Untraceable Read online

  Two hundred reps later, he lay on his weight bench, soaked and winded, but in a better mood. He could have clocked the kid. He’d had the chance. He’d had the provocation. But his partner had jumped in and, with one look, stopped Nathan from taking a career-threatening swing at a cranked-up gangbanger not half his age. Instead of returning the right hook, Nathan had settled for slapping some cuffs on him and hauling him downtown.

  Now Nathan’s gut clenched right along with his biceps. The scene on that street corner had been a bloodbath. Three victims—all still in high school. One of the kids’ mothers had seen it, and her shrieks still rang in his ears.

  What a waste. Nathan sucked in a breath and pushed the bar up. One more time. And again. And again. What a goddamn waste.

  “Pretty impressive.”

  His elbows buckled, and he dropped the bar onto the bench frame. A woman stood in the doorway of the garage. He sat up and wiped sweat from his eyes.

  Nope, he wasn’t seeing things. Alex Lovell stood right in his garage against a backdrop of pouring rain. Her dark hair was plastered to her head.

  She walked over and plunked a hand on her hip. “On second thought, you look like hell.”

  He hadn’t been this close to Alex in months. He noted the fresh scrape on her chin, the dirty arms, the grass-stained jeans.

  He glanced up into those whiskey brown eyes. “You seen a mirror lately?”

  “No.” She crossed her arms. “But it can’t be worse than you. You been beating confessions out of people again?”

  Her sarcasm hit a little too close to home. He grabbed a towel from the floor and mopped up his face.

  “How’d you find me?” he asked.

  She tipped her head to the side, obviously insulted by the question.

  He’d forgotten how short she was. The bench put him at eye level with her breasts. He hadn’t really noticed them before, but in that wet shirt—

  “Quit ogling. I have to talk you.” Her gaze wandered the room for the first time, skimming over his black ‘66 Mustang. It was the other half of his garage that captured her attention. Not a car person, apparently.

  He stood and draped the towel around his neck, recovering some of his cool. Alex Lovell was at his house. His pulse thrummed, but that was probably from the weights.

  She met his gaze briefly, then stepped away. “What’s with all the shelves?”

  “Ask my ex-wife.”

  She turned her back on him and paced the length of the wall. Some men had power drills and a tool bench in their garage. For years, Nathan had had Santas. And wreaths. And boxes and boxes of designer glass ornaments.

  Alex surveyed the empty plywood shelves. “Your ex a big reader?”

  “She’s a Christmas fiend. She needed half the garage just for her stuff. Took it with her when she left, though.”

  “You sound heartbroken.”

  “Come inside. I’ll get you a beer.” And clean up that face, too. The more he looked at her, the more he got a sour feeling in the pit of his stomach. Alex was up to her neck in something, and if she needed to talk to him about it, that couldn’t be good.

  He held the door for her and continued to ogle as she stepped inside. He should have called her months ago. He should have done a lot of things.

  She stood in the middle of his kitchen and glanced around.

  “Smells like hamburgers.”

  “Barbecue,” he corrected. “You hungry?”

  “No.” She pulled out a chair and sank into it with a sigh. She rubbed her grimy arms and shivered.

  Nathan dragged open a drawer and tossed her a dish towel.

  “Thanks.”

  She blotted her face, then her neck. And that’s when he saw it. The tiny, crescent-shaped scar above her top lip. That scar would be seven months old now.

  “I need your help.”

  He tore his gaze away from her mouth and looked at her eyes. “With what?”

  She stared down at her mud-caked Nikes. “This is harder than I thought.” She glanced up at him. “Could I have a drink first? A Coke or something?”

  He pulled open his fridge and retrieved two Bud longnecks, even though she’d told him once that she hated beer. He twisted off the tops and handed her one.

  “Thanks.” She took a long sip and rested the bottle on the table with another shudder.

  Nathan’s stomach tensed. The Alex he knew from before didn’t scare easily. And it was fear, not cold, that had her shivering in his kitchen. She took another swig, and his gaze slid over her slender neck, her mud-spattered T-shirt. It stopped at the hole in her jeans.

  “You’re bleeding.” He whipped the towel off his shoulder and dampened it under the faucet. Then he crouched down in front of her.

  “It’s nothing.”

  But he was already tugging up her jeans to reveal an ankle holster, which held a SIG P228. The pistol shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did. Her pale calf was streaked with blood, and she flinched as he pushed the denim up farther to uncover a deep gash in her knee.

  “What’d you do?” He dabbed at the blood.

  “I tripped. Earlier. It’s nothing—ouch!”

  He pulled a giant splinter of wood from the wound and glared up at her. Blood gushed from the cut, and he pressed the towel against it.

  “Hold that.” He replaced his hand with hers and went to get some first-aid stuff. His supply was limited, but he rummaged through the bathroom cabinet until he came up with some gauze and hydrogen peroxide.

  He knelt in front of her again. “Sit tight.”

  “Damn, that hurts!” She clutched his shoulder as the cut bubbled and foamed. He poured more antiseptic and grabbed her foot as it shot out to kick him in the stomach.

  “Easy, now.”

  Her grip tightened, and she let out a string of curses.

  The bleeding slowed. She drank and looked away. By the time she’d emptied the beer, he had her knee wrapped in gauze and taped securely.

  He sat back on his heels and looked up at her. “You were saying? You need my help?”

  “I’m not sure I want it now.” She scooted her chair back. “You’re a sadist!”

  He watched her steadily, relieved to see the fire back in her eyes.

  “Spit it out, Alex.”

  She jerked the leg of her pants down. Then she looked at him and took a deep breath.

  “I need to report a murder.”

  He crouched there, staring up at her, but she couldn’t read his expression. Probably because of all that nasty purple swelling around his eye. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and winced.

  “Alex…”

  He stood up and leaned back against the counter. Then he plowed his hands through his scruffy dark hair and gazed down at her until she wanted to squirm.

  “You need to call a lawyer,” he finally said.

  A lawyer? What…? “I didn’t kill anyone!” she sputtered.

  But she could tell he didn’t believe her.

  “I think someone killed a woman I know.” The words made her queasy. “She was a client.”

  “You think someone killed her.”

  “No, I know. At least, I think—”

  “Where is she?”

  “Huh?”

  “Your client. Where’s the body?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the thing. I was looking for her—”

  “If you don’t know where she is, how do you know she’s dead?”

  “Because I can’t find her. Anywhere. She won’t answer my calls or my text messages.”

  He uncrossed his arms and seemed to relax again. “So maybe she left town.”

  “She did. But then she came back.” Alex shot a glance at the ceiling, straining for the last bit of patience she needed for this conversation.

  “She did leave town,” she explained. “Months ago. I helped her disappear. You know, drop off the radar.”

  She watched his reaction. Some of her techniques weren’t exactly legal, which he probably knew because he was frowning at her.

  “You do this a lot?”

  “What?”

  “Make people disappear.”

  She shrugged. “It’s kind of a niche business. Sometimes people want to start over. For a lot of reasons. I show them how. I’m pretty good at it, actually.”

  Not good enough. Not this time. Alex gazed down at her slimy shoes. God, she was a mess. Maybe she shouldn’t have come here.

  “So if you showed her how to disappear, how do you know she’s really gone?”

  Alex got up and walked to the sink. She pumped soap into her hand and lathered up her arms, then nudged him aside and pulled open a drawer.

  “I met Melanie back in October.” She dried off with a fresh towel and finger-combed her hair. “She came to see me after a fight with her husband. He’d beaten her to a pulp.”

  “You should have called the police.”

  “I wanted to, but she refused.” Alex tossed the towel on the counter. “I started making arrangements for her. It took a few days. She gave me a little money, and I told her we’d settle up later, after she got a job. I told her to try waitressing.”

  “Why?”

  “You get paid in tips, mostly. If you can find someone to pay your wages off the books, it works out. She got moved, got on her feet. We were in touch for a little while at first, but then I stopped hearing from her. I did some searching today and found out she’d blown her own cover.”

  “How?”

  Alex huffed out a breath. “Every way possible. She ditched the waitressing job and went to work at some clinic, doing almost exactly what she’d been doing here.”

  “Makes it easier to track her down,” Nathan commented.

  “Exactly. And then I found out she’d been flying to Austin. Long weekends here and there, over the last two months. And then I found out she moved right back here. Right back to her asshole husband.”

  “She move in with him?”

  “No.” Alex scoffed. “But she may as well have. It took me ten minutes to find her, once I knew she was back in town. Her husband probably found her quicker than that. I went looking for her—”

  “Don’t tell me you confronted this guy.”

  “I didn’t,” she said. “But I checked out the house—”

  “You broke in.”

  “And then it caught fire.”

  “It caught fire? What the hell did you do?”

  “Nothing! Someone burned it! On purpose. It had to be. I think it’s a crime scene. I saw traces of blood on the back porch.”

  “What did the fire investigators say?”

  She glanced down.

  “Alex? You gave a statement, right? Don’t tell me you just peeled out of there.”

  She closed her eyes, ashamed of what she’d done. She’d taken off like a teenager afraid of getting caught. She’d messed up, but it was too late to go back and change it.

  She opened her eyes and looked at Nathan, wanting to make him understand, but also wanting to protect his opinion of her. After last fall, she knew he thought of her as smart, maybe even brave. Tonight she’d been neither of those things.

  “I was scared,” she said simply. “Something about the place felt creepy. Like someone was lurking around. And when I saw the fire, I panicked. I couldn’t think of what to do, so I came here.”

  His expression softened. Maybe he’d just realized that she’d known where he lived, that she’d had an interest in him long before tonight’s catastrophe.

  Well, so be it. She’d never been good at coy.

  “I need to go back to that house,” she told him. “I think Melanie might have died there, and I need you to come see. I want your take on it.”

  He sighed heavily, as though he sensed this was going to be much more complicated than she’d led him to believe.

  He was right. And he didn’t even know the half of it.

  “You’d better stop,” Alex said, glancing through the windshield. A foot of water streamed over the bridge, according to the metal depth marker, but Nathan didn’t slow.

  She glanced at him across the front seat. “Look, the last thing I need is your flooded-out car on my conscience.”

  But he looked totally unconcerned as he sailed right over the bridge, spraying water on both sides. Then he pulled over to let a boxy red fire engine rumble by. Its sirens were silent, and it was the second rig they’d passed since they’d left the highway.

  Alex didn’t need to navigate farther. A crowd of people milled around in the center of the road. They turned and squinted at Nathan’s headlights, but didn’t step aside. Nathan pulled onto a relatively high patch of grass across from Shady Shores RV Park.

  “You wait here.”

  “But—”

  “We can poke around later. I need to see who’s here.”

  He got out and slammed the door before she could object. Alex crossed her arms and heaved a sigh as he disappeared past the reach of the headlights. More waiting. Just what she needed.

  Patience had never been her strong suit, and she found it ironic that such a big chunk of her professional life was spent waiting around for things to happen.

  Her personal life was the opposite, and she liked it that way. When she saw something she wanted, she steeled herself for possible rejection and then just went for it. None of this moping around and wishing some guy would call.

  So why hadn’t she called Nathan? She’d run into him here and there since they’d met last fall. They had some mutual friends, and their paths tended to cross. But they’d kept it light, professional. Maybe it was the shock of everything that had happened today, but Alex wasn’t feeling very professional toward him right now.

  She caught a glimpse of him, talking to a firefighter beside a red Suburban. He was probably using his cop status to get all kinds of info not available to lowly citizens like herself. Law enforcement was a fraternity, and Alex was well aware that she’d never gain access to the club. She operated on the fringes, but she liked it that way. More flexibility. More room to bend the rules.

  Alex squirmed in her damp jeans. Nathan’s car was like a sauna. She decided to do some investigating of her own and popped open his glove box: proof of insurance, Maglite, bullets, lighter. Hmm… Closet smoker? Doubtful. Probably more of a Boy Scout, always prepared.

  Her phone vibrated in her pocket, and she jerked it out, hoping it was Melanie. But she didn’t recognize the number.

  “This is Alex.” She waited a few beats. “Hello?”

  The call ended, and she stared down at the screen, her heart racing now. Was it her? Was she reaching out, finally, after a dozen urgent messages?

  Alex clicked over to the Web browser and keyed the phone number into a search engine. No matches. She redialed the number and sat through about twenty rings before hanging up.

  The crowd had dispersed now, and Alex didn’t see Nathan. She watched the red Suburban containing the last firefighter roll away. Then she grabbed the flashlight out of the glove box and trekked across the road, sweeping the ray of light back and forth over the soggy grass until she found a strip of yellow crime scene tape. Beyond the barrier, the house had been reduced to a pile of charred debris. Steam curled up from the cinders and danced in front of the flashlight beam.

  “Hey.”

  She gasped and whirled around. “Dammit, you scared me!”

  “I told you to stay in the car.”

  “What did you find out?” she asked.

  He took the light out of her hand and turned it off. Right. Better not to broadcast their activities.

  “I talked to the captain.”

  “And?”

  In the darkness, her senses were sharpened. The air smelled like summer camp. Nathan smelled like damp leather from the jacket he wore to conceal his gun.

  “They got here pretty quick,” he said in that low, southern-tinged voice. “No casualties.”

  “Okay. And they’re sure about that?”

  “They brought in a couple of canines. No bodies under the bed, if that’s what you were thinking.”

  That was exactly what she’d been thinking. She felt relieved. But then she recalled the bloody shoe print, facing out, as if someone were leaving.

  “One of the dogs picked up an accelerant. Also, there was a propane tank somewhere in the kitchen. It exploded in the fire, pretty early on, based on witness accounts. Couple people at the RV park heard the boom before they even noticed the fire.” He paused. “They reported a white Saturn racing down the road soon after that.”

  The last part was loaded with disapproval.

  “I think there was a gas stove,” Alex said, redirecting the conversation. “I didn’t smell anything funny inside the house, though. No gas, nothing… decaying. I was standing right behind the house when the explosion happened.”

  Nathan didn’t say anything to this news, but Alex sensed he wasn’t thrilled by it.

  “Could a stove just blow up like that?” she asked.

  “I doubt it,” he said tightly. “Not unless it’d been tampered with.”

  Alex swallowed hard and glanced around in the dimness. It seemed like they were alone, but she couldn’t tell for sure.

  If the neighbors had seen her here, had someone else? And had anyone gotten her license plate?

  “Show me where you saw the blood,” Nathan said.

  She took back the flashlight and led him around to the back of the property. She aimed the light beam beyond the crime scene tape.

  “There was a porch,” she said, but it was gone now, reduced to a pile of burned wood. A blackened beam lay in the middle of it all, its surface all cracked and scaly, like alligator skin. “So much for the shoe print.”

  “You remember anything about it?” he asked. “Did it look like a man’s or a woman’s size?”

  “I don’t know. It was only the front part.” She walked toward the lake. “What if we got some Luminol out here? Maybe someone trailed blood away from the house.”

  “That’d be a huge long shot with all this rain,” he said. “Not to mention the fire hoses.”

  Alex’s temper flared. “Well, we have to do something! This is a homicide scene. Don’t you want to look for evidence?”