“You probably think I’m just being childish, ignoring him and latching onto you.”
Zander held the passenger door of a huge SUV open. He hadn’t even rolled up the garage door, which comforted her. She figured, as a protection specialist, he knew what he was doing.
“Why are you trusting me?”
Kaylee raised her eyebrows in surprise. He really didn’t know. “You live with them. They respect you.” Kaylee shrugged. “That’s good enough for me. Especially considering we won’t be gone more than half an hour.”
Zander tipped his head to the side. She figured that meant, “fair enough,” and then she asked, “How much do you charge for this kind of thing anyway?”
That got her a reaction. As she hauled herself onto the front seat, Zander said, “Five hundred an hour.”
He shut the door on her coughing and sputtering. When he got in the driver’s side, she said, “Five hundred?”
“Saving lives doesn’t come cheap.”
“Wow.”
“My insurance rates are a nightmare.”
Kaylee just blinked. “Well, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Are you going to send me an invoice later?”
He hit the button on the visor for the garage door and started the engine. “Not to you.”
She twisted to stare him down, her fingers freezing on the seatbelt buckle. “Who is paying for my protection?”
“Stuart.” He shot her a look like she should’ve figured that out.
“Great.” She straightened. He pulled out of the garage. “Now I feel even more like a jerk.”
“You stood your ground, and it made you feel like a jerk?”
She shrugged one shoulder.
“Huh.”
Kaylee watched the roadside as he drove. Even though she was probably completely justified being mad at Stuart, she couldn’t help feeling sympathetic. He’d gone through something insane. It had nearly broken him.
Of anyone, she knew what that felt like.
One night, after a movie, her parents had been shot by a man who had left her alive. To this day, she didn’t know why. She never would, considering he was dead now. Brad had killed him. If he’d found the reason she’d been left alive, he hadn’t told her what it was.
She pulled out the cold case file, trying to settle her thoughts with facts that encompassed zero emotion. After reading for a minute, she glanced at him. “I just don’t like this whole Trina thing. I mean she’s gone off the deep end, and for what? A shot at the flash drive? There’s no way I’m going to give it to her, and now the cops are looking for her. Where is she going to hide?”
“If she has half a brain, she’s in Mexico by now.”
Was Trina that smart? Kaylee had the feeling her “friend” was a completely different person than she’d previously thought. And now she was faced with the reality that maybe she didn’t know one single true thing about her, even though they’d known each other ever since Kaylee first started working at the bank.
“Maybe it’s her dad,” Kaylee said. “Hopefully Basuto questions him and figures it out. Because if he did something to her, that’s important to know.”
“You think all evil is a result of people who have those actions forced on them. Like they can’t help it?”
“Some of them. But I still think people are responsible for their actions, and they should be held accountable.” Kaylee shrugged. “But she was supposed to be my friend. I want to understand why she suddenly turned around and pointed a gun at me. How did she even know the flash drive was valuable anyway, and who would she have given it to? It’s not like she knows who to sell it to on the black market. It’s covert operations, international stuff. Right?”
“Guess we’ll find out.” Zander turned a corner into the neighborhood she’d entered into the maps app on his phone. “Maybe she does know some black-market players. Or some friend of a friend who has connections.”
“This is insane. It makes no sense.” She flipped a page and blinked. “Huh.”
“What’s that?”
“A cold case. I don’t even know why I’m reading it right now, but it’s a distraction, and my brain wants to be occupied so I don’t freak out regarding my present circumstance.”
“And the ‘huh’?”
“A photo of the victim.” Kaylee glanced at him. “Basuto put a note in here that says her mother insisted she’d been wearing a necklace the day she went missing.” She brought the photo closer to get a better look at the necklace.
She explained why she cared as much as she did about this missing girl, given her proximity to the young woman at the time of her disappearance and what had been going on in her life at the time.
“Easier to try and help someone else. Especially when your life is going crazy. You can control your feelings about a missing young woman who might never be found. But your own life? Who knows what’s going to happen next? That, you have no way to control.”
“So I just want to manage my whole life.” Kaylee shut the file. “I already knew that.”
“It’s not a bad thing to keep your world simple. Control the variables as much as you can, so that you know what to expect.”
She wasn’t sure that made it sound like a good thing. Some people might not want anything to do with a life as narrow as hers was. But that was their choice. She was entitled to choose whatever life she wanted to have. One she could love that gave her peace and supplied her with the contentment she needed.
Kaylee spotted what she was looking for and pointed up ahead, the sidewalk on the north side of the street. “Right there.”
“One of those ‘little library’ things?”
She nodded. “One sec.” Kaylee pulled out her phone and sent a text. “The kid who lives right here—” She pointed to the white house they were parked in front of. “—watches the library. He has a camera pointed at it from his bedroom window, and I have the password to access the footage from the cloud. So if anything has happened, we’ll be able to see who was here.”
Zander looked impressed.
Her phone buzzed with a reply. “Everything is good. Lewis said he checked this morning, and the envelope is still there.”
“You stay in the car.”
“Open the little door, and it’s taped on the inside lip of the roof closest to you. The envelope is half the size of one of those old floppy disks.”
“Copy that.” Zander kept one hand close to his gun. He jogged across the street to the mailbox-sized birdhouse that had a collection of old books inside. She’d read most of them, had purchased half of them herself, and kept a list of recommendations taped to the inside of the door.
Kaylee glanced at Lewis’s house. The blind in the front window shifted, but she didn’t see anyone watching. Probably the cat.
Zander got the tiny envelope—barely big enough for a couple of dollars worth of coins—and turned to make his way back.
A bang sounded. Kaylee glanced at Lewis’s white house. The front door opened, and Lewis strode out. Kaylee opened the car door before she could even register his strained expression.
Behind him, Trina’s face was set. Determined.
“Lewis!”
His gaze flicked to her. “Kaylee!”
Trina shook him, her arm grasping his bicep. The kid was twelve, but so gangly and short that he barely weighed ninety pounds. As an avid reader and gamer who spent zero time on his physique, he wasn’t exactly strong enough to fight off a grown woman who worked out regularly.
And especially not when she had a gun pointed at the back of his head.
Trina looked at Zander. “I don’t know who you are, but give me that flash drive now or this kid dies.”
Zander took slow, measured steps toward them. He was in the middle of the street now. Trina was at the corner where the front walk hit a right angle and then turned to the driveway. Kaylee wasn’t close enough to do anything since she was at the curb still.
She moved around the SUV door and took a few measured steps of her own.
“Both of you, stop!” Trina screeched the words.
Lewis whimpered.
Kaylee put her hands out. “Everything is fine.” She tried to speak calmly…to distract Trina from the fact Zander was still inching toward her while her attention was divided. “Everyone is going to be calm, and we’ll get this figured out.”
Where the clarity was coming from, Kaylee had no idea. There was a well of stoicism inside her that she could draw from in times of intense stress. Maybe it was that she had lost so much, and nothing could ever be as bad as what she had already been through.
She’d survived terrible things.
Trina said, “The flash drive, or he dies.” She jerked Lewis again.
The boy’s terrorized, tear-filled eyes bored into her. “She hit my mom.”
“I wouldn’t have had to if she hadn’t fought me.” Trina said, “Just give me what I want.”
“Let the kid go.” Zander sounded as calm as Kaylee had, only his was real. Cool and collected. “And I’ll consider not killing you.” And lethal.
Kaylee saw Lewis’s reaction. She mouthed, “It’s okay.”
Zander was closer now. Kaylee moved as well. Both of them, closing in on Trina and Lewis. Was she really going to hurt him? Who would do that to a child?
Kaylee continued distracting Trina so Zander could do what he needed to, “Why are you doing this? You work at a bank. You’re not a child murderer.” She paused only a split second before adding, “That’s what this will be. And then you’ll go to jail for the rest of your life.”
“Not if I get that flash drive first.” She waved the gun. “Now give it to me. I know you got it from the little library.”
Kaylee wished she was close enough to grab a book from it. She’d have literally thrown the book at her former friend. Lewis was going to be scarred for life by this. Kind of like the way Kaylee had been. And Trina didn’t care at all.
She didn’t get it.
“Let him go.” Kaylee tried to sound strong and unafraid.
Her friend’s attention shifted a fraction, and Zander made his move. Kaylee did the same, aiming for Lewis.
Zander slammed into Trina, grabbing her wrist—the hand that held the gun. Kaylee saw the second Trina let go of her hold on Lewis and reached her arms out to him. He slammed into her like he’d just escaped the clutches of a bear.
She heard Zander grunt and saw that Trina had scratched his face.
He seemed surprised for a second and then twisted her arm and rolled her to her front. He pulled the arm back behind her and slapped on a pair of cuffs from the back of his belt. Then he sat back on his heels. “Yeesh, where did you find this woman?”
“She’s supposed to be my friend.” Kaylee turned to Lewis. “Let’s go see to your mom, okay? We can call an ambulance, and they’ll check her out.”
Lewis nodded.
“Some friend,” Zander muttered.
“I know, okay? I made a bad choice. You think I have poor judgment. I’m doing the best I can.”
He hauled Trina to her feet and something around her neck glinted. Kaylee turned to Lewis. “Go inside. Call 9-1-1, and I’ll be there in one second.”
As soon as he raced away, she closed in on Trina and lifted the necklace from the collar of her blouse. “This belongs to someone else.”
“Whatever. Finders keepers.”
Kaylee wanted to be sick. “Who are you?”
“Anyone I wanna be.” But her bravado slipped, and Kaylee saw what looked like genuine fear in her eyes. She wasn’t going to fall for it, though. Not if it was a ruse.
“I have to go help Lewis.” Kaylee glanced at Zander and took a step away. “You’re good?”
Zander’s eyebrow rose. “I’m thinking, yeah. I can handle her.”
She wanted to warn him to not be cocky, but Trina said, “You have to help me, Kaylee. He’ll kill me. I didn’t succeed.”
She walked away.
“Kaylee, he’ll kill me!”