What Are You Afraid Of? (The Agency #2)(94)

They headed casually along the sidewalk, just two men out for a stroll. It wasn’t until they’d reached the empty lot at the back of the warehouse that Griff crossed the street to halt behind a stack of wooden pallets.

From his position he could study the two large loading docks. They were tightly closed, but there was a steel door between them. He leaned around the edge of the pallets, searching for any sign of the white van.

Nothing.

So what did that mean? His earlier fear that Matthew had been cleverly leading him on a wild-goose chase while Carmen was being taken far away returned with a vengeance. His fingers tightened on the gun.

If he’d been played, he really was going to shoot the bastard.

Then his gaze caught sight of something near the steps that led to the back entrance. It was long and dark, and at first Griff assumed that someone had thrown out a rolled-up carpet. The longer he studied the object, however, the more he began to suspect that it was something far more sinister than an old rug.

Beside him, Matthew heaved a sigh. As if he found being held at gunpoint a tedious way to spend his morning. Certainly not as exciting as lying beside a pool with half-naked models.

“Are we going in, or what?” the man demanded.

Griff frowned. “Do you see something next to the loading dock?”

Matthew glanced across the empty lot before giving a small shrug. “It looks like a pile of trash.”

“No.” Griff gave a shake of his head. “It looks like a person. Come on.”

Motioning Matthew forward, Griff used his companion as a shield as they slowly crossed the lot. If someone was going to get shot, it wasn’t going to be him.

As they neared the building, however, Matthew’s pace slowed as the younger man realized that Griff had been right. It wasn’t trash that had been tossed out the back door. Instead, a man in a dark uniform was sprawled at an awkward angle on the hard pavement.

“That’s one of the guards,” Matthew whispered, as if abruptly recognizing that this wasn’t some strange California game that Griff was playing. “Look at his head. It’s bleeding.”

Griff had already crouched down to inspect the man.

The dark uniform easily identified him as a rent-a-cop. He was middle-aged with thick streaks of gray in his dark hair and a flabbiness that might once have been muscle. His square face was unnaturally pale, emphasizing the nasty gash that split open his forehead.

It looked as if he’d been struck with something narrow. Like a steel pipe. Or a crowbar. Whatever it was, it’d done enough damage to fracture the poor man’s skull.

Reaching out, he touched the man’s neck. No pulse.

“He’s dead,” he said in a bleak voice.

“Dead?” Matthew stumbled back, nearly falling on his ass. “Are you sure?”

“Sure enough.” Griff straightened, urgency pounding through him. The guard’s skin had still been warm. Which meant he hadn’t been dead for long. There was still a chance that if Carmen was inside he could save her. “I need you to put your code into the keypad.”

Matthew was shaking his head, his eyes rolling like a horse who was about to bolt.

“Hell, no. I’m not going in there,” he rasped. “We need to call the cops.”

“There’s no time,” Griff snapped. “Carmen could be inside.”

“I didn’t sign up for this,” Matthew whined.

Griff stepped forward, placing the gun against the man’s forehead.

“Consider yourself signed up.”





Chapter Twenty-Three


Carmen didn’t black out this time, but she wished she had. The pain was so sharp she feared that Ronnie had broken her jaw. At the very least he’d knocked a tooth loose.

Not that the physical pain could come close to the ache of her broken heart.

Cupping her chin, which was covered in blood from her busted lip, Carmen glared at the man who was jerkily pacing from one end of the bay to the other.

“You killed them,” she spat out. “I lost everything because of you.”

Ronnie gave a dismissive wave of his hand, his previous fury replaced by a weird calm.

“I told you, it was their fault,” he said.

Carmen cautiously began to inch her way upright. Her skin prickled with a sense of danger. She didn’t know what was going to happen, but she knew she wasn’t going to like it.

She needed to be up and ready to run.

“If you truly believed you were innocent, then you wouldn’t have gone to such an effort to cover up your crime,” she said, still hoping to prolong whatever fate was awaiting her.

“I didn’t try to cover it up,” he denied, glancing over his shoulder with a scowl. “That was my mother’s decision.”

Carmen leaned heavily against the wall. She was upright, but her knees felt like rubber.

“Ellen knew what you did?” She didn’t bother to hide her surprise.

She’d thought Ellen was devoted to her parents. How could the housekeeper have concealed her son’s cold-blooded murder?

“She came in just a few minutes later,” he said. “She made it look like my father killed your mother and then himself.”

Carmen opened her mouth to protest. Even if Ellen was willing to stage the gruesome scene, why hadn’t the cops realized that something was wrong? They had to have done a thorough investigation, right?