Roman's Vow (Riley's Pride #4) - Sandra R Neeley Page 0,64

to look around the bar, making sure all was locked up nice and tight before he went upstairs to shower and get to bed.

As he got to the top of the stairs and turned toward his own room, he heard the door at the opposite end of the hallway open. He paused and looked back over his shoulder to find Patch standing there watching him. Patch held his hand out.

Lazarus walked back toward Patch’s room as he dug in his pocket. He held out his own hand with the key to the Ducati in it and dropped it into Patch’s outstretched hand.

Patch looked down at the key. “Shame that old bike hasn’t run in weeks. Something in the wiring, a short I think. I’m gonna take a look at it soon as the sun comes up and see if I can figure out what the problem is.” He looked up and met Lazarus’s gaze, telling him without saying it that the bike wouldn’t be running in the morning.

Lazarus nodded his head. “I can help you if you want.”

“Naw, you just get us ready to open. Won’t take a second to look at the wiring and see if I can find where the wires are frayed.”

Lazarus inclined his head and Patch stuck out his hand again. Lazarus shook his hand, then turned and went back to his room to get a change of clothes and then into the bathroom to shower.

Patch went into his own room to get dressed. As soon as he was dressed he headed downstairs. He knew exactly where he was going. He was heading out to fray a wire on the wiring harness of his Ducati so if someone claimed Lazarus had been on it this night in whatever it was he was involved in, he could honestly say it wasn’t running. He didn’t know what Lazarus had been involved in, but the blood on his shirt was enough to convince him that he might need an alibi, and if he did, Patch was damn sure going to give him one. Lazarus was a good man, even if he himself didn’t know it yet. If Lazarus had blood on him, it was without a doubt justified. He stopped in the kitchen to wash the key in the kitchen sink, then carried it with him out to the shed where he dropped it in the grass and dirt, then stepped on it a couple of times, before picking it up and putting it back on his keyring so it would be dirty like the others. Then he walked into the shed and went over to the Ducati, starting in on the wiring harness by rubbing it on the edge of the seat until the wires were frayed. As an afterthought, he went to his toolbox and got what he’d need to remove the custom muffler from the bike. If it made the fucking ground shake when it was ridden, it clearly couldn’t have left here without being noticed. He put the original muffler on the bike, and tossed the other in the back of the shed beneath a small mountain of rusted scrap metal.

Finished with his main objective he headed back toward the bar. Almost there he noticed some old oil on the ground. He dipped a finger in it and smudged it on all his keys to be sure no one could tell one of them had been washed, before wiping them on an old, red, shop towel then heading back inside.

~~~

The overhead lights were blinding as Mark walked up to the front desk of the first police station he came across. He waited at the counter politely until the Sergeant working the desk finished with his phone call and looked up at him. “Can I help you?” the officer asked.

“Yes, sir. I need to report several crimes,” Mark asked.

“What kind of crimes?”

“Some stealing, and breaking and entering. And the mayor’s grandson, that dude that was stabbed to death?” Mark asked.

“Yes,” the officer said, progressively more interested in the young man standing before him looking like he’d just had his ass whipped.

“That woman that’s in jail for killing him, she didn’t do it,” Mark said.

“And how do you know that?” the officer asked.

“I saw him die. I watched the murder. I didn’t do it, now, but I saw it go down. Frederick Davis did it and then he let his ex-wife take the rap.”

“I’m going to need you to come back to an interrogation room and give