Crash Into Me - L.A. Fiore Page 0,34
order the sandwiches.”
“Damn, you’re slacking.” Zac dropped his arm over my shoulders. “My treat today.”
I glanced up, letting him know I appreciated the gesture, and then said, “I’m getting the most expensive thing on the menu.” I glanced back. “Someone get the gun and money?”
“Yeah, it’s covered,” Vin said, then tugged on a lock of my hair. “Kidding aside, nice collar, Molly.”
I nodded then said, “I think I’m eating my whole sandwich today. I earned it”
I didn’t eat my whole sandwich, so Salem and I enjoyed it for dinner. I had what was salvageable of Frank Harris’ boxes. The television was on in the background, so I saw the clip a few times. In the day of cell phones, everything was caught on tape, so I got to see the confrontation with the meth head about six times. Ethan had been over already, asking me to give him fighting lessons, provided they ended with me lying on top of him. Idiot. I grinned, and that hurt. I had some nice color blooming on my face, too. And I couldn’t eat my sandwich, as it was intended, because my jaw hurt, so I picked the meat out of the roll. My phone pulled me from my research. Seeing it was my dad, I braced.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Don’t you hey me.”
“How’s Mom?”
“Molly Elizabeth Donahue. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was right there, Dad. It was either me or the rookie who was a real John Wayne but way too green.”
“He was high and carrying a gun. Was it really worth it?” Dad didn’t shout, but this was as close to a shout as I’d ever heard.
“I wanted to wait, pick him up later, but that wasn’t how the situation played out.”
“Jesus, Molly.”
I got it; as my parents, I understood they had to sit back while I put myself in danger. I tried to be smart, but sometimes, the situation determined the action. Was it a risk today, yeah, but I made the collar and got fifteen minutes of unwanted fame.
“It’s my job, Dad.”
He blew out a breath. I could practically hear him pulling a hand through his hair. “I know.” Silence followed for a few beats before he asked, “Are you ready to retire?”
It was me who was quiet for a heartbeat before I laughed out loud. “Not yet, but I’ll be more careful and will try to refrain from going hand-to-hand with any more meth heads.”
“Thank you.”
“Love you. Give my love to Mom.”
“Love you, too. Will do. Be safe. Oh, and Gavin said you looked good.”
I chuckled because he was the one who insisted I learn how to fight. “Later, Dad.”
Dropping my phone, I reached for the paper I’d been reading through. Some of the research I’d found in Frank’s boxes didn’t make much sense to me. I wondered if the boxes weren’t all on Katrina and were, instead, his filing system. So far I found nothing on Jason Benjamin. I was sure Frank had looked into him. He would have thought like the cops with Benjamin being the prime suspect. If he unrecovered anything on Jason, I hadn’t found those pages yet. And maybe I wouldn’t, maybe that’s what the man took before he torched Frank’s place.
I settled back on the sofa. People killed for countless reasons, but most of the time, the motive could be reduced to one factor, money. If we assumed Katrina Dent was murdered, keeping that quiet now by killing anyone looking into her death, was it to protect the identity of her killer or was money the motivating factor?
The news story on CyberTech pulled my attention. “It’s like we’re living in the movies,” the anchorwoman said in awe. “Prosthetics that are made of living tissue over a metal frame. It’s extraordinary.”
I turned up the volume. That was extraordinary.
“The focus will be for our vets,” a spokesperson for CyberTech shared. “A way to give back just a fraction of what they’ve given this country.”
Curious, I reached for my laptop and looked up CyberTech and discovered it was a consortium, a virtual who’s who in business. Two names stood out, Sinclair Rothschild and Kade Wakefield. I stood and paced, as my thoughts went in a million different directions. If we assumed money had been the underlying motive for Samantha’s death, she attended a Sinclair event and ended up dead later that night. Both Rothschild and Wakefield were big time investors in the CyberTech project. Their prosthetic was being deemed the greatest technological development since the H-bomb. The announcement