Paper Bullets (21 page)

I gave up trying to scan the crowd for Sewell. There were too many people milling around, and too many cars on the street. I should have just headed on home, but I had to try.

Now that the initial shock had worn off, I was starting to get the shakes. A man I’d just spent time with was dead. No, not just dead. Murdered.

At least this should get Ryan off the hook for Melody’s murder. The way Melody and Richards had died was too similar to be a coincidence. Richards had spent years undercover in the drug scene, and now he’d been trying to dig up dirt on a money laundering operation involving an east coast mobster. He must have made some serious enemies along the way.

Besides, Ryan wouldn’t have had any reason to murder Richards.

Except for the damn report I’d given to him.

Crap.

I could just see how the cops would spin this. Overcome with grief and remorse after killing his fiancé following a very public fight, Ryan shifts the blame to the man he thought was stalking her. He tracks the man down and murders him in the same way he’d murdered his fiancé.

Would Ryan even know how to build a car bomb? I’d be willing to bet anybody could learn how to build a car bomb on the Internet.

That took care of motive and means, and as far as opportunity, I’d taken Richards on a car ride for almost an hour. Plenty of time for Ryan to plant a device in Richards’ car.

Wait a minute.

I’d
taken Richards on a car ride.

It hadn’t been my idea—Richards had confronted me—but he was dead. I was the only one alive who knew I hadn’t persuaded Richards to take a little ride with me.

I could feel the blood drain from my face. For the first time that day, the car’s air conditioning felt too cold.

I could be in some serious trouble here, and not only from Justin Sewell. An undercover cop had been murdered. The security guard had seen the two of us together in the parking garage in what must have looked like the tense confrontation it had been. And the security guard wouldn’t have any trouble identifying me if someone showed him my picture, not after my conversation with him yesterday.

I was already a person of interest in one murder. How big of a stretch would it be to connect me to this one?

Whether Richards had been well liked or not, he was still a cop. If Archulette or Squires thought they could pin an accessory charge on me, I might find myself on trial for something I didn’t do.

I needed to talk to Kyle, and not just on speaker phone.

I drove down a few side streets, looking for a place where I could pull over and have a long conversation. The old houses in this part of town had been converted to office buildings, most of them home to small law firms. I’d done work for a lot of these firms. I wondered if any of them would still hire me if I was charged in connection with Richards’ death, even if the charges were eventually dropped.

I was still looking for a place to park when a car slammed into me from behind.

CHAPTER 27

I WAS SO STARTLED after the car hit me that for a moment I didn’t know what to do.

I’d never been in a car accident before. I should knock on wood when I say that.

I know I’ve been incredibly lucky. I track down people who witnessed car accidents. I go to wrecking yards and take pictures of cars that are little more than lumps of twisted metal, and sometimes there’s still blood on the metal. I live in a town where the streets are crowded with tourists who don’t know where they’re going, and with all that, I’ve never even been in a fender bender.

The car had hit me from directly behind for no apparent reason. I hadn’t hit the brakes suddenly, and there was no other traffic on the street.

I’d stepped on the brakes out of reflex when the car hit me. I looked in my rearview mirror. The car behind me was a big old sedan, a Cadillac or Lincoln. An old guy in a straw hat was behind the wheel.

He must have seen me looking in the mirror because he held up both hands in an
I screwed up
gesture.

Okay, Abby. Think.

Turn on the flashers.

It took me a moment to find the right button on the dash, but I found it and switched on the warning lights.

Put the car in park.

That one was easy. I also put on the parking brake.

Take an inventory of yourself to make sure you’re not hurt.

The collision hadn’t been hard enough to really hurt me, but I turned my head and rolled my shoulders just to make sure. The shoulder I’d dislocated last December seemed a little tighter than normal, but it wasn’t bad.

The next thing I needed to do was check my car and see if it was drivable. The car that had hit me was bigger than mine. I’d heard metal crunch. I was pretty sure it wasn’t his bumper.

I looked in the rearview mirror to check for traffic before I opened my door.

The guy who’d hit me wasn’t there.

Oh, great. A hit and run driver, and I hadn’t even gotten his license plate number. Some investigator I was.

I slammed the car door a little harder than necessary as I got out to inspect the damage.

In the grand scheme of things, a hit and run fender bender wasn’t worth getting upset about, especially when you’ve witnessed a murder and are pretty sure the cops are going to be arresting you, but sometimes it’s the little things that can set you off.

Which, I supposed, was the reason I yelled at the old guy as he came trotting over to me from the little parking area beside one of the office buildings. He must have moved his car there so it wouldn’t block the non-existent traffic on the street.

“Look what you did to my car!” I pointed at my poor car which now had definite dents in both the rear fender and the back of the trunk.

At least the panels covering the rear tires hadn’t been pushed in toward the tires, and I didn’t see any liquid pooling out beneath the car. From my perspective, at least my car was still drivable.

“What in the world were you thinking?” I said. “And why did you move your car? We’re going to have to report this.”

I didn’t wait for him to say anything. I walked around to the passenger side of my car where I’d left my purse and my cell. Here’s hoping the cops hadn’t already put out an arrest warrant for me. I was about to make it ridiculously easy for them to come pick me up.

I was so intent on getting my phone that I didn’t realize the old guy had come up behind me until it was too late. I felt something solid press against the middle of my back. Something solid and metallic and cold.

“I was thinking this was a good way to introduce myself,” he said.

I looked over my shoulder and realized with a shock that I’d seen this guy before, only then he hadn’t been holding a gun. He’d been reading his tablet while he ate lunch at one of the outside tables at the cafe on California.

He was the old guy Justin Sewell had bothered as he’d stood in the doorway of the cafe taking pictures of Melody.

The same older guy Kyle had noticed in the photographs I’d taken. The guy Kyle said had looked familiar.

And I’d seen him since then. I’d passed him in the guy this morning when I’d talked to Stacy. I’d thought he’d looked familiar but I couldn’t quite place him because he’d been wearing a baseball cap.

He’d made me, all right. He must have seen me drop Richards off while he was waiting for Richards to get back to his car. From there, it would have been pretty easy to follow me. Thank god I didn’t go straight home.

He wasn’t as old as I’d thought based on his picture. In person, his hair was more steel grey than white, and while his face was heavily lined, the lines were the kind caused by a life spent outside in the sun. His eyes were sharp, a cold ice blue, and his shoulders were a solid bulk beneath his loose cotton shirt.

The straw hat made him look older than he was, and the cotton chinos and canvas loafers made him look like a tourist. He could have doubled for any of a dozen senior citizens who get bussed into town on gambling junkets from California.

Only his accent gave him away. This guy was east coast through and through, and with the tan, I was guessing he made his home in Florida. Probably Boca Raton. Just like Gordino.

“We’re gonna get in your car now,” he said. “You’re gonna climb over to the driver’s side, and I’ll be getting in behind you. Don’t try anything foolish. I don’t mind shooting a woman, but you probably figured that part out already.”

I’d been kidnapped at gunpoint by a killer before. That time the guy holding the gun on me had been vicious and unpredictable. I’d only gotten out alive because I’d managed to pit him against his son, and even then I’d gotten very, very lucky.

The man holding a gun on me now wasn’t vicious or unpredictable. He was doing a job. His job just happened to be killing people.

I didn’t need an introduction to know that Gordino or one of his lieutenants had sent this guy out here to clean up after Sewell. He’d seen me with Richards, seen me taking pictures of Sewell, seen me talking to Stacy. As far as he was concerned, I was part of the mess he was supposed to clean up. It wasn’t personal.

If I didn’t do as he said, he’d shoot me in the back and walk away. If anyone saw anything, all they’d remember about the man who shot me would be that he was an old tourist in a straw hat. He probably had more than one change of clothes in his car. Put this guy in a suit and tie, and he’d look like a successful, middle-aged businessman. The last thing he looked like was a contract killer.

If I did what he said, he’d still kill me, but it wouldn’t be immediately. Getting in the car would give me time to figure something out, and time was the only weapon I had.

I’d never tried to crawl over the center console in my car before. I’m not as young as I used to be. My legs didn’t want to cooperate, but I finally managed to drag my feet the rest of the way over the shifter and right myself in the seat. The guy with the gun got in the passenger seat and shut the door after himself.

“Seat belt,” he said, gesturing at me with the gun.

I put my seat belt on. He’d had me toss my purse and cell on the back seat. At least he hadn’t destroyed my cell phone, but I couldn’t reach it, just like I couldn’t bail out of the car once I started driving. Not with the seat belt holding me in place.

“The car’s going to yell if you don’t put yours on, too,” I said. “Safety feature.”

I expected him to give me grief, but instead he latched the seatbelt behind himself. He must have had practice since he managed to buckle the belt without putting the gun down. There are days when I have a hard time buckling the seat belt even with both hands free.

So I was buckled in and he wasn’t. This wasn’t good. He’d prepared himself for a quick getaway. I wondered if he’d done the same thing when he had Melody drive to the place where he’d killed her.

He gestured at me with the gun. “Drive,” he said.

I drove.

CHAPTER 28

THE RAILROAD TRACKS that run through downtown Reno are no longer visible from street level, thanks to a handy-dandy covered train trench that cost the city way too much money and took far too many years to build. But even if you can’t see the rails, Reno still has a right and wrong side of the tracks.

The contract killer sitting in the passenger seat of my car holding a gun trained on my midsection had told me to drive toward East Sixth Street, a place that was definitely the wrong side of the tracks.

Any number of abandoned properties on East Sixth would be a perfect place to kill me in my car without being spotted. He’d have plenty of time to plant an explosive beneath the seat and incinerate my car with what was left of me inside.

He hadn’t carried anything into the car except the gun, but his cotton shirt was loose and he wore it untucked. He could be carrying what he needed in the pocket of his pants and the shirt would have concealed it.

“You killed Melody, didn’t you,” I said as I drove down Arlington toward Sixth.

“No talking,” he said.

He was looking straight ahead, no doubt scanning the road to keep an eye on traffic while he kept one eye on me.

“Oh, come on,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt. “You’re going to kill me anyway. At least tell me the reason why. You owe me that much.”

“You’re a nosy broad. I don’t like nosy broads. You want to stay on my good side, keep your mouth shut.”

I opened my mouth to say something else, anything else, just to keep him talking, but he gestured at me with the gun.

I got the message. We were done talking. I wouldn’t be able to distract him by getting him to tell me the whole story.

Not that I had a clue what I could do even if I did manage to distract him enough that he wouldn’t shoot me the second I made a move. I couldn’t punch him from where I sat, and even if I did manage to land a blow, it wouldn’t have much force behind it. I’m not a fighter, and I don’t have any martial arts skills. Maybe that was something I needed to learn if I got out of this mess alive.

My seat belt was still snuggly buckled. I couldn’t bolt from the car at a red light. Even if I could outrun a bullet, I’d have to be able to get out of the car first in order to try.

I doubted he would kill me in the middle of a busy city street, but I was pretty sure he could shoot me someplace that would hurt like hell but would let me keep driving, and no one would ever hear it. I might not know much about guns, but thanks to the movies, I could recognize a suppressor when I saw one.

I didn’t have anything I could hit him with, either. No metal travel mug in the center console or heavy flashlight in the map pocket on the driver’s side door.

I didn’t even have a drink I could throw in his face. The iced tea I’d bought at the gas station was long gone. I had a couple of bottles of water on the floorboard on the back seat, but those would do be about as much good as my cell phone.

He’d apparently been in town long enough to know his way around downtown. He told me to drive past Wingfield Park on Arlington. It was the most direct route to East Sixth, even though traffic slowed down around the park.