Trust No One (24 page)

Matt settled into a chair at a small table, patiently waiting. Of course, he planned to say no, so he had nothing but patience. If only he didn’t blame her for the death of his wife.

“I do need your help.”

“In case you forgot . . . from your passing out and all . . . I answered this question yesterday. No.”

“If not for me, then for Niko. He’s in trouble.”

Matt paused with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth. “Sounds like a Vista job.”

She shook her head. “No. He took off from Vista to go on a job on his own.”

“Off on his own, where?”

“Russia.”

Matt choked on his coffee. Gasping, he said, “And you really think I’d go back there? Woman, you really are crazy.”

His refusal was making her desperate. “What about that Christian forgiveness thing?”

“This has nothing to do with whether or not I’ve forgiven you. This has to do with I’m not going back to Russia.”

“But, you’re his best chance. If they’ve got him in prison, you’ve been there. You know what it’s like.”

“Yes. I’ve been there. I know what it’s like is exactly why I’m not going.”

“Why? What do you have here?” She waved a hand around to encompass their surroundings. “You live alone in the middle of godforsaken nowhere, best I can tell you don’t even have any pets.”
What do you have to live for?
She let the unspoken question hang in the air.

“I happen to like living alone. I happen to like living period, whether you approve of my situation or not. I
don’t
like torture or putting my life on the line. Not anymore. The answer is no.”

She drew in a shaky breath, surprised that she was on the verge of tears. She really must be tired. She never cried.

Matt got up to refill his coffee, seeming to know she was struggling to keep herself together.

When she could speak again, she said, “If you won’t go with me, will you at least tell me the best way to rescue him?”

Setting the coffee pot down, he said, “Now, that, I can do.”

* * *

Dead.
The word still hung between Ben and MJ.

“Where?” she asked.

“Not far from here. In Texas terms anyway. Colorado.”

MJ rubbed her temples and considered options. “Obviously Jeff doesn’t trust me. . .”

“Can you blame him?”

She pierced him with her stare. “Hell, yeah, I can blame him. He sent me on this crazy chase.”

The waitress brought their drinks, promised to be back in a moment to take their food order. MJ dumped three packets of sugar into her tea and stirred furiously until she noticed Ben watching her. “What?”

“Figures a junk food junky would be a sugar freak, too.”

“Are you always such a–” she’d been going to say “prick” but then she watched him pour four packets of sugar into his tea and changed it to “hypocrite?”

“What’s hypocritical? I only stated the obvious.”

“It’s okay for you . . . oh, never mind.” She pushed her phone toward him. “Here.”

He picked it up and turned it in his hands. “What?”

The screen had gone black by then. “Touch any key to bring up the picture.”

“Pic–” His puzzled frown changed to a wide-eyed stare. “The victim I would assume? And a message to check your email? Can you check it on your phone?”

“Yeah, but there’s only a message with an attachment, probably more pictures which I can’t see on my email through the phone.”

“You need to upgrade your phone. Hang on,” he said and moved to slide out of his booth until the waitress appeared and stopped him.

Hang on? MJ cocked her head. That sounded so . . . familiar. Yeah, people said ‘hang on’ all the time, but the way he said it.
Hang on, MJ
. Those eyes. Her gaze shot to his face, only to find him studying her as well.

“What about you, ma’am?” The waitress drew MJ out of her reverie. Oh! He wasn’t studying her. He was waiting on her to order.

She picked the most fat-laden junk food item on the menu, a bacon double cheeseburger. When Ben responded with nothing more than a look of censure and ordered a healthy meal of grilled chicken and green vegetables, she stuck out her tongue.

He was still smiling when the waitress left, but he offered no comment on her food choice. Instead, he said, “As I was saying, I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

“I have my computer in the car. I need the keys please.”

She spent the next few minutes until he returned studying the picture on her phone. Why would Tasha send her something so macabre? Had she taken pictures of every one of the men?

Ben returned with his notebook computer and before she could ask him if he knew the restaurant had WiFi, he pulled out a little gadget and plugged it into a port. “Have Internet will travel,” he said.

“You’re so handy with the little gadgets aren’t you?” she asked, thinking of the GPS device he hid on her Mustang.

“Technology’s a wonderful thing.” He typed in what must have been a password before he offered her the computer. “Pull up your email and let’s see what she sent.”

With her email open, she clicked on the attachment Tasha sent. “Whoa.” As she scrolled through the file of pictures, labeled, “And they all fall down,” the sense of unreal struck her. The men all looked to be peacefully sleeping. No wonder the deaths weren’t labeled suspicious.

She passed the computer back to Ben. “She’s good,” Ben said after looking at the pictures. “Warped sense of humor, too.”

“That can be taken so many ways,” MJ said. “What do you mean?”

“And they all fall down.”

MJ tilted her head up to stare blankly at the ceiling, trying to decide what she missed. “Okay, I give,” she admitted after a minute of drawing a blank. She brought her gaze back to Ben. “Why do you find that humorous?”

“Ring around the rosy?”

At her continued blank stare he said, “You know the nursery rhyme?”

“No, I don’t know. I’m into fairy tales, remember? So this nursery rhyme you’re theorizing she’s referencing means she’s warped because . . . ?”

He sighed, then recited, “Ring around the rosy, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.”

He knew yet another nursery rhyme? She pinned him with a stare. “I’m worried about you.”

“I have sisters, remember.”

“And you obviously spent too much time with them.” But once she said it, she had the thought that it couldn’t hurt for a man to know how women think. When he didn’t rise to her bait, though, she asked, “You think ‘we all fall down’ is relevant to ‘they all fall down’ in what way?”

The look on his face said he was reaching for patience, reminding her of herself when she was dealing with one of Angelina’s stubborn streaks. MJ wasn’t sure she liked that comparison.

“Some say the nursery rhyme refers to the bubonic plague, and do not ask me for the intricacies of that theory.”

“And the ‘we all fall down’ refers to the people dying?”

“Now she gets it.”

“Watch it.”

“Obviously Tasha’s referencing these guys as a plague to be wiped out.”

MJ shrugged, finding the theory too intricate just to kill someone. Then again, they were talking about Tasha, and something drove her to these murders in the first place. Was it something important enough to create such a ritual? Or was it an idea that evolved with each subsequent murder?

“Who are these guys?” MJ asked. “Why go to all this trouble?”

Ben shrugged. “Retired senators is all I know. Obviously they got on her bad side.”

“But they’re so old. What did they all have in common that would interest Tasha? Why didn’t Jeff give you names?”

“Yes, that is curious.” He typed in a few commands.  His eyes lit up. “Hm, here’s a site that lists all former senators. Wow, all the way back to the beginning.”

“Really? There’s a site like that? Someone has too much time on their hands.”

“Taxpayer dollars at work.”

“But how is that going to do us any good? We don’t know the men’s names in these pictures.” She stretched to look over the top of the computer. “Are pictures listed with the senators on that site?”

“There’s a link with most of the names.” He moved the mouse and clicked. “Yep. Pictures.” He studied the screen. “Come on over here.”

“So are you planning on clicking on each link?” she asked when she moved around to his side of the booth.

He was shaking his head, frowning. “That would take forever, I don’t have that kind of battery life.”

“And no doubt the restaurant would get irritated if we took up residence here.”

“There’s another problem. How are you at age progression?”

“What...?” When she looked at the screen she immediately saw the reason he asked. “They’re much younger. Which it would figure, of course, since we do know they are all retired.”

“And death creates a slightly different look, makes our task tougher.”

“Perhaps Tasha didn’t want us to get bored.”

“Ha. Ha.” He stretched his shoulder, rolling it in a circular motion.

“Arm bothering you?”

“A little,” he admitted. He pushed the computer toward her. “Why don’t you take over for now? We can stay here at least until after we eat.” He slumped back on the booth and closed his eyes.

She felt a moment’s sympathy for him, then shrugged. Nothing she could do to help. She turned her attention to the list. “There’s so many names, what we need is a way to narrow it down. The years each man served are listed here as well. It’s logical to assume that all the dead guys served around the same time.”

“Yep,” Ben said, eyes still closed.

“So. . .” MJ mused aloud. “When?” She tried to do the math in her head, resorted to using her fingers.

“Probably mid-80s to late 90s.” Ben didn’t open his eyes this time either.

“Well, that narrows it down.”

“Really it does. How long does each senator serve? Six years? Two terms spans twelve years then.”

“Okay, I’ll start with mid-80s.” She scrolled down the list, clicked on the first one. “He look like anyone in those pictures?”

Ben opened his eyes and leaned forward. “Hard to tell. I didn’t memorize those pictures.”

“Let me see if I can minimize both screens and we compare.” She arranged the smaller screens side by side. They only overlapped a little, it helped that Ben had a widescreen laptop.

“Yeah, that helps.” Ben looked on while MJ scrolled through the pictures Tasha sent and compared him to the senator on the webpage.

“Look, do you think this might be him?”

Ben leaned forward and squinted at the picture on the screen. “Possibly. Hard to say. Don’t suppose she could’ve taken a better face shot, huh?”

MJ cut a sideways glance to him, her irritation fading when she saw his face was flushed. “You don’t look so good. Better rest until the food gets–”

Just then the waitress walked up with two plates and slid their orders in front of them. With a smile and a thank you to the waitress, MJ waited until the woman turned away, closed the laptop and moved back to her side of the booth.

She pulled her plate to her, and was pouring ketchup into a puddle next to her fries when Ben said, “My laptop battery isn’t going to last long enough to go through all those pictures. I suppose we can drive around for a while and use my car charger.”

MJ set the ketchup back in place. “You need a nap.”

“Is that an invitation?”

“Quit trying to be a prick. You don’t need any more practice.” She dipped a fry into ketchup. “We can’t go back to the cabin, the generator is enough to charge your laptop but no–”

“No way to access the Internet without cell phone service,” he interrupted. “But I can download the pages while you’re driving around and we can compare them at the cabin.”

MJ finished the fry and took a bite of hamburger. It had been too many hours since those princess pastries. She swallowed and said over the top of her burger, poised for the next bite, “You still need a nap. How about we find a hotel, you take a nap and I can download the pages while your laptop is charging.”

His eyes darkened, a half-smile tugged at his lips.

“I said you nap, I download, Mr. One Track Mind.” She dropped her gaze to break the hypnotic quality of his eyes and noticed he hadn’t yet taken a bite of food. “Eat. Or do you want to cut up your food for you and feed you?”

“Yes, mommy.” With a sigh, he picked up his fork and attacked his food.

They only exchanged a few words through the rest of the meal, and then they were in the car, MJ driving and looking for a hotel, Ben once again slumped back on the seat. She noticed he’d taken some pain meds with his antibiotic after the meal and figured he was at his limits.

“Here’s one.” She turned into the hotel drive.

Ben eyed the older, somewhat shabby building. MJ knew she was being generous in that assessment.