by Mary Burton
“Should I apologize now?” She accepted his hand.
White teeth flashed. “No. He didn’t cross-examine me. Good thing, I suppose. He was known as a real tough nut in his time.”
If by “tough nut” he meant “ruthless legal shark,” then yes. “That he was, Kevin.”
“I just saw you crossing the lobby, and I wanted to introduce myself. Would you like to grab a drink in the bar?”
“No, thank you. It’s been a long day.”
Rejection slid off him like water off a duck. “Maybe we’ll catch up again some time.”
“Have a good evening, Kevin.”
“You, too, Faith.”
Faith sensed that under all his sleek manners and polish lurked an ulterior motive. She’d dealt with several men like him since her father’s death. Wearing nice suits, they came bearing law degrees and threats. And as she’d told them all, Russell McIntyre might have been worth a fortune once, but it was all gone. What she had now had either been left to her by her mother or she’d earned herself. Stones didn’t bleed, no matter how hard you squeezed.
What most people don’t realize about me is that I treasure all children. If I didn’t love them as much as I do, I’d never have made the sacrifices that I did to create so many.
Love, Daddy
CHAPTER FOUR
Monday, June 25, 10:30 p.m.
When FBI Special Agent Macy Crow had arrived in Austin, she’d taken a taxi directly to her father’s salvage yard. According to the Texas Rangers and the medical examiner, Jack had died in the early hours of Sunday morning under suspicious circumstances. The facts Ranger Hayden had relayed to her were grim. Jack had been beaten pretty badly before he’d suffered a massive heart attack.
Numb, Macy had thanked Hayden for notifying her as she sat in her small rented house near Quantico, staring at a picture of Jack and herself in front of the Chevrolet Impala they’d restored the summer she’d turned sixteen.
Immediately, she’d called her supervisor and cleared her schedule, stating she needed several days of personal leave. However, she hadn’t been able to get a flight out until Monday morning and after several delays had made it to Texas.
During a brief layover in Atlanta, Macy had listened to a voicemail from Dr. Faith McIntyre, the medical examiner. Dr. McIntyre explained she had conducted an autopsy on Jack and had concluded if not for the heart failure, pancreatic cancer would have killed her father by the end of the year. Macy had sat in stunned silence, wondering why Jack hadn’t called her earlier. Minutes before her flight, she had returned the doctor’s call, promising to visit her tomorrow.
Despite the divorce, Jack had always sent his child support payments, and he never missed a birthday or Christmas. Her mother had never spoken a word against Jack, but as Macy had gotten older, she realized he had lived hard and occasionally put his medical skills to work for less scrupulous men. Her mother had once described Jack as complicated and regretted they hadn’t tried harder to make it work.
Eight years had passed since she’d been in the salvage yard. It had been the spring she’d graduated from the FBI Academy in Quantico, and she had been driving to her first duty station in Denver. Austin hadn’t been on the way, but she’d wanted to see her old man. When she’d arrived at the salvage yard, Macy and her father had spent the next two days rummaging through the yard for a radio and speakers for her old Toyota sedan. Though neither was a big talker, the visit had been kind of cool.
Now as the cab drove past the piles of crushed cars, bent motorcycles, and an occasional RV on blocks, an overwhelming sense of fatigue and loss hit her with the force and the finality of the salvage yard’s hydraulic compactor.
Headlights slashed across the front of the trailer and flickered against the yellow crime scene tape wrapped around stakes positioned around the home. For an instant she couldn’t move. When the cabdriver cleared his throat, she paid him, grabbed her backpack, and got out of the car. The evening heat hit her, and she thought about friends back east who were convinced dry heat was better than 100 percent humidity. She fished her phone from her pocket and turned on the flashlight.
Taking long strides across the dusty yard past Jack’s late-model truck, she stepped over the tape and climbed the front steps past the lawn chair now roped off with red crime scene tape. She shone her light on the chair and its red, white, and blue woven straps and then on the cracked, sunbaked stained deck. Both were covered with blood.
The Ranger said Jack had been found in that chair, which ironically she had shipped to him two years ago for his birthday. She imagined him sitting in it, smoking a cigar, and then she pictured him in it screaming in pain and dying.
She pushed all the thoughts from her mind and read the orange seal placed over the doorjamb by the forensic examiner. It was dated yesterday and signed by someone named Ridgefield. The front doorknob and the wooden doorframe were covered with fine black fingerprint dust. On the deck beside her sat an overturned tented evidence marker.
She’d investigated enough scenes like this and wasn’t intimidated by the DO NOT ENTER warning and the consequences listed in small print below it. She reached in her pocket, removed two of the black latex gloves always crammed in each of her jackets, and slipped them on. Using keys Jack had given her, she unlocked the door and broke the seal.
Careful not to touch the powder, she stepped into a dark interior that smelled of cigarette smoke, air freshener, and bourbon.
She switched on the overhead light, dropped her backpack by the door, and unholstered her gun. The place was trashed. A forensic team had come behind whoever had ransacked the place to dust windowsills, the refrigerator door handles, the broken picture frames scattered in the center of the room, and some of the now-crumpled and torn pictures. Jack had never liked strangers on his property, and this invasion added the final insult.
“I’m sorry, Jack.” She tucked her phone in her back pocket.
Jack had called her a week ago, told her he’d stocked the refrigerator with a six-pack of Corona, her favorite. The call had been out of character, and when she had asked how he was doing, he had insisted everything was fine. She had instinctively known he wasn’t fine and had promised herself a Texas vacation very soon.
One way or the other he must have known he was on borrowed time and that his call would be enough to ensure a visit from her. She reached for a cold beer, wedged the cap under a drawer handle, and with a quick jerk, popped the top off.
As she took a long pull, she returned to the broken picture frames, picked up one, and shook off the broken glass. It was a picture of her christening. The next picture she spotted featured her with Santa. A third captured the moment she’d taken one of her first steps. In this space, she was frozen in time as toddler, when she, her mother, and Jack had all lived together.
She crossed to the bedroom to find the mattress upended and sliced. The end table was overturned and the lamp smashed. More black powder everywhere, and evidence tents placed by one of Jack’s pocketknives, his rotary phone now on the floor, and a newly shredded army-issue Bible he’d never gotten around to reading.
She holstered her gun and set her beer down on a dresser before straightening the table and setting the phone and Bible back on top. She pushed the bed frame away from the wall and peeled back a section of shag carpeting to expose a one-foot-square hatch. Jack had shown her the hiding place years ago. “This is where you look if I die, kid.”
She rooted around the small opening and pulled out a zip-top bag filled with twenty gold coins, a Sig Sauer, a spare set of keys to his truck, and a brand-new smartphone. She grabbed the keys, gun, and phone and set them on the nightstand before she returned the gold to its hiding place, closed the hatch, and replaced the carpeting.
When the bed was back in place, she dragged the mattress back onto the frame and dumped the blankets and sheets on it.
She sat on the edge, reached for the gun, and pulled back the slide just enough to confirm there was a round in the c
hamber. She tucked the Sig into her belt, picked up the beer, and took another long swig before reaching for the smartphone.
“Very tech savvy of you, Jack.”
Her old man might have been able to take a car apart and put it back together, but he had been hopeless with computers and smartphones. As long as she’d known him, he’d always had a rotary phone. She turned on the smartphone and discovered it was password protected. Knowing Jack was a creature of habit, she typed in the numbers that corresponded to Macy—6229. The phone opened. If that hadn’t worked, her next bet would have been 5225 for Jack. And her third bet would have been the year she was born, 1988.
As she searched the screen, she found no emails or, God forbid, texts. There were no apps that weren’t standard with the phone or any kind of call history. “So why the phone, Jack?”
She double tapped the home button and discovered the Maps app and Photos app were running. She opened the Photos app first and saw the image of a post office mail receipt. Jack had sent a package to her by third-class mail on Friday. She’d not received it in Saturday’s mail and guessed it was still floating through the post office system. “Curiouser and curiouser, Jack.”
She opened the Maps app and found three saved addresses. When she pulled the first up, she discovered the location was twenty minutes west of here, and if her memory served, the area was remote. The second location was in East Austin. The third was in downtown Austin. “What the hell?”
If Jack had wanted to get her attention with the phone, he’d succeeded. He had left these addresses for a reason, and she sure as hell was going to check them out. The third address was 1213 Sabine Street and the least likely for Jack to visit, so she searched it first. The address matched the location of the Travis County Medical Examiner’s Office. Interesting. She’d been in contact via voicemail with Faith McIntyre. Sometimes the world was a really small damn place. There was no staff page for the office, so she searched the site for “Faith McIntyre.” Service was unreliable out here at the salvage yard, and the phone was slow to pull up any links.
As she waited, someone pounded hard on the front door of the trailer. She tensed and reached for the Sig. “Who is it?”
“It’s Dirk Crow. Who the hell is in there?”
Dirk Crow. The brother she’d not seen since she was one or two. He was a stranger to her, but his voice had Jack’s familiar deep notes, and for an instant, she thought Pop had come back from the dead.
“It’s Macy Crow.” She holstered her gun as she walked to the front door.
She turned on the deck light, flicked back the curtain, and saw the large man standing with his feet braced and his hand behind his back. She’d bet money it was curled around a weapon. Dark hair brushed off a face that reminded her of Pop’s when she was a kid.
Dirk, nine years older than Macy, was the product of Jack’s first marriage. He knew how to bend the law like Jack had and was as good at flying under the radar as their pop. Dirk, however, had no trouble breaking laws.
When she opened the door, she found herself indeed staring at a younger version of her pop. “The prodigal daughter has returned,” she said.
He looked her up and down, his brown eyes wary. “Well, you sure are as white as I remember, Snowflake.”
“So I am,” she said.
Though they were Jack’s legacy, there was no real connection between the two. They shared no childhood memories, or even DNA since she was adopted.
“Who told you about Pop?” Dirk asked.
“The Texas Rangers. And you?”
“Got a voicemail from Ledbetter.” A small muscle pulsed in his jaw.
“You live on the property, and I bet the cops still had a hard time finding you,” she said.
“They did.” He shifted, his gaze narrowing as he looked at the lawn chair. “Ledbetter tells me Jack is at the morgue.”
“Yeah.”
“He wouldn’t want a funeral.”
“I know. I’ll have him cremated.”
“Why you?”
“Do you want to do it?” she asked.
“No. If you know anything about me, you know I don’t like to get into town, and last I checked the funeral home is in town.”
“Fair enough. That’s why I’ll do it.” Her brother lived somewhere on the property and from what Jack said was good at keeping an eye on things and keeping the varmints away. “Where were you yesterday?”
He rubbed his temple. “I was in El Paso on business. I came back as soon as I got the message.”
No sense asking what he’d been doing in El Paso. He’d not been here, and that was enough.
“Jack trusted you with all the paperwork,” he said. “Is there a will?”
“That’s the last thing on my mind right now. I want to know who killed Pop. Do you have any idea?”
Dirk’s nostrils thinned and he drew in a breath, and then he scratched the black-and-gray stubble on his chin. “How the hell am I supposed to know?”
“Because you’re the one who stuck around. You saw him all the time. And you’d know better than anyone if he’d done something to piss someone off.”
“I hadn’t seen Jack in over a week.”
“And if Jack were into something he shouldn’t have been, you wouldn’t try to hide it, would you?” she asked.
“What do I have to hide from an FBI agent, sister?” he asked.
“I doubt we have time to talk about all that you’re hiding, but unless it related to Pop, I don’t care.” She’d learned to bluff really well as an agent, knowing if she went in hot with a suspect and acted like she had the answers, they’d give up more than intended.
“Aren’t you the badass agent?” He shook his head as he rubbed a splintered spot on the deck with the tip of his worn boot.
“When’s the last time Jack went into Austin?” she asked.
“I have no idea.”
“What about the local diner near here?” she countered. “Had he been there lately?”
“He barely left the yard in the last year. Why are you so worked up about where he’s been? He was killed right here.”
“Our old man was tortured and murdered. Everything he did in the last few weeks matters to me. What he did and who he saw is all a part of the puzzle.”
Dirk shifted, as if he were trying to shake off the edginess that was eating at them both, but couldn’t manage it. “Jack serviced a rough crowd from time to time. He patched up some dangerous people.”
She’d warned Jack more times than she could count to keep clear of helping those who peddled in human flesh and drugs. “When was the last time he did that?”
“It’s been a couple of years. Like I said, he’s been a hermit mostly.”
“Do you think he helped someone while you were gone?”
“How would I know?” He reached into his jeans pocket, pulled out a can of dip, and wedged a pinch between his cheek and gum. “You think someone like that killed him?”
“Or someone looking for one of his patients.”
“He was stubborn. He’d not have ratted out anyone.” Pride rang under the words.
“I know.” She shook her head, some of the steam venting from her temper. “I’m going to find out who did this to Jack. I won’t let his death go unsolved.”
“That’s good. Pop deserves as much.”
She grabbed her backpack and walked out of the trailer, slamming the door behind her. She kept Dirk in her line of sight and a safe distance away, knowing a guy his size could beat the hell out of her without really trying. The truth was she didn’t know or trust her brother.
He followed, holding up both his hands in surrender. “We got off on the wrong foot, Macy. I didn’t come up here to stir trouble between us. I’m as upset as you, and I can be a blockhead like Jack used to be. Truce?”
Macy could play nice while she investigated Jack’s murder. She crossed the deck and the hard red soil toward Jack’s truck. “Sure. Truce.”
“Where are you going?” D
irk asked.
“To a hotel.”
She tossed her backpack into the front seat and slid behind the wheel before slamming the truck door and turning on the engine. As she pulled out of the yard, she glanced in her rearview mirror and caught Dirk opening the trailer door. If Jack had told him about the hidden compartment, he was in for a treat.
She drove for almost a mile before she hit a stoplight and pulled out the phone to check her browser for information on Faith McIntyre.
The pathologist’s picture appeared, and the instant Macy got a good look, she did a double take. The woman was her age, she had blond hair, and they shared the same blue eyes. The likeness was so similar that she thought for a moment she was staring at her own picture. A closer look told her she wasn’t. Faith’s face was slightly rounder than hers, and her eyes looked a little less jaded.
The light turned green, and she drove ahead a few hundred yards toward a gas station. She pulled into the parking lot, not trusting herself to drive.
The close resemblance was unsettling. “What the hell?”
When she’d heard Dr. McIntyre’s thick Texas drawl, she had never once thought it sounded familiar or even remotely like her own.
An unsettled feeling rolled through her, as if a quake were shaking the earth under her. Most kids might have fantasized about being adopted or wondered what it felt like, but she’d never had to wonder. Ever since she’d realized most raven-haired, olive-skinned parents didn’t usually make blond-haired, blue-eyed babies nicknamed Snowflake, she’d assumed something was off. Now as she looked at Faith’s picture, she knew if they weren’t twins, there had to be a strong genetic connection between them. Her parents had come clean about her adoption when she was eight, but they’d never once mentioned she had siblings. Jesus, why hadn’t they told her she wasn’t alone?
Her head was spinning as the screen image glowed. She wasn’t sure how long she sat before she drew in a steadying breath. “Shit, Jack. A simple conversation would have made better sense than all the secrets.”