Silenced

“What?”

“Under personal references it lists Paul Harris, her father.”

Kate blanched. “Could she have assumed the identity of a real person?”

“Identity theft? Anything’s possible. No address, but a phone number.”

“I’ll call it in and get the address, run a background on the guy. Good catch, Lucy.”

But it didn’t make her feel any better.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Brian loved his younger brother, but he wanted to pummel him for his stupidity.

“You shot at a fucking cop?”

Ned glared at him. “I didn’t know she was a cop-why would that bitch get in a car with a cop?”

“Maybe because we’re trying to kill her?”

Shooting at cops escalated police involvement. If it was just a couple of dead hookers, no one would care after a while and the crimes would disappear from the radar, but a cop?

“It’s not like she’s dead,” Ned said. He pulled a matchbook from his pocket and took out a match. “The news said she was stable. That means she’s fine. Probably a scratch.”

Ned lit the match, watched the flame flare, the smell of phosphorous hanging in the still air. The matchstick burned down, he pinched out the flame, and lit another.

Brian ignored his brother and flipped through news stations trying to get more information. If anyone saw his brother or found any damn fingerprints, Brian’d shoot him. Ned was in the system. That would be just fucking awesome for the feds to match his prints and find out Theodore Adam “Ned” Abernathy had spent three years in prison for extortion and fraud.

“I took the plates off the van,” Ned explained. He lit another match, watched, pinched it out.

“You think they can’t trace the van off the paint you left all over the city? You rammed their car. They have paint samples, glass, who knows what else. You are such an idiot!”

Brian couldn’t find anything that said there was a composite sketch. According to the news, the police were “investigating.” Good. But a witness could come forward, the police might trace the van to Ned’s next-door neighbor. And while they had paid off the lowlife drug addict, he would squeal if he was put under any pressure.

Brian didn’t enjoy killing people, and he especially didn’t enjoy killing people because his brother screwed up. He’d been looking after Ned ever since they were kids. Ned was the baby of the family, the one who could do no wrong, the one who could charm the habit off a nun, as their dad said before he croaked. For years, Brian had been cleaning up after him. The extortion gig happened when Brian had done his own thing for a while, in Hawaii, where girls wore bikinis under a hot sun and no one was stressed, everyone relaxed all the time.

He should never have left.

But you can’t pick your family, right?

His mother had flown to Hawaii after Ned was arrested, begging Brian to come back to DC and help her fix it. But Ned had been arrested before, and they’d always fixed it. Now he was stuck. “Maybe a few years in prison will toughen him up,” Brian had told her. “Make him less stupid.”

That infuriated his mother. She’d always thought Ned, who got straight As in school and was voted Most Popular and was the quarterback of the damn football team was smart. Smarter than Brian, who barely graduated high school and never went to college.

Brian would take common sense over book smart any day. Not that people like his mother valued the ability to stay out of trouble.

Twice she came to Hawaii, begging him to come home. The second time was when Ned was up for parole, and his lawyer said he’d be getting out. Brian wanted to know how he knew. It wasn’t just conjecture, his mother came to him and said, “Ned is getting out of prison next week and I need you to watch over him. You’re his big brother. It’s your responsibility.”

“Ned got five to ten, why do you think he’s getting out in three?”

“Good behavior,” she’d told him.

Now Brian knew the truth. Information is power. He wondered how different his life would have been today if his mother hadn’t married the lawyer. He wondered if Ned would be back in prison because he was an idiot, and if he, Brian, would still be in Hawaii enjoying the scenery and the sun.

Brian turned off the news when he was satisfied that the police had nothing on Ned being the shooter. Ned turned the TV back on and flipped to a baseball game.

“What the hell are you doing?” Brian pulled the plug out of the wall.

“The Yankees are playing-come on, Bri, you told me to lay low, this is how I lay low. I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

“You’ll do what I say if you want to stay out of prison.” Why did Brian even care if Ned went back?

Because he loved his brother, warts and all. And he didn’t want to see his mother cry. Even though deep down he knew his mother had manipulated him most of his adult life, he still had a deep need to please her.

Protect Ned at all costs. Even if he was so stupid he’d get them all tossed in prison.

Ned pouted and lit another match. Brian watched it burn out. The heat didn’t bother Ned-his fingerprints had been burned off his thumb and index finger. But the police had all five fingers, plus a palm, and probably DNA for all Brian knew.

Brian was no saint, he’d done his fair share of bad things, but Brian had never been caught. Because he knew how to be careful.

“Let’s think this through,” Brian said. “The good news is she went back to her neighborhood. That means she’s staying local, at least for now.”

“She’s probably long gone.”

When Brian first learned that Poison Ivy-his pet name for the wily bitch-was with the cops, he panicked. If Wendy told her everything, the girl was an immediate threat. That’s why he planned on getting out of town now. He had a train ticket for New York that he could use anytime, and from New York he could go anywhere in the world.

He needed to leave before the cops got smart and flagged his name. Let someone else clean up Ned’s messes. Mom loved him so much, let her track down the bitch. Or get her pretty-boy husband to do it. Why did it always have to be him? It wasn’t like it was his idea to use Wendy to gather information. He’d never trusted her. Like Ned, she thought she was better, smarter than everyone else.

Neither of them were as smart as he was. Which was why he was alive without a criminal record, and Wendy was dead and Ned had been to prison.

But when he was in the middle of packing, he had the radio tuned to his favorite twenty-four-hour news station. As soon as the report came on about the crash, he turned it up. Two cops transported to the hospital. One civilian may have fled the scene. May have? Damn straight Poison Ivy ran away. That meant the game was still on. And though Brian didn’t want to go to prison, the thought of losing to that little whore made his head hurt.

He just wanted to kill her so he could disappear.

What he didn’t understand is why she was still in town. If it were him, he’d be halfway to the islands by now.

Which meant she had something here, or no way of getting out of town. No money? No car?

He considered why she’d come back, exposed herself.

She was desperate.

She was hiding locally. Why?

What was keeping her here when she knew he wanted her dead?

“Ned, why did you think she’d go back to her house?”

“I dunno. Maybe because I’d go home if I were in trouble.”

But the house was gone. She must know someone in the area, someone she could trust.