“He’s okay. They want him to stay in the hospital for a couple of days and monitor him. How are you? Where are you?”

I look down the street at ATL Body Shop. Still no movement. “I’m fine. Making progress.”

“Didn’t answer my second question.”

“Nope.”

“Just be careful.”

“Have you met me?”

Ethan laughs, quietly. “That’s why I said that.”

After I hang up I take a deep breath and slowly exhale, a smile making its way across my face. The sun dips a little lower in the sky, setting the trees across the street alight with golden-green fire. My heart is lightened the slightest bit.

I take a chance and duck into the RaceTrac for a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit and a bottle of water, and as I’m waiting for the cashier I grab a can of double-shot espresso. I’d rather have a salad with some grilled chicken, but beggars can’t be choosers, and I’m going to need the caffeine. When I walk back to my bike, Cargill’s truck is still parked by the garage. I eat my biscuit and watch rush-hour traffic crawl by. Now it’s a waiting game.

CHAPTER TWELVE

A private investigator named Leo Nevsky gave me my first lessons in surveillance. He came to my high school for a job fair day. His graying hair was a little too long and a little too greasy, and he looked like he hadn’t shaved for two days. But he was polite, almost courtly in the way he treated me and a dozen other high school students when we showed up in his assigned classroom to learn about the ins and outs of being a PI. Most of the other kids were bored, but I was already planning to track down my parents’ killer and I wanted to learn something. I asked questions, took notes, and signed up to shadow him for one day in the summer. That involved following a stay-at-home wife whose husband was convinced she was having an affair. Mostly we sat in Leo’s ten-year-old Honda Civic down the street from the happy couple’s house, a two-story Colonial in Garden Hills.

After thirty minutes of sitting there with the windows down in the muggy June heat, I was antsy. “How do you deal with watching someone for hours?” I asked.

“You imagine scenarios, keep your brain occupied,” he said.

I raised an eyebrow. “Like fantasies?”