“How close did you go?” Paris asked.
“Close enough to see that it was empty. There were people in it earlier, though. I saw them when we left. I didn’t think anything of it until the same van was there when we came back.”
“Who?” The third person’s voice confirmed his identity. It was Dean, all right. “What’s going on?”
Paris answered him. “The cops. They’re watching the place.”
“Really? Are they hoping to prove Butch killed that woman?”
“Don’t sound so excited, Dean,” she snapped.
“I’m not excited. Just surprised. Seems they have a more realistic idea of Butch than you do.”
Anger put an edge to Paris’s voice. “Shut up! You wouldn’t be saying that if he was standing here.”
“True. But if he was as nonviolent as you claim, I could speak freely, correct?”
Hands curled into fists, she stepped up to him. “How dare you! You’re lucky he provides a living for you. Where would you be without him? On the street? Lord knows you can’t function like a normal human being.”
He remained unflustered. “You think a killer is normal?”
Their mother finally came between them. “That’s enough. Both of you. Don’t let this throw us all into a panic. We know Butch would never hurt anyone.”
Did she really believe that? Jonah wondered.
“You mean other than Kelly Martin?” Dean sounded as pleased as Paris had accused him of being. “Because he’s smacked her around before. Remember? It was for driving by one too many times and making their affair too obvious.”
“Dean!” her mother cried, but Paris tried to hit her brother and would’ve succeeded if not for the old lady, who did her best to protect him.
“You little prick!” she shouted. “You leave Kelly out of this. He never touched her.”
Poking his head around his mother, Dean came right back at her. “Oh, yeah? An affair means he did touch her, dear sister. In some very intimate places.”
“That’s it! We’re kicking you out. You can fend for yourself,” Paris screamed.
“We still own this property,” her mother said. “Don’t forget that.”
Paris appeared to have a ready response, but they all grew silent when Butch interrupted. Already on his way back from the van, he was carrying some object Jonah couldn’t quite make out. “It’s her,” he called.
Jonah caught his breath.
“It’s who?” Paris’s father asked.
Distracted from their squabble, even Paris and Dean turned to face him, silently expectant. “Francesca Moretti.”
Smothering a groan, Jonah cursed to himself.
“How do you know?” Paris asked.
“Recognize this?” He held up what he carried and Dean began to laugh.
“That’s her purse,” he said. “Again.”
“So where is she?” the old man muttered.
Butch threw Francesca’s bag at their feet. Then he propped his hands on his hips and stared into the salvage yard. “She’s got to be around here somewhere.”
“She’s got no right.” Paris sounded worried. Was it because she secretly feared Butch might not be as innocent as she wanted to believe? There had to be some element of denial in her reaction. “She’ll do anything to see you behind bars.”
“What are you going to do now?” Dean asked.
Butch didn’t react to the glee in his voice the way Paris had. He tossed a set of keys at Dean instead. “Lock up the yard.”
18
Butch knew it was her. And he had her purse again. Francesca couldn’t believe it. Her new phone was in that purse. She hadn’t taken it with her when she left the van. She’d wanted to be light on her feet, hadn’t wanted to carry anything, especially an object she could drop and break as easily as her iPhone if she had to move fast. That darn screen was expensive to replace. But she’d been thinking only as far as escaping Jonah. She hadn’t planned for this. What now?
Careful not to make any noise, she hid behind a piece of heavy equipment as she waited for Butch and his family to go inside. She couldn’t remember what the giant machine was called, but she knew what it was used for. Some kind of industrial-size lift, it stacked car frames. An excavator, which was even bigger, towered over the junk piles on her other side. Both pieces of equipment reminded her of a horror show she’d seen when she was a kid, where the cranes, bulldozers and lifts at a construction site came alive at night and killed the unsuspecting people who found themselves in proximity. To an adult the concept seemed corny, but those images had made a real impact on her when she was young. And, despite the impossibility of a machine killing on its own, it gave her the creeps to think about that movie now. Butch himself and all the garbage and the rats at the salvage yard made this the last place she wanted to spend the night.
When Butch, Paris and the others finally went into the house, the lights stayed on, but silence settled over the yard. Francesca had a chance to escape—if she could figure out how. She couldn’t get out the way she’d gotten in. When Dean locked the gate, he’d used a heavy chain and padlock.
She studied her surroundings. The fence was too high. Even if she could climb it, she’d never get past the razor wire, not dressed in a pair of linen shorts.
Wondering where Jonah was, what he was thinking, she began searching for a weak spot in the bottom of the fence where the chain-link might already be bent or she could bend it enough to slide underneath. She wanted to get out of here on her own, would rather not put Jonah in the awkward position of having to come after her. But there was a chance she wouldn’t be able to avoid it. She couldn’t let Butch wake up tomorrow to find her here.
Deciding she might be able to create an opportunity along the back, far from most of the lights and myriad pathways that led through the cars, car parts and other salvaged items, she slipped deeper into the yard. But reaching the back fence was tricky. Butch obviously used this area to discard the stuff he wasn’t all that interested in. She had to skirt past piles of sharp metal chunks and pieces, tramp over old toasters and other appliances and push some rusty bicycles out of the way.
When a sticky web clung to her legs, she almost screamed. Black widows spun sticky, stretchy webs like that, and they loved the desert. Tarantulas and scorpions lived here, too. So did the most poisonous of all spiders, the wolf spider…