She exhaled a quiet sigh of relief. Now he sounded like himself. Even though she barely knew him, she liked him. Underneath his inclination toward dark humor and his tendency to try to wrestle control of a situation away from her, he seemed to be a kind and compassionate man. She’d seen that in the way he’d looked out for the people at the diner during the gunfight in Sweetwater. In the way he’d interacted with Al and Barb. And in the way he’d treated her and tried to protect her each time they’d been attacked.
So it didn’t necessarily mean anything if she wanted to look out for him, too. They were just temporary partners watching each other’s backs.
“I won’t pretend to understand your relationship with your brother,” she said, “but I know you don’t want to hurt him. You don’t want to have to shoot him.”
“I’ve changed my mind. Right now I do want to shoot him.”
He shook his head and glanced her direction, a half smile playing across his lips and then quickly vanishing. But even before that, she’d known he was kidding. More dark humor. More trying to find a way to cope with a horrible situation.
“If you don’t want to be there when your brother is arrested, you don’t have to be,” she continued doggedly, because she could tell she’d struck a nerve. She could call Toby and Tim again. They always came through in a pinch.
The ugly truth was that Matt had a significant drug history. He might be strung out when they found him, appearing and behaving in a way that would make him nearly unrecognizable to Jason.
“You don’t have to stick with this until the bitter end,” she said. “I’ll look out for your brother. I’ll make sure things are done right.”
Jason rubbed his hand over his bristly black hair and then dropped it back down onto the steering wheel. “You sound like you’re sure you’re going to find him.”
“I have to think positive. That’s how I get the job done.”
“If it’s that simple, why haven’t the cops already found him?”
“Active, dangerous situations are their priority. It’s one of the reasons why bounty hunters exist. We make tracking down a fugitive our priority. Lieutenant Walker at the Denver PD told me when I spoke with him after the shooting yesterday that tracking down the members of your brother’s old criminal gang is his main goal.
“Beyond that, the cops have their advantages, and we have ours. They have access to governmental and financial databases. If Matt tries to take a plane, a train or a bus out of town, they’ll find him. They can track him if he uses his credit card. They can locate him through his cell phone if he leaves the battery in it. Now that his case has heated up, they’ll dedicate more of their technological resources to catching him. We have the advantage that people who won’t talk to the cops will talk to us. And if your brother gets word that we’re looking for him, he might step forward and give himself up to us. Whereas he might not turn himself in to the police.”
“Are you ready if Matt doesn’t want to give himself up and he turns violent?” Jason asked grimly.
“If things get bad, I’ll call the police, without hesitation. Ideally, I’d like to call for reinforcements before the actual capture. Maybe get Kevin to help. He’s good at keeping people calm.”
“Doesn’t that Kevin guy have some other bounty hunter he can work with?” Jason snapped. The jealous tone to his voice made her heart skip an extra beat.
“The goal is to arrest the fugitive myself rather than have the cops do it,” Lauren said, feeling her cheeks warm as she ignored the jab about Kevin. “Because that’s how I earn my fugitive recovery fee.”
They drove a few more miles in silence. “I keep thinking about what I could have done differently so that Matt wouldn’t have turned out the way he has,” Jason said.
The raw emotion in his voice told Lauren that this was something that had been eating at him for a while.
“He’s a grown man,” she said. “And you’re his brother, not his dad. You aren’t responsible for how he lives his life.”
She knew that their father had passed away six years ago. And that he’d never quite been able to pull himself back together emotionally after his wife died when the twins were twelve.
“Of course I’m responsible for Matt. He’s my twin brother. I should have done a better job of looking out for him.”
Lauren had no idea what to say in response to that. The world sometimes seemed to be divided into two kinds of people. Those who felt a sense of responsibility to others, like Jason did to his brother, like she did to her mom. And those who thought only of themselves, like her dad—and like Matt.
At least Lauren’s dad hadn’t ever made her the target of vicious gunmen intent on killing her. She supposed she should be grateful for that.
* * *
Twenty minutes later they were driving into Boulder.
Conversation between them had trailed off into comfortable silence, and Jason was glad. Because he’d revealed more of himself than he’d intended to when he’d told her he felt responsible for Matt. And that had left him emotionally exposed. A feeling he didn’t particularly care for.
He knew that his brother was responsible for his own decisions. But sometimes logic and reason just didn’t seem to matter.
Despite the uncomfortableness of their conversation, he’d found himself wanting to ask Lauren some questions about herself. Not anything deep or profound, just simple stuff. What did she do for fun when she wasn’t working? Did she like horses?
Did she have a boyfriend?
He’d started to ask her the first question, and then he’d clamped his mouth shut. Because what was the point? They weren’t friends; they weren’t going to be friends. The only reason that they were in this car together was because his brother was a wanted criminal and she was a bounty hunter tracking him down. It was her job. That was not a personal relationship.
Today, tomorrow or maybe a few days after that, they’d find Matt. She’d haul him off to jail, and Jason would head back to Sweetwater. He had a neglected ranch that he was trying to build back up. Horses he needed to tend to. And he had his welding business to manage.
Lauren would stay around Denver, moving on to capture the next bail jumper who needed to be tracked down.
There was no possibility of a future between them, and he knew that.
Jason hadn’t been in an emotionally close relationship with a woman for a long time. He was out of practice. And he was taking her polite concern a little too seriously.
“I thought of a couple of bars in Boulder where Matt liked to hang out a few years ago,” he said as they rolled into town. “After that, we should probably look online to see where the most popular nightspots are and then go there. Matt definitely likes to be where the action is.”
“Sounds good,” Lauren said. “But before we do that, check your phone and see if any of his friends have gotten back to you.”
Jason parked the car and then checked his phone. Years ago, before he’d gone into the military, Jason had hung out with Matt in Boulder a few times and had met some of his friends. Last night he’d tried to think of the names of some of those people. He’d managed to find three people who he thought might be them and he’d left messages on their social media sites. As of right now, he hadn’t heard back from any of them. Maybe he never would.
“Nothing,” he said to Lauren, shaking his head.
“Don’t worry, we aren’t giving up.”
Her confidence and optimism were encouraging.
They both got out of the car. He pulled the tags off his newly purchased baseball cap and sunglasses and put them on.
Lauren grabbed some of the flyers with Matt’s picture from the box in the back seat.
Jason pulled his phone back out of his pocket, planning to call Matt again and leave another message. If nothing else, maybe irritation from Jason’s constant calls would motivate Mat
t to finally call him back. He hesitated before he tapped Matt’s name on the screen. “Should I tell him I’m in Boulder? He might agree to meet with me. But he also might skip town.”
“Tell him you’re here,” she said decisively. “If he is in town and he bolts, there’s a decent chance the police will find him. They’ll either see his car on the road or track him by credit card activity. On the other hand, if he’s in town and decides to meet with you, well, then our problem is solved.”
Jason made the call, and of course it went to voice mail. He left a message asking his brother to meet up with him.
They went to the first bar on Jason’s list of places where Matt used to hang out. The bartender they spoke with wouldn’t accept the flyer that Lauren tried to hand to him. He barely glanced at the picture of Matt, said they hadn’t seen him before and asked them to leave.
“Do you think that guy’s refusal to help us is a sign that he’s covering for Matt?” Jason asked Lauren when they stepped back outside. He figured she’d had enough experience to know if that was odd behavior.
“Not necessarily. Most people are helpful,” she said. “Some just aren’t.”
They arrived at the second bar on Jason’s list. Business was slow. A guy was sweeping the floor, and the bartender was stacking clean glasses on the back bar. She noticed them as they drew closer. When Jason took off his sunglasses, she did a double take. And then stared at him, eyebrows raised, uncertainty written on her face.
“The bartender thinks you look familiar, but she’s not sure,” Lauren said quietly. “I think it would be best if you talked to her.”
Jason drew in a deep breath. Maybe this was his shot, his only shot, at finding someone who could connect him with Matt.
“Ease into asking her about your brother,” Lauren added. “Keep your tone conversational so she doesn’t get defensive. People don’t like to answer questions when they feel like they’re being grilled.”
“Got it.”
The bartender placed a couple of cocktail napkins on the bar as they stepped up. “What’ll you have?” she asked, her gaze resting on Jason.
“Do I look familiar to you?” he asked. The bartender had long blond hair and looked like she was in her late twenties.
“As a matter of fact, you do.”
“Maybe you know my brother. His name is Matt Cortez.”
She smiled broadly. “You sure do look like him.”
“We’re identical twins.”
“Huh. So, what are you drinking?”
“Do you know where my brother is staying these days?” Jason asked. “We’re trying to meet up with him, and we can’t seem to get connected.”
“Sorry, I can’t help you. I don’t know him that well. I just know him because he’s a regular here.”
“Has he been in here lately?” Jason asked, cautiously hoping that they finally might be catching up with him.
“He was here two or three nights ago.”
Jason exhaled a deep sigh of relief. There was no guarantee that Matt was still in town. But at least there was a chance.
“My name’s Jason. And this is Lauren.”
“Katie,” the bartender said, reaching across the bar and extending her hand first to Jason and then to Lauren. “Nice to meet you.”
“Can we leave a flyer with you?” Lauren asked, setting one down on the bar. “It has a couple of contact phone numbers on it. Maybe you could show it to some of the other employees here or to your regular customers. And if anybody knows anything, we’d sure appreciate a call.”
“Is Matt in some kind of trouble?” Katie asked, raising an eyebrow.
“We’re trying to help him,” Lauren said.
As they left the bar a few minutes later, Jason thought about the sad truth that Matt probably didn’t have any real friends. Just his criminal cohorts. Or people like Katie, who barely knew him.
Matt needed Jason whether he realized it or not. Unfortunately, by coming to Boulder, Jason may have just pointed a large arrow toward his brother’s location. Which meant his search here needed to produce results quickly, before it was too late.
SEVEN
“I think Katie the bartender knows more about your brother’s whereabouts than she let on,” Lauren said to Jason.
“You might be right.”
They were seated in a booth in the small restaurant attached to the hotel in Boulder where they’d be staying for the night. They were eating an early dinner after having each rented a room. It seemed like a good idea to stay in town so that they could respond quickly if anyone called them with information about Matt.
Jason turned his dark eyes toward her. As they’d spent the day walking around Boulder, talking to people and leaving behind flyers, he’d opened up to her a little bit more and asked her some questions. They’d talked about their pasts, about family and about what they hoped to do with their futures.
He was a man of faith. Which, given his behavior and everything he’d said and done since she’d met him, shouldn’t have come as a surprise when he’d mentioned it this afternoon. So much for her detective skills. Although, to be fair to herself, she been trying not to notice too much about him. She was trying to capture his bail-jumping brother. It wasn’t like she’d met him through mutual friends on a ski trip or in a night class or something. This, the time they were spending together, was business.
His identical twin brother was a criminal. Jason could be a criminal, too. Just one that hadn’t gotten tangled up with the law yet. Maybe he was a charming con man like her dad. That man knew how to fake emotion he didn’t really feel to get what he wanted. Jason could be the same way. How could she tell? She’d only known him three days.
“What makes you think Katie knows something about Matt?” Jason asked.
“The facts of the situation. Katie works in a bar, where people start talking and drinking and often end up saying more than they meant to in public. She sees who comes in, who they arrive with and who they leave with. It could be that I’m wrong, and that she doesn’t know anything. But I’m more inclined to think she didn’t tell us anything more about Matt because she’s afraid to speak up. It might be that she wants to talk to Matt before he talks to us. Or she could be holding out until we offer her money.”
“If she’s got information, I’d be happy to pay her for it.”
“Okay.” Lauren nodded. “The next time we see her, we’ll take that route.”
“I’ve never bribed anybody for information before,” Jason said. “How much should I pay her?”
His phone rang before she could answer. He picked it up from the tabletop and looked at the screen. Then glanced at her. “It’s somebody who is not on my contact list. Maybe it’s somebody calling with information on Matt.”
He answered the call and after a few seconds said, “Thanks for calling me, Ray,” while looking at Lauren with his eyebrows raised.
Ray Huffman? Lauren silently mouthed the name, and Jason nodded. Ray was one of Matt’s friends that Jason had tried to contact through social media.
She listened to Jason’s side of the conversation, though it didn’t give her much specific information. And then Jason said, “Holly? I don’t think I ever met her. Do you have her number?”
Lauren grabbed a pen and a scrap of paper out of her purse and slid them across the table toward him.
“Okay,” he said, jotting down a phone number. “Do you know where she lives or works?”
He started scribbling something on the scrap of paper. It didn’t look like an address—it was more like directions.
Jason stopped writing. “Have you heard back from him?” he asked into the phone, his facial expression going from hopeful to disappointed over the next few seconds. “I haven’t heard anything from him, either. Not since the day before yesterday.”
While the phone call continued, Lauren
turned the scrap of paper around so she could read it. Then she signaled to their server for the check. When it arrived Jason was just ending his phone call. He handed the server a credit card and held up a hand when Lauren started to protest. “I don’t care if it’s a business expense for you. I’m paying for dinner.”
“Thank you.” Lauren gestured toward the scrap of paper. “So, Holly. Is this Matt’s girlfriend?”
“Ray isn’t sure. Holly and Matt lived together for a short while a few years ago. They split up but still have some common friends. Matt mentioned Holly in passing the last time Ray saw him, maybe a month ago. Ray asked if Holly and Matt were back together, and Matt changed the subject.”
“So what’s Ray’s story? Does he live here in Boulder?”
“No. He lives in Denver. Says he stopped hanging out with Matt a while ago. He told me that all the drugs and the booze and the criminal life had changed Matt so much that Ray barely knew him anymore. But then he ran into Matt about a month ago, and Matt seemed different. More regretful—scared, even. Like something was going wrong. But when Ray asked him about it, he shrugged it off.
“After Ray saw my message to him on Facebook he tried to call Matt a couple of times before he called me, but the calls went straight to voice mail.” Jason sighed. “I’m starting to wonder if Matt is even still alive.”
“Don’t get discouraged,” Lauren said as Jason signed the receipt for their dinner and they both slid out of their booth. “We just need to take things one step at a time.” She gestured toward the scrap of paper in his hand. “Let’s start with paying Holly a visit.”
They paused in the hotel lobby, where Jason called Holly’s number. He obviously got no answer and left a voice mail message. Then he started walking rapidly toward the exit.
Lauren caught up to him and reached out to tug on his arm. He stopped and turned to her.
“I know how it feels to finally get a good lead after a dry spell,” she said. “You want to run wherever that lead takes you. But we need to remember that the people who’ve tried to kill us three different times are still out there. And now that we’ve walked through town asking lots of different people questions about your brother, there’s no telling what we’ve stirred up.”
Colorado Manhunt Page 15