Page 40 of Ransom for His Secret Son

“Where?” Brody couldn’t ask fast enough.

“On an old ranch trail about a quarter of a mile from the cemetery,” she said. “No houses around there for anyone to have seen who ditched it.”

Brody swore under his breath. “Any prints?”

“Nothing,” Jolene said, frustration coating her voice. “The whole thing’s been wiped clean. Whoever was driving it knew what they were doing.”

Remi crossed her arms, thinking. “Could belong to Eloise’s guard,” she said. “But I can’t be sure.”

Brody nodded, filing that away. “Jolene, what about the GPS in the car? Was there one?”

His deputy hesitated for a beat. “There was a built-in one, but it was wiped.”

Brody cursed under his breath. Of course.

“The techs are working on it now,” Jolene continued. “Might take some time, but they’re hoping to retrieve something useful.”

Brody didn’t have time. But he had no choice. “Keep me updated. The second they get anything, call me.”

“Will do,” Jolene said. “And Brody—be careful. Whoever we’re dealing with, they’re covering their tracks real well.”

“Yeah,” Brody agreed. He just hoped the SOB had made a mistake. All he needed was some sliver of evidence to latch on to.

Brody ended the call with Jolene, his frustration mounting. Every damn lead seemed to slip through their fingers just when they got close.

Remi tapped on her phone, already pulling up files. “I’ll look into Eloise’s guard,” she said.

Brody glanced over at her. “We didn’t get a name.”

“No, but thanks to everything we put together in the wee hours of the morning, we have enough on Eloise now to dig.” Her eyes flicked over the screen as she scrolled through the extensive background info they’d gathered. “Got him.” She turned the screen slightly toward Brody. “Zeke Regan.”

Brody frowned. The name didn’t ring any bells. “What do you have on him?”

“Former military special ops,” she said, scanning further. “He was working as a bodyguard for a private security company until he quit two years ago and started working full-time for Eloise.” She paused, lips pressing into a thin line. “No criminal record.”

Brody let out a slow breath. “That we know of.”

His mind began to work through the possibilities. If Zeke was the man they had chased in the cemetery, then that meant he had also been the one to leave Joe on Miranda’s grave.

And he might know a whole lot more than that.

Before Brody could even begin to figure out how they could use Zeke to get to the truth, his phone rang again. He saw Dispatch on the dash screen and gave the verbal command to accept the call.

“Walker,” he snapped out.

“This is Dispatch,” the man on the other end said. “A woman just called the station asking to speak with you directly. She wouldn’t say why, but she gave her name and number.”

Brody frowned. “Who is she?”

“Allie Harper,” the dispatcher said. “You want the number?”

Brody hesitated. He didn’t recognize the name, and after the media leak, plenty of people might be calling in with useless information—or, worse, playing games. But he wasn’t in a position to ignore anything right now. “Yeah, give it to me.”

Remi used her own phone to type in the number as the dispatcher read it out, and Brody ended the call and repeated the woman’s number as a voice command so he could try to contact her.

The line rang twice before a woman picked up. “Hello?”

“This is Sheriff Brody Walker,” he said. “I was told you wanted to talk.”