Page 134 of Fire Fight

“Hate to break up the love fest?—”

“No you don’t,” Crew cut Lane off.

“—but can we do a quick interview before I leave?” Lane asked me, ignoring Crew’s interruption.

“About what?”

“That day on the street when you received this,” he said, holding up the email in question. “Do you remember who was around? What were you doing?”

I glanced at Crew, and he dipped his chin slightly, encouraging me.

“Actually…have you ever heard of a cognitive interview?”

“Sure,” Lane said. “You want to do one?”

“Yeah, but not about that day on the street. We can talk that out, but Irememberthat. I want to try to access my missing hours between the abduction and fire.”

Lane blinked in surprise, but nodded. “Yeah, of course.”

Trey moved from the couch to one of the armchairs,apparently not ready to leave quite yet. Crew settled into the spot he’d vacated first, then let me curl up into his side. If I was about to relive a piece of my trauma, I needed him holding me together. Lane pulled out his phone and set it to record, going through his pre-interview spiel, detailing why we were here.

“Tell me what happened that day on the street,” he started, handing over my notebook to help jog my memory.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I transported myself back, then popped them open and scanned the pages of my notes, looking for the right one. When I found it, I tapped my finger to the passage and read aloud.

“The man holding his young daughter’s hand. The woman in a smart suit, phone pressed to her ear as she ate up the sidewalk. The two women, clearly mother and daughter, exiting the diner with take-out containers in their hands. The man standing on the corner a block ahead, hat pulled low over his face, shoulders hunched as he waited for a car to pass so he could cross the street.” I looked up to find all three men hanging on my every word. “I followed that last guy.”

Lane sighed. “Of course you did. Any luck?”

I shook my head. “Nah. He’d disappeared by the time I got to the corner of the next block.”

“Which direction?”

“Uhh…left?”

Trey snorted, and Crew socked him in the arm.

“Sorry, I realize that’s not helpful. But I don’t exactly have the lay of the land to be more specific.”

“You were on Cassia, right?” Crew asked. “In front of the pizza parlor.”

“Right.”

“Which direction did the man head from there?” I pointed to the left, and Lane stated that for the record. “How many blocks ahead did he go?”

“He was already ahead of me by a block, so he went another one.”

“The parlor is in the middle of the block between Ash and Juniper. Two blocks to the west would put you at Walnut. Another left turn would have him heading south.”

“It’s all a crapshoot, though,” Trey argued. “That’s all residential that way. He could’ve disappeared into a home and we’d never know better.”

“We canvassed after the dumpster fire that night and nothing popped.”

“And it wouldn’t,” Trey piped in. “This guy isn’t going to come to the door with his wrists held together and say, ‘hey, yeah, it was me. Take me away.’”

As annoying as he was, Trey had a point.

“We’ll circle back to this,” Lane said. “Now let’s focus on the night you were abducted and the events after.”