There was their rental car and... damn. It was probably undrivable—not that they’d want to go anywhere near it in the immediate future.
Another swift look down toward Emily’s house and... the entire front garden had been shot to shit. Damn, the sheer amount of ammo the crew in that vehicle had let loose was sobering.
Amateurs, maybe, but it was highly likely that Sam was only alive because Jules had annoyingly stopped to debate the potential meaning of Emily Johnson’s kicked-in front door.
If they’d immediately gone inside the way Sam had wanted, he wouldn’t have seen the SUV pull up. It was hard to imagine that one or even both of them would’ve escaped being hit—right through the now-shattered front windows of Emily Johnson’s little house.
But because Jules had also chosen that moment to reiterate just how much he believed that Milt the Junior—AKA Mick O’Rourke—was telling them the truth about not wanting his father’s money, they’d both survived this clusterfuck.
Sam lay there on the roof, just watching and listening as nothing moved out on the quiet street. There weren’t even any sirens in the distance. It was just... still.
Ominously so.
He took the opportunity to text Alyssa—a brief sit-rep ending with a quickWho’s sitting on their thumbs in the TS office?Because he and Jules were gonna need some help.
He knew Jules was probably getting antsy down on thedriveway, so he quietly slipped down off the roof, crouching down to stay hidden behind the gate. "SUV’s gone. Street seems quiet. But...” He let his voice trail off.
Jules sighed heavily. “They slashed the tires.”
“More like shot the shit out of the entire car.”
“God, really? That’s two for two.” He was talking destruction of rental cars, and yes. He was... winning? “Damnit.” He handed Sam back his sidearm.
“Thanks. But that wasn’t quite thebutI was thinking.” And yeah, Jules noticed Sam didn’t harness the weapon.
“Oh, good.” Jules sighed again. “You think they’re still out there, watching.” He pulled out his phone and opened his map app, switching to satellite view to get a closer look at the area. “Ugh. Too many splinters andsomany fences between me and my tweezers.”
Sam made it clear. “Going out to the street and waiting for a tow-truck and a Lyft could well be a fatal mistake.”
“Let’s definitely stay away from making any fatal mistakes,” Jules agreed, as he expanded the map. “This day’s been stupid enough.”
“Stupid, but productive.” Sam looked over the smaller man’s shoulder. Like most neighborhoods in this part of the Valley, this residential area bumped right up against a more commercial zone. He pointed exactly as Jules zoomed in to look at, yes, a mall with what appeared to be an easily accessible parking garage. On a one-to-ten scale of good places to hide from shooters in a black SUV, urban parking garages rated a high nine. “Considering we found our Emily.”
Jules sighed again. “I hear you, Starrett, but it still doesn’t make sense?—”
Sam cut Jules off mid-argument by pulling that folded-in-half photo out of the back pocket of his jeans and handing it to him. “This was in a frame on Emily’s bedside table.”
Jules unfolded it and... “Oh.”
Oh, indeed. The photo was a printed glossy of a clearly loving couple—heads close together as they smiled at each other. The young woman had brown eyes in a pretty face surrounded by a mass of thick, dark, curly hair. The man...
“You were right,” Jules admitted. “We found our Emily.Sonof abitch.”
“Son of a millionaire,” Sam murmured. “Also? Wig.”
Jules laughed—just one short bark. Because the man in the photo was none other than Milt Devonshire Junior. A short haired, clean shaven, non-blotchy-faced, Christmas-sweater-wearing Milt Devonshire Junior. Who’d lied right to their faces when, clad in what definitely had been a wig, he’d told them he had no idea who Emily Johnson might be.
Never heard of her. Absolutely no clue...
“Damnit,” Jules said, gazing again down at that young woman’s smiling face. “I hope she’s not dead.” He looked up at Sam. “What the hell? Harper’s our bad guy—gotta be. He went to a lot of effort to keep Wig-Milt away from the estate, which strongly suggests that Wig-Milt didn’t know about the ongoing fraud.”
“All thatDon’t let the son in, he’s dangerousshit,” Sam agreed.
“So how do we make this make sense?” Jules asked, but because he was Jules he answered his own question. As usual, all Sam had to do was look a bit pensive and wait. “Unless it’s not binary.”
Except, “Sorry, Squidward, you just lost me.”
“There are more than two possibilities here,” Jules explained. “It’s not just one, Wig-Milt is in cahoots with Harper, or two, Wig-Milt knows nothing of Harper’s criminal activities. There’s a three: Harper’s committing fraud along with kidnapping and possibly even murderandWig-Milt’sperpetrating some fraud and/or criminal activity of his own. Unconnected to Harper’s garden graveyard.”
