Kissed Blind (Hot Pursuit #2)(50)

He grabbed my face, and I thought for a second he was going to kiss me, but he didn’t. “You’re a genius.” I tucked my head down to hide my reddening cheeks, and he smiled snatching the stack of papers. He rifled through them and found the sheet he was looking for. He pointed to a series of numbers. “Read those off to me.”

I rattled off a sixteen digit number as Vance typed them in. After entering the last digit, his fingers hovered over the keyboard. “The moment of truth. Hopefully this works.” He hit enter, and a map of Cincinnati loaded onto the screen. A blue rotating circle spun and spun, and we waited to see if it would locate the chip hidden in Oliver’s wallet. A few seconds passed, and a green dot blinked on the screen. We read the location.

“Central Parkway? Where?” I blinked trying to think of a reasonable place he could be in the area. “Nothing’s over there, except for District One.” If I was going to take someone and hold them hostage, doing it next to one of the police department’s district buildings wasn’t the smartest idea.

Vance exhaled and laced his fingers behind his head. “Abandoned buildings are all over the area. He could be in any of those. Plenty of perfect hiding places.”

“Yeah, abandoned, crumbling buildings if you want to die and get eaten by roaches the size of your hand.”

He ignored my remark. “We should go.”

“You’re right. We need to get a look at the location and get this mapped out, prepare our game plan.”

“Give me your phone.” Vance held out his hand.

“Why?” I hesitated handing it over and glared at him. I still hadn’t completely forgiven him for breaking into my phone months ago.

“Would you give it a rest? God, one time, and you’ll never let me live it down. You need to update the B&B app so you can access the tracking locator. I can only assume you haven’t updated it yet.”

He was right, I hadn’t. “Fine.” I handed him my phone.

He installed the update and walked me through the tracking system. “The tracking locator works inside the B&B app. See here, there’s a new feature listed on the ‘Home’ screen.” He tapped an icon and entered the same sixteen digit number I’d read off to him. “There, now in a second it’s going to pull up the GPS and your phone should, in theory, give us directions.”

My mouth hung open. “That’s amazing.”

“Isn’t technology grand?”

“Yeah, kind of.”

“Okay, let’s motor and scope it out.”

Down in the car, Vance used the Bluetooth system to tie into my phone, and a man’s voice directed us where to go. We were only a few blocks away. We pulled up to the curb on a vacant stretch of Central Parkway. Not a soul walked the streets, which I wasn’t sure was a good thing or bad. Off to the side of the road was an old concrete bridge. Past it was a field of nothing, which led down into one of the major interstate highways. If ever I wanted to kill someone and hide the body that would have been a perfect spot.

A wave of dread rippled through me. “Vance, do you think they killed him already and dumped the body?”

“I hope not. I’d think they’d want their money first.” He cleared his throat.

“The blue dot hasn’t moved.”

“They have him tied up. He’s alive. Camille said she heard him.”

“Then, I don’t understand.” I pause and glanced around. “There’s nothing here. Where’s he supposed to be?”

Vance snatched my phone and took a closer look at the screen. He set it down on the dashboard and looked out my window. His eyes narrowed and he muttered, “I wonder,” under his breath.

“What? You think he’s under the road?” I laughed.

“Actually, I think that’s exactly where he is.” He fished his phone out of his pocket and began an internet search.

“Huh?” I tried to peek at his screen.

“They might have him in the subway system under the city.”

“Have you lost your mind? There’s no subway system under the city?”

“Actually, there is. Look here.” He tilted his screen, and a website loaded, detailing an abandoned subway system project. He scrolled through photo after photo of gates overgrown with weeds, graffiti covered tunnels, concrete staircases that led into black abysses, and old construction photos. He pointed at a spot on the map. “See, here are some of the tunnels running through the city—under the city. It was a huge project started in the twenties. They only built a few miles of the tunnels before it lost funding and the project was abandoned.”

“We have an unused subway system under our streets?” I scrunched my nose, and he nodded. “How do you know about this? And better yet, how do I not know about this?”

“It’s one of those things I picked up along the way. When I ran cross country in high school the coach organized runs all over the place. Changing the terrain was good for training and kept us engaged. One day I noticed these really huge double doors under a bridge. Me and a buddy went back after school one day and broke in. It’s pretty cool down there. Spooky, but cool.”

“You broke in? You rebel. I can’t believe you did that.” I leaned back into my seat and stared through the windshield. “I’m not sure we’re doing the right thing anymore. We might be in over our heads. What if he gets killed? That’ll be hanging over us for the rest of our lives.”