Page 105 of Reaper and Ruin

I shrugged. “If he still has any. I can’t even remember the names of the boys he was friends with in high school. They were older. One might have been Andrew or Andy or something.” I screwed up my face. “Sorry, that’s really not much to go on, is it?”

X squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry. We’ll find him.”

I had no doubt he would. The only question in my mind was whether Nyah would still be alive when they did. Realization dawned on me, and I covered my mouth, bile rising up my throat. “Oh God.” I rushed back up the path without a word of explanation to the guys.

I didn’t need to. I knew they would follow.

I banged my way back inside Francine’s office.

She jumped a mile again then scowled at me. “Violet! Dammit, you have got to stop doing that! My heart can’t handle it. Just knock like a normal person!”

I ignored her reprimands. “The jobs Nyah was supposed to do the day she went missing, did Travis Brumley book any of those?”

Francine pressed her lips together. “I already gave the police a list—”

“Yeah, a list of the house addresses and the owners’ names. I got all that from the roster too. But who booked those jobs, Francine?”

She squinted at the screen again and her fingers hovered over the keyboard.

I wanted to reach across the desk and force her hands to move faster.

“Ain’t got all day, lady!” X shouted, straight back into hisDirty Harryrole. “You type slower than my grandma!” He turned to me. “Which actually is not really an insult because she’s pretty fast. You know Silas has apparently been teaching her ‘digital skills?’”

Levi glanced at him. “Silas is that guy you went to school with who’s now banging your grandmother, right?”

X went pale. “Why remind me?”

Levi shrugged. “You sure when he said digital skills, he didn’t mean digit skills? You know a digit in some places is the term they use for fingers.”

X frowned, Francine’s slow-ass click-clacking on the keyboard the only sound in the room until X put together what Levi was getting at.

His mouth dropped open. “What are you saying? That Silas isn’t teaching my grandmother how to touch type but he’s using his fingers to…”

Levi shrugged one shoulder. “Get all up in her hot pocket?”

Whip grimaced. “For fuck’s sake, Levi. What is wrong with you? You’ve been hanging out with X too much.”

I couldn’t have agreed more. But I’d seen Silas and X’s grandmother together…and they’d definitely seemed like they were more into Silas’s ‘digit’ skills, rather than learning about emails and the World Wide Web.

X was positively green. He glared at Levi. “You are so lucky my digits are only interested in Violet’s hot pocket. Or I wouldsobe tracking down your granny right now and offering her a little digital relief!”

“Please stop talking, both of you,” I said weakly. “Please never say the words hot pocket or digit ever again.”

Francine gave them both a stern look from behind the desk. “I agree with Violet. Just because women get older, doesn’t mean they don’t have needs too. We were all once twenty and thirty like all of you. Our hot pockets don’t stop needing to be filled just because we hit our forties and fifties and beyond.”

Christ. I did not want to have a conversation about who or what was filling my aging boss’s hot pocket. “Please, Francine,” I begged. “Just tell us if Travis booked any of Nyah’s jobs that day.”

She muttered something but must have finally found whatever she was looking for because she nodded slowly. “Yes. He booked her first job of the day. 1705 Fire Ridge Way.”

Any glimmer of hope that Nyah had just upped and left Saint View of her own accord vanished.

She’d gone to that house.

I knew it in my bones.

And now a madman had her.

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