Erin Solomon Mysteries, Books 1 - 5

by Jen Blood

  He stared at me blankly, phone still in hand.

  “Raccoons, Diggs,” I said, feeling every inch the idiot I knew I was. My hands were shaking—not exactly what you’re hoping for from someone locked and loaded. “I’m fine. Look: It’s just a trio of varmints getting into the trash.”

  “We should get Chris out here anyway. Just in case.”

  “Just in case what? The coons start rioting? Diggs—come on.”

  He looked out the window as though to confirm my story, and nodded before he returned to the phone. “I think we’ve got it under control, Chris. Sorry to wake you.”

  After he’d hung up, he returned to my side. “You okay?” He looked shaken, all the light and humor I’d seen earlier gone.

  “It was just raccoons, Diggs,” I reminded him. “I think we’ll all survive.”

  He didn’t look so sure. He double checked to make sure the back door was locked, and turned off the outside light while I got Einstein back in hand.

  “I won’t feel safe until everyone behind whatever you’ve stumbled onto in the past year is behind bars. Or better yet, wiped off the planet.”

  Diggs is a reporter, not a warrior—those aren’t the kind of declarations he makes lightly. I took his hand and pulled him back toward the living room.

  “You want to catch these guys? Then stop distracting me, and help me figure out this fucking encryption.”

  An hour later, the house was still. Diggs snored softly on the couch while I sat on the floor in front of the coffee table, eyes burning, and stared at the computer screen.

  During our consult, Diggs’ pal Jesse had steered me toward a few decryption programs created by friends of his in the business. So far, I had tried almost all of them without success. Einstein lay with his head in my lap, fuzzy belly in the air, while I continued to torture myself.

  This memory card was all we had—a card that may or may not hold the key to an alleged mass suicide nearly twenty-five years ago; to the motivation and people behind the near-apocalypse in Kentucky; to a serial killer who had nearly claimed Diggs and me as victims last summer. Otherwise, I had nothing to show for the past year of work—a year that had almost killed Diggs and me multiple times over. A year when I’d learned that my father’s supposed suicide the summer of 2000 was staged and he was alive... A year when my whole life, in essence, had been turned upside down.

  There had to be something on this card that could explain why.

  I rubbed my eyes, took a deep breath, and returned to the computer. Diggs shifted behind me, his hand settling on my shoulder.

  “You should get some sleep,” he mumbled. “Start fresh tomorrow.”

  “I just want to try one more thing. You can go on home if you want, though.” Absently, I hit a couple of keys on the computer, then gave the okay for the program to run.

  “I can stay,” Diggs said. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

  “You don’t need to do that.”

  He sat up, stretched, and began massaging the knots from my shoulders. “I know I don’t. I’d feel better, though.”

  “So you can save me from anymore wildlife gone rogue?”

  As if on cue, Einstein righted himself and sat up, ears perked. Diggs and I both ignored him when he raced to the kitchen this time.

  “Maybe,” Diggs said. “Or maybe—shit.” His hands stilled. “Erin.”

  I’d been focused on the incredible things Diggs was doing to my tensed muscles, but at his tone I looked up. “What?”

  “It’s working.”

  For a split second, I wasn’t sure what he meant. Then, I looked at the computer.

  What had been a screen scrolling miles of meaningless symbols suddenly transformed, replaced by line after line of data—mostly alphanumeric entries, about twenty characters long. I still didn’t know what they stood for, but they were at least legible.

  “Do they mean anything to you?” Diggs asked, nodding toward the numbers.

  I looked at the first entry: 40N85W3062210511115DM. “Not really, but it looks a hell of a lot easier to break than what we were dealing with before.”

  Einstein raced back into the living room, barking furiously at Diggs and me.

  “Tommy’s down the well again,” Diggs said. “I hate to break it to you, ace, but I think your dog needs sedation. Or intensive therapy.”

  “He’s just oversensitive since Kentucky. Can you blame him? Stein—seriously, chill. We’re all right.” I returned my attention to the computer screen. “What do you think this means?” I asked Diggs.

  Before he could answer, my cell phone rang. It was after one a.m. The number came up as Private Caller.

  Nothing good comes from calls after midnight, in my experience.

  One look at Diggs told me he was thinking the same thing. Einstein gave up on rallying the troops and raced back to the kitchen.

  I answered the phone. “Hello?”

  “Get out of the house.”

  If the words themselves hadn’t scared the bejeezus out of me, the voice did the trick. Fear climbed my spine and rattled my heart.

  “What? Who is this?”

  “You know who it is. Damn it, Erin, get out of the house. Now.”

  Diggs looked at me curiously. “Mitch Cameron,” I mouthed to him. He was on his feet in an instant, looking just as unnerved as I felt. For more than twenty years, Mitch Cameron had shown up in all the wrong places at the worst possible times in my life. I happened to know for a fact that he was a murderer several times over… And yet, more than once, he’d been Diggs’ and my saving grace.

  “What’s happening?” I asked Cameron.

  “I don’t have time to explain,” he said. “But you’re in danger. The evidence your mother has been holding over my people was just destroyed—there’s no more leverage. Jenny is coming for you.”

  “Where the hell are we supposed to go?” I demanded.

  “I’ll contact you; just don’t go to the police. That’s the first place Jenny will check—and they won’t slow her down, if that’s where you are. Lie low until you hear from me. I need to try and find your mother before they—” There was the distinctive pop of rapid gunfire on the other end of the line.

  “Cameron?”

  The phone went dead. Before I could even contemplate that, I heard glass shatter on the second floor. The house alarm blared as the lights went out. Fear seized me like a fist. There was no time to hesitate—no time to think.

  “We have to get out of here,” I said to Diggs. “Grab the laptop and your gun; I’ll get Einstein.”

  He didn’t ask questions, just closed the computer and shoved it into my backpack. Einstein cowered beside me, all bravado long gone.

  “Through the garage,” Diggs shouted over the alarm. He pulled me toward the door, Stein on my heels. Less than ten seconds after we’d heard the glass break, we bolted through the side door into the attached garage, where I hoped like hell someone wasn’t waiting for us to make exactly that move.

  The garage was empty.

  I shoved Einstein into the back of my Jetta, manhandled him into a doggy seatbelt I’d gotten for slightly less dramatic scenarios, and got in the front as I mashed my hand down on the garage door opener. Diggs jumped into the passenger’s side and slammed the door.

  Inside the house, there was a whoosh like all the air had been sucked from the building. I slammed my foot down on the accelerator without waiting for the garage door to come up all the way, bracing myself for the impact when the top of the car hit the bottom of the door. The sound of metal on metal screamed through the night. Einstein yelped, cowering behind us. I was barely clear of the garage door when an explosion rocked the house, propelling the Jetta into the street and almost into the neighbor’s yard before I regained control. A second explosion followed. The windows of my mother’s house blew out.

  The second I was in control of the car again, I was blinded by the glare of high beams.

  “Shit—Erin!” Diggs shouted.

 
“I see it, I see it.” I put the car in gear and hit the gas, veering out of the way as a black SUV sped past, narrowly missing us. I could just make out a woman’s face on the way by, her hair pulled back and pure murder in the set of her jaw. Jenny Burkett: The bitch who’d left Diggs for dead just before the final countdown in Kentucky.

  “It’s her,” I said. “Cameron was right.”

  Diggs already had his phone out. “Head for the sheriff’s station. We can regroup there—give them a description and let them handle this.”

  “Cameron said we can’t go to the police,” I said. “We need to hide until he calls back.”

  “And you’re listening to him? You’ve had nightmares about the man since you were ten years old… Now you think it’s a good idea to start taking his advice?”

  “Diggs, just—please. We need to get in touch with Kat. The puffin thing is through the college up in Bar Harbor—you should be able to reach someone if you contact them.”

  I sped down Littlehope’s main stretch. Behind us, Kat’s house was now a fireball in the rearview mirror. Littlehope’s volunteer fire department was already mobilizing at their station on Main Street, but I didn’t dare to stop. I knew from experience that Jenny and her people—whoever those people were—didn’t give a rat’s ass about collateral damage. They wouldn’t blink at the idea of taking out all of Littlehope at this point, if it meant they could get rid of Diggs and me.

  I drove past Diggs’ father’s church and Kat’s medical clinic, Bennett’s Bar and Lobster Shanty, the turnoff to Edie Woolrich’s residential home… The pavement was greasy on Route 97, the two-lane stretch of rutted, twisting road that leads from Littlehope to coastal Route 1. Diggs white-knuckled the car’s Oh Shit handle while I clutched the steering wheel. He craned his neck to see behind us, looking for any sign of Jenny.

  It didn’t take long.

  “Someone’s coming up fast behind us,” he said.

  “Can you tell if it’s her?”

  “At that speed? I’m thinking it’s a pretty good bet.”

  We were still ten miles from Route 1, with nothing to prevent Jenny from running us off the road into oblivion. I eased off the accelerator. Made the conscious decision to avoid tapping the brake.

  “What are you doing?” Diggs asked.

  “Just trust me,” I ground out. The SUV got closer. And closer. Ahead of us, the road dipped and curved, a barely discernible turnoff just ahead on our right.

  “Erin—” Diggs warned.

  I didn’t listen. At the last possible second, I turned the wheel hard to the right. The car slid, losing purchase on the slick pavement. I willed myself not to panic. Jenny sped past, continuing along 97. I was too focused on recovering from the slide to see whether she turned around to come at us again.

  Einstein whimpered in the backseat while I prayed silently that we could stay upright. Time froze in a haze of fast-moving trees and the terrifying, weightless feeling of a car out of control.

  Somehow, miraculously, I recovered from the skid. Another endless second or two later, we were back on the road. I took a fraction of a second to get my breath and my bearings. We were on Cross Road, a series of picturesque twists and turns that’s beautiful in the light of day. By night at sixty miles an hour in a snowstorm, it’s not nearly as idyllic.

  I pressed my foot back down on the accelerator.

  “She’s back again,” Diggs said, a few minutes later.

  “Damn it.”

  “You’re doing great. Just keep going—we’ll make it.”

  “Have you reached the college?” I asked. “You have to keep trying them—we have to get to Kat.”

  “She’s on Raven’s Ledge, right? Out near Mount Desert?”

  I checked the rearview, noting the high beams bearing down on us. “Yeah,” I agreed. “I think she said there’s a boat that goes out from Bar Harbor.”

  “Jamie Flint’s business is out there. You want me to call her?”

  Jamie Flint made her living training some of the best search and rescue dogs in the country. Last summer, she and those rescue dogs were responsible for tracking down Diggs and me during our debacle with the serial killer in northern Maine. I hesitated.

  “Sol?” Diggs pressed.

  “I’m thinking.” Behind us, those high beams were getting closer by the second.

  “This isn’t like bringing a civilian in on it,” he insisted. “Jamie’s good. She knows what she’s doing, and she’s got muscle behind her. We can’t do this alone—if we’ve learned anything in the past year, it should be that.”

  Up ahead as we came around a hairpin curve, blue and red lights flashed on the side of the road. I saw the glow of the SUV’s brake lights in my rearview, and slowed down myself. A pickup had turned over on the shoulder along one of those picturesque twists and turns we were currently navigating, the top of the cab smashed and the wheels still spinning.

  I barely waited until we were clear of the emergency crew before I hit the accelerator again.

  “Go ahead,” I said to Diggs, after a long few seconds of thought. “Call Jamie. See if she can get us out to that island.”

  “There’s another call I think we should make,” Diggs said.

  “I’m not calling Juarez.”

  “We need someone on our side here, Sol.”

  “Not him,” I said evenly. “I told you: Call Jamie. I’m not calling my ex-boyfriend in the middle of the night to save our asses.”

  “Goddamn it, Erin—”

  “No.”

  I knew he was frustrated, but at the moment I didn’t much care. I stayed quiet, focused on the road ahead. Finally, he punched in Jamie’s number. I kept driving.

  I managed to get some distance from Jenny by rocketing along a series of side streets once we hit the town of Thomaston. She was back again by the time I turned onto Old County, a country road that serves as a less-traveled shortcut for locals determined to avoid Route 1 at the height of tourist season in midcoast Maine. Diggs snapped his phone shut.

  “Jamie will meet us at the Bar Harbor ferry terminal,” he said. “She’ll have a boat and a crew.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that. She’s apparently got some interests out on the island herself… If there’s trouble, she wants to stop it before it gets out of hand.”

  I sped up along a twisting stretch of road where metal guardrails and cement walls hemmed us in. Rockland, Maine, is home to some of the deepest quarries in the world, thanks to a once-booming market for the limestone found there. The deepest of those quarries run along Old County Road—vast, watery graves where people have killed themselves and one another for decades. Diggs’ brother had died in one such quarry, when they were just kids. Now, Diggs hung onto the dashboard with both hands as the guardrail loomed closer.

  “Erin—”

  “Just hang on,” I said through clenched teeth.

  We made it over the narrowest of bridges, along another stretch of open road, and then I hung another fast right with no warning. A stone wall loomed large at the corner, but I kept my head and managed to avoid it.

  Behind us, Jenny wasn’t so lucky. I heard a crash and the blare of a car horn. I didn’t waste time celebrating.

  “Nice driving,” Diggs said beside me.

  My stomach churned. “Thanks. This reporting thing’s getting a little stale… I’m thinking NASCAR would make a nice second career.”

  He leaned back in his seat, exhaling slowly. “You’re a natural. Just do me a favor and leave Stein and me in the stands, would you?”

  To bring that point home, Einstein puked in the backseat.

  I knew exactly how he felt.

  On Main Street, Rockland, all the lights in town were out. The only vehicle in sight was a plow truck, yellow lights casting shadows on old brick buildings and trendy shop windows. We had lost Jenny, but I didn’t plan on waiting for her to catch up to us again. Cameron still hadn’t called back. Since it had sounded like high noon at
the OK Corral when he hung up, I wasn’t holding my breath until we heard from him again.

  I took a left down a little side alley off the main drag, and stopped in a dark parking lot that stood empty except for a hulking green dumpster and a very well-used pickup truck. Einstein perked up, his tail wagging hesitantly now that we were back in familiar territory.

  “I assume you have a plan,” Diggs said.

  We were in the employee parking lot behind the Loyal Biscuit, Einstein’s favorite local hangout. I nodded toward the pickup beside the dumpster.

  “That’s Mel’s truck,” I said. “They use it for local deliveries… We can take that.”

  “Seriously? I don’t think that’s a great idea.” Mel is one of the gang at the Biscuit: a pint-sized pirate who’s run Diggs up and down more than once for some story or other he’s reported over the years. She’s cute as hell, tough as nails, and Maine to the core. Diggs is alternately turned on by her or terrified of her—though he’ll only admit to the turned-on thing.

  “Who would you rather face: a slightly-pissed-off Melody, or Jenny and her psychotic syndicate?”

  Diggs frowned. “Hang on—let me think about that one.”

  “Suck it up, Diggins. Unless you have a better idea, this is our only option.”

  I scrawled a mostly illegible note in my notebook promising my firstborn if we wrecked the truck, and stuck it on the dashboard of my car. Meanwhile, Diggs took Einstein for a quick pee on the nearest brush pile. Mel’s key was strategically placed in one of those magnetic Hide-A-Key deals under the wheel well. I snagged that, unlocked the pickup, and transferred our stuff. Five minutes later, Diggs, Einstein, and I were crowded into the cab of the pickup. This time, Diggs was behind the wheel.

  “Just remember,” I said as he pulled back onto Main Street, “it’s your ass on the line if you break this thing.”

  Diggs grimaced, but he didn’t ease up on the accelerator. He headed north while I prayed to some nameless deity that Kat was still out there somewhere. Preferably alive, with all of her limbs. If we could reach her safely, I swore to the heavens that I would change my ways: clean up my language, save the planet, help little old ladies cross the street.