even listening—” When she just stared at him, he muttered. “Junior has had nothing to say. And given that he was being groomed by his father, it’s likely he’ll let his gun do the talking.”
“Will he take over here in Caldwell?”
“There’ll be a power struggle first. Then we’ll have to see.” McCordle glanced toward the scene again. “I gotta get back. Promise me you’ll call if you—”
“Yes, of course. I’m not going to be stupid about this.”
There was a pause. “Jo.”
When he didn’t go any further, she said, “What.”
“I get that you want to do your job. And you’re a really good reporter. But you need to leave town until the dust settles. Nothing is worth your life.”
“You’ll let me know if you hear anything for sure about me.”
“I will. I promise.”
“Looks like we’ll be in touch again, then.”
Tucking the envelope under her arm, Jo gave McCordle a nod and then she went back around the hairdresser’s and across the street to her car. Before she got in, she looked over the crowd. The sense that this was not the end of the story, and she had the inside track on the situation, made her flirt with self-satisfaction. And it was that ego-driven nonsense that hounded her as she went back to the newsroom.
It was dangerous to think you were above things.
When she pulled into the parking lot of the CCJ, she went for the first available open spot. Putting her car in park, she opened the envelope and slid out the glossies.
Grimacing, she recoiled at the sight of a man squeezed into the back of the SUV. His face happened to be turned toward the camera and his eyes were open, as if he were alive, even though she knew that wasn’t the case: There was a black circle in the center of his forehead, about the size of a pencil eraser, and a tendril of blood leaked out of it, traveling down at a slant until it joined his eyebrow. The trail didn’t go any further than that.
She was surprised there wasn’t more gore.
She got that with the Gigante picture. God . . . it looked like a font of blood had come out of the front of his throat and waterfall’d down his fat-belly shirt.
The sense that she was being watched brought her head up and she burrowed her hand into her bag, finding her gun. Heart pounding, she looked around the lot. The buildings. The lanes. No one was moving, but would she see someone who had taken cover—
All at once, her headache came back, the sharp, piercing pain cutting some kind of mental connection. Some kind of—
It was a memory of feeling like this in her car before. Yes, she had felt exactly this kind of fear-based adrenaline sitting behind this wheel—and it hadn’t been a distant-in-time thing. It had been recent. It had been . . .
Groaning, she had to stop following the thought pattern, but the amnesia was frustrating, the conviction that what she was reaching for, in a cognitive sense, was close at hand and yet out of reach, taunting her.
Fumbling to slide the pictures back into the envelope, she grabbed her bag and got out. The rain was still falling in a gentle way, and she felt an urgency to take cover that had nothing to do with the weather. She flat out ran for the rear door of the newsroom’s building.
With a shaking hand, she swiped her card and all but jumped inside.
Pulling the solid steel panel closed behind herself, she leaned back against the wall and tried to catch her breath.
Maybe McCordle was right, she thought. Maybe she needed to get out of all this—
A memory that had no obstructions in front of it came to her mind. She saw Syn jumping out of her bathroom, prepared to shoot the pizza delivery guy. Contrasting that image with McCordle in his uniform, putting his version of brawn between her and that shout at the scene?
No offense to the officer, but she’d pick Syn every time in that race.
And P.S., she didn’t need a man to watch out for her, anyway.
Putting her hand on the side of her bag, she felt the hard contours of her gun, and decided Syn was right. She needed to keep this weapon close, 24/7.
She didn’t want to end up a crime scene photograph.
Day transitioned into night, and still Mr. F read on, turning pages one by one, his eyes skipping nothing of the book’s incredibly