Stranded

Creed said. “Is that a GPS?”
    “Yup.” Tully snapped the top back in place and started making marks on the napkin. “And it writes, too. Does my woman love me or what?”
    And that’s the moment that Creed found Maggie’s eyes. Something passed between them, strong enough that Creed looked away. Not just looked away but took a deep breath.
    “How about another drink?” he asked them, and he was already waving over the waiter.
    Maggie’s cell phone started ringing. She glanced at it. No caller ID but she recognized the number. It was the same one that had called earlier and didn’t leave a voice message.
    “This is Maggie O’Dell.”
    “That bastard tried to kill me.”
    “Excuse me. Who is this?”
    “It’s Lily. Your new best friend from Iowa. You already forgot who the hell I am?”
    “Slow down. No, of course I haven’t forgotten.”
    “The damned bastard bashed me in the head.”
    “Lily, what are you talking about? Who tried to kill you?”
    “The son of a bitch who’s been burying all those bodies. That bastard in the stupid
Booty Hunter
cap … he tried to kill me.”

CHAPTER 50

    It was almost midnight when Maggie called Sheriff Uniss in Sioux City, Iowa. She was ready to apologize but the sheriff beat her to it.
    “I don’t know how it happened.” He was immediately defensive. “Nobody got your name from me.”
    “What exactly are you talking about?”
    “The media. They swarmed the place like locusts almost as soon as you two left. We’ve got them all out there: CNN, ABC, FOX, even frickin’
Entertainment Tonight
. I didn’t give them your name.”
    She hadn’t turned on a television or listened to a radio since her and Tully’s drive down. While she listened to Sheriff Uniss, she walked across her hotel room and turned on the TV, found CNN, and within seconds saw why the sheriff was frazzled by her call. Her photo was set in the upper right corner of the screen while a reporter spoke from the scene. She recognized the long driveway of the Iowa farm in the background. She left the Mute button on. Sat on the edge of the bed and ran her fingers through her hair.
    This is not a big deal
, she told herself.
    “That’s not why I’m calling, Sheriff,” she said.
    “One of the men said they’ve been running some kind of profilepiece on you. I swear to you, they didn’t get a single thing from me or my men.”
    Maggie switched the channel to FOX and saw that her photo was a part of their “breaking news” alert, too. Must be a slow news cycle and again, she brushed it off.
    “Sheriff, listen to me for a minute, please. The construction crew that was helping, are they still there?”
    “Construction crew?”
    “Yes, the foreman, Buzz, and his crew.” She shook her head in frustration. Why hadn’t they gotten more than the men’s first names?
    “No, those guys have moved on. We’ve got this place marked off as a crime scene indefinitely. Those guys won’t be back any time soon.”
    “They’ve already loaded up their equipment?”
    “Early yesterday.”
    Damn it!
    She heard a knock at the adjoining doorway, which was open, and Creed peeked around the doorjamb. He held up two cans of Diet Pepsi. She waved him into the room.
    “We need to bring in Buzz for questioning. Is that something that your department can handle?”
    “Of course we can handle that, but you’ll need to tell me what the hell we’re questioning him about.”
    Creed was watching the television screen and she wished she’d shut the damned thing off.
    “I got a call from Lily.”
    “Lily?”
    “The woman we found in the house.”
    “That lot lizard?”
    “Yes. She said Buzz tried to kill her.”
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake. And you believed her? She’s probably strung out again on high-speed chicken feed.”
    “High-speed chicken feed?”
    “Meth. That’s what the truckers call it.”
    “Look, Sheriff, you need to find Buzz and, if possible, Lily.”
    “She called you but she didn’t tell you where she was? I hate to say this, Agent O’Dell, but sometimes people on meth hallucinate the wildest things.”
    Maggie knew that. She remembered Lily trying to pick imaginary bugs off herself. But the woman had sounded genuinely in distress. And Buzz fit their general profile. A man who traveled from worksite to worksite across the country. Mid to late thirties, lean, and in good shape. Used to hard, physical labor but smart and able to manage people. He could overpower a victim