Hide From Evil (16 page)

He hadn’t even bothered to argue as he’d dialed Ibarra’s number.

“Sounds like exciting times in Richland, Washington.”

Sean felt the bottom of his stomach drop out.

Ibarra’s laugh rasped through the phone as though he could read Sean’s mind. “Don’t worry, man. I only know because I have specialized equipment, but that should tell you how easy those disposables are to track if you know what you’re looking for.”

“I figured that if the cops are involved, they might be monitoring people we’re likely to call. I don’t think you’re exactly on their radar.”

“I’m not on anybody’s radar, and that’s the way I like it. Now tell me what you’re dealing with.”

Sean gave him a quick rundown on Krista’s cryptic phone call with Jimmy, the questions about Jimmy’s suicide, and everything that had gone down after Krista had shown up at his door.

“Meet me at the gas station just off the Bottle Bay exit on Highway Ninety Five, before you hit the bridge. Should take you about three and a half hours to get here, so call me when you get on the road so I know when to look for you. I’ll see what I can dig up in the meantime.”

As much as Sean had thought he’d written off his former brothers-in-arms, it felt good to have one at his back again. “Thanks, Ibarra.”

“Least I can do. Get some sleep. You’re going to need it.”

Stew Kowalsky checked his watch as he waited for the files from Nate Brewster to transfer to his online backup service. “Come on,” he muttered as he watched the status bar. He was supposed to meet an informant in fifteen minutes, but it would take him at least twenty to get across town, even with the light Saturday morning traffic. It wasn’t like Meester would have anyplace else to go, but he’d sounded a little tweaky when he’d called Stew to tell him he had some information to pass on about a case Stew was working on for the PA’s office. Paranoid and agitated, Meester would scurry off like a rat at the slightest sign that things weren’t going right.

Finally the files finished backing up and he switched off his computer. Normally he would have just left the computer in the office and let the automatic backup happen while he was out, but this whole case with Krista had him spooked. Even though he hadn’t found anything that gave them a solid lead, he didn’t want to risk losing a single byte of information.

He double-checked the lock on his office and did a quick scan of the empty hallway before he headed out.

At first, he’d been happy to do a little work on the side for Deputy PA Slater. Despite the Slasher debacle and the discovery that Sean Flynn had been framed, Slater was still Prosecuting Attorney Benson’s golden child and doing good work for her meant Stew would stay on the short list of investigators contracted by the PA’s office to assist in ongoing investigations.

Not to mention, Slater wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes, and Stew would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit to hoping that maybe one of these times they could have a meeting in person, over drinks or ideally dinner, and move their interaction beyond strictly professional.

But then the shit hit the fan after Jimmy Caparulo’s apparent suicide two days ago. Going against all protocol, Caparulo’s body had already been released for cremation—without an autopsy. This despite the fact that there were footprints in the dirt outside Jimmy’s open window and there was some debate about whether there was enough gunpowder residue on Jimmy’s hands to prove he’d fired the gun himself.

Stew had found out all that the morning after Jimmy’s death. In the two days since, all of Stew’s sources inside the department and the ME’s office had clammed up.

And if that hadn’t signaled to him that he and Krista were onto something, the news report that Krista might have been kidnapped by Sean Flynn after he’d shot a sheriff’s deputy sure as hell rang some alarm bells.

No wonder she hadn’t answered any of his calls when he’d tried to reach her with the info about Jimmy.

He wished Krista had talked to him before she’d gone to see Flynn on her own. Stew could have gone in her place, or at least gone with her. Though he smelled something fishy in the story being splashed all over the news, there was no guarantee Flynn hadn’t gone off the deep end and taken Krista hostage out of revenge.

If that wasn’t the case and the story was a cover for something else, that meant they were onto something big. And Krista was in some deep shit.

And he could be, too, if the wrong people found out Stew was helping her.

So far nothing had happened, but he’d had that creepy tingle between his shoulder blades for the past two days that had him constantly on guard.

Even though he had case files piled up and dozens of clients waiting for reports, something in his gut told him that as soon as his meeting with Meester was over, it might not be a bad idea to head out for an extended vacation in some undisclosed location until this whole thing blew over.

He took the stairs down to the parking garage under his building. On weekends it was nearly deserted. There were only four cars besides his SUV. A sudden wave of paranoia hit him and sent his heart racing. He gave the garage a quick scan, paying particular attention to the shadowy corners, but he didn’t see or hear anything. He clicked his key fob to unlock his car and slid his hand inside his jacket to rest on the butt of the Glock 20 10mm he had tucked inside a shoulder holster.

He had just reached his car when he felt the air stir behind him. A hand closed over his throat from behind and before Stew could firm his grip on the gun he felt the icy sting of the blade as it slid in below his sternum.

Chapter 9

D
espite her exhaustion, Krista spent a restless night in between the cheap scratchy sheets of the hotel room, too keyed up to sleep.

She couldn’t shut off her brain, which raced with questions and scenarios of who was after them and why. Of course it had something to do with the little information she’d uncovered about Nate Brewster, along with whatever else Jimmy Caparulo was planning to tell her before he died. That much was obvious.

It was clear she and Stew had homed in on something, but what? She barely knew anything—yet. What the hell was she getting so close to that it was worth killing not only her but also Sean? Who, she acknowledged with no small amount of guilt, was looking more and more like an innocent bystander in all of this, and not the source of key information that was going to lead her anywhere.

And the even scarier question was, who was behind this? Karev? Maybe. But as powerful as he was in the local mafia, Krista wasn’t sure he had the capability to track every move and infiltrate law enforcement, backing them into a corner, ensuring they had nowhere to turn.

She curled herself around the knot in her stomach, praying Sean’s faith in his former army buddy wasn’t misplaced.

And her sleep wasn’t helped by the fact that she was hyperaware of Sean, only a few feet away from her in the dark, though it might as well have been miles. After he’d talked to his friend, he’d told her that they better get some sleep and turned off the lamp over his bed without another word. Turning his back to her, he pulled the sheet and blanket up over his head, and within minutes she heard his breathing reverberating through the room.

His even breaths were like nails on a chalkboard as Krista lay there, vibrating with unfulfilled desire, itchy and restless. Every exhale, every shift of his big body against the sheets echoed in the room like a gunshot, snapping her awake each time she started to fall asleep.

She finally fell into a fitful half sleep full of dreams that morphed the hotel room into a prison cell where a guard came in to retrieve her only to pull out a gun. Jimmy Caparulo was there, too, saying that he had something to tell her, but before she could get to him, the prison guard was shooting at them both.

Then Sean was there, yelling at her, pulling her out of the way, telling her it was going to be okay.

She jerked awake to find him leaning over her, roughly shaking her shoulder as he shouted at her to wake up. Her hands came up to clutch at his arms and only the realization that this wasn’t part of the dream kept her from hurling herself into his arms and burying her head against the warm wall of his chest until her heartbeat slowed down.

He jerked away and told her they were leaving in ten minutes. “It’s already almost noon and we need to get moving.”

She staggered to the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, and slipped on her glasses. Even the thought of subjecting her gravelly eyes to contact lenses made her wince. Unfortunately, the heavy frames did nothing to hide the giant circles or the puffy lids.

Three and a half hours later, she wasn’t looking any better, she thought as she stared at her pale, strained face in the restroom of the gas station Ibarra had chosen as the meeting point.

She washed her hands, wincing at the icy bite of the water, telling herself it didn’t matter how crappy she looked. It wasn’t like she was trying to impress Sean. But that didn’t stop her from pinching her cheeks and biting her lips to get a little more color in them.

She slid back into the passenger’s seat and closed the door behind her. Sean was tuning the radio dial, listening intently through the static. Krista rubbed her hands in front of the feeble stream of warm air blowing from the vents of the stolen SUV.

“Are you sure he’s coming?” Krista asked. They’d already been waiting for forty-five minutes. “I thought you agreed on the meeting time.”

Sean held up his hand for silence and turned up the volume on the radio. The newscaster’s voice popped in and out, so Krista could understand only about every other word. “Flynn…seen…west.…Tacoma.…dangerous…condition…Slater…”

A faint smile pulled at Sean’s lips as he turned off the radio. “Tommy will be here. He already came through for us.”

As though on cue, a beat-up Jeep Wrangler pulled into a space two slots down from them. The driver’s side door opened and a man climbed out. Sean opened and shut his door as he went out to meet him.

Krista frowned. The way Sean had talked about his friend he’d made him sound like a computer nerd, a guy who spent most of his time behind a monitor or in his lab as he developed cutting-edge communication and surveillance devices.

Based on her view from the passenger’s seat window, Tomas Ibarra didn’t look like any computer geek she’d ever seen. Dressed in heavy work boots, worn denim, and a fleece pullover, he was a couple inches shorter than Sean but his shoulders were just as wide. Dark glasses hid his eyes and a dark-brown goatee covered a strong chin.

He and Sean greeted each other with a manly half hug and slaps on the back. With their tall, rangy builds, chiseled features, and a don’t-mess-with-me attitude surrounding them like an aura, it wasn’t hard to imagine them dressed in fatigues and full combat gear ready to take any enemy, no matter how fierce.

She felt the tension coiling in her spine ease a degree as she realized that with these two on her side, maybe she had a chance of getting out of this mess alive.

Though whether Sean was on her side was still debatable if the narrow look he shot at her was any indication. He’d been hostile and close-mouthed ever since their…incident.

Krista didn’t know what else to call it.

But Sean had been avoiding her, as much as it was possible to avoid someone sharing the same tiny hotel room and within the confines of a car, anyway. Other than their argument about whom to call and a few words after she’d woken up late this morning, he’d all but ignored her, as though he was afraid he’d get contaminated just by talking to her.

Now as she climbed out of the SUV to meet Ibarra and find out for herself how he thought he could help them, she felt Sean’s hard stare boring into her. Ibarra slipped off his sunglasses and hooked them over the neck of his fleece, and Krista fought the urge to squirm under the combined intensity of their gazes.

But while Sean kept his look carefully blank, Ibarra’s curious stare had a hint of warmth as he studied her. Then, as though he approved of something, he gave a quick nod and took a step forward.

“Tomas Ibarra,” he said quietly as his big hand all but swallowed hers up.

“Krista Slater,” she replied. She met his stare with her own patented cool gaze, the one she used to make sure no one—not the lowlifes on trial, their smarmy attorneys, not even her colleagues in the PA office who secretly rejoiced in her failures—got it in their head to mess with her. “I hope you can help us. Sean seems to think you can.”

Instead of taking offense, Ibarra smiled at her frosty tone. White teeth gleamed against his dark beard and tanned skin, and even as cold, exhausted, and scared out of her mind as Krista was, she’d have to be blind—no, dead—not to notice how attractive he was.

Yet it was the surly man who glared at her and snapped “Mind if we get going?” who made her stomach flip every time she looked at him.

Krista climbed up into the Wrangler, shivering as she braced herself for a cold ride to wherever they were going. Though the afternoon sun beat down on the mountain peaks, at this elevation, a sharp chill hung in the air. Despite the temperature, Ibarra had removed the top of his Jeep, leaving him and his passengers exposed to the elements.

“What about the SUV?” Krista asked, practically yelling over the sound of the engine and the wind whipping around them as he pulled out of the gas station. “Shouldn’t we do something before the police find it?”

“You swapped out the plates, didn’t you?” Ibarra called to Sean, who nodded.

“Even if anyone notices it here, which isn’t likely, by the time the cops bother to check the plates against the serial numbers you two will be long gone.”

The whipping wind and roar of the engine precluded any conversation on a drive that was mercifully short. Nevertheless, by the time they pulled off the highway and onto a single-lane dirt road, Krista was shivering so hard her muscles were starting to ache.

Ibarra pulled the Jeep up to a heavy wooden gate and punched a code into the keypad. The Jeep barely cleared the gate before it slammed shut behind them. Ibarra must have noticed her jump. “I have it programmed to shut fast so no one can sneak in behind. My mom hates it,” he said and she could see the flash of his grin in the rearview mirror. “The last time she came up here the gate almost took off the back end of her truck.”