A short while later, she was ready for work in a turquoise linen tank dress and peekaboo pumps. As she folded up the blanket she’d used, she heard another truck on the driveway, only this one was louder than Jonah’s—maybe even diesel.
Sophie took her gun from her purse and stepped toward the kitchen just as a man stomped up the back steps. Confident gait, wide shoulders, strong jaw. He was the spitting image of Jonah, except for the white hair.
She tucked the revolver behind the cookie jar as the screen squeaked open. He tried the knob, then rapped on the glass.
“Jonah?”
She flipped the latch. “Hello,” she said, swinging the door back.
He looked her up and down. He held a brown paper bag in his hands, and she glimpsed tomatoes inside.
“Jonah around?”
“He’s at work.” She stepped back to let him in. “Would you like some coffee?”
He hesitated a moment, then removed his John deere cap and wiped his boots on the mat before stepping inside.
“You got a pot going, I could use a cup.” He deposited his hat on the counter and rested the bag by the sink. “I’m Wyatt Macon, Jonah’s dad.”
“I’m Sophie Barrett. You like sugar?” She opened up a cabinet and took down a mug.
“Black, thanks.”
She poured his coffee as he leaned back against the counter and watched her. He wore a blue chambray work shirt and jeans. His scarred leather boots reminded her of Jonah’s, as did his build—except for the slight paunch hanging over his belt. She wondered if Jonah would have one someday.
She set the coffee on the table, and he took the invitation to sit down.
“You’re from the panhandle?” she asked, joining him.
“Lubbock.” He paused. “Been down here fifty years, though. Thought my accent wore off.”
She smiled. “I’ve got an ear for voices.”
They sipped coffee and regarded each other over their mugs. His hands were big, brown, and callused, and she noticed he didn’t wear any rings. Was he widowed or divorced? She watched him sip his coffee and realized how little she knew about Jonah’s personal life.
“So.” She glanced at the paper bag on the counter. “You grow your own tomatoes?”
“Brandywines, mostly. Along with some Italian plums, a few cherries.”
She got up and went to the sink, mainly because she wanted something to do with her hands. She’d never particularly liked being scrutinized by people’s parents. She grabbed a dish towel from the counter and spread it out by the sink. Then she unpacked the tomatoes and started rinsing them.
“How long you two been livin’ together?”
Sophie looked at him over her shoulder. “Well, let’s see.” She glanced at her watch. “I guess about nine hours. Would you like one of these?”
“No, thanks.”
She got a plate down and took a steak knife from the block near the stove. She picked a fat gold tomato and cut it into thick slices. Then she sprinkled salt and pepper and returned to the table.
“It’s not what it looks like,” she said.
He made a humph noise.
“What?”
“If it’s not what it looks like, my son’s either blind or stupid, and I know he’s not blind.”
Sophie smiled as she cut a bite of tomato. It was sweet and juicy and she closed her eyes to savor it. “These are amazing.”
“Homegrown. Only way to eat ’em.”
“Best tomato I ever had.”
He smiled. “I’ll tell Jonah’s mama you said that. Those plants are her pride and joy.”
She glanced at his hand again. “I hope you kept some for yourself,” she said.
“More than I need.”
The kitchen got quiet except for the rotating fan and the sound of mockingbirds through the screen door. He got up from his chair and took his cap from the counter. “I ‘preciate the coffee, but I better get back. Macey’ll be thinking I ran off.”
He settled his cap on his head and nodded at her.
“Nice meeting you, Mr. Macon.”
“Wyatt,” he said. “And it was nice meeting you.” The screen squeaked as he pushed it open. “Take care now, Sophie. And don’t be leaving that LadySmith on the counter when strangers come calling. You’re liable to get in some trouble.”
Roland entered the conference room and sank into the seat Allison had occupied when she’d been in here interviewing Sophie.
“Looks like you won’t be buying me that beer,” he said.
“No DNA on the gum?”
“No, there was. But according to Mia, it belonged to the gunman.”
“What about the hair?”
“I analyzed the hell out of it, but I can’t tell you whose it is.” He held out a one-page report and Allison took it, sighing.
“What can you tell me?” she asked. “Is it animal or human? Can we get a race or gender?”
“Human is animal.” He smiled slightly. “But I know what you mean, and yeah, it’s human. I can also tell you the hair is not dyed, it’s light brown, and it belongs to someone of European descent. It’s impossible to determine the age or sex.”
Allison scanned the report, which contained a lot of specialized vocabulary and acronyms.
“Your main problem is you’ve got no comparison sample. If you had one, I could say with near certainty that the contributor of the sample did or didn’t leave that hair in the car. You guys have any suspects yet?”
“No,” she said, deflated. She’d thought the hair was a good lead.
The door opened, and Mia stepped into the room. “Sorry I’m late.” She didn’t take a chair, and Allison could tell she was in a hurry. She could also tell she wasn’t going to like Mia’s news.
“No DNA?” Allison asked.
“Not nuclear DNA, no. This hair appears to have been shed naturally, so we didn’t get any follicular cells.” She passed her a slip of paper from the clipboard she was carrying, and Allison added it to her ever-growing stack of unhelpful reports. “Mitochondrial DNA can be useful if we have a known sample to compare it to.”
“Mitochondrial?”
“It’s more plentiful than nuclear DNA,” Mia explained. “It can be found in nonliving tissue like hair and bone, which are extremely durable. So it’s good for identifying remains. But to run a profile through the database of known offenders and get a cold hit—which is what you were hoping to do—I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. You need nuclear DNA.”
“Tell her about the door,” Roland said.
“What about it?” Allison pinned a hopeful gaze on Mia.
“I did recover some skin cells from the door, where someone rested his arm.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Locard’s Principle,” Roland said. “Every contact leaves a trace. That’s why Mia and I have a job.”
Allison looked at Mia. “‘His’ arm?”
“Got that Y chromosome.” Mia smiled. “very handy, isn’t it? We’re still running the profile, though. I’ll let you know if we get lucky. I can tell you the profile doesn’t match that of the gunman, James Himmel. We have his DNA sample from the autopsy.” She looked at her watch. “Speaking of, have you seen Jonah? I thought he was riding out with you.”
“Haven’t seen him today. Why?”
“He’s supposed to bring me another sample—some murder victim who was autopsied this afternoon.”
“The gangbanger behind the bar?” Allison was surprised. “They’re sending his DNA here?”
“Jonah wanted me to run it.”
Allison stared at her, baffled. What did the guy in the alley have to do with this? And why was she being kept in the dark?
She tried not to let her annoyance show as she got to her feet and collected the paperwork.
“Thanks for the help,” she said crisply. “Let me know if you get any hits.”
“You’ll be my first call. I don’t like being cut out of the loop, either.” Mia gave her a
pointed look, and Allison remembered the woman lived with a cop. “Hey, and if you see Jonah, tell him I’m looking for him.”
Jonah shot down the narrow highway, juggling his phone and the stack of Polaroids he’d snapped with the ME’s camera.
“A phone call would have been nice,” Allison said, continuing her rant. “I don’t know how you expect me to contribute here if I’m constantly playing catch-up with the facts. Why is Roberto Consuelo getting the VIP treatment today?”
“I think he might have a link to the university shooting.”
“He’s a junior-grade gangbanger. I’m not seeing the connection.”
“Sophie Barrett’s the connection,” Jonah said. “I think the guy who attacked her the other night could have been the one driving Himmel’s car.”
“Interesting theory. I would have liked a heads-up, though. I could have pitched in here.”
“Fine. Next autopsy’s all you.” He found several photos of the forearms and tucked them in his jacket pocket, along with a face shot. Sophie said she hadn’t seen him from the front, but maybe a picture would jog her memory. Or maybe she’d seen him around earlier. The guy could have been stalking her.
“You know, this isn’t just a pissing contest.” Allison was still at it.
“No?”
“It’s about communication. And let me catch you up on a few facts. According to delphi, the light brown hair recovered from Himmel’s volkswagen is of European descent. Consuelo is Mexican.”
Jonah thought about that as he wended his way through the rolling hills. The late-afternoon sun cast long shadows on the hillsides, reminding him that it was closing in on five and he hadn’t put anything in his system today besides coffee.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Mia’s wasting her time. The guy in the VW isn’t Consuelo.”
“She’s not wasting her time. Whether this links back to the volkswagen or not, he’s got tribal tattoos and a fresh gash on his arm, and I want to confirm whether he’s responsible for Sophie’s attack.”
“And just how do you propose to do that? I was on the scene that night, Jonah. She didn’t see his face. All you’ve got is a seventy-two-year-old eyewitness who was busy firing his shotgun into the air as this kid took off with a coin purse.”
“We’ve also got blood on the sidewalk.”
A pause. “You read my report.”
“Of course I did.”
Another pause, and Jonah could almost hear her mental wheels turning on the other end of the phone. Allison was smart, but it didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that his interest in Sophie went beyond the normal cop interest in a case. If he wasn’t careful, she’d also figure out he’d asked Mia to run the latest DNA test as a personal favor. Reynolds never would have approved ordering up a DNA test for something as minor as a mugging.
“You really think Consuelo is connected to Himmel?”
“I don’t like the timing,” Jonah said. “Maybe Sophie was targeted by Consuelo because she witnessed an accomplice.”
“But why would he do that?”
“Why do people do most things? Probably someone paid him.”
“And now he’s dead. At the hands of that same someone?”
Jonah didn’t say anything. He took another bend in the road and glanced at his watch.
“Jonah?”
“I’ll let you know what I find out,” he said. “I’m on my way out to Delphi to drop off this sample and run these autopsy pictures by Sophie.”
“Well, you’re going to be disappointed. I just left the lab. Mia’s expecting you, but Sophie’s already gone.”
“Where the hell are you?”
She paused, absorbing the hostility.
“I’m in my car. Why?”
“Why aren’t you at Delphi?” Jonah demanded. “I told you I’d come by today.”
“And I told you I had an appointment to meet with a leasing agent after work.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“I left you a message at your office.”
He grumbled something, and Sophie figured he fell into that annoying subset of people who never checked their voice mail, except on their cell phone.
“So, what’s up?” she asked now. “Where are you and why are you ticked off?”
“I’m on my way to the lab. I need to show you something.”
She heard the urgency in his voice, and her stomach tightened. “What is it?”
“That homicide I caught last night—I just attended the autopsy. Victim’s Roberto Consuelo. I’m ninety percent sure he’s the guy who attacked you in front of your building. I’ve got some photos to show you.”
“All right.” She tried to sound calm, but her pulse was racing. “You might be better off talking to the store manager. He’s the one who—”
“Ric already talked to him. Got a tentative ID.” Sophie eased her foot off the gas as she rounded a bend. This was a curvy road, and she needed to concentrate, not let her imagination run wild with hypotheticals.
“Sophie?”
“I’m here. I just … Do you know who killed him?”
“We don’t know who, but what. Two rounds, point-blank range. We haven’t run the ballistics yet, but we could get lucky and get a match. I’ve got a couple of slugs here for Scott Black to look at.”
“How long will that be? Don’t ballistics tests usually take a while?”
“Depends. Where are you, exactly? We need to connect—the sooner, the better.”
“Well, I could cancel my appointment.” A truck appeared in her rearview mirror. It was moving fast, and she drifted over so it could pass. “I’m supposed to see an apartment at five-thirty and—”
“Cancel it. This is important.”
“Yeah, and here I thought finding a safe place to live was important.” She glanced in the mirror as the pickup loomed closer. “Jerk,” she muttered.
“What?”
“Not you.” She put on her turn indicator and eased toward the shoulder. The truck sped up. Her stomach tightened as she watched it close the gap.
“Sophie?”
He was right up on her bumper now, close enough for her to see the Dodge emblem and the mud spatter on the black hood. Her foot hovered over the brake. She didn’t want to get rear-ended, but as he inched even closer, she realized that that was exactly his intention.
“Oh my God.”
“What is it? Sophie?”
Her phone clattered to the floor as she gripped the wheel with both hands. He lurched closer. She instinctively hit the gas, even as her brain screamed for her to slow down.
She tore her gaze from the mirror and looked ahead, saw the black S on the yellow sign. Fear snaked down her spine. She was going much too fast.
The bend was upon her. She swerved, taking it wide. The tires skidded, and for an instant she had a bird’s-eye view of her Tahoe as it careened across the yellow line. She hung on through the turn, praying that she wouldn’t hit the oncoming car that was sure to be just around the corner.
“Please, please, please …”
To her right, an empty lane and a tree-dotted hillside. To the left, a steep drop-off. She clenched the wheel. She prayed. The curve finally eased, and she fought her way back into the right-hand lane.
Another glance in the mirror. Her heart seized. He was there again, black as death, as she hurtled into the next turn.
He’s going to hit me.
She accepted the fact calmly as she pressed the brake in a last-ditch effort to keep control. But it was too late. She had too much speed. The tires squealed. The guardrail seemed to suck at her as she crossed the yellow line once more. She gripped the wheel, struggling for her lane, fighting for the hillside instead of the cliff.
Another sickening skid. A metallic crunch. She held her breath as the tires left the road.
Everything slowed, like a film in slow motion. She sailed through air and it felt like water, thick and blue around her. Her
stomach dropped and her gaze fell on her hands, tight on the steering wheel. She registered the veins protruding beneath the white skin as she hung on for her life, for that fleeting, fragile life that was about to get ripped away from her. And she saw a thousand separate details leaping up at her, vying for her attention in the last endless moment: the flash of sun in the mirror, the green trees rushing past, Jonah’s voice, calling her name from some unreachable place.
She knew he would find her. He’d be first on the scene, like he’d been once before, and he’d see her mangled, lifeless body, and she knew that it would cut him to the bone—the kind of cut that never really healed—because he saw himself as her protector. She realized that now in this tumbling, too-slow moment when her life stood stark and insignificant before her and she was flying headlong into death after too many wasted hours and days doing nothing much that mattered. She’d cheated death before, and now it was her turn.
She felt the relentless pull of gravity, yanking the front of her car down, dragging her straight back to earth and into the wall of trees. And she suddenly rejected death, with every fiber of her being, because even if it was her turn, she was a survivor, and she was going to fight until her very last heartbeat.
The wall of trees rushed up. The windshield popped. The entire world reached out and smacked her in the face.
Jonah raced through the curves and switchbacks, searching for the Tahoe. His heart thundered. His hands were slick on the steering wheel as he replayed the last few seconds over and over.
There had been a scream and then a high, excruciating shriek of metal just before a silence that froze him to the core.
And then he saw them, there on the highway. Two black parallel skid marks crossing over the yellow line.
“Fuck!”
He stomped on the brake and slammed to a jaw-rattling stop on the narrow shoulder. He jammed the gearshift into park and leaped from the truck, his heart pounding in his chest like a herd of cattle.
He followed the marks and spotted the twisted guardrail he’d missed just seconds earlier. It had been shorn from all but one of its posts and flung over the hillside like a piece of trash.
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