“What the hell’s wrong with you, lady?” he yelled. “I just want to talk. I want to know why you’re here.”
He knew she’d found the body. She could see it in his eyes. He was trying to convince her that she hadn’t really seen what she’d seen, that it was safe to trust in the trappings that surrounded them—the swing set in the front yard, the kiddie pool off to the side, the hand-painted welcome sign on the door. But she wasn’t that easily fooled. As much as the domesticity of the scene might tempt her to think she’d leaped to the wrong conclusion, especially when she saw the wounds she’d inflicted on his cheek, she knew killers often looked like the most mundane husbands and dads. She’d studied them in her work; rarely was it obvious that they were monsters.
Rocking forward, she covered her head. He was so close. All he had to do was break the glass. There was no one else around, no one to hear the window shatter or her cry for help.
“Go away!” she sobbed.
Suddenly, he stopped banging.
She sat up to see him using the bottom of his shirt to clean the sweat and blood from his face. Then he checked behind him, apparently searching for something, and stalked off toward the only tree in the yard. A bat leaned against the trunk, next to a ball and glove. Hefting it, he came toward her as if he intended to break the window. Before he could take a swing, however, the sound of a car engine drew their attention to the road. An old Impala chugged up.
Determined to get the driver to help her, Francesca crawled into the other seat and laid on the horn, but the effort proved to be unnecessary. The woman behind the wheel slowed, then turned in and parked as if she owned the place. She’d planned to stop here all along.
Clearly torn, Butch glanced between Francesca and the driver of that car. A little boy also sat in the Impala. Window down, round face sweaty, he waved and yelled from his car seat, excited enough that even Francesca could hear him. “Daddy! Daddy! We’re home!”
Butch’s expression changed instantly. Dropping the bat, he strode over to the Impala.
Now! Francesca let herself out on the side facing the road. She couldn’t expect the Impala’s driver to come to her assistance, as she’d originally hoped. Not if this was Butch’s wife. Francesca had to assume she was still on her own, because chances were she really was.
Locating her spare key beneath the back bumper, she tore it free. At the same time, the child got himself out of his car seat and demanded Butch pull him through the window.
The woman rushed around to join father and son. As Francesca darted back to the driver’s seat, she heard, “What’s going on? What happened to your face?”
Butch’s reply was too low for Francesca to make out, but the woman’s next question carried easily on air already saturated with heat and threat and panic. “What? But why? Who is she?”
This had to be Butch’s wife, as she’d guessed. The timing of her return home had most likely saved Francesca’s life. But Francesca wasn’t planning to stick around long enough to thank her or tell her about the body stashed amid the junk in the salvage yard. She was get ting out of here while she could.
Climbing behind the wheel, she tossed the magnetic container that had held her spare into the passenger seat, started her engine and punched the gas pedal.
2
“Holy shit.” Jonah Young came to a stop so abrupt Investigator Finch, with the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office, slammed into the back of him.
“What the hell?” he muttered, but Jonah didn’t move. The woman Finch was taking him to meet sat in a chair just inside the entrance to the investigator’s cubicle. Cradling a cup of coffee, she had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders as if it was the middle of winter instead of the height of summer. But he knew she was fighting off more than the chill of the building’s aggressive air conditioner. She’d just been through a harrowing ordeal. When he called, Finch had told him that a P.I. from Chandler had been attacked. Finch’s partner, Hugh Hunsacker, had taken some deputies and gone directly to the salvage yard, where the incident had occurred, but Finch had stayed behind and asked Jonah to come down and have a talk with the victim. He hadn’t mentioned any names.
“I know her,” he said.
With his bald head, goatee and various tattoos, Finch resembled a biker more than a cop. “You do?”
“We attended the academy together.”
Jonah had been careful to keep from being overheard but Finch hadn’t. Francesca Moretti glanced at them over the rim of her coffee cup. Then she lowered it and any question that he could be mistaken about her identity disappeared. Even with her long dark hair mussed, her mascara smeared and her top lip swollen to almost twice its normal size, there was no mistaking the amber-colored eyes that riveted on his—or the contempt that instantly settled over her classic Italian features when she recognized him.
“Oh, boy. Doesn’t look as if she likes you,” Finch said, and skirted past him.
Jonah reluctantly followed. Francesca didn’t like him. And he’d given her good reason. But that was ten years ago. Surely they could put the past behind them now. She seemed to have gotten over him fairly easily, had never returned his calls when he’d attempted to apologize. And from what Finch said, there could be some connection between the missing teacher she’d been searching for and the murders they were hoping to solve. Figuring out who’d killed the women dug up in Dead Mule Canyon mattered more than his personal discomfort. Jonah had never been involved in a case so disturbing.
The investigator gestured toward him. “Ms. Moretti, you might remember—”
“Jonah Young,” she finished, never taking her gaze off him.
Finch hurried on. “Yes. I’m not aware of how familiar you two are with each other since the academy, but these days Jonah works for Department 6, a private security firm out of Los Angeles. They contract with individuals, companies, even different police entities, to consult on or assist with various hard-to-solve cases. I’ve asked him to—”
Her focus still on Jonah, she interrupted again. “I knew you weren’t with Phoenix P.D. anymore, or we would’ve run into each other. I thought maybe you’d been kicked off the force.”
Sure, he’d screwed up all his personal relationships during the short period during which they’d known each other, but he’d never even come close to losing his job. Ever since he was a little boy, he’d wanted to be a detective, and heading up investigations via the private sector was a better deal all around. With Department 6, he faced similar challenges, but he had more freedom and a much bigger paycheck—the best of both worlds.