She’d had no enemies. No drug problem or crazy ex with an axe to grind. Her murder had never made any sense.
Now, though, Harper was beginning to see how it might have worked. Her father had represented Dowell and lost the case that sent him to prison for a long time. The man had lost everything. He must have been furious.
She didn’t know how he’d done it from inside jail, but when it came to organized crime, nothing was impossible. He would have had connections on the outside willing to do jobs for him.
She wondered distantly why he hadn’t killed her, too. It would have been easy the day her mother died. She was only twelve and all alone. Or any day after that. She’d never known to watch her back. To be afraid.
Harper let out a choked breath, and the sound of it startled her back to awareness.
For a disorienting second, she didn’t know where she was. Ahead, a dark stretch of road unfurled in the cold glow of her headlights. Her scanner, which had been burbling a steady stream of information a moment ago, was silent.
She was on the highway heading across the saltwater marshes. The lights of Savannah were far behind.
Isolated and gloomy during the day, the wetlands were worse at night. The flat landscape seemed to absorb light, creating a thick, inky blackness that sprawled in all directions—devoid of any sign of humanity.
Harper tensed, her hands tightening reflexively on the wheel.
How could she be so foolish? She hadn’t taken a circuitous route—hadn’t made certain no one followed her. For the first time in months she’d just … driven. Without thinking about who was behind her.
When she’d first talked to Luke and Blazer about how to live anonymously, they’d both identified this as the obvious weak point. Her home was off the books, and the office was protected by guards with guns and panic buttons and CCTV.
This journey—the one she made every night—this was the chink in her armor. The moment when she was completely alone and cut off.
The lieutenant had been blunt. “If I was going to kill you, that’s where I’d do it.”
She tried to focus on the road ahead, but her eyes kept straying to the rearview mirror.
It was all too easy to imagine a light that started small and far away, but grew closer and closer. A car driven by someone who wanted her dead, all because her dad had gotten mixed up with the mob back when she was eleven years old.
The sole set of headlights behind her were tiny in the distance, visible only because the land was so flat. Still, a trickle of nervous sweat ran down her spine.
She put her foot down. The Camaro responded, powering forward with a growl.
The lights behind her did not close in. Eventually, as she sped away, they disappeared completely. But she didn’t lift her foot from the gas until she reached the bridge onto the island.
Gradually, her heart rate returned to normal. The little town’s lights glowed reassuringly ahead. There was even a car, passing her the other way. She was safe.
She’d just reached the first red light when her phone rang.
Assuming it was Miles, she answered it on hands-free. “McClain.”
“Harper. It’s Luke.”
She was too tired to hide how glad she was to hear from him, and there was a breathless edge to her voice when she replied. “Hey. What’s up?”
“This is going to sound weird but I think I just passed your car. Are you driving into Tybee right now?”
“Just crossed the bridge,” she said. “Wait. Was that you going the other way?”
“Pull over,” he said. “I’m turning around.”
She drove onto the shoulder and put the car in park. As she waited, she hastily checked her face in the mirror, smoothing the tangles from her russet hair.
A minute later, Luke pulled up behind her and killed the engine.
She got out of the car to meet him.
He strode toward her like he was walking across a crime scene. At some point he’d ditched the jacket and tie. The top two buttons of his white shirt were open.
“You just heading home?” she asked.
“Yeah. You too?”
She nodded.
“Guess it’s been a hell of a day for both of us.” He glanced at his watch. “Look, I know it’s late. But do you want to grab a drink? I could use one.”
Harper hid her surprise. It had been a long time since they’d had a drink together.
“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”
He looked down the empty street. Not a single car had passed while they talked.
“It’s a bit late, I guess. You know any place that might be open?”
“How about the Shipwatch?” she suggested. “It’s the old white and blue hotel on the main street. It stays open late.”
“Sounds good. I’ll follow you.”
Harper got back into the Camaro and sat still for a second. What were the chances that they’d pass each other like that? There’d been a time when he would have been the first person she called tonight. He was a good cop and, despite everything, one she trusted.
Maybe this was fate.
He stayed behind her as the road curved around the edge of the island to where the Shipwatch sat, just off the main beach. With snow-white walls and nautical blue trim, the 1950s hotel was a blast from the past. Known to everyone in town as “the Shipwreck,” it was the island’s main late-night hangout.
The parking lot behind the building was half empty. Harper parked at the back, out of habit. Luke pulled up next to her.
“This place is a bit eccentric,” she warned him, as they walked across the asphalt to the hotel bar.
“I think I can handle it,” he said, with a slight smile.
They could hear the Eagles wailing from the jukebox even before they opened the door. Inside, the cool air smelled of spilled beer. It wasn’t crowded, but everyone who’d made it this far was in it for the long haul.
“Fresh blood!” a drunk man cried, pointing as they crossed the empty dance floor to the bar.
Luke gave Harper a raised eyebrow, but all he said was, “Beck’s?”
She nodded. “I’ll grab a table.”
She took a seat near the door and leaned back, scanning the room. There were about ten people left. Most of them were wasted. As the song shifted to another bouncy oldie, the drunk—a red-faced man in an Atlanta Falcons T-shirt—began to dance unsteadily, a beer bottle in his hand.
Luke was chatting with the bartender. She was tiny, with short black hair and a silver hoop in her nose. He said something that made her laugh as she popped the caps off the beers with quick, practiced moves and slid them across, making eye contact.
Harper couldn’t blame her. With his rangy good looks and country-boy smile, Luke could charm the fur off a cat.
God, she missed him.
When he reached her a few minutes later and handed her a bottle, he said, “I figured you didn’t want a glass.”
Shaking her head, she took a sip. The beer was ice cold. She hadn’t known how much she needed it until that moment.
“Oh, this was a good idea,” she murmured, leaning back in the unyielding wooden chair, and trying to clear thoughts of her father’s past from her mind.
“How’d it go at the Rayne house?” she asked.
He gave a slight shrug. “We didn’t find any bodies. It’s always harder when they don’t leave the corpses lying around.”
“So you didn’t arrest anyone?” She held up one hand. “Off the record, obviously.”
“No. The house was pretty clean.” He paused. “Got to say, though, I heard a lot about you tonight.”
“Me?” She didn’t hide her surprise. “From who?”
“Allegra and Hunter. They kept asking me to call you. Said they’d only talk to me if you were there, too.” He gave her a curious look. “What’d you do to convince them that you’re their champion?”
“Nothing,” she insisted. “I’ve only met them a couple of times.”
She was
being disingenuous. After all, she’d spent the last two days trying to win them over. And it had worked.
“Well, they seem pretty hung up on you. Hunter in particular. He kept wanting to call you. We had to take his phone away. Is something going on between you two?”
His tone was elaborately casual, but there was a tension beneath the words.
“No,” she said. “Absolutely not.”
His doubtful expression didn’t change.
“Come on, Luke. They’re just kids.”
“They’re our age.” He set his bottle down. “They’re not children.”
“Well, they’re not habitual criminals either,” she said. “They didn’t understand what was happening. I just tried to explain how it works.”
A suspicious look crossed his face. “What exactly did you tell them? This is a criminal investigation. You shouldn’t be telling them anything.”
“I told them to call the cops,” she said, exasperated. “I told them to talk to you guys. I told them everything would be okay. That’s it. Give me some credit.”
He held her gaze for a long moment before relenting. “I’m sorry if I sounded accusing. I’m just tired.”
Harper watched as he took a drink, gazing out across the bar. She didn’t know what to make of this. Was he jealous of Hunter? That would be ridiculous. After all, he was the one who had a girlfriend, according to the police station rumor mill.
Either way, they needed to get to safer ground.
“What do you make of Cara?” she asked, after a beat.
“Man.” He blew out air from between pursed lips. “That girl is something else. If I choose to believe her, Xavier was a saint, she loved him, a monster snatched him from the beach, and her heart is broken.”
“Do you believe her?” she asked.
He hesitated, holding his beer halfway to his lips. “I’m not sure, yet.”
“You really didn’t find anything in the house?” she pressed. “They don’t strike me as criminal masterminds.”
“Nothing conclusive,” he said. “No kill zone. Traces of blood in the kitchen sink but Allegra had cut her finger cooking dinner the night before.” He stretched his shoulders as if they ached. “We’ll test and see if there’s DNA.”
“But you still like them for it?”
“They’re the closest to him,” he said.
He didn’t have to say more. Killers rarely come from far away. Except in her mother’s case.
The thought jarred her, distracting her instantly from Xavier Rayne.
Pushing her half-empty bottle aside, she leaned forward. “Can I tell you something that happened tonight? It’s got nothing to do with the case.” She kept her voice low, but he must have heard the change in her tone, because his brow creased.
“Shoot.”
“I got a text, from that guy.” She didn’t have to say which guy she meant.
Luke searched her face. “What did he say?”
Talking fast, she told him what she’d learned. When she mentioned Martin Dowell’s name, he held up one hand to stop the flow of words.
“You’re not talking about Martin Dowell, as in Southern Mafia Martin Dowell?”
She nodded. “You’ve heard of him?”
“Your father defended that piece of crap?” His face hardened.
She dug through her bag for the printout of the photo she’d found of her father standing next to Dowell in front of the Atlanta courthouse, and slid it across to him.
Luke studied it with obvious distaste. When he handed it back, his mouth was set in a grim line. “Harper, this is bad news.”
“Tell me about it.”
“No, I mean, the worst damn news.” He angled forward across the table until he was so close she could smell the soap on his skin. “When I worked undercover, I was in Dowell’s operation—or what’s left of it now.” He gave her a weighted look. “You remember the scar on my side?”
Harper thought of her and Luke in bed, her head on his chest, her fingers tracing the angry line of the scar. “I remember.”
“Well, it was Dowell’s guys who gave it to me. The organization’s run by a dirtbag named Rodney Jordan now. A little psychopath. He was Dowell’s hit man for years. After the boss went down, the group disbanded, but Jordan brought it back together, a little at a time.” His tone was bitter. “Every drug dealer in the state is scared to death of him and the gang of shitheads he’s pulled together. They kill ruthlessly, and they leave no evidence.” He held her gaze. “They erase people, Harper.”
Her stomach turned to ice.
“I think they must be the ones who killed my mother,” she told him, quietly. “After Dowell went to prison. I think Dowell had her killed to get back at my father for losing that case. I don’t know how he did it, but it makes sense.”
She could see him working it through in his mind. “You can’t know that for certain,” he said. “It’s speculation.” Seeing her expression, he raised one hand. “I get that it’s reasonable speculation. But you don’t know for certain, and you can’t go down that path all the way to deciding it was definitely him.”
“But it fits,” she argued. “The timing. The fact that the killing looked professional. Dowell’s a professional. That guy you mentioned—his hit man. He could have done the job.”
Luke fell silent. When he spoke again, his tone was dead serious.
“These guys don’t believe in mistakes. They believe in winning and making money. If your dad lost that case, and Dowell blamed him for what happened…” His hand tightened around the bottle. “They wouldn’t hesitate to kill a woman to send a message. Wouldn’t even blink.”
Harper’s mouth had gone dry. She licked her lips before telling him the last piece of information she had. “Luke, I think Dowell … he might be out.”
He stared at her. “Are you certain?”
“No,” she admitted. “There’s nothing about it in any newspaper, and all the offices are closed. But it’s been seventeen years. With good behavior…”
The worry in his face told her everything.
“I’ll need to talk to some people,” he said. “See what I can find out. But seventeen years would be about right.” The shallow lines on his forehead deepened. He seemed bewildered by this tsunami of bad news. “Damn, Harper.”
“I know,” she said. The knot that had formed in the pit of her stomach earlier had only grown more solid. “The guy thinks Dowell’s coming for me. He’s the one I’m supposed to be hiding from.”
Luke didn’t look convinced. “Even if he is out, he’ll be on probation,” he reminded her. “He’ll be monitored. Have to check in every week. Besides, if he wanted to get to you, wouldn’t he have had it done it by now? Your name’s in the paper every day. You’re not impossible to find.”
The same question had been puzzling Harper.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” she admitted. “Maybe Dowell wants to do it himself. Maybe he waited.” She held up her hands. “Or maybe the guy’s making it all up. I don’t know.”
He considered this. “What’s your gut tell you?”
She held his eyes. “My gut says I’m in trouble.”
Suddenly she needed a real drink.
She picked up the bottle of beer, finished it off, and gestured at his. “Want another?”
He started to get up but she motioned for him to stay put and grabbed her wallet, heading to the bar. As she approached, the bartender looked up from putting glasses in the dishwasher. She had unusual blue eyes and a heart-shaped face.
“A Beck’s and a shot of Jameson’s, please.” Harper placed the empties on the bar. “Make the whiskey a double.”
The woman plucked a bottle from the shelf. A voice came from just behind Harper’s shoulder. “You and the detective look awful cozy. That must come in handy.”
Harper spun around.
Jon Graff had shed the light jacket he’d worn earlier that night on Admiral’s Row. He held up his glass. “I told you we should
have a drink together.”
“If I wanted to have a drink with you,” she said, icily, “I would have a drink with you.”
His grin widened. “You have got such attitude. I like it.”
“That’s twelve fifty.” The bartender was looking back and forth between the two of them with animated curiosity.
Keeping her eyes on Graff, Harper dug a ten and a five out of her wallet and slid them across.
“Keep the change.” She picked up the drinks, suppressing the urge to throw them in his face.
“Come on, Harper McClain. Tell me how you got in that house tonight.” He followed her across the bar. “Did the handsome young detective let you in?”
“I’m not telling you a thing,” she said.
“Sure you are.” Glancing to where Luke sat, he said, “You’re telling me things you don’t even know you’re telling me.”
Biting back a series of creative suggestions of just what he could do with his questions, Harper tightened her lips and stalked away, holding the drinks in a death grip.
When she reached Luke, his eyes were fixed on Graff. “What was that about?”
“A tabloid reporter from LA looking for trouble.” She lowered her voice. “He recognized you.”
She didn’t have to tell him what this meant. If Graff pushed it, Luke could find himself questioned by Blazer about why he was sitting with her in a bar in the middle of a homicide investigation she was covering.
Luke watched Graff with a murderous expression. “He gave you hassle?”
Harper made a dismissive gesture. “He tried to talk to me out at the house. Followed me to my car talking trash. I didn’t like him then. Don’t like him now.”
She didn’t mention that he’d asked her out. The last thing she needed was Luke getting in a macho fight right now. But he seemed to know there was more to it than she was letting on. He pulled out his phone. “Give me his name again. I’ll run him through the system tomorrow.”
Harper spelled it for him. The whole time, she could feel Graff’s eyes burning into her back.
“I think we should go,” she said.
Revolver Road Page 10
