Santiago’s was a beautiful new two-story building designed to look like the residence on a hacienda with a red tile roof, a painted tile mosaic on the floor in the foyer and heavy, dark wooden tables and chairs in the main dining room.
“Matt told me the money he gave me to invest in the restaurant was earned legally,” the majority owner and manager, Tony Santiago, said to Jason. “When he got released from his first stint in lockup, he stayed sober and worked hard for a little over a year. He was living with a roommate, paying modest rent, and he saved up a fair amount of money. He told me he wanted to invest it before he blew it on something stupid.”
The thought of his brother getting out of prison and doing well only to fall back into his old ways again made Jason feel sick. And a little bewildered. Why was Matt determined to ruin his life?
Jason had been overseas when Matt’s life of crime started. Why hadn’t Matt reached out to him if he needed money or some other kind of help? Jason would have come through for him. Did Matt not know that?
He glanced at Lauren. She returned his gaze and raised her eyebrows slightly, as if she were questioning Tony’s story. He couldn’t blame her. His brother was a known criminal with known criminal associates. They couldn’t assume that Tony was telling them the truth.
“Man, you really do look like your brother,” Tony said, shaking his head. “It’s amazing. He told me he had a twin, but I didn’t realize you were identical.”
“I don’t know how much this building and everything in it is worth, but it’s obviously a lot,” Jason said. “Why would you put it up as collateral for a bond to get my brother out of jail? Why take that risk?” Matt’s legal occupation was long-haul truck driving. Even if he’d saved every penny he earned for a year and a half, he couldn’t have invested that much money in the restaurant.
Tony crossed his tattooed arms over his chest. He was a few years older than Jason, probably midforties, and the lines on his face and slight bags under his eyes gave him the appearance of a man who’d lived a hard life.
“Santiago’s started as a tiny restaurant with twelve tables. I’d wanted to open my own place for a long time, but I didn’t have much cash set aside, and my credit history wasn’t exactly stellar. If your brother hadn’t helped me out back then, at the very beginning, I would not have been able to open for business.” He glanced down for a moment, cleared his throat and then looked Jason square in the eye. “I have been blessed. Business has been great. I’ve obviously been able to upgrade. And here we are.
“Matt told me to keep reinvesting his share of the profits into the business rather than paying him. He never asked for anything. Not until he called me from lockup a couple of weeks ago and told me he’d gotten arrested again. Accessory to murder.” Tony sighed deeply and shook his head.
“What did he tell you about the events that led to the accessory-to-murder charges?” Lauren asked.
Jason held his breath, not certain he wanted to hear the answer.
Tony shrugged. “He said his real crime was being stupid. That he didn’t know what was going to happen that night. That he was a thief and sometimes a hothead, and he might have been involved in a few things that weren’t exactly legal, but he wasn’t a murderer.”
“That’s it?” Lauren asked. “That’s all you know?”
“Look, we’ve known each other for a long time, but in the last few years I’ve been working a lot of hours at the restaurant, and I’m raising a family. He called and asked me for help. I figured if a judge had set bail for him, then he had the legal right to get out of jail. Innocent until proven guilty, right?”
“And he repaid the favor by jumping bail,” Jason said flatly. He was worried about his brother, but he was also angry. Matt was disrupting so many lives, putting people in danger, and apparently he didn’t even care. He deserved to be tracked down and locked up. At least until he got his head on straight. “Can you tell us anything that would help us find him?”
“He mentioned he was spending time in Boulder.”
“Is he staying there?” Jason asked. “Do you have an address?”
“He just mentioned it in passing. He and I used to go there on weekends before I got married, hoping to meet college girls. He eventually moved there for a while. He said he’s been back there recently, catching up with some old friends. I don’t have an address for where he could be staying.”
“Did he mention any names?” Lauren asked. “Or talk about places he liked to hang out? A favorite bar or restaurant, maybe?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Could you give me the names of the places where the two of you liked to spend time back when you used to go to Boulder together? Maybe the names of people you used to hang out with?”
Tony rattled off the names of some bars and restaurants, and Lauren jotted them down. When it came to individuals, he could offer only a few first names.
“Thanks for your time.” She handed him a business card. “Please call me if you hear anything from him.”
He nodded. “I will.”
“And if anybody else comes around asking about him, it would probably be a good idea to call the police,” Jason added. “Some of Matt’s criminal cronies are looking for him, and they’re pretty dangerous.”
Jason scanned the restaurant parking lot as he and Lauren stepped outside. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary.
“I suspect that the people who are after your brother are doing the same thing we are,” Lauren said, walking beside him. “Checking out all the places where Matt’s known to spend time. Assuming Tony was telling us the truth about Matt’s connection to Boulder, they’ll likely look for him there, as well.”
Jason sent up a silent prayer. Please, Lord, help us find him first.
“I know this is an old-school technique, but it works,” Lauren said to Jason twenty minutes later as they walked into an office services and shipping store a few blocks away from Santiago’s.
When she’d first brought up the idea of having flyers printed with Matt’s picture on it, Jason had looked at her like she was crazy. “Digital pictures are good, but not always better,” she continued. “Sometimes a printed picture, something somebody can tuck into their purse or pin onto a corkboard, is more helpful. If a target sees his picture posted in a store window, that can be motivation for him to turn himself in.”
“But won’t having his picture posted all over Boulder let the bad guys know that’s where we think he is and so they’ll focus their attention there, too?”
She nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. But the longer it takes to find him, the better the odds are that the criminals who are tracking him will find him first. There are more of them. They can fan out and cover more ground faster than we can. There’s no perfect solution here. All we can do is make the best decisions we can and then act on them.”
Bounty hunting was not an exact science. There was a lot of uncertainty. Mistakes were made. Hours were wasted chasing down dead ends. That was the nature of the job.
Lauren got plenty of teasing about what she did for a living. Some of it came in the form of gentle jabs. A lot of it came as harsh criticism. People often asked her why she didn’t get a real law enforcement job. The truth was she liked tracking down people. And while the idea of becoming a US marshal was appealing, that wasn’t a career path she could pursue. Because if she left Denver for training and then traveled all over the country to apprehend fugitives, who would look after her mom? With bounty hunting she could decide how far away she would travel and how long she was willing to be away from home.
She reached the store’s service counter. Behind it, a high-speed printer shot sheets of paper into a cardboard box. It took a few seconds for the nearest service clerk to notice her and walk over. A second clerk, farther in the back, was busy packing and taping a row of large boxes.
Lauren quickly sketched out what she wanted on a blank sheet of copy paper, got a destination email address so she could transmit the digital photo of Matt she had on her phone, and then waited for the clerk to make a sample flyer for her to look at.
At a stand-up desk behind the counter, the clerk opened the email with the file image, looked at it, looked at Jason, looked at the image again, and then looked at Lauren with her eyebrows raised and a puzzled expression on her face.
“Matthew is his identical twin brother,” Lauren called out over the continuing noise of the printer.
The clerk, who nodded slowly, didn’t appear entirely convinced.
“So my brother is basically on a Wanted poster now.” Jason sighed heavily and shook his head.
“We’ll find him,” Lauren said. Please, Lord, help us find him, she prayed silently.
“I’m obviously not heading back to Sweetwater today,” he said. “I need to make a couple of calls. I want to confirm that my neighbors are still willing to look after my animals. And I need to call my clients who have appointments for me to come out and do welding repairs and reschedule them.”
“You can head back to Sweetwater,” Lauren said. “You don’t have to go with me to Boulder.”
“Yes, I do have to go to Boulder,” he said firmly. “I need to do whatever I can to help keep my brother alive.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and started tapping the screen.
The clerk walked up with a printout of the flyer with Matt’s picture at the top and the pertinent details, along with contact phone numbers, beneath it. Jason glanced at it, shook his head sadly, and then walked away toward the front of the shop as he started talking on his phone.
“That looks fine,” Lauren said to the clerk. “I’ll take fifty copies. Save the file. I might be back for more.”
“Sure.” The clerk walked back to her computer.
The high-speed printer finished its run. Now that it wasn’t so noisy in the shop, Lauren could hear Jason’s voice as he spoke on the phone, although she couldn’t understand his specific words.
And then she heard a loud boom followed by another, and then another.
Gunshot blasts! Again!
“Everybody get down!” Lauren yelled as she dropped down behind a self-service copy machine and drew her pistol out of her holster.
Shards from the storefront windows flew across the lobby, the jagged projectiles slicing through the air in a wide arc across the front of the store. The buckshot and debris from the shattered windows caught part of the blinds, ripping them down. Display racks and framed signs and pictures on the wall clattered to the floor.
How had the bad guys found them again?
She heard one of the clerks scream behind the counter. As the scream died down, she heard the frantic, shaky voice of the other clerk obviously talking to a 911 operator, pleading for help.
Jason.
Where was he?
From her vantage point, Lauren couldn’t see him. She crawled forward to peek around the corner of the copy machine. She had a better view of the front of the store, and she saw movement, but it wasn’t Jason. It was a man striding through the front door wearing a ski mask with a shotgun in his hands. Outside the front door, a large black SUV with a driver behind the wheel idled at the curb.
The shooter stepped over the threshold, ratcheting the shotgun and scanning the store as though he wanted to confirm that he’d killed Jason. Maybe he wanted to finish off everyone else in the shop. Leave no witnesses behind.
Icy fear rolled through Lauren’s body, making her hands tremble and finally settling in her stomach. But she forced her feelings aside. Jason didn’t have a gun. As far as she knew, no one else in the shop did, either. She couldn’t just wait for the cops. Everyone in the store was in immediate danger. She had to do something.
The gunman walked farther into the shop, moving closer to the position where she was crouched down. If she stayed where she was, he’d eventually see her and shoot her. Or he’d step on her and then shoot her. If she tried to move to a different position, he’d hear the broken glass crunching beneath her feet. There was no moving to a more protected position before she engaged him. She had to do it here and now.
Heart thundering in her chest, taking shallow breaths because her lungs were tight with tension, she waited until the gunman turned his face away from her and then she jumped up with her gun pointed at his head. “Freeze!”
He swung the shotgun around and pointed it at the center of her chest.
From the shadows beneath the store’s shattered front window, Jason sprang at the gunman, launching his full weight onto the man’s back and nearly knocking him to the ground.
But the gunman managed to stay on his feet, staggering and shoving the barrel of the shotgun backward, jamming the butt of the firearm into Jason’s ribs.
“Drop your weapon!” Lauren yelled. She kept her gun trained on the grappling men, but there was no way she could get a clear shot at the bad guy.
Jason grabbed the barrel of the shotgun with both hands, doggedly hanging on to it as the gunman twisted and turned, cursing as he tried to wrench it out of Jason’s hands.
Finally, Jason let go with his right hand so he could throw an uppercut to the gunman’s chin. It connected with enough force to stun the guy, and Jason immediately followed up with a second punch to the jaw.
Outside, the driver in the waiting car blared the horn.
Lauren heard multiple sirens in the distance, getting closer.
The gunman cursed, let go of the shotgun and ran out to the waiting SUV, which sped away.
With trembling hands, Lauren holstered her handgun.
Jason walked over to her. He laid the shotgun down on the copy machine next to where she was standing, and then wrapped his arms around her. She felt his lips pressed against the top of her head, his exhaled breath warm and comforting in the midst of all this chaos. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m okay,” she answered. “How about you?”
He squeezed her a little tighter. “Never better.” Without letting go of her, he yelled back to the shop employees, “Anybody hurt?”
They both answered that they were all right.
Red and blue lights flashed outside. The police had arrived.
“I can’t help wondering if Tony had something to do with this,” Lauren said. “Maybe he called somebody as soon as we left the restaurant. Described my SUV. Told them we were in the neighborhood.”
“It’s possible,” Jason said. “As soon as we’re finished talking to the police, let’s go find out.”
“We went back to Santiago’s and talked to Tony,” Jason explained to Al and Barb. “We told him what had happened at the copy shop with the gunman, and he seemed genuinely shaken.”
He exchanged glances with Lauren, and his heart warmed in his chest. She was a remarkable woman. Smart. Brave. Resourceful. And despite everything that had happened to them since they’d first laid eyes on each other, she still seemed determined to track down Matt. She was not a quitter. Jason had begun to feel like they really were working together. They weren’t just using each other to reach their common goal of finding Matt.
“Tony called his wife while we were still talking to him,” Lauren added, directing her comments to Al and Barb. “He told her to take their kids and go to her mom’s house. Just to be safe.”
The four of them were sitting at the dining table at Al and Barb’s house, getting ready to dig in to the Chinese takeout food Al had brought home.
“The police told us that the criminal group Matt is connected to, the people trying to kill him now, has informants all over Denver,” Lauren continued as she dished some fried rice onto her plate. “It’s possible somebody working at Santiago’s saw Jason, thought he was Matt and called in the tip.”
“After talking to the police, we decided to get the rental car,” Jason said, putting a couple of big spoonfuls of kung pao chicken on top of the pile of rice on his plate. Fear and stress after the attack at the copy store might have killed his appetite earlier in the day, but he was hungry now. Life did go on. And apparently Lauren felt the same way, because when dinnertime rolled around she’d said she was pretty hungry, too.
“The thugs know what Lauren’s SUV looks like, and I’m sure they have the license plate number,” Jason continued. “It seemed smarter to leave it in a parking garage downtown and get something else to drive to Boulder tomorrow.”
“Good plan,” Al said.
“You’ll both stay here tonight,” Barb said. It was less an invitation and more a command. She turned to Lauren. “You already told me you were worried about leading the gunmen to your house and putting your mom in danger. You can’t be one hundred percent certain no one saw you exchange vehicles, so it would still be smart for you not to drive to your mom’s house.”
“I appreciate the offer,” Jason said. And he truly was touched to know that they would be willing to help the brother of a man who’d skipped out on them after they’d bonded him out of jail. “But I’m the person drawing gunfire since the bad guys can’t seem to figure out I’m not Matt. I think the safest move for you, and for Lauren, would be for me to take a cab back to a hotel downtown and get a room there.” He turned to Lauren. “I’ll be back here first thing tomorrow morning.”
Lauren shook her head. “No, I think you should stay here. If you go back downtown, you increase the chances of somebody dangerous seeing you. It isn’t just our safety that matters. Yours does, too.”
Her gaze lingered on him, and his heart beat a little faster.
“This isn’t our first rodeo,” Al said. “Remember, we sell bail bonds. That means when people don’t show up for their court date, we call in bounty hunters like Lauren to find them and haul them to jail. You think Barb and I don’t have a long list of people who want to harm us? Of course we do.”
“So we’ve got good, solid locks on the doors,” Barb said. “And an excellent security system. Not to mention vigilant watchdogs who will let us know if anyone tries to break into the house in the middle of the night.”
Watchdogs. Jason had to laugh out loud at that. The watchdogs were Daphne and Flower, a couple of chunky and slightly bug-eyed Chihuahuas.
“Don’t underestimate them,” Al said. “All we need them to do is wake us up if anyone comes around the house in the middle of the night. We can take care of things from there.”
“So you’re staying,” Lauren said. “Now let’s talk about our plan for tomorrow. In his bond application, your brother listed a couple of former employers here in Denver. I think we should talk to them before we go to Boulder.”
“Tony seemed like a nice enough guy when he came into the bail bond office,” Al said. “But keep in mind the fact that you don’t really know him. Boulder might be a solid lead. Or he might be sending you on a wild-goose chase.”
“Fair enough,” Lauren said. She turned to Jason. “After dinner, let’s get started on a list of leads to check out in Boulder. The names of any places or people you could remember your brother mentioning would be helpful.”
“I’ll do that.”
As they continued eating, Barb directed the conversation to lighter topics and mutual friends she and Al shared with Lauren. Jason just listened and soaked up the feeling of family and warmth around the dinner table. It was something unusual for him and something he savored every bit as much as the Chinese food. For a minute or two, he let himself imagine what it might feel like to have his own family around his own dinner table every night.
He glanced at Lauren, and when she looked at him, he quickly glanced away. He turned his attention to the windows instead. He didn’t have much cozy family experience, but he did have combat experience. He knew how to stay vigilant. He would stay up late tonight and set his phone alarm to wake him up very early. He would watch and he would listen. He was a magnet for danger right now. Not just for himself, but for anybody who was helping him. Which made it his responsibility to watch out for everybody sitting here at the dining table.