“Isaac, you should go on about your business,” I murmur.
I don’t have to warn the maintenance man twice. He’s gone in a flash, leaving me to watch what I’m guessing is an impending drug bust from the privacy of my car.
The driver has his hands up and is arguing with Mantis, telling him he knows his rights and the police have no cause to harass him, that he’s done nothing wrong.
“Then you don’t mind popping the trunk for me?” Mantis says with feigned casualness.
“There’s nothing in there. It’s empty.”
“We received a tip that says different.”
“That’s a lie. You have no cause!”
Mantis nods toward Stapley, who reaches into the car and hits the release.
Mantis’s stern face splits with a wicked grin.
“That’s not mine! You planted it there!” the guy exclaims before spinning on his heels, looking intent to run. Two of the cops cut him off. They have him pinned against the hood of the car and in handcuffs in seconds.
“What do we have here . . . coke, meth . . . Jesus, this might earn us a commendation! Hope you don’t like freedom, because you’re not gonna see it again for a long time,” Mantis says jovially. He shakes his head to himself, but he’s enjoying every second of this. “Read him his rights.”
As the fourth officer begins reciting words I could say in my sleep, Mantis reaches into the trunk. When his hand reappears, it’s with a wad of money. He glances over at Stapley and then, barely missing a beat, he grabs a black duffel bag and tosses it through the open window of the SUV.
CHAPTER 25
Noah
“Good boy,” I whisper, giving Cyclops a scratch behind his ear as he settles by the park bench. I sigh heavily, my mind a chaotic mess of puzzle pieces with no picture to guide me.
Gracie’s right—we can’t use that money. Not yet, anyway. I have enough savings to cover Dina’s first month of rehab. It’ll wipe me out completely, but I have a giant inheritance coming my way. Hopefully, Fulcher can speed up—
“Rough night?” a voice calls out into the quiet night, cutting into my thoughts and unsettling Cyclops.
It’s a familiar voice, and yet I can’t place it. Not until the park bench sinks and I look over to find Special Agent Klein sitting beside me.
“Shhh . . .” I warn Cyclops, tightening my grip on his leash, even as panic swirls inside me. What is the FBI doing here? “Don’t you belong in Texas?” I ask coolly.
“I belong wherever my case takes me,” Klein retorts just as evenly.
I glance around for his dark-haired partner.
“Agent Tareen stayed behind, to follow up on a few other leads,” Klein explains as if able to read my mind.
“Leads for what?”
Ignoring me, Klein reaches a hand out toward Cyclops.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I warn as a deep growl resonates from the small dog’s chest.
Klein pulls back. And frowns. “He’s missing an eye.”
How observant. I bite my tongue. Antagonizing the feds will do me no good.
Klein leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “He yours?”
“A friend’s.”
“Is that what Grace Wilkes is? A friend?” He says it so casually.
Klein found me in Tucson. I shouldn’t be surprised that he knows who I came to see. And yet my stomach tightens with anxiety, hearing him say her name.
I give Cyclops’s head another pat and avoid answering his question.
“Two days ago, you told me that you haven’t seen or talked to anyone in the Wilkes family since Abraham Wilkes died. But here you are, in Tucson, with his wife and his daughter. You even rented her a hotel room.”
I want to ask him how he knows, but I can already guess. He flashed his badge at that bubbly blonde receptionist. “So?”
“So, why are you here?”
I lean back, trying to give off the same air of indifference. “To see Dina and Gracie.”
A smirk dances across Klein’s face before he smooths his expression. “I went by the Sleepy Hollow Trailer Park today, right before going to visit Dina Wilkes at the hospital, and—”
“You were at the hospital today?”
“Yeah.”
“You went to her room?”
Klein pauses to regard me, curiously. “I wanted to ask her a few questions. Why?”
I heave a sigh of relief. The man with the badge . . . Dina’s not delusional after all. The man in her room wasn’t some ghost from fourteen years ago, looking to silence her. “You scared the shit out of her.”
“Why would she be scared of talking to me?”
“She thought you were someone else.”
“Who is she afraid of?”
“I’m not sure, but . . .” I hesitate. “She doesn’t think her husband’s death was an accident.”
Klein doesn’t appear at all shocked by that. “And what do you know about Abraham Wilkes’s death?”
“Do you make it a habit of talking to hospital patients without signing in at the desk?” I say instead.
“There was no one at the desk to sign in with. Security is rather lacking there, wouldn’t you say?”
“I noticed.” Dina, in pajamas and barely upright, managed to dart out, undetected.
There’s another long pause, and I suspect Klein is weighing his next words like a move on a chessboard. “I came here to talk to Dina Wilkes about her husband’s death. Imagine my surprise when I found out that you carried her out of the burning trailer. It’s interesting . . .”
“How is that interesting? What should I have done, left her there to die?”
“The fire was yesterday, in the early afternoon. It’s twelve hours to Tucson from Austin if you drive, and you drove. I saw your Jeep Cherokee over there, in the lot. Now, I’ve never been good at telling time, but if we stopped by your place in Austin around . . . what was it, four in the afternoon on Thursday? You would have had to leave for Tucson that same night.” He mock frowns. “Did you decide all of a sudden to drive two states over and see the Wilkes family, whom you’ve had no contact with for fourteen years, after our little talk?”
Shit. I force a shrug. “I wanted to get away.”
“Did your mother tell you to come and see Dina and Grace Wilkes on the night she died?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Tell Gracie he was a good man. You’ll do that, right?”
I heave a sigh to mask my panic. “Am I under some sort of federal investigation, Agent Klein? Because if I am, I’m entitled to have an attorney present.”
“No. Not yet, anyway.” He reaches into his pocket to pull out his phone. “I want to play something for you. It’s short. Do you mind listening?”
“Go ahead,” I mutter, my curiosity getting the better of me.
He holds his phone up in the air.
“Ten fourteen p.m., Wednesday, April fifth, 2017 . . .” the automated recording chirps into the still night, the time and date setting the hairs down the back of my spine on end. “Agent Klein! Since you’re so hell-bent on arrestin’ somebody, I’ve got a name for you,” a woman says, her Texas drawl thick, her words slurred, her tone bitter.
My vision blurs with dizziness as I’m instantly transported back to that terrible night.
“You need to look into Abraham Wilkes’s death. Everything about what happened to him was a lie. He was set up because he saw Dwayne Mantis steal money in a drug bust and he was gonna nail him for it. I don’t know exactly how Mantis did it, but I know he killed Abe. Look into him. Look into how Dwayne Mantis murdered a good man.” The call ends abruptly.
“That’s your mother, isn’t it?”
I’m sure I don’t have to answer; my ghostly white face must say it all and Klein is watching me closely.
There’s no mistaking it. That was Jackie Marshall.
“You could have warned me,” I manage to get out, my voice hoarse, my heart pounding in my ears. I could punch this dickhead for ambushing me.
“So you could prepare a lie?”
“Why would I lie?”