remember my name?”

Dunn chuckles softly. “You don’t spend day in and day out in a car with a man who won’t stop talking about his daughter and not remember her name.” He pauses and glances over at me. “You, too. He went on about the both of you.”

“How long were you partners for?” Gracie asks.

“Three years.” He frowns. “How’d y’all find me, anyway?”

“Dunn’s BBQ? Voted best barbecue in Austin last year?” I smile. “You’re not exactly hard to track down.”

He grins. “I guess not.”

“Gracie’s barely taken a breath, she’s so busy gobbling up your food.” I ignore her eye roll.

“Listen . . .” He heaves a sigh. “I’m sorry that I ever gave my statement. I can’t help but feel it helped with making Abraham look guilty. I still don’t know what all those phone calls were that he kept getting, but I should have known it wasn’t anything wrong. It was Abe, after all.”

“We think the phone calls had to do with this girl.” I pull out my phone. “Do you by chance remember seeing her?” I show him the shot I took of Betsy’s picture.

His murky gray eyes sit on Betsy’s face for far too long to be mistaken for simple consideration. He’s carefully weighing what to say. “Who is she?”

“Her name is Betsy. She’s my mother’s little sister,” Gracie says, watching him closely. She’s picked up on his hesitation too. “She was a runaway, and we think she got pulled into prostitution by a trafficking ring. My father must have seen her in Austin, because he was looking for her in the weeks before he died. We think that’s why he went to the Lucky Nine motel the night he was killed.”

“Jesus Christ . . .” Dunn’s gaze drifts past me, out the window, his jaw tightening.

“You remember her, don’t you? You saw her? When? What happened?”

“Gracie.” I give her a warning look. She’s going on the offensive, and with that posture, getting people to talk—especially cops—might not get us far.

“Maybe it’s best we leave this alone.”

She looks at him in disbelief. And then she erupts. “Fine!” Gracie pushes her tray forward, as if done with her meal. “We’ll tell the FBI to come and talk to you. Maybe here, in front of all your customers. Maybe I’ll call the newspapers, too,” she throws in almost as an afterthought. “Let’s help you get the kind of PR your ‘Best Barbecue in Austin’ restaurant deserves.”

“You don’t wanna be doin’ that,” Dunn warns, his jaw clenched.

“Then you’d better start talking.”

He glances around us—again. His face is a grim mask as he gestures for Gracie to sit back down. “Dispatch sent us out to a hotel one night; I can’t remember the name of it. Decent enough place. They’d gotten an anonymous call about prostitution, possibly with a minor. So we went.” He hesitates. “The man at the door said he was on a date and brought out the girl’s ID. Your father insisted that the girl come to the door to make sure the ID matched. When she finally did, Abe lost it. He was ready to arrest the guy and haul her out of there.”

I exchange a surprised glance with Gracie. “So Abe definitely recognized her?”

“He seemed to.”

“And it was this girl?”

“I believe it was.”

“And then what?” Gracie pushes.

Dunn takes a deep breath, his eyes flickering to me. “And then Jackie Marshall showed up and dismissed us. Said she’d handle it from there. My guess is the man called her as soon as we knocked on the door. It took him a good while to come to the door in the first place, using the shower as an excuse to stall having to answer. And then he kept checkin’ the hall, as if waitin’ for someone. Anyway, Wilkes wasn’t happy. But your mom, she tore my notes right out of my book and sent me to the car. Wilkes came out five minutes later, hoppin’ mad. He radioed in that all was clear, and then we left for a robbery call.”

My stomach drops in that way it does when you realize you’ve gotten caught for screwing up. Only I didn’t screw up. But it sounds like my mom did. “You guys left a fifteen-year-old human trafficking victim there?”

“No. We followed a superior officer’s orders. If that girl got left there, it’s on Jackie Marshall,” he says carefully, but I see the guilt in his eyes.

Gracie’s brow furrows. I’m sure she’s filling in the blanks with what we learned from Dina already, and Dunn’s account of that night fits well with everything, except the one thing we both know of Abe—that he wouldn’t leave Betsy in a hotel room, not even because of an order from a superior officer.

My mother must have found some way to compel Abe to leave.

But the bigger question is, why the hell would my mother interfere like that in the first place?

Holy shit. “She was protecting the guy in the room.”

“That would be my guess. But you’d have to ask her.” His words dig exactly where he means them to—deep into my chest.