To the Limit (37 page)

As briefly as possible she led him through the events that had culminated in Reno's and Gorman's murders and the note at the scene.

"It's like a game or something. Why a game? Why all this strung-out drama?"

"Seems to be the big question, huh? I'll keep digging. Watch yourself."

"Thanks, Bob. I will."

When she hung up, she knew that she was not only going to watch it a little closer, she was also going to think about Bob's idea for a very long time.

"What?" McClain asked beside her.

"We might have our link."

MESQUITE,
  
NEVADA-ARIZONA BORDER

"Up here, take a left at the light," Eve directed as she consulted the GPS unit.

Mac flipped the turn signal on their new rental vehicle. After they'd left the beer garden and taken their tram ride, they'd hailed a cab.

"Where to?" the driver had asked.

"Doesn't matter. Just drive."

The cabbie had taken one look at their cuts and bruises, silently handed them a first-aid kit, and punched it. He hadn't asked any more questions. Guess the ads were right. What happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas.

Eventually, they'd had him wait for them at a pawnshop. McClain was now packing a 9mm Beretta and Eve had made room in her oversize purse for a .38 S & W. They'd each bought extra ammo. The last stop in Vegas had been a car rental agency.

As a precaution, Eve had phoned Ethan again and asked for help acquiring the vehicle. Ethan had charged the rental by phone using Nolan's wife's, Jillian's, card. The news anchor for KGLO TV in West Palm had kept her credit cards in her maiden name, Kincaid, even after she'd married Nolan because that's how she was known professionally in the area. With the rental charged in her name, the transaction couldn't be traced—at least not immediately—to either Eve or Mac. It might buy them a little time from whoever was after them.

They'd left Vegas a little over an hour ago in a white Jeep Cherokee, heading for the coordinates the GPS tracker had provided to Mesquite. No clothes, no laptop. They'd been lucky to escape the bomb blast with their lives and their few personal items. Eve had her purse and cell phone. Mac, his wallet and phone. The GPS had been lost in the bombing.

Now, of course, they each had a gun. Kind of told the tale about the anxiety level. Since increasing Kat's would serve no purpose, they opted not to call her and fill her in on the bombing. And since their luck wasn't exactly holding on the good side, they hadn't been lucky enough for Tiffany to have turned her phone on again before they'd lost the GPS unit. And of course, they had no expectations of actually finding her at the motel pinpointed by the tracker. She was probably long gone by now. But it was a place to start and they actually got a stroke of good luck when they started asking questions at the motel desk.

"Nope. Never seen her." The desk clerk looked to be about twenty. He had a thin, acne-scarred face and spooky gray eyes. His shoulders were scrawny and thin on a tall, spidery frame. His shirt was dingy gray.

"But then, I just came on duty," he continued. "You'd want to talk with Janet. Yo, Janet!" he yelled as a middle-aged woman entered the lobby through a door marked: Employees Only.

Janet had a huge black purse tucked under her arm. An unopened bottle of Diet Coke was tucked in a pocket of the purse, and she held an unlit filtered cigarette in her other hand. Except for the cigarette, she looked like the type who would go home and bake cookies for her grandkids. Since Mac put her weight at about two-fifty, he figured she'd probably sat down and eaten the bulk of those cookies herself.

"Folks here need to ask you a couple of questions," the clerk said.

Janet regarded them with suspicion through faded brown eyes framed with crow's-feet and wire-rimmed bifocals. "You the police or something?"

"Oh no. Nothing like that," Eve assured her while Mac stood back and let her handle it woman to woman. "I'm looking for my sister. We had a little family fight and she ran. You know how it is."

"Boy, do I. Got two girls of my own. Fight like banshees. Scream at each other all the time. It's over boys mostly."

Eve smiled with empathy. "Yeah. I know. We think my sister is with a boy now. Someone who isn't very good for her. My mom—well, she's sick and all. I want to find my sister and bring her home before ..." She hesitated, squeezed out a tear. Got control of herself. "Before it's too late."

Mac laid a supportive hand on her shoulder. He thought it was a nice touch.

"Oh, sweetie. Don't you cry now. I'm sure you'll find her. What's she look like?"

Eve gave her Tiffany's description.

"She was here," Janet said, excited that she could help. "Her and some skinny runt of a cowboy. Checked in about eight thirty this morning. Left around ... oh, I'm thinking three o'clock."

Eve checked her watch. It was almost five o'clock. She and Mac were
two hours behind them. But they had a lead. Possibly a
good one.

Eve took Janet's hand. "I don't suppose you saw what they were driving? Or if they said where they were going?"

"They weren't driving. But you might try the bus stop. The boy asked for a schedule. I sent 'em back to the station. Check
Boomer's Texaco down on Sandhill."

"A gas
station?"

Janet chuckled. "Honey, round these parts you get a twofer. The bus stop is at Boomer's."

Par for the course, evidently, in a Nevada desert town made up of gas stations, casinos, and, according to the sign, around twelve thousand residents. When they got to Boomer's, Mac filled up with gas while Eve flirted information out of Boomer's boy, Buddy, who just couldn't grin wide enough when she turned a high-octane smile his way.

"A young man—thin—and a young woman buy bus tickets in here earlier today?"

"Mighta," Buddy said, whipping a grease rag out of the hip pocket of his oil-stained blue coveralls. "Chet'd be the one to talk to. He sells the tickets. Come on. We can ask him together."

Mac shook his head. Buddy was smitten. Surprise. So was he.

Grim-faced, ignoring the increasing pain in his knee, he topped off the tank, replaced the gas cap, and washed the windows while Eve worked her magic on the boys.

"OK," Eve said, settling into the passenger seat five minutes later. She handed him a fresh bottle of water and a bag of peanuts. For herself, she'd bought an iced tea and a pound bag of M&M's. "They're headed north."

"Salt Lake?" Mac speculated as he uncapped his water.

"Not quite that far." She buckled up, opened the M&M's. "Parowan, Utah."

"Come again?"

She checked the map. Made a puzzled sound. "Far as I can tell, it's just a little dot a mile or so off I-Fifteen." She calculated the mileage. "Maybe a couple of hours from here tops."

"So, we're off to Parowatsits."

"Parowan," she corrected. "I wonder why they picked there? Suppose maybe this boy lives in that area?"

"I seem to recall the word
cowboy
coming up. So maybe."

They'd seen a lot of pickups and stock trailers on the road from Vegas to Mesquite. This part of the West was a land of cowboys, it seemed.

Cowboys and, unfortunately for Tiffany and for them, a killer.

Things just kept getting better.

Chapter 24

parowan, utah

The rural town, as it turned out, was
exactly what it looked like on the map. An ink spot. Granted, it was a pretty ink spot that boasted a one-street business district, approximately twenty-five hundred residents, and a really nice little park.

They bought burgers and fries and soda at the Parowan Cafe, then drove to the park to eat and stretch their aching muscles.

"Do not ask me again how I'm feeling, OK?" Eve advised as she eased gingerly onto a park bench. "We're both battered and bruised. We're both stiff and sore. And don't think I haven't noticed that your knee is bothering you, so don't look at me like I need to be in ICU every time I forget myself and groan."

"OK, tough guy. No more concern."

"If you want to be concerned about something, start worrying about how we're going to find Tiffany and her cowboy before the bad guy finds them—or before he finds us."

Mac set the sack of takeout on the bench between them, dug around inside, then handed her a burger. "All we can do is hope she calls Kat again. And do a little canvassing in town to see if anyone saw them."

So that's what they did after they ate. They stopped in at the local general store, bought a few necessities—like changes of underwear and some jeans and T-shirts—and asked questions.

They came up as empty as a dry well.

"So what do you think about calling Edwards... just to feel him out?" Mac asked as they climbed into the SUV yet again after several stop and query missions. He'd received calls on his cell phones from Edwards. He'd ignored them but had picked up his messages. All of them had gone something to the tune of, "Call me immediately with a report or you're fired!"

"On one hand, I'd like to call Edwards and gauge his reaction to the news about Reno and Gorman. On the other, since we have no idea if he or Clayborne is in on this, I don't want to tip him off to the fact that we're still on Tiffany's trail and lead them to her before we can get her to safety."

Mac eased out into traffic and headed for a gas station. "Logically, we should be thinking about contacting the feds or the local law, but I think we should keep them out of it for now, too. If Clayborne is involved, it's hard telling how long his arm reaches. He could have some officials tucked all neat and tidy in his pocket."

"There is that. Money talks. His kind of money shouts. We could actually put Tiffany in more danger."

"Not to mention, we can't call the LVPD without implicating ourselves in Reno's and Gorman's murders."

He dragged a hand through his hair. This was turning into a real cluster fuck. "Let's wait until Ethan gets back to us before we stick our necks out that far."

"In the meantime, want to make a side bet that you can kiss your pay good-bye?"

No shit,
Mac thought grimly. And thinking about the money made him think about Ali. Not that he hadn't been thinking about her. She was never far from his mind. And she was probably wondering why her daddy hadn't called her in two days.

He fished his phone out of his pocket and punched in Angie's number.

"Angie," he said when his ex picked up. "It's me. Is Ali there?"

He gritted his teeth and drove, relegated to listening to Angie's sniping denigration of him as a bad father for ignoring his daughter just like he used to ignore her.

"Just put her on the phone, OK?" There was no point arguing or defending. There'd ceased to be any point between them long ago, he thought wearily.

His heart fell when Angie stopped her tirade long enough to tell him that Ali was on a play date.

"When will she be back?"

Apparently it was a sleepover. He let out a defeated breath. "Tell her... would you please just tell her I miss her and I'm sorry I haven't called."

He gritted his teeth, waited her out. "I'm on a case, dammit. It's been a little difficult."

That just brought on another tirade, which he cut off. "I'll call her tomorrow. Just tell her that for me, will you? And tell her I love her."

He hung up.

And said absolutely nothing while he tried to get his temper and disappointment in check.

"That's got to be rough," Eve said after a long moment.

Yeah. It was rough. "The worst of it is, Angie's right," he said, admitting the hardest part. "My work does interfere with my time with Ali."

"Yeah, well, I'd really beat myself up over the need to make a living. Most dads are independently wealthy and don't have to pull the forty-hour-week thing, or the eighty-hour-week thing, for that matter. They just stay home with the kiddies and bond by the hour."

He cut her a sideways glance. Leave it to her to overjustify. "Maybe if I'd had a nine-to-five job instead of one that kept me out all hours, things would have been different."