Carved in Darkness (35 page)

He just gave Ben another shrug. “I’d kill you for a handful of magic beans and a talking donkey. I’m a killer—that’s what I do.”

Ben laughed. “We have more in common than you think, O’Shea,” Ben said before looking out the window. “You believe I’m gonna tell my father about her, and he’ll use her to keep you in line,” Ben said, reading him perfectly. “Do you love her?”

He looked at Ben. “Capsule or not, if anything happens to her, you’ll be the first person I kill.”

“I guess that answers my question.” Ben pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number.

Michael waited for the capsule in his back to detonate. For some kind of neurotoxin to drop him to the floor and take him out.

Ben spoke a few words and clipped his phone closed. Within seconds, the Lear banked gently to the right.

Michael looked out the window. They were now heading east.

“I can buy you a couple of hours. That’s the best I can do,” Ben said.

“What’s it gonna cost me?”

Ben smiled. “Does it really matter?”

He looked away, out the window at the world below. Sabrina was down there, and he’d do whatever it took to get back to her—nothing else mattered. He stared out the window and shook his head. “No, it doesn’t.”

SIXTY
-
EIGHT

T
HE REVELATION HUNG BETWEEN
them. Sabrina looked at Carson and waited for him to put the rest of it together. That not only was Melissa Walker alive, that she was sitting next to him. If he did put it together, he didn’t tell her. If he already knew, he hid well.

“Charlie’s is up here on the right.” He pointed to a white stucco building with
Dubois & Son Funeral Home
stenciled on the side.

They entered though the back of the building, stepping into an office that make Richards’s look like corner digs on Wall Street. Charlie Dubois looked up from the open file on his desk, looked at his watch. “Chief Carson, I was just about to call you.” He stood up from his desk, extending his hand across its surface in Sabrina’s direction. “Nice to meet you, ma’am, I’m Charlie Dubois.” He pulled his hand back before continuing. “Are we ready to get started?”

She started to nod but the phone on her hip let out a chirp. “Excuse me,” she said, taking a glance at the display. It was Strickland. “I have to take this, I’ll be right back.” She left through the door they’d just come through and stepped into the parking lot.

“Tell me you found it.”

“I found it.”

Relief, followed by a strong shot of adrenaline, hit her system. “Where?”

“You aren’t gonna believe it—I sure in the hell didn’t. I checked long-term parking at the airport, like you suggested. Guy I talked to said he called
us
about a car matching the description I gave him yesterday. Said he remembered because the car had both its plate and VIN pulled. Said we sent a uniform out and had it towed to the city impound lot.”

“If the plate and VIN are gone, how do you know it’s a match?”

“I don’t. Not for sure, anyway. Both are dark blue, 1999 Chevy Cavaliers, but … ”

“But what?”

“But I checked the plate and VIN you gave me. Both are registered to a Pete Conners.”

Pete was alive.

Strickland was still talking and she tried to focus on what he was saying, but all she could think was that somehow, the man she thought she’d killed had survived.

“ … the address on the registration matches to a storage yard for long-haul truckers in Idabel, Oklahoma, so there’s no way to prove it’s a match to the car I found.”

In other words, they had nothing.

But Strickland wasn’t finished. “What I
do
know for sure is that the tire treads on the car I found in the impound lot match the cast we took of the tire tracks left at the Mount Davidson crime scene. The car I found was the one used to dump Kaitlyn Sawyer’s body.”

She dug the ticket out of her pocket and read it carefully. The address printed at the top of the ticket didn’t match the one on the one in the registration records that Strickland pulled: it was for a
residence
in Idabel. Which was less than a hundred miles away.

She headed for the car. “Okay. Thanks.”

“I have to turn my findings over to Robbins and Carr.” He made it sound like an apology.

“I know. Give me two hours, okay? I might be able to make a positive ID on the suspect,” she said, digging her keys from her pocket.

“How stupid are you about to get?” he said, a panicked edge to his voice.

“I’ll call you in a couple hours.” She hung up the phone. The door to the funeral home banged open. She looked over her shoulder to see Carson coming at her. He had something in his hand, and he looked angry. She opened the car door and started the engine, pulled out of the lot without looking back. How stupid was she about to get?

Very.

SIXTY
-
NINE

S
ABRINA PARKED ACROSS THE
street and watched the house for a few minutes. She’d made the trip on impulse, hadn’t really thought about what she’d do once she got here. She needed proof that the car Strickland found belonged to Pete, and she needed to find a way to link it all together. Beyond that, she had no idea how she was doing.

With her badge clipped to her waist and her hand resting firmly on the butt of the .38 that rode her hip, she walked with false confidence up the length of the driveway. Bypassing the front door, she headed for the back, toward the detached garage. If the car was there, she was back to square one. If not, she’d check the truck yard listed on the ticket. It was a long shot but she was running out of options and time. Strickland would have to hand what they’d found over to the officers in charge of the case and when he did, it would only be a matter of time before Mathews found out she was here. She walked around the side of the garage, into the yard next to it. There was a side door next to a couple of windows. She used her sleeve to wipe off some of the dirt that obscured her view and looked inside.

There was a car inside, covered from front to back with a canvas tarp. She looked at the floor, saw that it was dirt. Its oil-soaked surface was crisscrossed with dozens of tire tracks. She’d bet anything that one of those tire tracks was a match to the ones they found in Mount Davidson. She needed to get in. Get a look under the tarp to make sure the car underneath it wasn’t the one she was looking for. Snap a few pictures of the tracks pressed into the dirt and send them to Strickland for a comparison, just to be sure. She looked at the door. It was secured shut with a tough-looking padlock.

No way in.

“Excuse me, can I help you?” someone said behind her, and she stiffened. The tone and cadence was one she remembered well. She turned toward the voice, a remote, professional smile plastered on her face.

Standing not more than five yards away was her mother.

After Ben worked his magic, he left him alone. Michael imagined he was off polishing his knife or hatching plans for world domination—he didn’t know and didn’t care. All he knew was that the kid was going to help him. It would cost, but he didn’t care about that either. The only thing that mattered was getting back to Sabrina.

He looked across the plane at Lark, tapping away on his computer, and tried to get a grip on what he’d come to believe. He’d turned it inside out, pulled it apart, and put it back together—all to the same conclusion: Lark had betrayed him.

He moved across the aisle and sat across from his friend, watched him for a few seconds, trying to keep himself together.

“Why?” It was all he could say, the only question he could think of. Lark looked up for a second, shooting him a puzzled look.

“Why what?” He looked at him again, shook his head. “Look, I told you—the kid’s in charge. Daddy handed him the keys to this op, I’m just along for the ride—”

“No. I understand why you sold me out to Shaw, but you’re the one who started the rumor about Sabrina’s survival and that she was living in California. I want to know why.” Even as he said the words, he couldn’t believe them. Didn’t want to. Not Lark. Not his friend.

Lark stopped tapping and gave him a long, hard look. He could see them, the calculations Lark was running in his head. How far could he get on a lie, how much trouble would the truth buy him. He closed his laptop and leaned back in his seat.

“I did what had to be done to get the mission back on track.” That was it. No remorse. No regret. “What started as a simple re-con turned into some fucked-up babysitting job. That bitch was messin’ with your head. You weren’t thinking straight anymore, hadn’t been for
weeks
. I knew that if we were going to get what we were after, I was going to have to
make
it happen.” He shrugged. “So I did.”

“I had everything under control.” It was a lie, but he said it with such conviction that he almost believed himself.

Lark laughed. “Control? Please—you’ve been scrambling since day one, but I stuck by you. Did what I promised I’d do. But I never promised to die over this shit, and that’s exactly where the both of us were headed.”

“Lucy—”

“Was collateral damage. I just spun the top and set it down—I had no idea it was gonna knock her over,” Lark said with a shrug.

“How? Who did you tell?” Lark was an outsider in Jessup, one that would be remembered. No way he acted alone.

Lark looked out the window. “Your Aunt Gina.”

It hit him hard. Harder than he thought it would. He wasn’t surprised though, not really. He’d never been close to her—she’d never understood Sean and Sophia’s devotion to him. It’d been Frankie she loved and raised as her own after her sister’s death. She would’ve done anything to find even a small measure of justice for the child she lost.

“Lucy wasn’t collateral damage. She was my friend. She trusted me.” It was all he had, the only reason he could think of, but for a man like Lark, he knew it wasn’t enough.

“Are you listening to yourself?
She trusted you
? Really? Come on, man—how many people have you fucked over in the past? How many people have you betrayed to your own end?
Your friend
? What about me? You left me high and fucking dry—ass in the wind—while you played hide-and-seek with that whacked-out headcase—”

The draw was fast, so fast he didn’t even realize what he was doing until the gun was in his hand and shoved in Lark’s face. He pressed the barrel of it into his cheekbone, finger hovering above the trigger. “Yes. Lucy was my friend.” He touched the trigger for a half-second, felt the urge to pull it. “She trusted me, and I trusted you.” He forced himself to lower the gun and stood, shoved it back in to its holster. “She was a good woman—so good that she’d want me to forgive you. That’s the only reason you’re still alive.”

Lark looked up at him and smirked. “Over a woman.” He shook his head. “Who would’ve thought
El Cartero
would go soft over a woman?”

He reached for his gun again, but before he could draw down, Ben was in his face, pushing him back. “Wow. You are one intense motherfucker, aren’t you?” He shoved him into a chair, pointed a finger at him and shook his head. “Wheels down in five—save it for later.” He turned to Lark. “You say one more word to him, I’m gonna let him kill you.”

Five minutes. Michael looked out the window and counted them down in his head. Tried to convince himself that the hard knot in his belly was just nerves, that it had nothing to do with fear.
She’s fine. She’s safe
… he repeated it over and over, but the more he tried to convince himself, the more sure he became that she was anything but.

SEVENTY

I
T TOOK
S
ABRINA A
few seconds to find her voice. Her mother was alive. “Are you Kelly Walker?” she said to the woman in front of her.

There was nothing, not even a glimmer of recognition to suggest that her mother knew who she really was, and she wasn’t surprised. For the whole of her young life, her mother had been either drunk or high. Her children had been nothing but bothersome strangers to her.

“Yes, is something wrong?” Kelly said, her bright blue eyes settled first on the badge secured at her waist and then the gun strapped to her hip.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions about a 1999 Chevy Cavalier registered to a Pete Conners. This address is listed as his residence,” she said in a tone that made it clear that Kelly really didn’t have a choice.

“Alright.” Kelly widened her stance to push the door open, inviting her inside. “Would you like to come in? I’ve just started a pot of coffee.”

That was exactly what she wanted. “I’d hate to impose.”

“Don’t be silly—my Pete’s not here, and I don’t have to be to work for a few hours. Come on in,” she said, beckoning her up the steps and into a tidy kitchen. The house smelled clean, like fresh laundry. Nothing like the dank smell of cheap booze and even cheaper sex she grew up with. This was a Kelly she’d never met. Sober and healthy, clear gaze and steady hands. She felt a sudden, irrational stab of anger that she and the twins had been denied this life, had never known this mother.