Keep Them Close(3)

He grips it in one hand like he’s been waiting to use it. His voice thunders across the empty lot, ugly and raw, words jagged with hate, cunt and bitch prominent among them. Then, calm as anything, he fishes out his phone. Puts it to his ear.

I don’t dare take my eyes off him, but I reach into the middle compartment.

“Yeah,” he says into his phone, loud enough for me to hear. “You know the Mortimer College parking lot? On Woods Edge? Yeah. Come quick. We got ourselves a live one.”

The words slither through me. The gun is now in my lap. I try to load the bullets, but my hands shake too hard.

“You wanna play, sweetheart?” He comes around to the driver’s side, raising his crowbar. “Okay, now we’re gonna—whoa.” He stops short when he sees me pointing the gun at him. I haven’t been able to load a bullet, and my hands tremble, but the gun sends enough of a message.

He backpedals, returning to the front of my car. “I ain’t done with you, you dumb bitch! You’ll see me again!” He holds out his phone and aims it at my front fender, wanting to photograph the license plate that isn’t there. “I’ll be seeing you real—”

I floor the accelerator, smacking into him, sending him sailing backward into his truck, his head cracking against the side with a dull thud before he collapses to the ground.

Oh God oh God what did I do what did I do—

I’ve stopped just short of his truck. I put the car in park and get out. He is lying in the small space between our two vehicles, face down. Not moving, from what I can tell, though the lighting is terrible; he’s lying under the beams of my headlights. I squat down near him, but hear nothing. Is he dead or is the thumping of my pulse drowning out—

An ambulance. He needs an ambulance. I reach for my pocket but—no phone. I look around in the dark and find his iPhone. I tap it. It comes to life, a screensaver of a Playboy centerfold. I don’t know the code. Should I put it up to his face or—emergency, yes, there’s a way to make an emergency call.

I press the buttons on each side of his phone. Two messages pop up:


slide to power off

SOS Emergency Call

Slide to call Emergency Services

Then I hear him. I startle to my feet at the sound. A baritone growl like nothing I’ve ever heard, menacing and predatory, more animal than human.

I rush back to my car. Lock the door. Back up my SUV until it’s bumping the fence. Shine my headlights on him.

I squeeze the buttons on his phone again, get the same two options. I slide my finger as instructed.

Not to call emergency services but to power it off.

I navigate slowly, careful not to blow out a tire, moving right to get around the truck, my right front tire rolling over a parking block by the building’s brick wall.

Then I floor it, peeling out of the parking lot, with only one thought in mind:

The security cameras, at every corner of the school’s parking lot.



* * *





Finley’s car is still gone when I return home. I rush inside and find my phone charging on the kitchen island. I unhook it and take a deep breath, trying to settle myself before I call Luke.

My brother is my only prayer, if he’s still at work, a distinct possibility this time of year.

Please be at work please answer your phone please be at work please answer your—

“Hey,” he says, answering on the third ring.

“Are you still at work?” I ask, unable to hide the quiver in my voice.

“Yeah, the transfer portal closes— Is something wrong?”

“I need your help,” I say. “Are you somewhere where you can see the parking lot?”

“Um—no, I’m in my office, other side of the building. Hang on. Why?”

“Just hurry. Hurry.” My pulse echoes in my head. For a moment I think I hear the garage door lifting. I do not need Finley coming home right now. I pat my pocket, which holds the phone I stole from the man. I’ll have to decide what to do with it.

“What the fuck?” Luke hisses into the phone. “There are cops in the parking lot. An ambulance is pulling in. Someone’s…Is that guy dead?”

I draw a breath. “Do you have access to the video room, Luke? For the parking lot security cameras?”

“Well, yeah, all the video’s in the same room, but…Jesus, what’s Finley done now?”





3


Allison

Sunday, four days later, I enter the bar in Ukrainian Village by the expressway. Old-school, with dark wood and sticky floors and dim lighting.

Jennifer Harper already has a booth in the rear, next to the pool table. She didn’t have to fight a lot of customers for it. She didn’t wait for me to order a drink, either. But that’s Harp. It’s not drinking alone as long as someone else is in the bar.

That was one of the things that burned her at the FBI. But the Bureau’s loss is my gain. There’s no one else I’d use, for law firm work or personal matters, as a private eye.

She half smiles as I approach, looking younger than her mid-forties in her black leather jacket and dangling earrings, short-cropped blond hair with bangs that fall in her face.

“Tell your client he can relax,” she tells me as I take a seat. “He’s in the clear.”