Dropping his cigar onto the floor, he ground it out under his boot heel. It was simple, really. A little C4 connected to a timer, an invisible beam to set it in motion when the time was right.
It was too bad he’d turned the car over to a blackmailing weasel like Otis Whittley; he never guessed it would come back five years later to bite him.
He gunned the rage that idled in his veins and his heart rate accelerated. It would all end today. It wasn’t how he’d planned it, but Littrell and Kendall were getting too close to the truth.
Disappointment surged inside of him. He’d wanted Brian to suffer…live through the pain of watching Kendall be torn away from him one agonizing breath at a time.
This little device would rob him of the pleasure, but it was better than getting caught.
He stuffed the bomb into a duffel bag. Time was short, according to the blip on his monitor.
The sun was low in the sky when they reached Pennybrook. Kendall eyed the rural-turned-suburban area and tried to imagine what it had been like in Mary’s youth. Subdivisions had taken over where cane once grew, but there were still patches of open space and she looked for a Chelmette Road sign.
“There it is.” She spotted the remains of an old wooden plaque. A single nail hammered in the center of the board secured it to a rotten post.
Brian slowed and turned down the single-lane road. There was a small yellow house at the end of the drive. The shades were drawn, the grass overgrown.
“Look, over there.” Her hand trembled on the door handle and she pulled it the minute the car stopped. A garage was visible amongst a field of tall weeds.
“Kendall, come back here,” Brian cautioned, but she ignored him. She’d already spotted the tire tracks through the weeds to the shed. She broke into a jog. The ancient doors were open, pushed to the sides with enough force to split the rusted hinges. She slowed, with Brian right behind her.
“We’re too late.” His comment hovered in her mind and her hope crashed.
“Let’s look around, there might be something.” She moved into the enclosure, surveyed the ground and looked into the grease-saturated soil for any indication of what had been inside.
“Tire tracks. There was a car in here. But I doubt it was ever a takedown shop. No tools of the trade. The work bench doesn’t have any signs there was ever equipment on it.” She brushed her finger through the dust on the filthy work top. Her heart rate slowed with disappointment. She turned and walked back outside. “See the tracks, just before they disappear into the weeds? There were two cars. I’d guess one pulled the other one away.”
“Right on, tracker Kendall.”
She waved his comments aside. “Try genius. Genius.” Scanning the area, she tried to find anything that could help them, help her. Something shiny lay in the grass. “Over here. It’s a padlock.”
Brian pulled a hankie out of his pocket and picked the lock up with it. “Looks like a pair of bolt cutters were used. We’ll have tool marks.”
“Yeah, who needs a key.”
“There’s only one way to find out.” He took the key out of his pocket.
She watched it slide into the lock and pop the clasp. “This is it, Otis’s hiding place. He went to a lot of trouble. You said he didn’t have a record. He was clean until he took the mayor’s car, so why was he hiding a car out here, away from the action?”
Kendall went back into the garage, desperate to find something, anything. It needed a second look. Nuts and bolts were scattered around. Oil cans. She looked up into the rafters, draped with cobwebs. A sheet of plywood had been nailed between a couple of beams and a rickety ladder was propped against the platform.
“Have you got a flashlight?”
“Sure, but this place is clear. Whatever was here is gone, so is our lead.”
“Just get it.” She heard the car door open then close and felt the cool flashlight in her hand before she turned to look at him. “I’m going up there.”
“Where?” Brian looked up at the platform she pointed to.
“That ladder doesn’t look safe.”
“Not safe, but used.” She turned the flashlight on and brought its beam to bear on the fourth rung. The light enhanced a dirty shoe print.
“Well, what do you know.” He moved closer.
“Whoever climbed up here was tall. He started the climb halfway up.” She moved closer to the ladder.
“Be careful, Kendall.”
“I will.” She looked at him, aware of her desire to kiss him. She flicked off the flashlight, shoved it into her pants and stepped onto the second rung, keeping her feet spread and flush with the sides of the uprights. “No sense tampering with evidence.”
“You should have been a cop.” He smiled up at her.
“I’d rather just try to outsmart one.” Taking another step she worked her way to the top and braced high on the ladder so she could get a downward look at the top of the plywood.
She turned on the flashlight.
Years of dust caked the wood, but like clay it held an image, the design was clear. Her heart jumped as she studied the intricate pattern of grillwork. It had been removed along with the car it belonged to, was her guess, but it was the missing piece of the pattern that did strange things to her insides.
The piece of grillwork at Brian’s house fit into the blank spot, she was sure. This was the car that had killed his family. Her stomach tumbled. Could she tell him? Would he even believe her? “Brian.”
“Yeah?”
“You need to come look at this.” She moved down the ladder.
“What’s up there?”
“A piece of the past…your past.” She reached the end of the ladder and stepped down.
“What are you talking about? How did my past get in this garage?” Brian charged up the ladder. “Flashlight?” He reached down and grabbed it from Kendall, turned it on and focused on the image in the dust.
Waves of horror crashed through him and churned his insides like a riptide. He reached toward the blank spot; his hand shook. He tried to control it, but couldn’t. Deliberately he touched the place where the metal should be, but wasn’t. The missing piece was twenty-five miles away on his mantel.
The hot burn of tears stung the backs of his eyes, but he forced them dry. Relief, sorrow and rage stirred in his mind and the knowledge congealed.
“It was here, Kendall. It was here all the time. That’s what Otis had on Copeland. A murder weapon.”
She reached up and grasped his ankle, touching him, attempting to share his pain, somehow. He could feel the warmth in her hand, knew the sympathy in her heart. And to think he’d always suspected her family. How much time had he wasted on one stupid rumor?
“We need CSI out here. Copeland might have left something behind.” Brian sobered, shelved his internal quagmire of emotions and shut off the flashlight. He savored a moment of darkness and said his final goodbyes.
“Why would Otis hide a car used in a hit-and-run?” He speculated out loud. “Was he behind the wheel that night?” He moved down the ladder, careful to avoid the latent footprints.
“I don’t think so. What if he was blackmailing someone. The someone who was driving?”
“How would he get the car? The driver would have found a way to get rid of it, so how would Otis get it?”
Kendall was next to him. He knew she was thinking, turning the mystery for examination just as one twisted a kaleidoscope.
“What would you do with a hot car, if you didn’t want to get caught with it and you didn’t want to have it found…ever?”
“I’d take it down.” She looked straight at him.
“Suppose the driver, after the accident, had the same idea. So he got someone, say Otis, to take the car to the chop shop, but Otis decides to keep the car instead of dumping it. The driver doesn’t know the job hasn’t been done and Otis has a get-out-of-jail-free card if he needs it. He’d be able to use it if he got into a pinch.”
“I like it, but either the driver found out or Otis got greedy, wanted too much money?”
“Beautiful and equipped with a brain.” Brian put his arm around her and pulled her close. Like salve, her nearness soothed his wounds.
“Comes standard on this model.”
Pulling his cell phone from his belt, he called downtown. “I’ve got a secondary crime scene out in Pennybrook.” He rattled off the address and signed off. “They’ll be here in forty-five minutes. Want to wait it out?”
“Sure.”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Being Kendall McKinley. Ex-car thief, repo agent and all-around smart woman.”
“I’m not sure some of those are too great, but the truth is the truth.”
He pulled her against him, unsure if he could hold out much longer. The nights shut up with her were torture. Somewhere on the wild ride they’d taken together, his heart had been compromised. Did she feel this powerful bond, too? Was that elusive emotion lodged inside her or did she still crave her love from the past, the man she’d had a child with?
“I want to tell you what I think.”
“Fire away.” He breathed in the slight floral scent of her hair and zoned out on the feel of her body next to his.
Kendall turned in his arms, wanting his full attention. “If the driver has the car, which I’d suspect, he’d take it down ASAP, assuming he just got hold of it. But if he got the location on the car a month ago, before he killed Otis…we’re after a pile of scrap.”
He words sobered him and the intoxicated gleam in his blue eyes dimmed. “Mixed in with a hundred other piles of scrap.”
“Yeah, but I can help you find the right pile, Brian. Give me a chance.”
A tic jumped along his jaw line, the pressure of his teeth working against each other. She had to convince him to accept her help. It was the only way. “Please.”
“I’m an officer of the law. There’s a line that exists between what I do and what you did. It can’t be crossed.”
“We’re talking about information. Let me call my brother…it could mean the difference between finding the man who killed your family and letting him vanish with your life wrapped around his finger. Please, Brian, do it for me. For us.”
Sucking in a breath of contentment, she settled against him, lost in the stillness that invaded the little garage they stood in. Twilight had settled around them. The lights of the city glowed, reached into the night sky and cast a blanket of security around them. There wasn’t anywhere else she wanted to be right now except with him.
He pulled her chin up and she could see the look of defeat in his eyes. “Okay. I want this bastard more than I care about the line. Make the call.” He held his cell phone out to her.
She took it and turned away from him, wandering into the corner of the garage to press in Andrew’s number. He prayed she could get the information that would set them both free.
Brian listened to her muffled words as she spoke into the phone, heard her say goodbye to Andrew, and move toward him. He was tired. Too tired to fight it anymore. Maybe it would take a McKinley to find a killer, but the payoff would be justice. Wasn’t that what he wanted?
Flicking on the flashlight he swept the garage with the beam in precise increments. They had time to kill before CSI arrived and it couldn’t hurt to take another look.
In his peripheral vision he caught a glimpse of a red glow next to the entrance.
Reality slammed into his brain and took his breath with it. He drew the flashlight beam onto the electronic device at the opening of the garage.
Digital numbers glowed red, like the fires of hell…six…five…four…
