Flashback by Justine Davis (reading e books .TXT) 📗

don’t care. He only worries about what his boss thinks. And wants.”

“Like me dead?” she suggested, and saw the answer in his eyes.

So. Whoever had hired this piece of work—the gardener or maybe somebody else—had also been hired by somebody else, Alex mused. The head of the food chain? Or just another link? Just how long was this thread that led back to the person who didn’t want her digging into Marion’s murder? How much distance had he put between himself and the attempts to stop her?

As much as he could, she thought. It only made sense. She’d already deduced whoever it was had a lot to lose. Or gain, if the motive had been as simple as vengeance. Problem was, what was of value to one person could be completely disregarded by the next, so unless you knew what was important to that person, you didn’t really know where to look.

“Maybe,” she said thoughtfully, “you just might have something to bargain with after all.”

The man had gone pale. Probably because as she’d spoken, she’d idly tapped the knife blade against this throat. She smiled at him. He didn’t look encouraged.

“Unless, of course, he paid you enough to die for him,” she said.

Chapter 10

“What did you find at the scene besides the weapon?” Kayla asked.

Alex settled the headset earpiece more firmly in her ear so she could continue sorting the papers she’d jammed rather haphazardly in the hotel room safe as she talked to her friend.

In true Athena fashion, Kayla had leaped into action when Alex called from the desert. A marked police unit had arrived in less than twenty minutes to take charge of her assailant, leaving Alex free to process the scene. It didn’t take her long to locate the rifle he’d used, with the makeshift silencer. A quick inspection told her how lucky she was. If he’d bothered to maintain his weapon, or secured one in better shape, she might well be dead right now.

“Shell casings. Right amount for the number of shots. Tracks, one good enough for a shoe print. Your CSI’s doing that. Oh, and I had her bag a couple of cholla needles. Looks like they have the suspect’s blood on them.” She could have turned over her knife, as well, for it’s tiny droplet, but decided it might be wise to keep that to herself. “May not need DNA, but you never know.”

“And you can never have too much evidence,” Kayla agreed.

Kayla had offered to come out to Athena herself, but Alex had declined. Her friend was much more experienced at interrogating than she herself was, so she had asked that she take care of that, to see if she could get any more information out of this desert rat.

“Anything more from him?”

“I didn’t have much more luck,” Kayla said. “He told me the same thing he told you. Insisted he’d never met the guy who hired the guy who hired him. He was paid in cash left at a drop, half now, the second half to be delivered when he provided proof you were dead.”

In any woman except one from Athena, Alex might have expected a bit more emotion, worry or panic in the voice. But Kayla was Athenian through and through, and spoke as calmly as Alex had.

“Where was the drop?” Alex asked.

“The library, if you can believe it.”

“Ours? The one in Athens, I mean?”

“Yes. I checked with Mr. Lang.”

The now-forty-something man—he’d been in his twenties when they’d first seen him, and drop-dead gorgeous—was the antithesis of the librarian stereotype. He loved football, climbed mountains, ran marathons and laughed aloud more than any man Alex had ever known. When he’d taken charge, he’d even set aside a separate room in the library for people to violate the no talking—or laughing—rule.

Tongues had wagged at first, but it worked, and the main room of the building was blissfully quiet for those who needed it. And the laughing room, as they called it, had become a cool haven for kids who, without it, might be up to who knows what mischief out on the streets.

And, Mr. Lang pointed out, if they were around books enough, they seemed to absorb their importance, and that was half his job done. And to this day, even though he was only a decade or so older than they were, they called him Mr. Lang.

“He remembered the guy?” Alex asked.

“He did. You know how he is, he knows everybody who comes in, practically. So he noticed this guy as a newcomer.”

“Did he come in more than once?”

“Off and on for a couple of weeks. Mostly on the computer stations.”

“E-mailing his boss,” Alex guessed.

“That was my thought, too.”

“Mr. Lang said the records, cookies, et cetera are all cleared once a patron’s session is over. So are check-out records, once the item is returned, unless there was a fine or a hold involved.”

“Standard response,” Alex sighed. “I don’t want to have to lean on Mr. Lang.”

“I didn’t think you would, any more than I would. I asked him to tell us as much as he was comfortable with.”

“And?”

“Your guy used a Phoenix library card number to reserve a computer station for a specific date and time.”

Alex blinked. “An assassin with a library card?”

“With somebody’s,” Kayla said. “That reservation buys him up to an hour, but he only used about ten minutes of it.”

Alex’s mind was racing. “Do you think Mr. Lang would give us records on any cards that have been reported stolen or missing?”

“He will. They’re on the way. He reasoned that since they were already out of the possession of the rightful owner, and thus couldn’t reflect on them, they were fair game.”

Alex smiled, widely. “Woman, you are a wonder.”

“Just a good cop.”

“More than that, my friend. Much more.”

As she hung up, Alex wondered if the happiness at having Kayla back in her life would ever abate. The estrangement between them had been long and unpleasant for two who had been like