Where is he?” Mia spit the words at the old man pressing a gun into her side. “Where is my son?” Her hands were slick and hot on the steering wheel. She barely saw the cars around them.
They had Gabe, Vin had told her a few minutes ago. They had Gabe, and the only way they would keep him alive would be if Mia went with him. Right then.
“Have you hurt him?” Her voice cracked. “If you’ve hurt him . . .”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said tonelessly. “Shut up and keep driving.” There was no passion in his voice, as if he wasn’t even invested in their conversation. As if what she had to say didn’t matter. The kindly old man who had apologetically told her about Scott’s last few minutes had disappeared as if he had never been. Which Mia supposed he hadn’t.
Should she even ask about Brooke? Would asking only serve to draw attention to her? Or was Vin keeping silent because something irrevocable had already happened to her daughter? Four-year-olds were not known for obeying orders. A gunshot might be the quickest way to silence a crying child.
No, Mia told herself, her gorge rising. No. The reason he’s not saying anything about Brooke is because they don’t have her. Maybe had even forgotten or not known about her. It was better to keep quiet.
But she couldn’t keep absolutely silent. The wheels were turning in her brain. “You killed Scott, didn’t you?”
Beside her, Vin shrugged. Still, it felt like an admission. All he said was, “Turn left at the light.”
But before they got there it turned red, giving her a moment to think. Was there anything she could do?
“Don’t make eye contact, don’t call out, don’t do anything to draw attention,” Vin said, pressing the gun more firmly into Mia’s side, just below her ribs. She had seen enough crime-scene photos to know what would happen if he pulled the trigger. If the bullet didn’t kill her outright, the infection from having her intestines ripped apart probably would.
As ordered, Mia kept her face pointing straight ahead, but still she concentrated on what she could see in her peripheral vision. The person closest to her, a girl in the passenger seat of an SUV, was texting on her phone. Even if Mia rolled down the window or ran out of the car, what could that girl do? What could anyone do? If Mia tried anything, she would be dead within seconds.
The light turned green and she took the turn. “So I guess you were a little more than just a passerby who happened upon my husband’s accident,” she said.
“Look, Mia.” The sound of her name in his mouth made her shiver. “When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Your husband decided he was too good for certain things. Like he could pick and choose. Fraud and tax evasion were okay, but selling coke wasn’t? We didn’t need him getting a conscience. Don’t worry, I made sure it was fast. Fast and smart. And I covered my tracks. No one had to know. But then you had to come along and start asking questions.”
So the Jade Kitchen was selling more than Chinese cuisine. Mia wondered how Kenny Zhong did it. Four restaurants meant a lot of people coming and going. Maybe he hid drugs in takeout boxes?
But Kenny hadn’t done his own dirty work. The man sitting beside her, sitting close enough that she could hear his slow exhalations, had swung a bat at Scott’s head so hard that it had shattered his skull. And Alvin Turner—or Vin—still seemed to think of himself as the good guy. The chances of appealing to his sense of human decency were slim.
“I have a diamond ring worth thirty thousand dollars,” she said. “You can have it if you let me and my son go.” It was in her purse, the purse still strapped across her shoulder, but Vin didn’t need to know that.
“Good to know.” His voice was laconic.
“Please, if not me, then my son. Let Gabe go, and I’ll tell you where the ring is.”
He sighed. “There’s no point in talking. This whole thing has gotten way past the point of talk.”
He was never going to let her go, that was clear. She had seen his face. Knew his name, at least if the name he had told them was true. People who were dead couldn’t talk.
The same was probably true for Gabe. Was she really helping her son by following Vin’s orders?
Could she crash the car into something and get out and run? Mia looked up the road. There. Where the road turned. It wasn’t a line of trees like Scott had crashed into, but there was a telephone pole. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt, just as Scott hadn’t. How badly would she be hurt? She remembered Scott’s torn aorta. At least the pole was closer to Turner’s side. Maybe the two of them would die together.
The pressure of the gun was gone from her side, but before she could react, the barrel was pressed just under the hinge of her jaw.
“Stop thinking about how you’re going to get out of this,” Vin said. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
“Don’t make this harder!” she repeated, anger singing through her veins. “For who? For me or for you? Because I’m getting a feeling this is going to be pretty dadgum hard for me.”
To her surprise, Vin made a muffled snort.
Had that been a laugh? But then the nose of the gun pressed into the spot under her jaw even harder than ever.
Following the directions he barked at her, she turned into the parking lot for Puget Marina. As she parked she looked around for someone who might help her. But there were only a handful of cars and no people to be seen at all. On an August afternoon there wouldn’t be a free parking space. But it was a different story on a blustery late afternoon in November.
There was no point in relying on someone else to save her. If Mia was going to live, she had to figure it out by herself.