“I don’t believe you.” Lynch slid his finger back, and the car lurched out of the parking lot.
Zales looked around frantically. “Shit!”
“Lynch,” Kendra whispered. “What are you doing?”
“Watch.” He and Kendra walked closer to the car, which was now slowly backing down the street. He called out to Zales, “There’s a railroad track down here, isn’t there?”
“Please, man!”
“And if you’d stop whining long enough to listen, I think I heard the sound of a train horn in the distance. It’s almost like it was meant to be, isn’t it?”
Zales stopped to listen. Sure enough, a train horn blasted and a locomotive engine rumbled closer. A moment later, the white crossing gates dropped across the road. Zales looked back at Lynch with panic in his eyes.
“Stop it!”
Lynch quickly walked alongside the driver’s side window with his phone extended in front of him. “I’m sure I can put you over the tracks before the train gets there. And your car will snap those crossing gates like twigs, don’t you think?”
“Oh, God! No!”
“Give me something. Where can I find this guy? Who may he be working for?”
“The Cardinellis paid me for that job. They’d kill me if they knew I ratted the guy out.”
“Everyone already wants to kill you.” Lynch pushed the control button, and the car rolled faster toward the train tracks.
“No! Stop!”
“Give me something, Zales.”
“Padres! Padres!”
“You’re calling for your dad?”
“No! He was working for the Padres baseball team!”
Lynch slowed the car. “Doing what?”
“Security. He was like a bodyguard. I saw him about a year ago. He was bragging about it. He said he was working for a company that was doing security for them on their away games.”
“What company?”
“I don’t know! Stop it! Please!”
The train’s roar was getting louder. The car rolled closer toward the thin gates.
“Is that all?”
“Yes! Please! Believe me! That’s all I got!”
Lynch tapped his screen and the car stopped. “See, Zales? Was that so hard?”
Zales lunged out as the doors unlocked and rolled away from the car. The train roared past only seconds later.
Lynch pocketed his phone. “Have a good day.” He took Kendra’s elbow and led her toward the Toyota. “You should really take better care of your vehicles, Zales. You almost damaged a fine piece of machinery.”
Zales was still swearing helplessly as he watched Lynch and Kendra drive away.
“That was…interesting,” Kendra said when she could get her breath. “What if Zales hadn’t had anything to tell you?”
He shrugged. “I had to go the limit. I knew I had at least another thirty seconds before I could be sure that he didn’t know anything else.”
“Oh, thirty seconds. That’s different.” She moistened her lips. “I was afraid it was really close.”
“Only if the Tesla hadn’t performed as well as I thought it would.” There was a sudden twinkle in his eyes. “But as I told Zales, it is a fine piece of machinery.”
“Bastard.”
“You can’t convince me that there’s not a hidden term of endearment buried in that word somewhere. Particularly when I’ve just performed every bit as well as that Tesla. Don’t I deserve it?”
“You’d deserve it more if you’d given me warning ahead of time.” She added grudgingly, “But that would probably be too much to expect considering who you are. And you did get us the information we needed. Where do we go from here? What do you know about the Padres?”
“That I lost quite a bit of money on them last year. I’m hoping for better things this season.” He held up his hand as she opened her lips. “And as far as I know, the franchise would have no reason to hire a thug of Hayes’s caliber in a security capacity. But there are always possibilities to explore. I think we should go to Petco Park and talk to the Padres security department about why they’d do that.”
“I only hope none of their executives drive a Tesla,” Kendra said. “At least the interview should be comparatively tame in comparison.” She looked at her watch. “It’s only the middle of the afternoon. We should be able to get across the border and to the stadium before five or six. That should be—” She stopped. “Shit!”
“What?”
“I can’t go with you. You’ll have to go by yourself. Olivia’s had Harley all day and she’ll be upset if I don’t take him over on schedule.”
“Can’t you call for an emergency dispensation?”
“I could, if I could prove it to her. But she wouldn’t consider an interview with a bunch of sports executives as any kind of emergency.