“You just scared that woman to death.”
His head turned to the left. To the heavy shadows that waited.
Malik Jones walked out.
“I gave her and the kid some pro tips. I think they’ll both appreciate me later.”
Malik grunted.
The guy was just not particularly chatty.
Gray crossed the threshold of room four.
Malik lingered near the doorway. “That’s a lot of blood,” he noted.
Yes, it was. “He was shot in the heart. Bled out fast.”
“Guess the Night Striker doesn’t play.”
Uh, right. The Night Striker. Gray had received a text from Cass. One saying that Cass had taken out the attacker who’d…
He fired first. Three times. No choice.
Then…
I left a dead body for you. Cass had given the location of Findaway, Mississippi, and Cass had known that he had to do cleanup.
Except…
He turned on the lights inside the motel room. “Come inside and shut the door,” Gray ordered him. Not like he wanted Naomi to come in and get an up-close look at his investigation.
The door closed softly.
Gray whistled. When he’d spoken with the local sheriff earlier that day, Gray had ordered the guy to leave room four exactly as is. Sure, the body could be bagged and tagged, but Gray had wanted his own eyes on the scene. He even had his hand-picked evidence team at the ready. They were currently waiting in a van outside.
He ambled toward the bed.
One shot in the pillowcase.
Two shots in the mattress. Technically, the shots had gone through the sheets. He picked them up with a gloved hand. Yep, those two bullets had gone through the sheets and into the mattress.
But…
There was another pillow on the floor. A pillow and a worn, gray blanket. The blanket was stretched out, as if…as if someone had been sleeping on top of it. On the floor?
“Guess the perp thought he was going to catch them unaware.”
Ah, that was a whole sentence from Malik. Impressive. “It would seem so.” What bothered him, though, was the fact that the perp had found Cass and Agnes so quickly.
Did someone sell you out, Cass? Cass had been playing a dangerous game for years. And Gray had warned him, time and again, that he needed to get out.
But Cass had told him it was too late. The only way out was in a body bag.
Well, someone had been taken from that motel in a body bag. Only it hadn’t been Cass.
He let the sheet drop. Gray studied the scene once more.
The pillow on the floor didn’t fall there. It’s positioned deliberately. So is the blanket.
