Page 149 of Sunset Beach
It was after eight Sunday morning by the time Brice met them at the Treasure Island police station, with three Mocha Grandes and three toasted bagels. Drue and Jonah sipped coffee and devoured the bagels while they waited for Hernandez to join them in the cramped conference room.
“Okay,” she said, bustling in and closing the door behind them. “Just so you know, Ben Fentress was admitted to St. Anthony’s. He’s having surgery to wire his jaw back together, which is kind of a shame, but while he was waiting in a treatment room he declined to chat with me without counsel present anyway, so it’s kind of a moot point.”
Hernandez was dressed in mom jeans and a Red Wings baseball jersey, with a blue blazer thrown on top of it.
“Has he been charged?” Brice asked, his yellow legal pad at the ready.
“Yes. Two counts of attempted murder, two counts aggravated assault and…” She opened a steno notebook and flipped through the scribbled pages. “Trespassing.”
She sat down at the table. “Sorry you had to wait, but I wanted to be able to tell you what we discovered after we got the warrant to search his apartment in Woodlawn. The main thing is his laptop. And a bunch of files. And of course, we’ve got his cell phone.
“For an IT guy,” she said, looking directly at Brice, “he was surprisingly careless. There was a yellow index card, taped to the inside cover of his MacBook, with all his passwords on it. I think my ten-year-old son could hack that thing. Hell, my seventy-five-year-old mom could hack it, and she still uses AOL.”
She paused momentarily. “And one more thing. When we were searching Fentress’s apartment, we found his passport and some travel documents indicating he was planning on moving to the Cayman Islands. Were you aware of that, Mr. Campbell?”
“News to me,” Brice said, grim-faced.
“He’d even set up a bank account there. Looks like he was anticipating a big payday.”
Jonah insisted on driving her home. It was almost ten o’clock, and the sun was already blazing hot when he pulled into the driveway. “Do you want to come in?” she asked, feeling suddenly shy.
“I do. But I think you could probably use some rest,” he said.
“I really, really do need to sleep. Like, for days, but I’d settle for a good four or five hours,” she said, leaning over to kiss him lightly.
“Call me, please? As soon as you wake up. In fact, FaceTime me.”
“Okay, but why?”
“So I can hear you, and see what you look like, when you first wake up.”
She looked at him dubiously.
“Oh please. That’s a line from an old chick flick, isn’t it?”
“Possibly. But it’s still one hundred percent true.”
Jonah said, “I’m serious, Drue. Call me.”
She kissed him again. “You know, for a fratty Mcfrat boy, you’re kind of cute. And sweet.”
He rested his forehead against hers. “And you are a total badass. I think maybe I’m developing a thing for badass chicks.”
She chuckled as she opened the door and looked back at him over her shoulder. “We’ll see about that.”
61
The next time she looked at the clock on her nightstand it said six o’clock, but it was still dark outside her bedroom. Drue sat up and grabbed her phone and looked at the calendar.
Six o’clock. Monday morning. Somehow, she’d managed to sleep for eighteen hours straight. Remembering the last conversation she had with Jonah, she scrolled through her contacts, found his name and before she lost her nerve, tapped the icon for FaceTime.
The phone made that weirdboop-boop-boop-boopnoise, and then Jonah’s face—and water-beaded bare chest—filled the screen of her phone.
“Good morning,” she said, yawning.
“And to you. Did you forget to call me last night?”
“You won’t believe it. I went to bed and just now woke up. I slept like the dead. How about you?”
