VANISHED, A Romantic Suspense Novel (Edgars Family Novel) by Suzanne Ferrell Page A

pending to pull her phone records, then we can try to find her on the GPS.”
    “How long will it take you to get a warrant for the phone records?” Locking gazes with Abby again, Luke laid his free hand over hers, stilling it on the phone. With a shake of his head he mouthed the word wait to keep her from pushing the call button.
    “If we’re lucky and find a sympathetic judge who hasn’t taken off for the weekend yet, a few more hours.” Jeffers paused. “But then, as her friends , you don’t need a warrant to call her. If you want to come in, we could use our system to track the phone call from here.”
    Yeah, Jeffers hadn’t become a detective because he lived in the shallow end of the smarts gene pool.
    Luke waited for the man to put more pieces to the puzzle together.
    “And you don’t need my program, because you have your own.”
    Bingo.
    “If I come up with anything, we’ll let you know.”
    “You do that. Even super feds need backup.”
    Luke grinned at the sarcasm in that comment. “Speaking of backs. Watch yours.”
    “Oh?” A sharpness filled Jeffers voice.
    “Yeah. Apparently you’ve got a tail. Drives a dark sedan, plate number starts with ESC.”
    “Numbers?”
    “Couldn’t quite get those. But guy wears a grey hoodie, probably like half the OSU fans in town.”
    “Caucasian,” Abby added, leaning close to the phone.
    “’Preciate the info,” Jeffers said.
    They disconnected and Luke released his hold on Abby’s hand, waiting for the barrage of questions while he opened another program on his laptop, typing in his password to open the encrypted site.
    One.
    Two.
    Three.
    “I thought you weren’t going to tell Jeffers about his tail? And why didn’t you offer to send the picture of hoodie guy?”
    Turning, he stared straight into those deep green eyes. “I told him because he’s a good cop and needs to know to watch his back. I didn’t offer to share the picture because we don’t want him bringing in the guy before we discover who he is or we might not get a crack at figuring out what his connection to your friend’s disappearance might be. Your friend’s life might depend on that.”
    This made her pause and focus on their priority, finding her friend.
    “You’re not going to wait on a warrant to run Brianna’s phone records are you?”
    “Nope.”
    “And you don’t want me to try calling her because someone could trace the call back to us?”
    God, he loved how her brain worked.
    “Right. But we can still try to use the phone to trace her whereabouts.”
    “How?”
    “What kind of phone did Bethany have?”
    “Brianna. She would spend thousands of dollars maintaining her looks, but high-tech upgrades? She didn’t see the need in it. She had a very old cell phone.”
    “Damn. It would be better if she had the newest smartphone. They all have GPS installed in them.” He brought up the screen. “What’s her phone number?”
    Abby read it off to him. “What if it’s turned off? We won’t be able to track it then, will we?”
    “Not a problem. We can still track it as long as no one removed the battery.”
     
    * * * * *
     
    Detective Aaron Jeffers sat staring at his cell phone and contemplating the conversation he’d just had with Agent Edgars. He didn’t buy the guy’s story about just visiting his girlfriend’s friend for one second. Years of listening to criminals and people with something to hide lie to him left him with a nose to smell out a line of horseshit when he heard it, even if it was with a firm handshake and politician-slick smile.
    Oh, there was something between Edgars and Ms. Whitson, he’d give the guy that. Hell, Edgars had practically marked his territory like a wolf protecting his mate. Who could blame him? When she’d walked into the pub today he’d had to do a double-take to be sure it was the same woman from last night. Who knew such a beautiful and sexy woman was hidden under all that baggy blue polyester?
    A dating couple