Captivating Witness

“Body checking is a police job.”

“Unless the police created the body.”

“Chuck?”

Reggie nodded, wincing at the sharp pain the motion caused. “There was a gun and another man and cop or not... I’m sure it wasn’t something legal.”

“Then you definitely shouldn’t be checking.”

“I have to, Max. What if the other guy is still alive and needs help?”

His mouth twisted like he wanted to argue, but after a second, he just shook his head again. “I’ll go.”

“No.”

“The second you step out of the car, you’re going to fall over. What’s going to happen if someone is back there, and he’s not happy to see you?”

Reggie wanted to protest that she wasn’t anywhere near falling down, but it would’ve been a lie. Her head definitely didn’t feel right. But she wasn’t excited about the idea of him risking himself either. Not for her sake.

She swallowed. “I don’t think it’s very safe.”

“I’ve got some experience dealing with the shadier side of life,” he assured her.

“That’s not exactly reassuring.”

“It just means I can handle whatever’s around the other side of that Dumpster.”

“You’re sure?”

“A hundred percent.”

She took a breath, then nodded. “Okay.”

He studied her for a second longer—like he was trying to figure something out—then moved to the passenger-side door on the front of the car. He opened it, then the glove box, too, and pulled out something shiny and metal.

A gun.

Reggie was shaking her head—pain be damned—before he even brought it back and held it out. “I can’t take that.”

“You’re scared. And for a minute or two, you’re going to be alone. This’ll give you some security,” he said.

“I don’t even know how to fire it.”

“This is an easy one. Flick off the safety, then click, point and shoot.” He demonstrated the steps once, then twice, then handed the weapon to her and made her repeat the sequence herself. “Good.”

Reggie couldn’t think of a worse word to describe the situation. Less than an hour ago, she’d been worrying that she wouldn’t have time to do her nails before Garibaldi’s party. Now she was sitting in a stranger’s car with a gun in her lap. And the stranger was telling her things would be fine and holding out his hand and expecting her to just take it.

“C’mon,” he said. “I’ll help you into the front.”

As she closed her fingers on his, a startling tingle shot up her arm. The sensation was strong enough that it momentarily blocked out the buzz in her head. Surprise made her loosen her hand, and she shot her gaze up, wondering if he felt the shock of sharp heat, too. But Max was focused on tightening his hold and pulling her out gently.

Reggie made herself dismiss the heady sensation as a side effect of her head bump, and let him guide her to the passenger seat. But it was impossible to deny the jolt of loss as he let her go.

“Key’s in the ignition,” he said. “If I don’t come back around that corner in five minutes, I want you to drive away. Fast and far enough away that you know your 911 call is going to go to a different city.”

Reggie opened her mouth to protest, but he was already closing the door. With her heart in her throat, she stared after him as his pressed himself to the edge of the building, then slipped around the corner and disappeared.

* * *

With well-practiced stealth, Brayden eased along the exterior brick wall of the Frost Family Diner. He’d already compartmentalized his worries so that he could focus on the moment. From the shoe in the cop’s back pocket to whether or not this whole situation related to his own case, to the fact that he found the pretty waitress’s green eyes utterly mesmerizing, everything had been tucked into a tidy corner of his mind. Even the ridiculous prick of heat he’d felt when he took her hand had been momentarily put aside. After all, he wouldn’t get a chance to experience it again if he couldn’t satisfy her need to check up on whatever had happened in the alley.

He moved along a little farther. He didn’t feel insecure about leaving behind his weapon; he was more than capable of winning in a hand-to-hand combat scenario. Even if his opponent came armed, Brayden had a few ways of disarming him without breaking much of a sweat. If worst came to worst, he could always rely on the small knife he kept tucked in his boot.

He had a feeling, though, that neither a knife nor his fists were going to be necessary. In spite of the quiet, uneasy air, Brayden’s instincts weren’t screaming a warning. His gut wasn’t wrong often. Eight years a cop—four of them as a detective—saw to that.

He reached the Dumpster in question and pushed out from the wall to avoid rubbing his back along the sour-smelling bin. He inched along until he got to the corner, where he paused, listening. Not a single sound carried out from the other side. Even the dim light above didn’t emit a hum.

Feeling confident that he’d find nothing—but cautious nonetheless—he eased out into the open. Silence continued to reign. Brayden relaxed even more. His gaze swept the area in search of anything out of the ordinary. The alley was clean. Almost weirdly so. He slowed his perusal of the space, now looking for something in place instead of out of it. There were no scraps of trash on the cobblestone, no signs of refuse of any sort.

He frowned. There should’ve been something. A half a dozen businesses shared the alley and the Dumpster. How could it possibly be so clean? The answer was one that made his instincts jump.

Because someone cleaned it up.

The trip between the spot where he’d picked up Reggie and the spot where he’d pulled the U-turn to come back had taken a little more than thirty minutes. If someone had come in and taken care of the scene—assuming the waitress was right about what happened—they’d done it in a hurry. Which meant they likely missed something.

Brayden made himself do a third visual inventory, this time square foot by square foot, surveying everything from the walls to the ground. He still saw nothing. Convinced he’d been thorough but with his gut still telling him something was off, he turned to head back to the car. Then he spotted it. Wedged under the door opposite the large bin. A dull metal soup can with a highly-recognizable logo.

With a quick glance around, he took a few steps toward the discarded item. Then paused as something far more sinister caught his attention. Just above the can, at chest height on the wall, was a small, rust-colored smear. A few more steps and a closer look confirmed Brayden’s initial suspicion. It was blood. He’d seen enough of it in the course of his career to know.

Now he backed up, trying to get a wider view. The light was growing steadily worse, but he was almost positive that the wall showed signs of a hasty wipe down. An unnaturally even arc of dirt swept around the smear. Like someone had wiped it clean, then tried to mask the wipe down. An untrained eye might’ve missed it. A few days from then, it would probably be utterly unnoticeable.

Habit made Brayden want to call it in. But the integrity of the local police was more than just in question—it was possible that at least one of them was responsible. He didn’t even know for sure what the end result of the shooting was. If the man was alive, he stood a chance of being saved. Except he thought the chances of that were slim to none. If he hadn’t been dead when the cleanup happened, he wouldn’t have made it for much longer. A shooting in an alleyway wasn’t a warning—it was a death sentence.

Make a decision, he ordered silently.

He tapped his fingers on his thigh for a second, said a silent prayer for the man who’d very likely met his untimely fate in the alley, then yanked out his cell phone. As much as mourning the loss of life felt right, it was action that would make things right. So in quick succession, he took a series of photos, making sure to get the smear from multiple angles. Then he took a panoramic shot of the alley. As soon as he had a good collection of pictures, he dragged them into an album, added a shorthand note and fired them off to a generic email address that he and his team used for communications like this. What were the chances that a town as small as Whispering Woods was home to two criminal masterminds?

Slim to none.

This had to have something to do with the slippery crook who killed their father. And if for some crazy reason it all turned out not to be related to his own case, it was still a good record to have. Especially if a man had been shot, as Reggie said.

Reggie. Right.

He needed to get back to her. His five minutes were more than likely up, and he had a strong preference for not walking the fifteen miles back to his cabin. Tucking his phone away, he turned up the alley once more. He only got two steps before a bang rocked the air.

For a second, he was frozen, a tumble of bad memories hitting him hard.

The bomb. The echo. The debris.