Buried in Secrets (Carly Moore #4) - Denise Grover Swank Page 0,122

most. Even if Emily had had questionable motives for sending me to Bingham, he might have real, solid information. What difference would ten minutes make?

But images of Marco lying dead in a ditch flashed before my eyes. He might already be dead, but what if he wasn’t? What if I got to him in the nick of time?

I wasn’t going to waste a precious second.

I shook my head and started rushing to my car. “Sorry, Bingham.”

“Don’t you call me again, Carly Moore!” he shouted after me. “You may not like the welcome I give you!”

But his last words were muffled once I got in the car. I started the engine and shot out of the parking space, nearly taking out Bingham in the process.

I was going to pay for that one.

Whipping out of the parking lot, I turned right onto Main Street, my tires squealing in protest.

“Jesus Christ, Carly,” Max shouted. “What the fuck is goin’ on?”

I shot him a brief glance, then shifted my attention back out the windshield, driving well over the forty-five MPH speed limit. “Someone threatened me this morning. He said if I didn’t stop, someone I cared about would have an accident.”

“Who threatened you?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t recognize him, but he made himself very clear. And since he broke into Marco’s house to tell me, it seems logical he’d go after him first.”

“Was Marco there?”

“No. He’d already left for work.”

“What did he want you to stop doing?”

I hesitated. I loved Max like a brother, but I didn’t one hundred percent trust him, and neither did Marco. “I’m not at liberty to say, but”—I shot him another glance—“I think your mother knows.”

“Is that what she talked to you about last night?”

“She was rather cryptic, but yeah.”

“Carly, if this has something to do with my dad…”

I shook my head. “I can’t think about that right now. I just need to find Marco. Where do most of the accidents happen on the highway from Ewing to Drum? Do you know?”

“There’s a couple of places known for accidents,” he said in a quiet voice.

“The guy this morning insinuated many of them aren’t accidents.”

He pushed out a long breath. “I would agree with that.”

“Why doesn’t anyone do anything about it?” I asked.

“What’s there to do, Carly?” he asked in exasperation.

“You can take out an army one soldier at a time,” I said as I gripped the steering wheel in a death lock. “Or you can take out the general.”

“You’re really tryin’ to bring my father down?” he asked in disbelief. “Wyatt told me you were, but I didn’t think you were so foolhardy.”

I pressed my lips together. Damn Wyatt for telling his brother, not that I was surprised. I was more worried about who else he might have told.

“Was it one of my dad’s men who showed up at Marco’s?” He sounded panicked.

“I don’t know. I’d never seen him before. Not even at the tavern. Don’t most of his guys come in from time to time?”

“Not all of ’em,” he grunted. “What did he look like?”

“Mid-forties. Lecherous. A smoker. He drove an old black pickup truck.” I shot him a glance.

Relief filled his eyes. “Not anyone who sounds familiar. His guys are mostly younger now.”

“Except for Jerry.”

“Yeah.” He looked troubled at the thought.

A light rain began to fall. We drove in silence for about five minutes, the steady rhythm of the windshield wipers the only sound along with rain drops hitting the windshield as the rain became heavier. I tried my best to keep images of Marco’s mangled body from filling my mind. He had to be okay. He had to. I couldn’t live with myself if he’d been hurt or killed because of me.

“There,” Max said, leaning forward as far as his seat belt would let him. “I see something up ahead.”

I rounded a curve and could see the flicker of light in the trees. My heart was beating so fast I was jittery with it.

“It looks like it’s close to the road, so that’s good,” Max said, but his tone revealed his nerves. “That place up ahead is an accident site, but the cars usually go off the road and down the ravine. They often don’t find the cars for days.”

I turned another corner and saw Marco’s Explorer up ahead. Relief washed through me when I realized it was parked on the side of the road and not crashed into a tree or a ditch. The headlights were on, casting beams through the rain, but the windshield