Exposing a Killer

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  LEAVE YOUR PHONE BENEATH THIS ROCK, OR YOU’LL BE SORRY.

  “Leave my phone?” Megan shook her head hard enough for her ponytail to hit her on each cheek. “Someone will park here and drive over it and smash it.”

  “I think that’s the idea.” Jack slid the flashlight beam around the immediate vicinity. “They want your video or pictures or whatever they think you recorded tonight.”

  “I know, but they don’t know I didn’t get the video all the way uploaded to the cloud, and I could have already emailed pictures somewhere.” That was what she should have done in the first place. “Smashing my phone is pointless. In fact, I’m going to finish the upload right now, even if it drains my battery to zero percent.”

  She continued uploading the video to the cloud drive. No one could touch it there.

  Unless they managed to take her phone before someone destroyed it, hack into it and delete her files. But they would have to move quickly. Parking in this partially commercial district would be at a premium in another couple of hours.

  But the man and his female accomplice could be nearby, watching, knowing if and when she had obeyed their demands.

  Megan’s skin crawled. Despite the fleece lining of her jacket, she shivered under the sensation of being watched. Every recessed doorway, each tree, every car parked along the street potentially concealed someone surveying her and Jack’s moves.

  Of course the perpetrators would know where to look. They had taken her car. They knew she would return to retrieve it.

  Her car with all her case files locked in the trunk along with her laptop. Password protected or not, getting into the laptop was probably as easy as fetching it from the trunk. Finding an unethical hacker was a mere handful of clicks away on a search. Shortly, if not already, the man and woman would possess information on each of Megan’s cases, including the one against Ms. Cahill. She could email a colleague what pertinent data she had on her phone, but without Wi-Fi, that might take too long. And the battery seemed to be draining faster than the upload proceeded.

  Arms crossed over her front, Megan scanned her surroundings. Other than a few lights popping on in apartments, nothing in the street had changed. But those lights glowing through shades, curtains and open windows felt like a dozen eyes able to pierce through her skull and read her mind.

  “We have to get out of here.” Megan barely spoke above a whisper.

  Her gaze landed on Jack and discovered he was surveilling their surroundings, as well, one hand in a coat pocket, the other bent behind his back.

  Either location could hold a weapon.

  So he felt the danger, too.

  Without a word, he removed his hand from his pocket and clasped hers. In accord, they started down the street, their footfalls sounding like bass drumbeats against the night stillness. In the distance, traffic noises increased as the morning advanced. Air brakes hissed and squealed. Engines roared. Somewhere a siren began to wail.

  Megan wanted to run, locate the nearest open public building and find a corner to hide. Jack maintained a steady pace, not fast, not slow, eating up ground nonetheless. Megan barely managed to keep up. Nausea gripped her stomach, making breathing difficult. Every sense stood on high alert for danger. Her eyes never stopped moving, probing the shadows. Her ears felt stretched from listening for the slightest whisper of pursuit. Her nostrils flared, seeking a change in scent—perfume rather than dried leaves, cordite rather than exhaust. Amber, her roommate, had taught her so much about using her senses for learning her surroundings. Sight was just one. Smell, hearing, taste and touch acquired quantities of information if one employed them.

  Megan tasted the bitter metallic flavor of fear. And touch was simply cold, goose bumps rising along her arms, a prickling at the back of her neck.

  Then she heard it, the purr of an engine she recognized, a vehicle speeding down the street, too fast for the narrow lane, too fast to be up to anything good. Megan dove between two cars on one side. Jack threw himself in the other direction. No cars for him to take cover on that side, only a border of shrubs as fragile as paper ornaments, not enough to stop bullets.

  And the bullets flew. Bang! Bang! Bang! Explosions roared from the passenger window.

  The passenger window of Megan’s own car.

  “How dare you,” she shouted at the taillights, though not moving from her shelter between two electric cars.

  Tears stung her eyes. The red lights blurred, then grew bigger, brighter, closer. The driver had thrown the car into Reverse. Streetlight reflected in a dull gleam from the gun barrel poked through the driver’s window.

  Megan flattened herself beneath the nearest car a fraction of a second before more gunfire erupted again—from two directions. Too close from one direction. Even closer from another.

  Help. Help. Help. Was as much of a prayer as she could squeeze through her head.

  Where was Jack?

  She edged around beneath the car and spotted him, crouched behind the fender of the next car down, slamming another clip into his weapon.

  He really was carrying. And he was shooting. Fast. Accurate. At least accurately enough for bullets to ring off the metal of her car.

  Her poor car was going to look like a colander.

  Megan stifled a giggle. Now was not a time to get hysterical. Dark humor would turn to darker tears. She needed to be calm, collected. She took a deep breath. Exhaust and cordite filled the air, as the driver gunned the engine and the car—her car—sped away.

  “My car.” Half sobbing, Megan crawled from beneath the chassis and scuttled to the sidewalk. Only one thought filled her head: get out of here.

  But Jack was there beside her, his hand grasping hers to pull her to her feet and help her get moving.

  “We gotta get out of here,” Jack spoke the admonition out loud. “They can come back.”

  “That was my car,” Megan said.

  “Needs a tune-up.”

  “Not. Funny.” After that, Megan saved her breath for running.

  They reached the corner and turned. Out of sight of the cross street, Jack stopped and faced Megan. “At the next corner,” he said in a murmur, “we’ll head for the Brown Line this time.”

  “But that train doesn’t run all night.” As she said the words, she heard the squeal of the elevated train running around the curve that carried it north.

  “I wasn’t thinking about the time.” He glanced behind them. “We’re safe at the moment, but they could be around any corner by car or on foot.”

  “Keep running?” Megan clasped Jack’s fingers as though she had fallen into a freezing Lake Michigan and they were the only way to climb out before hypothermia took over. Then she followed his lead. More running. More darting between cars and up alleys. They didn’t look back. They couldn’t hear anyone in pursuit. The tumult of traffic as the city woke up drowned their own footfalls from their hearing, let alone that of others. Every car on the street sent them flattening themselves against the buildings, watching, waiting for danger to strike.

  The only scents that filled Megan’s nostrils were what rose from overflowing dumpsters waiting for the day’s trash pickup. She caught the sound of the truck in the distance, grumbling and whining before the crash of the load spilling into the bed. And always the back of her neck prickled. An attack could spring from anywhere, a doorway, a passing vehicle, around the next corner. They needed more light and more people. They needed time to rest and regroup.

  In a lull between traffic and trash collection, they heard it, the click of a cocking gun.

  “Where?” Megan asked.

  The height of the buildings distorted sound location. She saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  Jack didn’t respond. Megan understood. Who cared where the gun was? At whom it pointed was what mattered. Finding shelter mattered.

  Megan let Jack lead. Her strength
was nearly gone. She had been awake for twenty-four hours. She hadn’t eaten for ten. Despite her daily runs, her legs ached from keeping up with Jack’s longer strides, his greater speed. Every car headlight flared into her eyes like strobes.

  This was supposed to be a safe case—workmen’s compensation fraud only. Surveillance. Pictures. Lots and lots of computer database searches. She shouldn’t be running for her safety, maybe for her life, for the second time in one night.

  She could catch her breath at the next corner. They all had traffic lights here.

  But Jack didn’t stop at the light. Dodging blaring horns and shouting drivers, they cut across the intersection at a diagonal. One car cut so close that heat from its radiator seared Megan’s hand.

  “I’ll take...my chances...with the...gunman,” she shouted between pants. “We should just stop and...call the cops.”

  “Stop where for safety?” Jack’s voice drifted back to her, and he clasped her hand tighter as though he could tow her along.

  He did. Three more blocks to the L. A few early commuters moved along the pavement with them, giving them odd looks as they raced past. They were a help, though they would never know. Only someone truly homicidal would shoot with others in between.

  Jack could slow their pace, but he didn’t. He kept up the sprint until the tracks loomed above them and the door to the station rose before them.

  Heart banging against her ribs, Megan preceded Jack into the buildings as he held the door for her and three other people. She stopped at the turnstile to see what he was doing.

  Three more people entered, then Jack released the door and joined her. “No one’s out there,” he said. “We might be okay.”

  Only might be.

  Megan pulled out her transit pass and scanned it. “Can we walk from here on out?” She glanced down a hallway. “Can we take the elevator up?”

  Jack grinned. He wasn’t winded, but his hair waved around his forehead in damp curls. So unfair. When she got sweaty, she looked like something one had used for washing dishes. He looked...adorable.

  She pushed damp hair off her own brow and headed for the elevator, along with a few people holding coffee cups. The wonderful aroma nearly knocked her on her back. Her mouth watered, and she suppressed a moan of longing.

  But Jack was still with her. “I thought you were going to go south,” she said.

  “I’m not leaving you alone.”

  “But they’re not around. I mean, we got away from them...”

  “As far as we know. They are in your car, so they could meet us at another station.”

  Megan blinked hard over eyes that felt like someone had applied heavy-grade sandpaper to the corneas. “At least we’ll be safe on the train.”

  * * *

  Jack wished he possessed Megan’s optimism. But she was probably right that the train was likely to prove safe. One never knew whether the nicely dressed man in the opposite seat was a lawyer on his way to work early or a plainclothes policeman riding the rail to ensure the safety of the passengers.

  The car Megan and Jack entered held no men or women in business attire that morning. Most passengers, only a handful, appeared to be on their way home from working all night. They slumped in their seats, eyes half-closed, the world blocked out by headphones stuffed inside their ears and phones clutched in their hands. Music cranked so loudly Jack caught the lyrics blasted from the buds of one young man.

  “He’s either trying to stay awake or trying to go deaf,” Jack said, then felt like an old curmudgeon of his grandfather’s age rather than a relatively young man of twenty-eight.

  Twenty-eight and he was still riding the train for work because he couldn’t afford to spend money on owning a car.

  He shook off the moment of self-recrimination and fatigue and checked his phone for messages. Grace would be waking up soon. She wouldn’t worry about him, but he texted her to let her know he was all right and would be home soon. Then he texted his elderly neighbor to look in on Grace and make sure she ate breakfast. At sixteen, Grace was capable of taking care of herself except where eating breakfast was concerned. And if she didn’t, she tended to grow spacy in her morning classes. Jack figured that meant she should have breakfast every morning, even if her school work was virtual and it was the weekend.

  On the face of things, his uncle was right. Grace would be better off living with him and his wife. But neither of their children—now grown men—had turned out well. Far from it. Maybe his aunt and uncle had done everything right as parents, and maybe something in the household was terribly wrong for both sons to end up petty criminals who never held down a job for more than a few months. Jack’s uncle had gone to court seeking custody of Grace. She had said no. She was fourteen at the time, and the judge listened to her preference.

  But that was before her accident.

  Jack returned his attention to his phone. Grace hadn’t written back. Not surprising. She liked to sleep.

  Beside him, Megan was also texting. Probably her roommate. Her boss. Maybe her wealthy family asking for a new car.

  “I think you should tell me what else is going on with the Cahill case.” Megan stuffed her phone into her pocket. “Simple workmen’s comp insurance fraud isn’t worth killing someone over. And your involvement says the fraud is deeper than insurance.”

  Jack hesitated. He wasn’t supposed to say anything, and yet he felt Megan deserved some kind of explanation as to why she had lost her car and nearly lost her life. “A great deal of money disappeared from the company account over the past few months. During the time Cahill has been out sick. Small amounts at a time that add up.”

  “Embezzlement?”

  “Looks like it. She is—” He thought of the crumpled body on the deck, the head lolling oddly, and corrected himself. “She was a software engineer. Hacking into financial records wouldn’t be that difficult.”

  “So maybe the whole slip and fall was a setup so she could be away from the office when the funds began to disappear?”

  Jack smiled at Megan, whose face was bright beneath the train’s lights. She was a quick study.

  “And that’s worth—” Megan gulped. “That’s worth killing over.”

  The train slowed to a halt at the next station. He’d forgotten this line had stops so close together on the northbound route. The doors opened. The other passengers in the car exited except for the young man with the blaring music.

  Jack eyed the platform outside the open door, watching for others coming aboard, seeking danger.

  “One person was just standing there,” Megan said after the doors closed, showing him a photo she’d taken of the person. “I don’t like that they didn’t get on. I mean, it’s not like any other train comes this way.”

  Jack leaned to the side to get a look at her screen. He caught a whiff of her hair. Strawberries and coconut. The fragrance seemed too sweet and innocent for a lady involved in a business that was usually routine and sometimes dangerous. At the moment, the job was dangerous, and Jack experienced an overwhelming need to protect Megan.

  Or maybe he simply liked the scent of her hair. And its color. And the way her ponytail bounced around like it possessed a mind of its own. And—

  He reined himself in and straightened so he wasn’t so close to that shining, sweet-smelling red mop.

  “Do you think he—I think it’s a he—looks like he’s trying to keep people from coming into the car?” Her voice was tight.

  She was on edge, alert to danger, not attracted to his unremarkable hair.

  “I honestly couldn’t tell.” Jack glanced toward the door. It was closed now as the train pulled out of the station and proceeded to the next station only a couple of blocks away. “But nothing’s wrong with looking at everyone as a potential threat right now.”

  “Be ready for trouble,” he murmured.

  She nodded.


  With the sun beginning to rise, each golden ray picking out the autumn colors of the trees, trouble seemed unlikely. This was a quiet neighborhood. A safe neighborhood near a locally venerated university. No one would try to harm them in breaking daylight.

  The train slowed. Stopped. The doors glided open. Jack was on his feet and backing toward the end of the car before a passenger with his hood up stepped off the platform.

  “Don’t move,” one of them said.

  But Megan was already moving with Jack behind her, shielding her from the newcomers to the car. She flipped up the latch to open the emergency door. The roar of wheels on tracks swirled around them with the rushing wind dozens of feet above the ground. The walkway in between cars was short but narrow, with the infamous third rail providing thousands of volts of electricity to power the trains running along one side and the service platform on the other. The space didn’t allow for errors like a slip or a stumble.

  Ahead of him, Megan stepped across the gap and shoved through the door into the next car. Jack started to follow. A hand shoved between his shoulder blades.

  And Jack stumbled out of the car and began to fall toward the third rail.

  FOUR

  Jack wasn’t behind her. He had been so close to her for hours she sensed the absence of his proximity even before the train door slammed behind her.

  “Jack.” She spun on the heel of her trainer and grabbed for the emergency release.

  He was there, beyond the window, between the two cars. And he wasn’t alone. Another man was trying to shove him over the guardrail toward the deadly third rail.

  Jack was a big man and seemed strong, but his arm had been injured, weakened. The other man was also big. Not as tall, but even broader than Jack. He appeared as though he spent hours at the gym on the weight machines.

  The man from the deck. The man who had possibly killed Cahill with his bare hands.

  “Help him,” Megan cried—to whom, she didn’t know.