The Shark (Forgotten Files Book 1) (26 page)

“Not now.” His leg throbbed and he thought about that bitch Jo-Jo hiding out at Duke’s. He’d go there and kill her if he thought he could get close enough to do the job. But the old man was tough as gristle, and he’d heard stories about Duke’s younger days. When Duke wasn’t gambling or drinking hard, he was breaking heads for the casinos. He didn’t doubt for one second that Duke would shoot him dead without batting an eye.

“We can call Duke’s again.” She chuckled and it struck him that her laugh sounded more like a chicken’s cackle. “Rattle his cage.”

“No.”

When she tried to touch him again, he moved out of reach. “Don’t you go turning your back on me. I been with you through it all,” she said.

Headlights loomed out on the road and he straightened. “That’s him.”

“Who?”

“Do me a favor and keep your mouth shut.”

“Don’t you tell me to shut up.”

Rage roiled, and on reflex, he whipped his hand around and struck her squarely across the face so hard that she fell to the ground. She raised a trembling hand to her bloodied lip, staring up at him as if he’d lost his mind. He’d told her to be quiet. But she never listened.

Gravel crunched under tire wheels, and he turned away from her as if she were trash. Jax hiked up his pants and smiled as the car came to a stop. When the driver got out, he puffed his chest. “So what do you want? Coming to give me back what’s mine?”

“Here to give you what you deserve.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Thursday, September 22, 6:30 a.m.

When Riley arrived at Duke’s house, she was tired. She’d only logged a couple of hours’ sleep last night. She found Duke sitting on the front porch, talking into his cell phone, his expression dark and his words muffled but tense. When she closed her SUV door, he straightened, grinned, and ended the call.

“You’re looking a little rough,” he said, standing as he tucked his phone in his pocket.

“Didn’t get much sleep last night. And I could say the same for you.”

“I got enough.” He gave her an affectionate jostle to her shoulder. “So, what can I do for you?”

“How’s Jo-Jo doing?”

“Moving slow but getting around. She’s eating and her right eye isn’t as swollen. But it still hurts for her to walk. Busted ribs.”

“Any more problems with Jax?”

“Naw. I haven’t heard a word from him.”

“You should be on guard. That creep is out there stalking and waiting for his first chance to grab his meal ticket.”

“I told Maria to keep Jo-Jo in the house.” He nodded back behind him. “They’re both up if you want to visit.”

“Yeah. I’d like to touch base.”

“Head on inside. I’ve another call to make. Supplier busting my balls on a delivery.”

“Thanks.”

He studied her closer. “You doing all right?”

“Nothing a little time won’t fix.”

“Get some rest.”

“I’ll do my best.”

He grinned. “Liar.”

She moved through the house that had always felt like home. Her blood pressure still dropped when she was here.

In the bright kitchen, Jo-Jo slowly stirred cereal in a bowl. Maria greeted Riley with a wide, welcoming grin and a hug.

“Where’s Cooper?” Maria asked.

“In the SUV. I don’t have long.”

“Look who’s in the kitchen. Jo-Jo made the big trip down the stairs this morning.”

Riley sat down across from the runaway. “That’s not a happy smile.”

Jo-Jo looked up. “I don’t like cereal.”

“Really, cereal makes that kind of frown?”

“Easier to worry about this goop than my life.”

The girl was dressed in well-worn but clean jeans and a T-shirt that Maria must have given her. In regular, age-appropriate clothes she looked like a normal fifteen-year-old.

“The way I look at it, your life took a major upswing. Like the universe reached out, grabbed you by the collar, and pulled you out of the abyss.”

Jo-Jo cocked her head, her street smarts kicking into gear. “What’re you doing here?”

“Thought I’d come by and see how you’re feeling.”

“I’ll live.”

“You’re tough.”

Jo-Jo lifted her chin. “Jax used to say he liked my toughness.”

“Jax said nice things to you because he was manipulating you. He believes you’re his property.”

Fresh tears glistened in the girl’s eyes. “Nobody ever said they loved me before Jax.”

“And I bet he and Darla knew that. He’s evil but also smart.”

“He said some nice things to me and gave me presents. I felt special.”

Maria set a cup of coffee in front of Riley, who smiled her thanks before reaching for the sugar and creamer.

“I know Duke and Maria have said nice things, too,” Riley said.

Jo-Jo shrugged. “They have to. They’re some kind of social workers.”

“They don’t have to do anything. They say what they mean. They don’t lie. Neither do I.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Honey, Jax doesn’t love you. Love doesn’t hurt. A man who loves a woman does not beat her or pimp her out to other men. Jax says
love
because he knows you need to hear it, but he doesn’t love you or any of the other girls, including Darla.”

Jo-Jo’s jaw clenched, but tears welled in her eyes. “That’s not true.”

Breaking the hooks Jax had sunk into this kid would take time. Riley would likely have to say this hundreds of times before it penetrated the girl’s damaged self-image: “Real men don’t bruise the women they love.”

With trembling fingers the girl wiped away a tear. “Why are you really here?”

“I want you to understand that you have an opportunity to leave the streets. You can be someone different.”

Jo-Jo glanced at her shorn fingernails and curled them into a fist. “It’s not such a bad life.”

“It’s hell. But you’ve been trapped in it for so long you don’t know the difference.” Riley glanced at her watch. She needed to report in before patrol and knew one conversation with this kid would not cut it. “This place offers safety and a warm bed. You can give yourself a chance to sleep and heal. Maybe grab a couple of good meals. Then in a few days if you still think you want to find Jax, there won’t be anything I can do to save you.”

“I don’t need saving. I can take care of myself.”

“That’s what I said when I landed on this doorstep.”

“You stayed at Duke’s?” Jo-Jo’s expression conveyed disbelief.

“I did. I was a couple of years older than you are now. If I hadn’t landed at Duke’s then, it would have been just a matter of time before someone like Jax found me.”

Doubt darkened Jo-Jo’s eyes. “I can’t picture that.”

“Maria, is this true?” Riley asked.

Maria had been wiping the same spot on the counter for at least a minute. “Riley was in a bad place. Duke and I found her at the bus station. She was messed up. Could barely stand.”

Riley could preach a sermon on what she knew about the streets and how they would chew up a girl like Jo-Jo. But she held back. The kid needed food and rest, not a lecture. “Give it a day or two. You’ve nothing to lose.”

Jo-Jo ladled cereal with her spoon. “You’re not going to change my mind about Jax.”

“Maybe,” Maria said.

Jo-Jo ate, wincing as her sore jaw chewed. She glanced around the modest kitchen as if she were afraid to allow herself to like it. “What if someone comes by here to get me?”

“Call me,” Riley said.

The girl stared at her. “I bet you can kick some ass.”

“I can.”

She studied the scrapes on Riley’s knuckles still healing from yesterday’s search in the woods. “Jax must have been surprised as hell when he saw you on that mountain.”

“He was. But if you want to hear the story, it’ll have to be after my shift tonight. I need to roll.”

A sigh leaked from Jo-Jo’s clenched teeth. “Fine.”

“Fine what? Does that mean you’ll be here this evening?”

“Maybe.”

Not a ringing endorsement, but Riley would take it. The girl’s coloring was a bit better, and she’d had a chance to shower and wash her hair. Her road back to life was slow and frustrating. One step at a time.

“Can you walk?” Riley asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good. Walk me to my car.”

Jo-Jo followed Riley out to the gravel driveway where her SUV was parked. Duke was nowhere in sight. “Why is the car running?”

“My dog, Cooper, is inside.”

Jo-Jo peered in the window. “He’s not so scary looking.”

“He’s one of the best tracking dogs in Virginia. He helped me find Jax.”

Maria stood at the front door. She didn’t say anything but just watched, her expression worried.

Jo-Jo glanced back at Maria. “She always looks upset.”

“She’s worried about you.”

“She doesn’t know me.”

“Better than you think. She’s also looked at me that way more than a few times. If you haven’t guessed, I can be hardheaded.”

That coaxed the faintest smile. “No shit?”

“I’ll be back this evening.”

Jo-Jo shrugged her shoulders, but Riley knew the girl was simply afraid to hope. “Whatever.”

Riley slid on her sunglasses and slid behind the wheel. She watched as Jo-Jo turned and slowly walked back toward the house. Her gait was uneven as she guarded her right side. Riley had cracked her ribs on a climb once, and they hurt like hell. Impossible to sleep and blinding pain if you sneezed. Tightening her fist, she imagined the judge sentencing Jax to dozens of years behind bars. But unless Jo-Jo was willing to press charges, he’d likely skate by with a year at the most.

Later that morning, when Riley was on I-95, her phone rang. It was Sharp.

“Credit card receipts show that Lenny left his home in Las Vegas five days ago and checked into a hotel about twenty miles from here. Rented the car you found at the park and bought one meal in a local restaurant. Other than that, he wasn’t on anyone’s radar.”

“What about phone records?” she asked.

“Called his bookie in Vegas several times and a few other numbers that turned out to be burners,” Sharp said.

“Have you considered asking Shield to run a search on the guy? His people might know a better way to trace them. They want to catch this guy.”

“And we don’t? Believe me, I want to bury him.”

“I hear ya. Keep me posted?”

“You do the same.”

“Will do.”

When she pulled into her driveway that evening and got out with Cooper, she’d ended a long shift topped off by another visit to see Jo-Jo. She spotted a dark SUV parked in front of her house. Bowman stepped out of the vehicle in no hurry.

She almost asked how he knew she would be here, then remembered the chip in her arm. Terrific. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Been thinking about the text you sent me last night.”

“Walk with me. Cooper needs to stretch his legs.”

“Sure.”

Down the street, she turned onto a small path that cut through the woods behind her house. “Checking in?”

“Afraid so.”

She laughed but heard the nervous buzz behind it. It was nice to have someone checking in on her, even if the arrangement was temporary.

“Sharp said the man who shot himself was Lenny Vincent. He’s from Vegas and a gambler,” said Riley.

“I know. I talked to Sharp an hour ago.”

“Why would he kill himself like that? The forensic team hasn’t finished its analysis yet, but there were hair fibers found in his car that appear to be from Cassie. The theory is that he killed her.”

“I don’t know. Andrews began reviewing his records this afternoon. He was in deep financial trouble, and he has a wife and two kids. I wish I knew the Shark’s end game.”

“How could Vincent know I would be the one to track him in the woods?” Riley asked.

“My guess was that it was a calculated risk.”

The Shark’s web never seemed to end. “I started reading the files you gave me, and I’ll finish them this evening.”

“Do you ever rest or drop your guard?”

“Rest?” Riley asked. “Now and then. Dropping the guard? Almost never.”

They walked in silence for several minutes, and when they got close to the woods, she let Cooper off his leash so he could run.

“Would you like coffee?” Riley asked.

“That would be great.”

When the dog returned, they moved inside and she unholstered her gun, placing it in a closet lockbox, then unstrapped her belt and hung it on a peg.

As they passed into the kitchen, she flipped on the lights. The kitchen table was scattered with the files she’d been reading last night.

As he leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed, watching her, she set a coffeepot to brew. “Did you have any trouble on the road today?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Good.”

She pulled the file of the first victim again and reread it. “Angie was seventeen years old, and she had been on her own since age fifteen. She worked in some of the casinos backstage as a grip for their stage shows, likely with a fake ID,” Riley said.

“If she worked in the casinos, it makes sense she’d have caught the Shark’s attention.”

She tapped her finger on the papers. “That’s not what bothered me. It was the fact that she worked with the stage crew.”

“Why would that bother you?”

“Remember the T-shirt she was wearing? It’s for a band called BANG.”

His eyes narrowed a fraction. “Andrews researched the band. They were handled by Byline Entertainment,” Bowman said. “He said they broke up five years ago.”

“Byline,” she said. “That’s the company leasing Hudson’s field.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Could it be that simple?”

He stepped closer and glanced down at the picture of the first victim. “Shield had an informant while he was working the cases in New Orleans. She was a casino dealer and a part-time singer. She was the one who first told Shield about the Shark and his possible connection to the dead girls. She was strangled to death shortly after she talked to Shield.”

“This guy has eyes and ears everywhere.”

Bowman pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed a number. “Andrews, this is Bowman. Check on a company called Byline Entertainment and cross-check their concert schedules with local murders that match the Shark’s MO. Great. Thanks.” He ended the call, carefully tucking his phone back into his pocket.

Riley moved to the cabinets and removed two mugs. She could feel his gaze on her, and simply the idea of him looking at her made her heart beat faster.

“He’s not going to touch you,” Bowman said. There was such confidence in his voice.

She faced him. “You sound sure of yourself. He’s eluded you and Shield for twelve years. Why would now be any different?”

“He’s moving very quickly. He’s killed two girls, Lewis, and I’d bet my life he is behind Lenny’s suicide. When a killer accelerates like this, the tendency is to get sloppy. I will catch him.”