Warfield shrugged. “Can’t say I do. We didn’t talk very long.”
“Not a problem. I can refresh your memory. It was a house owned by a Carl Remington. Seems he was injured riding out a storm a few years back when the house collapsed. The builder sold him a bunch of upgrades and told him it was hurricane proof. Didn’t work too well, though. The first big storm, not even a hurricane mind you, and the place ended up a pile of sticks. Ring a bell?”
“Nah. But that’s terrible.” Warfield shoved his free hand in his pocket and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“Interesting. I thought you might remember that one since your name shows up on the complaint they filed against the builder. Ring a bell now?”
“I can’t talk about that.”
“Right. The builders paid the Remingtons off, didn’t they?” Brand pressed.
“I told you, I can’t talk about that. That’s all there is.”
“I see.” Brand scribbled something in this notebook not because he had something to write, but because he wanted to keep the pressure on Warfield. “And if I were to tell you a few other houses you happened to inspect ended up looking a whole lot like the Remingtons’?”
“I’d tell you I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” He looked at his watch. “I really need to get goin’. I’ve got a few more places I need to inspect before—”
“Mr. Warfield, do you have a family? Children?”
“My family has nothing to do with this.” Warfield’s cheeks flushed with anger.
“How would you feel knowing the house they live in could collapse at any time? Would that bother you?”
“I do my job,” Warfield snapped. “That’s all anyone can do.”
“I’m sure it is,” Brand replied. “If that’s really what you’re doing. Because if you aren’t, someone’s going to figure it out. Hopefully that’ll happen before someone else gets hurt. Or worse.”
“We’re done here.” Warfield’s skin looked pasty, and sweat ran down his forehead.
“If you want to come clean, I’m sure folks at the SBI will take that into consideration.” He doubted Warfield would.
“Excuse me.” Warfield walked over to one of the houses and pulled his phone from his pocket.
Brand headed back to his car. From what he could see, Warfield still talking on his phone. He’d give Warfield a few minutes. If the guy didn’t take the bait, he’d head home. If Warfield did, he’d call Zach and cancel.
Brand drove out of the development and parked across the street. Five minutes passed, then ten. Brand was just about to give up when a white county vehicle pulled onto the street with Warfield behind the wheel. Brand waited a minute, then started out a few blocks behind Warfield.
Warfield drove out of Ritchfield Shores and onto Highway 133, headed back toward Wilmington. Brand rolled the windows down and inhaled the salty air. November 27, and it was nearly seventy degrees outside. One of the many reasons he loved living in Wilmington. Sure, it’d get colder as the months went on, but it rarely got much below freezing even in the dead of winter, and they almost never got snow.
He made sure to keep a good distance behind Warfield. There weren’t a lot of cars on the road this time of year, and he didn’t want to be spotted. He’d been driving for a mile or so when he spotted a silver car in his rearview mirror flying down the road. The car flashed its brights, and Brand slowed to let it pass where the road straightened. It increased speed and darted out next to him, but instead of passing, it drifted into Brand’s lane.
Bland waved the driver to pass him, but they matched his speed and came closer and closer, so the tires on the right side of Brand’s car drove on the shoulder. He accelerated to avoid getting sideswiped, but the car slammed into him hard enough that he lost control and flew off the road.
The car bumped over the foot or two of thick grasses next to the shoulder, over rocks and debris as bits of leaves flew in through the open window. Brand tried to steer back onto the road, but the front tires were already airborne. He took a deep breath and braced himself as the car slammed into the drainage ditch.
Sorry Zach. I don’t think I’m going to make it back for lunch.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“ANYTHING?” KENDRA peered inside the office where Zach was working.
“Nothing.” He glanced at the laptop screen. Shit. It was one o’clock and he hadn’t even realized it. He shut the laptop and looked up at her. “He never forgets to call.”
“No. Never.” She frowned. “Especially when I ask him to check in on a job.”
Zach picked his cell phone off the desk. There were no messages and no missed calls. He called Brand. The phone rang four times, then went to voicemail. “Not picking up.”
“Could be driving through one of those dead zones on the highway on his way back. Or maybe he just let the time get away from him. Dammit, I should have met him out there myself.”
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Zach lied. Idiot. Telling me not to go off on my own and what the hell does he do?
“Probably.” She pressed her lips together and wrinkled her brow.
Fuck this. Zach got to his feet and shoved his cell phone in his pocket. He wasn’t going to get any work done worrying like this. He’d catch up with Brand and give him a piece of his mind. “But it can’t hurt to check, right?”
“Keep me in the loop.”
“Will do.”
He tried Brand again before he pulled out of the station’s parking lot. “Brand, I’m not the mother hen, but you need to call me and let me know where you are.” He sighed and plugged the phone into the charger cable before starting out for Richfield Shores, then called Jesse on his way.
“Jesse, it’s Zach.”
“Hey, Zach, how’re you doing?”
“I’m fine, but I’m worried about Brand.” Zach took a deep breath. “He went to visit a construction site this morning, and no one’s heard from him. He was supposed to call me about lunch three hours ago. Maybe I’m overthinking this, but….”
“After all that’s happened, better safe than sorry,” Jesse replied. “I’ll get out on the road and get the word out that he’s missing. If he’s anywhere in the county, we’ll find him.”
“Thanks.”
“Where’s the construction site?” Jesse asked.
“Off Highway 133. Ritchfield Shores?”
“I’ve seen it. Big place. Maybe he’s still wanderin’ round, trying to talk to folks.”
“I hope so.” Zach drew a long breath.
“I’m way over near Shallotte,” Jesse said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. And don’t you go and wander off now, okay?”
“I promise I’ll keep in touch, and I won’t go anywhere on the site without an escort, okay?”
“Sounds good.”
“Thanks.” Zach was a good thirty minutes ahead of Jesse. Enough time to ask around about Brand and Warfield.
“Sure I remember him. Tall guy, blond. Reporter, right? He signed an autograph for Jim Marx’s kid,” Carlos, the site foreman, told Zach a few minutes later. “Said he wanted to talk to a building inspector. Bluefield, maybe?”
“Warfield?” Zach asked.
“Yeah, that’s the guy. Balding, glasses. Funny thing, he was supposed to be here all day, but he left right around the time your friend did,” Carlos said. “I called over to his office, but no one answered. We were waiting on him to finish up the first set of houses. Now we’re going to have to push back the opening day.”
Warfield had left at the same time as Brand? The Terry Warfield Zach had spoken with wasn’t exactly the chattiest guy around, so it was unlikely he agreed to meet Brand somewhere to talk.
“Do you remember anything else? Did Inspector Warfield say anything to you?” Any detail might be a clue as to where Brand had disappeared to.
“Nah.” Carlos shook his head. “I mean, this Warfield guy looked pissed, but these inspectors always look irritated. It’s like we’re putting th
em out or something.”
“Thanks.” Zach handed Carlos his card. “If you remember anything else, or if you see Mr. Josephson or the inspector, please give me a call.”
“The River Watch? I read that. You really the publisher?”
“Yep. That’s me.”
“That’s cool.” Carlos grinned. “Me and my wife been subscribing for a few years now.”
“Thanks. Glad to hear it.” Zach didn’t want to be rude, but he wanted to speak to more of the workers on the site before quitting time, which was now less than fifteen minutes away.
A few other people had seen or spoken to Brand, but he hadn’t stayed that long. “He that news reporter outta Wilmington?” a man Brand had talked to asked. “’Cause I thought he looked kinda familiar. Good-lookin’, like a movie star or somethin’. Real nice too.”
Zach nodded and thanked the man. He knew Brand hated that kind of attention, but the guy had a point. Brand stood out, not only because of his stature and quarterback build, but because of his outgoing personality. So why is it no one can tell me where you are? The tension in Zach’s gut was now a fully formed ball of roiling nerves.
Zach got back in his car and called Brand again. Still nothing. Dead zones don’t last for hours. Sure, his cell phone might have run out of power, but Brand wasn’t sloppy. He kept a charger cable in his car. Tools of the trade.
This was insane. Trying to find Brand was like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. He’d spent enough time with Brand to know this wasn’t like him, and it scared him to death.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“A FEW guys remember seeing Brand,” Zach told Jesse when he arrived around five thirty, “but he only stayed about forty minutes. One of the guys we’ve been looking at for our story was here too. He was supposed to be inspecting houses all day, but he took off a few minutes after Brand. Someone said he was on the phone and looked angry after speaking with Brand.”
Brand still hadn’t checked in. Things were getting worse and worse, and with the time change, it would be dark in about an hour. Jesse had someone check to see if they could locate Brand’s cell, but it was either out of range of a tower or switched off.
The ache in Zach’s gut worsened as time passed, and the tense expression on Jesse’s face wasn’t helping. He knew what Jesse was thinking—that the same guys who hired someone to knife him on the Riverwalk and bust up the newspaper’s offices had gone after Brand. How was it possible that half the county was looking for Brand and no one had heard from him?
“We tracked Warfield down,” Jesse said. “He lives on Ocean Isle Beach. A friend of mine with the Brunswick County Sheriff just spoke with him. He claims he left the job early because of a sick kid. He remembers speaking with Brand, but he says Brand left before he did and he hasn’t seen him since.”
Another dead end. Of course, Warfield could be lying, but they weren’t going to get anything more out of him, and there was no probable cause to search his car or home.
“I have to do something.” Zach had been pacing the length of the construction trailer since the crew had left. Carlos had hung around to keep the place open, and a couple of Jesse’s fellow officers were checking inside the houses, but Zach was pretty sure they’d find nothing. Everything they knew pointed to the fact that Brand had left the site in his SUV.
Think, think, think! Where would you go?
“I’m going to take a drive around,” Zach told Jesse. If Brand’s SUV was anywhere around, it’d be pretty easy to spot. It was a hell of a long shot, but he was out of ideas.
He headed away from the city first. There was less development out that way, and with the fading light, he probably only had another twenty minutes before it got too dark to see. The road back to Wilmington had more streetlamps, so it could wait.
He traveled down a long stretch of road with nothing but brush to his left and marshes and swamps on his right. He’d driven nearly three miles when a truck passed him going the other direction, the only vehicle he’d seen since he’d left the construction site. He was always amazed at how few cars there were on the roads this time of year, in spite of the relatively warm weather. There were even fewer this year on account of the back-to-back hurricanes and the destruction they’d left in their wake.
Now and again, a pile of debris sat waiting for pickup—mattresses, chairs, and even a couch piled on top of moldy insulation ripped from houses that had been flooded in the storms. He drove by several, slowing out of curiosity, trying to focus on something other than the ever-insistent feeling of dread that permeated his body. He drove nearly ten miles before gassing up and buying himself a Diet Coke.
“Anything?” he asked Jesse as he climbed back into his car.
“Nothing so far. We’ll find him, Zach. I’ve got nearly a dozen guys looking for him.” Jesse sound too chipper, and Zach knew he was putting on a good face.
Zach called Kendra just to be sure Brand hadn’t shown up at the office or checked in. “I haven’t heard anything from him.” She sounded shaky. It was nearly dark, and at this point, he couldn’t rationalize this away. Brand was missing, and no one had a clue where he’d gone. The vague hope he’d held on to that Brand’s phone had died or he was out of range had given way to despair.
Zach took a few deep breaths as he started his car and headed back to Wilmington. He tried to keep himself occupied by counting the tiny reflective strips in the middle of the road as his headlights illuminated them. Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four…. Twenty-five had a couple of skid marks that angled off the roadway and disappeared on the shoulder, where there were a couple of tire ruts. Something blue flashed in his peripheral vision, and he slammed on the brakes.
I’m imagining it. He was so desperate, he was seeing things now. Sure he’d find nothing but a beer can, he turned around, drove back to where he’d seen the tracks, and stopped the car. He tapped the flashlight icon on his cell phone and got out to look around, following the marks over the high grasses to where they ended in muddy ruts where the grass had been tamped down by a set of tires.
His heart beat faster, even though he told himself he was getting excited about nothing. Surely the tracks had been made days, maybe weeks before. Then why hasn’t the grass grown back? He shone the phone ahead of him and nearly tripped over a broken liquor bottle and a couple of large rocks. He walked a little farther, over to the drainage ditch that ran parallel to the road, and his light reflected off something blue. Baby blue.
Holy fuck! He stumbled over a few more rocks, stepping on an aluminum can and slipping on the muddy embankment until he reached the car. Not any car. Brand’s SUV, angled down into the ditch, covered in mud and grass.
“Brand!” Zach slipped and slid into the steeply angled ditch, four feet down to the bottom. He dropped his phone, managing to retrieve it only because it had fallen on its side, illuminating one of the vehicle’s tires.
“Brand!”
Silence was the only reply. Deafening and terrifying.
“Brand! Brand!” He walked through the mud to the car, which had landed so it leaned on the driver’s side door. He shone the phone through the open passenger window and his breath caught in his throat.
“Brand! Brand! It’s Zach.” Fuck, fuck, fuck. Brand’s head rested on the steering wheel atop a collapsed airbag, and blood oozed from a cut on the side of his head. If he’s bleeding, that means he’s still alive, right?
“Brand!” Zach pulled open the passenger door and gingerly rested his weight on the frame. The car seemed stable enough. As wet as the drainage ditches had been since the storms, the front left corner of the SUV was probably deep in the mud.
“Brand!” In the light of the phone, Zach thought he saw Brand’s finger’s twitch. He climbed slowly inside, sliding over the damp upholstered seat until he could reach out and touch Brand. His skin was warm.
Oh thank God.
“Brand! Brand, wake up.” He pressed his hand to Brand’s neck and felt the steady pulse there. “
Brand, please wake up. You need to wake—”
Brand moaned and stirred.
“Brand? Brand, can you hear me?”
“Zach?” Brand whispered.
“Yeah, it’s me.” He put his hand to Brand’s cheek. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes.
“Hey.” Brand managed a smile.
“Hey.” Zach turned the phone toward him and wiped mud from the screen before calling Jesse. “Jesse, I found him. He’s hurt, but he’s alive.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m not sure. I was headed down Highway 133. I stopped for gas at an Exxon a few miles back on my way back to Wilmington.” Zach wished he’d paid attention to the mile markers instead of counting the stupid reflective tape. “My car’s on the shoulder. I left the hazards on.”
“We’ll find you. Just stay put. I’ll call you back if we run into any trouble, okay?” Jesse said.
“Got it.” He ended the call and set the phone on the dash so that he could better see Brand. “You really are a mess, you know.” Damn the tears! Why the hell couldn’t he keep it together?
“You’re covered in mud.” Brand’s eyes fluttered closed again.
“All your fault.” Something told him he should keep Brand talking. “If you hadn’t taken off on your own, I wouldn’t have had to come in on my white horse and save your sorry ass.”
“I’m s’posed to be the hero,” Brand said. “Make things all right.”
“Says the guy with blood running down his forehead.” Zach needed to do something about that. He opened the glove compartment and sighed to see the first aid kit there. He ripped open a gauze packet and pressed it to Brand’s head.
“Ouch.”
“I bet it hurts. There’s already a lump there the size of a scone.”
“A scone?” Brand laughed, then gasped and said, “Hurts to laugh.”
“I’ll try not to make any more jokes, then.” Zach taped the gauze over the cut. “What hurts?”
Chasing the Story Page 16
