Body of Evidence (Evidence Series) (48 page)
Read Body of Evidence (Evidence Series) Online
Authors: Rachel Grant
Tags: #North Korea, #Romantic Suspense, #JPAC, #forensic archaeology, #Political, #Hawaii, #US Attorney, #Romance, #archaeology
“It doesn’t look like your vehicle’s been stolen. There’s no forced entry on any of the doors and no sign of how the engine was started. Is there any chance you parked here, then forgot, and didn’t see it when you left the restaurant?”
“How on earth is that possible? I’d have to be blind or crazy!”
His look was pointed. “You don’t appear to be blind.”
She took a startled step backward and then gathered herself enough to say, “I’m not crazy.”
“The engine is barely warm. It isn’t hot enough to have been driven on a joyride. It couldn’t have been driven more than a block, if at all. Don’t waste my time here. If you forgot where you parked, say so now. We’ll have a good laugh and you can go home.”
“When I left the restaurant, my truck wasn’t here.” She touched the engine herself, desperately seeking something hot, something to prove him wrong, but she couldn’t.
He studied her intently, evaluating and judging her.
“My truck was stolen,” she said with a firmness she no longer felt.
“Is there anyone you know who could be playing a joke on you? Or anyone who might have borrowed it?”
“If one of my employees wanted to borrow it, they would have come into the restaurant and asked. Besides, I’m the only one with keys.”
“Do you have a key hidden in the undercarriage?”
“My only spare is in my desk at the Shelby house.”
“Look for it when you get home. Maybe you gave it to an employee and forgot.”
“I wouldn’t forget something like that.”
“Do you know how much gas you had in the tank?”
Hope blossomed. She could prove she wasn’t crazy. “The tank was full. I filled it this morning.” She could show him the receipt.
With her key, he started the engine. She watched anxiously. Hope fled when the needle rose to the full line.
Chief Colby cut the engine. “Okay. You’re free to go.”
“Aren’t you going to dust for prints?” she asked. He could at least
pretend
to investigate.
“No reason to. Be grateful you won’t have black powder everywhere. This isn’t a GTA—the vehicle’s here, undamaged, and no gas burned. No crime.”
“So this was a total waste of your time.”
“Pretty much,” he said, heading toward the police station.
“Is there anything else you need from me?”
“Believe me, I’m done,” he said as he walked away. “Goodnight, Ms. Maitland.”
Libby stood next to her vehicle. The hood was up, the driver’s door and the rear doors open. Strewn on the ground was the field equipment she’d removed to check on the mapping equipment.
What had just happened?
Unsure of herself, she stared at the parking lot in front of the restaurant, and tried to remember how her truck had looked when she’d parked it there, but now she began to question her own memory.
She collected the equipment and closed the doors. The police chief’s reaction shook her. As she slammed down the hood, she glanced in the direction of the police station. He was gone. He must have run the last blocks to the station. She looked up and down the empty street. The only movement came from insects flying in the dim cones of light cast by streetlamps some distance away. Standing in front of her truck, centered in the long stretch of darkness between two streetlamps, a chill ran through her.
Her truck had been left in the darkest stretch of Main Street on a nearly moonless night. She hadn’t made a mistake. She didn’t imagine this. She pressed her palms flat against the cold hood of the Suburban and took a long, slow breath. Her heart began to race. Cold sweat broke out on her face and neck. Someone was out there, watching.
Oh, God. It was happening again.
M
ARK
C
OLBY STOOD IN THE SHADOWS
, watching the archaeologist as she gathered her equipment and reloaded her truck. He wanted to see her reaction. She slammed the hood and glanced up and down the empty street. She looked afraid and the cop in him felt a trace of guilt for letting her believe she was alone in the darkness.
He waited until she was safely in her vehicle and driving away before he headed toward the station. As far as he could tell, she really did believe her truck had been stolen. But still, she could be just another flake who’d forgotten where she parked and refused to admit it.
He stopped and glanced back at the empty street. Coho was quiet as usual, the fire station the only other Main Street building with lights on. He considered stopping in to have a cup of coffee with whoever was on duty. Short-staffed all week, he still had eight hours to go on this double shift, and the ten minutes he’d just spent on the street with Libby Maitland were likely to be the most interesting of the night.
He should be grateful the paperwork on this was minimal and file his report and be done, but her insistence her truck had been stolen troubled him. He wanted to believe the only reason he listened to her was because he was a sucker for tall women with deep green eyes, and he was tired from working doubles since Monday, but the truth was, something about her story bothered him.
Her name was familiar. She’d mentioned living in Seattle, and he had a feeling he’d heard her name when he was on the Seattle police force. He dropped the idea of coffee at the firehouse and hurried to the police station. He wanted to run a background check on Libby Maitland.
For more information on
Grave Danger
, including bonus content, please visit my website at
www.Rachel-Grant.net
.
K
ISS AND
T
HRILL
If you enjoyed Body of Evidence, please visit my group blog at
www.KissandThrill.com
, where you will find recommendations for other fabulous romantic mystery, suspense, and thriller books.
Also, be sure to check out books by the other Kiss and Thrill authors, including the novellas:
Hush
by Carey Baldwin
and
Legally Yours
by Manda Collins
A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR
Four-time Golden Heart® finalist Rachel Grant worked for over a decade as a professional archaeologist and mines her experiences for storylines and settings, which are as diverse as excavating a cemetery underneath an historic art museum in San Francisco, survey and excavation of many prehistoric Native American sites in the Pacific Northwest, researching an historic concrete house in Virginia, and mapping a seventeenth century Spanish and Dutch fort on the island of Sint Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles.
She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and children and can be found on the web at
Rachel-Grant.net
.
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