“No,” Joe said. “I stepped out before he could spot me, but I don’t think it worked. I felt his eyes on my back.”
“Who?”
“Killer Max.”
Killer Max? “Joe, is this a new guy you recognize, or are we talking about Peter Nell?”
“If that’s even his real name,” Joe said by way of confirmation.
“Peter Nell?” asked Nate. When I nodded, he held a hand out for the phone.
Like that was going to happen. “Hold on, Joe, I’m just going to go somewhere quiet.”
I slid off the stool and gestured for Nate to follow. The bullring seemed as good a place as any. It was sectioned off behind a glass partition and currently unoccupied. Nate closed the door behind us while I switched to speakerphone and rested the phone on the leather-padded bull’s rump.
“Joe, you’re on speakerphone and Nate’s here.”
Nate walked up. “Joe, you sure this is the same guy from Wellington?”
“Hundred percent,” Joe said, sounding irritable. “He’s at the bar counter, but swiveled around and facing the room. I didn’t see him when we first arrived, but I’d say he’s been here a while. His drink was half gone.”
“Did Jenna see him?” Nate said.
“I’m not sure.”
“Do you want to ask her?”
“Yeah, okay, I’ll ask when she gets back.”
I cut in, “Jenna’s not outside with you?”
“She went to the restroom before I noticed Killer Max,” Joe explained. “I should probably get back before she thinks I’ve run out on her, but what if Killer Max sees me? I don’t want him to suspect we’re onto him.”
Somehow, I doubted poor Peter Nell would immediately jump to the conclusion that we were stalking him. “Get back to the table right now and wait for Jenna.”
“And get another look at this guy,” Nate inserted.
Joe gave a long suffering huff, but the background traffic noise faded, soon replaced by music and chatter. “I don’t see him,” Joe said breathlessly.
“Is Jenna back?”
Nate was more interested in, “He’s not at the bar anymore?”
There was a hushed pause, as if Joe had pressed mute, and the seconds ate at me until he came back on, “I don’t see him anywhere.”
Nate raised a cynical brow on me.
Which I might have been inclined to agree with, if I didn’t know Joe well enough to know he had no reason to bullshit us.
Something felt wrong.
Very wrong.
“Is Jenna back?” I asked again.
“Not yet.”
I met Nate’s eyes with a questioning look.
He nodded. “Sit tight, Joe, we’re on our way.”
I grabbed my phone, held onto it as we hurried out and stopped at the front desk to collect our coats. “I don’t like this.”
“Neither do I.” Nate shoved a hand through his hair, his expression grim. “Try Jenna’s phone.”
“Why?” My heart stopped dead with the fright of a hundred scenarios. Most of them involving Peter Nell’s distorted face. “You think she’s in trouble?”
“Not at all.” Nate eased the grim from his expression, his tone calm and quiet and clearly designed to soothe my irrational fears. “I just like to know where all my players are.”
Easier said than done. Jenna’s phone rang and rang, then cut off to voicemail. I texted her instead of leaving a voice message. If she was speaking to Jack, at least a notification would buzz in.
The night fluttered with large snowflakes as we crossed the parking lot to Nate’s truck. Red and white lights sped past from the avenue beyond, which meant traffic was heavy but thankfully not stalled.
I wasn’t worried, not exactly.
I mean, even if Peter Nell was Killer Max, and he was here, it was only Monday night.
Rehearsal night.
Nothing to see here, folks, come back tomorrow night.
But my bones were jittery and I wouldn’t be happy until we were united again with Joe and Jenna. Actually, scrap that. I wouldn’t be happy until we left this town in our dust. It was official: Brackenport seriously creeped me out.
Nate didn’t speak until we’d merged into the traffic. “I need to ask you something, and I need you to really think about it before jumping to Joe’s defense.” He glanced at me. “Okay?”
Remember when I said I wasn’t worried? It seemed so long ago. “What’s going on, Nate?”
He turned his eyes on the road. “Could Joe have been mistaken about seeing Peter Nell?”
“And by mistaken, you mean lying through his teeth.”
Nate sent me another fleeting glance. “He’s convinced Peter Nell is his Killer Max. And he’s had to deal with our skepticism all day long. Maybe he decided to give us a little nudge.”
Well, when you put it that way…
I sighed heavily. As the reigning ex-wife, I’d obviously been very wrong about Joe at least once before. But when had I ever let that stop me? “Joe may be mistaken, but he’s not messing with us. He believes he saw Peter Nell.”
“Hmm.” Nate opened a compartment on the dashboard to reveal some type of police radio and promptly put out an APB on the silver Mercedes.
I stared at him, slightly shocked. If I’d known he’d put that much stock in my opinion, I might have left a little room for doubt. Sorry, Peter Nell.
Duke’s Saloon didn’t have its own parking and once we’d crossed town, it took another five minutes to find on-street parking one block down. Snow plopped steadily on my head as we hit the sidewalk, a sure sign I’d be sporting the drowned rat look before long. The streetlamps struggled to give off foggy pools of light and there was precious little nightlife on this end of town, mainly industrial office space and darkened frontages.
I peeked at Nate, who caught me peeking and returned a reassuring grin that felt like a kick in the gut. Why did I need a reassuring grin? What the devil was going on inside his detective brain?
On the outside, Duke’s Saloon reminded me of a timber shack, all shoddy woodwork and grimy windows and an actual pair of batwing doors that belonged in a black and white western movie. There was a proper door behind that, thank God, to keep the bitter cold out. The inside was all trampled hay floors and dingy corners where the filtered blue light didn’t have a hope of encroaching. No live band, just hee-haw music blaring half-heartedly from speakers somewhere. Joe and Jenna had definitely drawn the venue short straw.
My gaze skimmed over the bar counter, a slab of wood that stretched the full length of one wall. A grizzled bear of a man stared back at me from behind there, clearly unimpressed with the state of his world. Couldn’t say I blamed him. A few stragglers hugged the bar, a handful more propped up walls or slouched in chairs. If this place was going for authentic appeal, it was lost on the townsfolk.
Joe popped up from a table hidden in shadows and waved us over.
Still no Jenna that I could see.
“Seriously?” I said as I walked up to Joe. “It’s been like, twenty minutes. Where’s Jenna?”
Nate had more pressing concerns. “What’s happening with Peter Nell?”
“He must have left when I was outside talking to you guys,” Joe said. “I haven’t seen him again.”
“Where’s the restroom?” I demanded.
Joe pointed and I went, trying hard to not think about what was crunching beneath my boots. Best case scenario, rat droppings. A shudder rippled through me. Maybe Jenna had jumped out the first window she came across and made a run for it. It’s what I would’ve done, and I had a much higher tolerance when it came to Joe and his recent eccentricities.
A flickering light (naked bulb dangling from the ceiling) guided me into a narrow passage off the main bar area. Nate caught up to me before I reached the door painted with a small cowgirl, Joe a step behind.
“Thanks for the company,” I drawled, “but I’m going in alone, if you don’t mind.”
To be hone
st, I really needed to use the facilities. Apparently draft beer flows straight through me.
Nate put his shoulder to the wall, arms crossed. “Don’t be long.”
I pushed the door open. “Jenna?” Listened a beat. “Jenna?”
That’s all the time Nate gave me.
“Try calling her again,” he said as he shoved his way in alongside me and walked up the line of three stalls, tapping doors partially open with his knuckles.
Joe poked his head around the door. “She’s not here.”
Regular genius.
I rolled my eyes at him and slid my phone from my coat pocket to call Jenna. Two rings, and then I heard it. We all did. The bzzzz of an object vibrating on a hard surface.
Nate backtracked to the first stall, pushed the door all the way open, and then he cursed as he hunched down.
When he came back up, a phone balanced in the palm of his hand. His gaze burrowed into me, dead sober and seriously thoughtful.
The screen remained black.
It looked like Jenna’s phone, but then so did a billion other cell phones.
I cut the call.
The bzzzz stopped.
Called Jenna again.
Bzzzz.
I’m sure I didn’t need to spell it out, but I said it anyway. “This is not good.”
Joe sank against the wall, barely keeping himself upright. “I don’t understand. What does this mean?” he said hoarsely.
Nate tucked Jenna’s phone into an inside jacket pocket and went to investigate the frosted window at the far end of the narrow room. “It’s not latched,” he called back to us as he pushed it wider open and stuck his upper body all the way out, then the rest of his body as he squirreled out of sight.
I ran on over, had to go onto my tiptoes to lean out the window. Nate was already on his feet, his phone out with the flashlight on. “Nate!”
“Hang on…” He walked off, slow, measured steps, the spotlight bouncing low to the ground as he went.
I gnawed my lower lip, watching until the light bobbed off into blackness.
Oh, come on!
Did Nate not know the first rule of creepy horror movies? Always stay together. Do not go wandering off on your own, never to be seen or heard from again.
I dangled my arms out the window and turned my phone flashlight on to get a better look at what had intrigued Nate. Footfalls—not Nate’s—made nearly indistinguishable by the falling snow. And a sweeping, shallow trough in the snow that took longer to wipe away. Right under my nose. The kind of trough a body might make when it landed if it had been shoved out the window.
That morbid thought wrapped around my throat like a strangling vine.
This isn’t happening.
It really isn’t.
I had some experience with my flair for the dramatics and I knew a thing or two about jumping to all the wrong conclusions.
Jenna had not just been kidnapped by Killer Max.
That was just silly.
Her phone had probably fallen out of her pocket and she didn’t realize it was missing. She was more than likely sitting out there right now, in some dark and dusty corner, nursing a drink and hiding out from Joe.
Nate bobbed back into existence in the shape of dark ghoul shrouded in the shadow of torchlight.
“See anything?” I called out as he got closer.
He looked at me a moment, then said almost reluctantly, “The footfalls led to a car that was parked around the back of the neighboring building, some type of storage unit facility. There’s too much damn snow to identify the treads or shoeprints, and the trail goes dead on the main road.”
Are you freaking kidding me? “So, someone slipped out the window and ran off,” I said, desperately clutching at foolish wisps of absolutely nothing. “That’s what you’re saying, right?”
“I’m going around the front.” Nate scrubbed his jaw, turned his shoulder on me. “Meet me at the bar.”
“Nate,” I hissed. “Don’t you dare walk away!”
He paused, looked up at me again.
“I swear to God, Nate, if you don’t tell me what’s going through your head, I swear I’ll—”
We never found out what I’d do, because Nate cut in with a gritty voice, “Peter Nell was here and now Jenna’s missing. That’s all I’ve got, Maddox. I’ve called for backup. The local cops will be here any minute.” Another pause, then, “Are you okay?”
No.
I was so far from okay, okay wasn’t even in my rear vision.
My mind screamed insanities, but I nodded, grimaced, pulled myself together with some deep breathing. I couldn’t fall apart now. Not when Jenna needed me.
“I’m fine,” I clipped out.
“We’ll get her back, Maddox,” Nate said, so softly, so firmly, I actually believed him. “Latch the window, okay? And meet me by the bar.”
And then he was gone, slipping into the shadows.
I latched the window, turned, to find Joe bumped up against me.
He stepped back to give me space. “Nate thinks Peter Nell took her,” he said, not a question.
Doom and fury spitted through my veins. Joe looked terrible, puppy eyes drooping, gaunt in the face, shoulders curled in miserable defeat. I knew it was wrong of me, I saw he already blamed himself more than I ever could, but this was Jenna and she was gone and none of this should be happening.
“This isn’t what’s supposed to happen.” I swallowed to loosen the tightness in my throat. “Jenna knows what he looks like. Peter Nell. She would never have gone off with him anywhere. He picks his victims up at the bar, Joe. That’s what you said. He seduces them into going home with him. That’s what you said.” My fists clenched at my sides. “On Tuesdays, Joe. That’s what you said. Not Monday nights. Tuesday nights.”
“God, Maddie, I know.” He hung his head, rubbed his brow. “Maybe he recognized me and panicked, I don’t know…”
“Neither do I, Joe” I said frostily.
“This is all my fault.”
I stared at him, hard, unforgiving. This was all his fault. Starting with him writing that sick and twisted book, ending with us here, now, Jenna in the clutches of a psychopath.
It was all my fault, too. What on earth had I been thinking? Hunting down a serial killer? Bringing Jenna along for the ride?
As much as I couldn’t forgive Joe, I couldn’t forgive myself, either.
“Nate wants us to meet at the bar,” I said and marched past him, out the door.
NINE
I’d never really understood the saying, how things can change in the blink of an eye. I mean, I understood the conceptual theory, that things could change real quick. I wasn’t a complete idiot.
But now I really understood.
One moment I was being dragged under Nate’s spell and what promised to be a hot, hot kiss, and the next Jenna was gone, her life balanced in the hands of a killer. All the moments in between were so irrelevant, they didn’t count.
A numbing ache tried to spread inside me, but I kept it at bay. I wouldn’t crumple into a heap of trembling bones when my best friend needed me to be alert, sharp, focused. Jenna’s life was in the balance, not gone yet.
I shot out of the passage into the blue haze of the main saloon and slammed to a halt at the sight of Nate leaning over the counter, flashing his badge at the bartender. From the sour look on the big man’s grizzly face, they’d already had some words. He shifted along the counter, must have flipped the switch for overhead lights, because startling white light flooded the instantly dazed expressions of the handful of patrons.
My gaze darted to the previously darkened corners, hunting for Jenna. The room was scarcely furnished, no hay bales to hide in, no raised stage to curl beneath, nothing but a half dozen tables and no Jenna.
I felt Joe shuffle in beside me, but he didn’t say anything and I didn’t acknowledge his presence.
Nate turned around to face the room and flashed his badge again.
“No cau
se to panic, folks,” he said, his deep, gravel voice carrying authority. “We just need to ask a few questions. I’m going to have to ask you to remain here, but it shouldn’t be for long.”
There were a couple of murmurs and grumbled protests, which Nate ignored. He turned back to the bartender. “How many exits to this building?”
Grizzly stabbed a thumb at the main door, then again at me (or the passage at my back.) “There’s a storeroom with a side entrance for deliveries, that’s it.”
“You sure about that?”
“Hey.” Grizzly threw his hands up. “I don’t want any trouble. That’s it.”
“Good,” Nate said. “Now lock the main door and don’t open it until the cops get here. No one leaves and no one enters. Keys for the storeroom and side door?” He held a hand out for the ring of keys Grizzly snatched from beneath the counter.
Nate strode toward me, scooped my hand in his to tug me along as he walked past. “Joe?”
Joe followed us into the storeroom, left the door open a crack to give us some light. The room was small and cramped, one wall stacked with crates, a desk pushed up against the other. A third wall made up the side entrance, a double set of doors with a press bar instead of a handle. That’s where Nate went. He depressed the bar, pushed the door open, then closed it again.
“What are we doing here, Nate?” I crossed to where he stood. “We should be out there questioning those people, looking for Jenna.”
“We need to talk, before the cops get here,” he told me. “But first, can you send me those photos of Peter Nell? And the Merc license plates.”
I brought my phone out, ready to attach the photos to a text. Slight problem. “I don’t have your number.”
Nate gave me a surprised look, but didn’t waste time, speaking while he sent me a text that I could reply to. “I had to lie to the cops when I called for backup. I told them I was working a case that led me here, that Peter Nell is a murder suspect and I have every reason to believe Jenna’s his victim.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” I asked.
“Not really,” Nate said. “We have no hard proof that Peter Nell is anything other than a medical rep doing his normal rounds.”
“But Jenna’s missing.”
Words That Kill (A Maddox Storm Mystery Book 3) Page 8