Read Online Captcha Thief (Amy Lane Mysteries) by Rosie Claverton - Free Book Online Page B

time. She tried not to think about it, but he usually completed a basic two-day shop in under forty-five minutes including travel both ways. One hour and fifteen minutes had passed since he’d left the flat. What if something had happened to him? Her fingers itched to bring up the GPS tracker and locate his phone. Or the small coin-sized tracker she’d slipped into the lining of his favourite leather jacket, the one in the dashboard of the Micra, or the one in the shell of his motorcycle helmet. She liked to be prepared for any eventuality.
    She almost missed the girl mounting the stairs two at a time to get into the galleries above. She flicked to the camera footage of the Impressionist gallery, but the girl was nowhere to be seen after ten minutes of scanning. Amy changed to the main art gallery on that floor and spotted her. She entered the gallery and continued her strange routine, checking frames – but only of certain pictures. Amy marked their positions on her gallery outline map, hoping to find some correlation between the pictures she picked. Artist, perhaps? Dollar value? Or maybe just the shopping list of her employer?
    When Jason came home, she’d send him round the gallery to mark the positions of all the paintings. The CCTV footage was too poor for identification and he needed something to occupy him.
    She had to maintain his interest in the work. Assistant to Amy Lane was only an attractive job title so long as Amy’s work was stimulating. Without the police cases, the thorny private investigations, what was there to keep him here? Amy didn’t flatter herself that she was enough. It was murder that had drawn him in and it would be murder that kept him close.
    The man caught her eye because he was so still. He sat on the bench nearest ‘The Blue Lady’ and stayed there for forty minutes, looking at something on his phone. Occasionally, he would glance up at the picture, squint for a moment and then return to the phone. As his right hand cradled the phone, his left hand squeezed the edge of the bench, working its way all around the edge.
    Eventually, he left his spot – but not before Amy had taken a series of stills. Another potential suspect. Amy noted down the timestamp and the location on her map.
    As soon as he left, another man took his place, sitting in the exact same spot for seventeen minutes, before moving on. He also had his phone in hand. ‘Filming?’ Amy muttered.
    ‘Say again?’
    Amy had forgotten Owain was in the room.
    ‘I have a pair of strange men sitting in front of “The Blue Lady” with their phones.’
    ‘I have a middle-aged woman doing the same.’
    Amy reviewed the stills. ‘But only for a few minutes. It’s an unlikely crew.’
    ‘Maybe they’ve been recruited in? A cell structure – each of them only knowing their part and no one else’s.’
    The lift doors whispered open and a ball of tension dissolved in Amy’s chest.
    ‘Jason. Can you go to the museum and map out—’
    ‘Can’t.’ He hauled two large shopping bags through the living room and into the kitchen. ‘I have to go away for a bit.’
    Her heart stopped, a squeezing fist occupying its position in her chest. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe.
    ‘Something happened?’ Owain said, worried. ‘Is Cerys—?’
    ‘She’s fine. Coming over for dinner. Frieda and I are taking the fight to North Wales. Show them Gogs what’s what.’
    Frieda.
Her anxiety morphed into white-hot anger, not enough diazepam in the world to calm the storm.
    ‘You work for me. Me.’
    ‘It’s for your investigation. I’ll phone in every day.’
    ‘You’re taking off with some London bitch—’
    ‘You don’t even know her.’ Jason’s body was all hard lines, steeled for a fight.
    ‘Neither do you!’
    ‘She’s police, Amy. I’m not hanging out with some drug lord.’
    ‘Not this time. Not yet. How can I trust you not to die out there?’
    The anxiety and anger spiralled together, until she was spinning