He banged the heel of his hand against the car window. Figured. He rubbed his hand against his thigh as he retreated to his car.
At least he didn’t have to go rushing in to rescue her from Adam—he could wait until they got back to the car. Then he’d break up that little tête-à-tête, along with any harebrained and dangerous scheme Adam planned to drag April into.
He got back into the car and slumped in his seat, cradling his phone in his hand. He scanned through his messages and paused over the one from Duncan. He’d asked Duncan to put a rush on those samples, and he knew Duncan had contacts.
He tapped it. Duncan had gotten the results back on the blood samples and had some info for him in an email. Clay brought up his email and located the one from Duncan. He tapped it and downloaded the report Duncan had included.
He skimmed through it and enlarged the area that contained the results. His fingers froze and he brought the phone closer to his face.
The blood in April’s kitchen didn’t belong to Adam. That blood belonged to a Jaime Hidalgo-Verdugo, whose corpse was found two days ago. It didn’t take a crack detective to figure out that Hidalgo-Verdugo was really Jimmy Verdugo.
Clay’s heart pounded in his chest as he scrolled down to the next set of results. The blood on the towel in April’s trunk? That belonged to Jimmy also.
Dread pounded against his temples. It had all been a big lie—a hoax. Adam didn’t have enough wounds on his body to produce that much blood. There was only one way Jimmy’s blood could’ve wound up in April’s kitchen and on a towel in her trunk.
Jimmy hadn’t assaulted Adam. Adam had murdered Jimmy. Sweet, hapless Adam was a killer.
What did that make him capable of now?
Chapter Seventeen
April dragged the tines of her fork through the salsa on her plate next to her half-eaten omelet. Adam had agreed to turn the flash drive over to Clay after Adam located El Gringo Viejo, but April didn’t trust him.
“Just give it over now, Adam. It belongs with Clay. Can you imagine what the Border Patrol could do with a map to the tunnels of Las Moscas?”
“Yeah.” Adam downed his second cup of coffee and put his finger in the air for a refill even though his leg was already bouncing uncontrollably beneath the table. “They could do some serious damage to the drug traffic into this country.”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly.” His blue eyes met hers over the rim of his coffee cup. He smiled, but the emotion didn’t reach his eyes. It never did.
She’d always put that down to the drug use. How could you really feel anything if drugs altered your emotional state? But if she looked at the past honestly, Adam always did have a flat affect, even as a child.
“Adam, you don’t have the infrastructure in place, like Jimmy did, to take over for Las Moscas. What good is that information going to do you?” She dropped her fork where it clattered against her plate. “I told you. I’ll come with you to Mexico to help you find Dad. If he is El Gringo Viejo, you can start a new life down there with him. You don’t need the flash drive for that.”
“I give you the flash drive now for Agent Clay, and you bail on me.” He held up his mug to the approaching waitress and nodded his thanks as the steaming brown liquid filled his cup. “Besides, if you found Dad would you really let him slide? He killed our mother, after all. You’d let him get away with that?”
She dropped her hands to her lap, folding them, her fingers twisting around each other tightly. “He’s in Mexico. If he is El Gringo Viejo and the authorities haven’t been able to get to him yet, why would they be able to get to him just because I dimed him off?”
Adam shrugged. “They probably wouldn’t. But can you imagine what I could do with knowledge of Las Moscas’ tunnels and backing from El Gringo Viejo?”
“That’s not our deal.” She wrapped her fist around her fork and stabbed her eggs. “What you could do? I thought you just wanted money in exchange for that flash drive. I thought you just wanted some protection from Dad. What are you planning?”
“Dream big, April.” He shook out a packet of sugar and dumped it into his coffee. He stirred it so that it created a whirlpool in the liquid. Then he placed the spoon on the table with a hand not altogether steady.
She glanced sharply at his eyes, dilated and darting around the room. “Are you on something now?”
“Not at all.” He rubbed his hands together. “I’m high on life. Isn’t that what you always told me to be, April?”
“I don’t understand why you need me to find Dad.”
“You know why.” He blew on the surface of his coffee and then slurped it up. “You were always their favorite. You could do no wrong in their eyes. Dad never paid much attention to me. Why would he want to see me now? But you?”
“He hasn’t tried to contact me once since he disappeared.”
“Because he thinks you think he killed Mom, but we know better, don’t we? If we could somehow get word to him to let him know we don’t believe in the setup, he’d want to see you in a heartbeat. C’mon, you want to find him, too, or you wouldn’t be here.”
April clasped the back of her neck and dug her fingers into her flesh. “I meant what I said about the flash drive, Adam. I want to turn that over to Clay.”
“Clay, Clay, Clay.” Adam smacked the table three times with each utterance of Clay’s name. “I thought you were over that guy.”
“Over?” April sat up straight, lining up her back against the booth. “This doesn’t have anything to do with my relationship with Clay. He’s Border Patrol. Just when
