She Can Hide (She Can #4)(40)

Abby sat up in the passenger seat. She took one look at his face and paled. She got out of the truck. “What happened?”

She rose on her toes and craned her neck to look over his shoulder.

“Don’t.” He moved in front of her to block her view. “He’s dead.”

Abby had enough baggage. She didn’t need to carry the grotesque sight of a suffocated man in her head. Ethan pulled out his cell phone and called the local police.

Abby waited until he disconnected the call. “How?” Her gaze searched his face. She wrinkled her nose. “Fight, gunshot, overdose?”

Ethan stayed downwind. Nothing short of double showers would erase the smell from his skin. “Oh no. This was definitely murder.”

By the setup of the scene, it was a particularly vicious, cold, and methodical killing. Actually, the word in Ethan’s mind was execution.




Faulkner was dead. Murdered.

Abby sat sideways on the edge of the passenger seat. Her feet rested on the running board. Standing next to the open door of his pickup, Ethan called his boss and reported in. Every time the wind shifted, the putrid smell on him wafted toward her.

Ethan lowered his phone and shoved it in his jacket pocket. Frustration brightened his eyes.

“Who would kill him?” This morning, she’d been afraid of seeing Faulkner. Now she was more frightened. How would she ever know if he was the one who’d poisoned her?

“He wasn’t exactly a pillar of the community,” Ethan said. “I looked up his official arrest record yesterday. Besides his conviction for kidnapping you, his arrest record was long and distinguished: couple of misdemeanor possession charges for marijuana, drunk and disorderly, simple assault, resisting arrest, etcetera. Since getting out of prison two weeks ago, he got involved in a lawsuit against the county over the disallowed evidence in his trial, and he ripped off his own mother. Who knows what else he did?”

Sirens announced the arrival of the local police. Abby was grateful that Ethan handled them, showing his badge and explaining why they’d come to talk to Faulkner. Abby didn’t have much of a statement, which suited her just fine.

Despite the freezing temperature, she kept the pickup door open and watched the activity. Several more cars arrived, including the medical examiner. Ethan moved amongst the cops, but he always seemed to have her in his view. His concern warmed her.

What did Faulkner’s death mean? Was he involved with other criminal behavior? Did his murder have anything to do with her case? And now that he was dead, how would she ever find out what had happened?

Too many questions without answers reeled in her belly. The smell of melted tar added to her nausea.

She wasn’t sure how much time passed, an hour, maybe two, before Ethan came back to her side. “We can leave. They’ll call us if they need anything else, and the detective is going to send a copy of your kidnapping case file to me.”

He slid into the driver’s seat, rolled down the window, and blasted the heat. “I’m sorry about the smell.”

Abby closed her door. “It’s not that bad,” she lied.

He snorted but didn’t argue.

“Faulkner’s car is behind the Dumpsters.” He backed out of the parking space.

“Why would he put it there?”

“Maybe he didn’t want anyone to know where he was, or maybe the guy who killed him moved the car so it would look like Faulkner wasn’t in the room.” Ethan drove out of the lot onto the highway. A mile down the road, he pulled into a gas station and parked next to the restroom. He grabbed a gym bag from behind his seat. “Lock the door. I’ll be right back.”

When he came out, he was wearing sweatpants and a snug T-shirt. He locked his odorous clothes and leather jacket in a storage bin in the pickup bed before getting behind the wheel. He smelled much, much better.

His next stop was a fast-food joint. He followed the arrows to the drive-through window. “What do you want?”

“How can you be hungry?”

He shrugged. “We missed lunch, and the drive home is two and a half hours.” He ordered a burger, large fries, and a Coke.

The smell of hot grease drifted in the window. Abby’s stomach growled. She leaned across the cab. “Make that two of everything.”

They ate in the parking lot. Abby scarfed the burger down embarrassingly fast. Ethan took the Atlantic City Expressway headed west. He had the window cracked. The blasting heat couldn’t counter the freezing air whipping around the cab.

Sipping the remains of her icy soda, she shuddered hard. “Can we close the window?”

“Are you sure?” Ethan glanced over. “I smell pretty bad.”

“I don’t smell it at all now, and you have to be freezing.” Not that she minded what he was wearing. The snug T-shirt outlined defined biceps and shoulders but was hardly winter wear.

“The odor must be imbedded in my sinuses.” He raised the window.

“Thanks.”

The sign for the Route 206 exit passed by the window. Abby sat up straighter. The greasy food in her belly did a cartwheel.

“Get off here.” The words were out before she could stop them. Why did she want to torture herself?

Ethan exited without questioning. She directed him through more turns onto a long dirt road. They passed rows of blueberry bushes, winter-barren and scraggly in the sandy soil. It had been summer then. If it had been winter, she would have died of exposure. Gravel and sand crunched under the tires as the road cut through a patch of woods and emerged into a clearing. In the center was a partially collapsed house.