“Yep. And he was here again . . . April twenty-first to twenty-third. That was a two-night stay. And then . . . let’s see, two more times this fall.” She shifted her computer screen to show him.

Brandon peered over the counter and read the dates.

Son of a bitch.

*   *   *

Antonio cut through the crowded corridor, ignoring his buzzing phone as he sidestepped gurneys and harried hospital workers. He rushed to catch the elevator and slid through the door just in time.

His phone buzzed again, and he gave the nurses beside him an apologetic look before answering the call.

“Peña.”

“Hey, it’s me. Get this. I’m at Rustling Pines and—”

“Hang on.”

The elevator opened. Antonio held the door for the nurses and then followed them into the busy corridor. The emergency department was packed today, and the weekend had barely begun.

Antonio pushed through a pair of doors into the waiting room and made a beeline for the exit.

“Okay, sorry. I’m just leaving the hospital,” he told Brandon. “How’d it go at the campground?”

“No record of Vanessa. Or of Jason. But get this. Her other boyfriend, Cooper Collins, booked a campsite here five times in the last year.”

Antonio stepped around a couple of paramedics standing around the ambulance bay taking a smoke break. They seemed oblivious to the irony.

“Well, that’s not really surprising, right?” Antonio spotted his car at a meter. He’d gone over the time limit but didn’t have a ticket yet. “I mean, didn’t he tell us they’d gone camping there together?”

“Yeah, in February. He mentioned that. But he’s been four times since then, including October ninth.”

“The ninth.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s the day after Vanessa went missing.”

“Exactly.”

Antonio’s pulse sped up, like it did when a whole new path of investigation opened up.

“Weird coincidence,” he said.

“No shit.”

Brandon didn’t think it was a coincidence at all. He didn’t believe in coincidences. It was one of the first lessons he’d drilled into Antonio from his first day as his training officer. Look hard. If you see something that looks like a coincidence, look harder.

“So, I guess we’ll follow up with him?”

“I’m working on it,” Brandon said. “Tell me how it went at the hospital.”

After transporting the convenience store shooter to jail, Antonio had returned to the hospital for a follow-up interview with the store clerk.

“Well, he’s pretty doped up,” Antonio said.

“The victim?”

“Yeah. He’s been out of surgery for hours now, and it looks like everything went how they wanted, but he’s still pretty out of it. I got a few details we didn’t have, but I’m going to have to come by here again and talk to him.”

“He have any family there?”

“Yeah, a daughter. I gave her my number.”