Blood Trails (The Heir Hunter Book 1)

by Diane Capri

  Flint knew how these things tended to play out in small towns back then, when law enforcement had limited resources. Record keeping was usually the last thing on the to-do list. Equipment was old, too. Which all added up to everything Scarlett said was totally plausible. “But the mistaken identity of the second gunman sent the local police down the wrong path?”

  Shaw listened and sipped without adding anything. Maybe he’d learned to wait out Scarlett’s long-winded answers, too. Or maybe she’d already told him all of this and he was simply watching for Flint’s reaction.

  “That’s right,” Scarlett said. “Initially, first responders thought there was only one gunman and he was dead at the scene, so they were in no particular hurry to identify him.”

  “Lack of imagination,” Shaw said, frowning. “Like with the 9/11 attacks. Locals didn’t imagine there would be a different answer.”

  Scarlett nodded and warmed to her story. “The female victim was identified right away, but she wasn’t a suspect. She was a local woman, a customer. When the clerk regained consciousness after surgery two days later, his eyewitness account of a second male suspect caused the local cops to start looking for a second man. They rousted a few deadbeats, showed the dead gunman’s photo around a few hangouts. Stuff like that. No luck. Then they caught a break. It took them a few days to identify the first gunman as Rosalio Prieto using his fingerprints to check criminal records databases. In those records, they found a male known associate who could have been the second gunman.”

  For Shaw’s benefit, she explained, “Known associates are tracked by law enforcement because criminals tend to stick together and travel in the same packs. It’s a way to locate criminals who often have no fixed addresses. The locals put out a BOLO. Two weeks after the robbery, the man turned up dead of a drug overdose in another town. At that point, they thought both gunmen were dead. The robbery case wasn’t technically closed because of the missing gun and money, but they stopped actively investigating.”

  Flint rolled the cigar between his thumb and fingers, feeling the smooth Cuban tobacco. “So you’re thinking Oakwood didn’t know that the locals had bungled the case? She believed she’d been identified and was the subject of a manhunt? That’s why she ran and why she’s still in hiding?”

  “Exactly.” Scarlett hadn’t touched the booze or the cigar. Not because she didn’t appreciate both. She was focused on the case with the same laser intensity she applied to everything. “There’s no statute of limitations on murder. Ballistics prove the second gunman killed that woman in the convenience store. And the second gunman’s criminally responsible for the boyfriend’s death, too. If the cops found out Oakwood was the second gunman, even after all these years they’d issue a warrant for her arrest. The first time she popped up on anybody’s radar, be it a passport or a parking ticket, she’d be arrested, tried, and convicted in a hot second. She’d no doubt get the death penalty, too.” She arched her eyebrows and gave him a flat stare. “We do execute women in Texas, you know.”

  Flint considered the logic as he puffed the cigar. After a few moments, he said, “If we go with that theory, then you’re thinking our Bonnie and Clyde probably had an escape plan in place before the robbery, and she simply followed through on that plan after things went south. Makes sense.”

  Flint paused and nodded, although that theory didn’t seem likely to him. What happened to the baby? Assuming the young parents kept the child, where was she while her parents were liberating the cash from the convenience store? “Do we have any closed-circuit camera footage? It would help me to see how Oakwood carries herself, how she moves. She’ll have changed a great deal since then, but body movements and speech habits are hard to mask.”

  “This store was a relic, Flint. Located at the corner of back and beyond. In 1989.” Scarlett shook her head. “Place was on a well-traveled truck route, though. Fair amount of cash changed hands there over the course of a week. And they’d had robberies before. Even so, no surveillance cameras as far as we know.”

  “How do you know you’re right about Oakwood being the second gunman?” The moment the words were out of his mouth, he wished he could take them back. Scarlett was laying out her theories for Shaw’s benefit. She needed Flint to support her, not shoot holes in her evidence.

  For the first time, she looked defensive. Her chin rose in the way he recognized that meant she’d made up her mind and she wouldn’t back down, no matter what. “The clerk said he wounded the second gunman and the location of the blood evidence shows there were two women in the store, not one. Oakwood disappeared without a trace, maybe that very night. What other reason could there be for her to run away and keep hiding all these years?” Scarlett took a deep breath. “But you’re right that I can’t prove it. Not until we find her. We won’t know for sure until then.”

  “Let me be clear.” Shaw returned to his chair and gazed across the desk toward Flint as if Flint had passed the first test or something. “Even if Katie’s theories are a thousand percent right, I’m not interested in bringing Laura Oakwood to justice. The robbery case was over long ago, and wherever she is, she can stay there as far as I’m concerned. All I want is to find her and buy her mineral rights. I need her signature on the papers. That’s it. We’re not threatening her. Exactly the opposite—when she signs, she’ll be a wealthy woman. She should want to help us. Understood?”

  Flint nodded again, but he didn’t promise. He believed Scarlett was right on all counts because the theory made sense. Oakwood had killed a bystander in the course of committing an armed robbery. Flint didn’t see himself as any kind of cop, and hunting murderers was not his job. But leaving Oakwood free and making her richer than the entire GDP of some third-world countries didn’t sit well with him, either. No time to figure that out now. He’d cross that Rubicon when he came to it.

  Flint shrugged. “There was a lot of blood at the scene and not all of it belonged to the clerk, the customer, or the dead robber?”

  “That’s right,” Scarlett said. “A newer forensic blood analysis technique is how we figured out the escaped killer was a woman, not a man. That was our first break in the Oakwood case.”

  Flint nodded. The blood analysis was how he’d learned about the baby, too. Maybe Scarlett already knew, which made him feel better about not telling her. “But I found no DNA reports on Oakwood in the files. Do we have any?”

  Shaw’s eyes narrowed and then his mouth tilted in what might have been a grin or a smirk or something in between. “We have unidentified blood from the scene, which we believe belongs to her. We’ve tested it. There is nothing in the databases from Oakwood to use for a definitive match, of course. But when she’s located, we should be able to confirm the blood was hers. Katie, please see that he receives those DNA reports. What else do you need right now to get started?”

  “Here’s what I don’t need.” Flint lifted his right ankle and rested it on his left knee, relaxed, as if he hadn’t been attacked in that alley less than an hour ago. “I work alone. Nobody needs to look over my shoulder. If I want help, I’ll ask for it.”

  Shaw’s rugged face closed like a cloud had crossed his features. “Who is following you?” His tone was belligerent, probably faked.

  Flint pulled out his phone and located the snaps of the two goons he’d left in the alley.

  Shaw looked at the photos and shook his head. “I don’t know those guys. Sorry.” Shaw handed the phone to Scarlett.

  “I’ll find out who they are.” She studied the shots, pressed a couple of buttons to send the photos somewhere, and returned Flint’s phone. “Did you pull any ID off them?”

  He shrugged. “Why?”

  “They don’t look all that great in these pictures, so I can’t be sure. But I think they’re a couple of freelance land men I dealt with from Oklahoma a few years ago. They find the owners of unclaimed mineral rights and get a cut of the deal. In this case, it would be a substantial amount of money. Millions. So they’d be highly motivated to
succeed, let’s put it that way.” Scarlett looked Flint directly in the eye. “In the Oklahoma case, the rights owner ended up in the hospital, as I recall. These guys don’t ask nicely.”

  Legitimate land men were often hired for such work. To determine mineral rights ownership, find the owners, and negotiate leases with them on behalf of the oil companies. Usually, they worked for a slice of the royalty pie. It was lucrative work. But these two weren’t like any real land men Flint had ever met.

  “Tell me about it.” Flint’s shoulder complained again, remembering the hard blow he’d delivered, using the gate, to the gnaw-eared guy. The Juan Garcia Field seemed like a project a little too complicated for a freelancer, too. These two guys definitely had the vibe of hired muscle. Mercenaries, probably.

  Flint leveled a steady gaze toward Shaw. “If you didn’t hire these knuckle-draggers, then who did?”

  “Felix Crane, most likely. He’s the only one in line with a claim to Juan Garcia Field if I can’t exercise my option.” Shaw shrugged and swigged his Scotch. “Who else would it be?”

  Crane. So the entire time he was chatting Flint up at the café this morning, his plan B was to disable him from a job only he could do. Which meant that Crane was not only devious but dangerous as well. Good to know.

  Flint stood. “Is there anything else before I head out?”

  Scarlett looked up from her chair. “Head where? Nobody knows where Laura Oakwood is.”

  “If this job was easy, you wouldn’t need high-priced talent like me, would you?” Flint walked away, savoring Scarlett’s scowl, while Baz Shaw laughed.

  After he’d put twenty feet of distance between them, Flint turned back and grinned at her. “Are you coming? We’ve got work to do.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Waiting for the elevator, Scarlett never relaxed. Shaw had her wound tighter than usual, and Flint wondered why.

  He smiled. “Maddy called me. She invited me to her birthday party on Saturday.” Maddy was Scarlett’s daughter. She was turning six and Flint found everything about her delightfully amusing. She was a handful for her mother, though, which wasn’t too surprising. As his foster mom used to say, the apple never falls far from the tree.

  “She’s very excited about the party, but she’s insisting that you need to be there.” Scarlett’s frown eased a bit and her lips turned up slightly at the corners. “I told her you wouldn’t miss it unless you were absolutely unable to show up.”

  Flint nodded. “That’s what I told her, too.” He didn’t mention why Maddy was so keen to have him at the party. Scarlett wouldn’t be happy about the present she’d requested. He didn’t have time to peel her off the ceiling right at the moment either.

  Scarlett cocked her head. “I sent you those DNA blood reports, but I haven’t had a chance to look at them all. I’ve been too busy with everything else. We haven’t known about the whole robbery thing for very long, and the police reports are worse than useless. Somebody didn’t like filling out the paperwork back then, I guess.”

  The elevator arrived and they stepped inside. The moment the doors sucked closed, the elevator car seemed to drop from the sky in a free fall that left his stomach on the eightieth floor.

  When they landed with a soft bounce at the bottom, Flint replied, “That’s what I figured.”

  “DNA doesn’t seem important until we find Oakwood and have something to match it to.” She scowled again, wrinkling her face in the way he’d seen thousands of times before. Which meant nothing but trouble coming his way. “What did I miss?”

  Maddy could scrunch her face into that same scowl and for the same reasons, but the look was a lot cuter on a five-year-old.

  He waited until they’d left the building to answer. He glanced around for Crane’s mercenaries. They’d had time to follow by now, but he saw no sign of them.

  He lowered his voice. “Looks like Oakwood could have been a new mom. Blood analysis shows she’d either recently miscarried or delivered, probably within four to six weeks of the robbery.”

  Scarlett’s scowl turned meaner. In Flint’s experience, after she’d screwed up, she was more impossible than ever. She hated to make mistakes. And not reading deep into those blood reports was a major misstep. She was usually much more thorough.

  Drake waited inside the black Lincoln Navigator at the curb out front. Flint opened the door and Scarlett slipped into the backseat. Flint slid in beside her and pressed a button to lock the soundproof privacy screen into place. He flipped the control switch that added frequency interference to the cabin.

  Scarlett arched both eyebrows and pursed her mouth, but she didn’t object to his extra precautions. Too bad she hadn’t been taking those steps all along. Crane and Shaw were two powerful men who would stop at nothing to get what they wanted. Flint expected them to monitor everything she did, even sleeping at night. After his experiences this morning alone, putting a few extra barriers in their way seemed prudent.

  After Drake merged into the flow of traffic, Flint said quietly, “You didn’t know about the blood evidence. So you haven’t checked for live births or abortions in the area hospitals within, say, four to twelve weeks prior to the robbery, have you?”

  He didn’t believe the abortion angle, and Scarlett shouldn’t either. Rosalio Prieto, named for his grandfather, was by all accounts a religious young man. He wouldn’t have agreed to an abortion. Laura could have had the abortion without telling him, but Flint already knew she hadn’t.

  “Easy enough to find out.” Scarlett picked up the thread. They’d worked together many times before. She could often guess how his mind worked. But not always. “The only people who might believe that convenience store was worth robbing were people who already knew a lot about the business and its customers. So Oakwood or the boyfriend was a local. Or they knew someone who was local. There can only be a couple of hospitals within twenty-five miles of that store.”

  “Couldn’t have been that many babies born, or not born, out there during the relevant time frame, either. You should be able to isolate the hospital pretty quickly. Grab the info and then wipe the records to buy us a few more hours once Crane and Shaw or those two land men figure out what we’re doing.” Flint rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. His muscles were feeling stiff. “And while you’re at it, identify those two guys. Get me full background checks on them.”

  “Mind your manners.” Her tone was sharp and her scowl even more fierce. “I don’t work for you, regardless of what Shaw said back there.”

  “Or I could quit. Leave you to do this yourself, now that I’ve pointed you in the right direction.” His tone was harsher than he’d intended, but she’d already caused him a lot of grief today, whether she knew it or not.

  She grinned. But she didn’t argue. No reason to.

  He breathed deeply. Unlike anyone else, sometimes Scarlett got on his last nerve. It was a rare talent she’d displayed that first day at the state-funded boarding school they’d both been dumped into. She’d developed the talent over the years and wielded it as deftly as a surgeon’s scalpel.

  Scarlett always knew when to thrust and when to parry. Sisters were like that, he’d been told. But she wasn’t really his bossy big sister. She just acted like it whenever he let her get away with the game.

  Under different circumstances, he would have told her about Oakwood’s baby. They’d worked together before and usually shared intel. She was trustworthy. Reliable. Working on a short timeline like this would have been easier with her team to help.

  But she was being used. Shaw and Crane were keeping close tabs on her. Safer to assume the two goons were watching her, too. Anticipating her moves. And his. They thought watching her would reveal everything Flint discovered before he chose to report back. So far, they’d been right.

  Time for a change.

  To stay ahead of the problems, he couldn’t trust her as he usually did. As long as Scarlett was easier to find, easier to anticipate, and giving them new information wheth
er she realized it or not, they’d follow her and not him. Which might just give him the breathing room he needed to function effectively.

  He’d rather tell her. He wished he could. But Flint expected trouble at every turn and he was usually not disappointed. No one knew him better than Scarlett. When she found out about the baby, she’d be pissed, but she’d understand why he made that choice. Not that she’d forgive him for it. She’d make him pay, which was only fair.

  “Finding the hospital and records on the abortion, or the baby if there was one, is pure grunt work. My staff can take care of it.” Having won their little contest of wills, Scarlett backed off. She had good instincts. “We’ll identify those two land men. What else?”

  “You know how I work.” His methods were unorthodox, but that was exactly why he succeeded where others failed. He’d tried to analyze his success a few times. Mainly, it came down to using his talents in a way that was unique to him. Not really instinct but choices based on ingrained experience. Whatever words he used to describe how he worked, they’d been inadequate to persuade the relentlessly methodical Scarlett, so he didn’t even try to replow that old ground.

  “The fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants method, you mean?” She scowled, annoyed again. “We don’t have time for that.”

  He shrugged. “Tell you what, you use your methods and find Oakwood first, I don’t get paid. How’s that?”

  “I can’t fail here, Flint.” She drew and held a long breath and folded her hands in her lap. She lowered her voice. “I’ve chosen Shaw instead of Crane. Which means I’ve lost one of my two biggest clients already. I’ve got to keep the other one. I have to keep my business alive and food on the table. I’m on Team Shaw now. And so are you. There’s no going back.”

  “No matter what?” The question was a ritual test of her determination.

  She raised her chin. “No matter what.”