Chapter Two
Gasoline soaked through Darren’s clothes. The fumes stung his nose and lungs as he ran from Miranda’s car—what was left of it, anyway. He hadn’t recognized it when he’d approached the scene of the accident. It looked like a soda can that had been repeatedly stepped on.
He couldn’t believe she had survived. She didn’t even seem to be hurt—just understandably shaken. His skin tingled as he kept watch for any sign of a spark. He needed to get out of his clothes as soon as possible. And to take about a dozen showers.
Miranda was gripping the front of his shirt, pressing her body against his. He’d imagined holding her so many times during their chats at the diner. His daydreams were never like this.
He slowed when he thought they were far enough away from her car to be safe if it exploded, then glanced back at it. He’d been so sure the driver would be dead. He’d braced himself for the worst before looking into the crumpled wreck.
And then he’d seen Miranda smiling at him, her brown eyes wide as saucers and her dark hair dangling from her ponytail toward the ceiling. She had even made that joke, though it was obvious that she was utterly terrified.
People died every day. He was very aware of that working in private security. But it had been a long time since that danger had hit so close to home.
“It looks a lot worse from out here,” she said.
“Try not to think about it.”
The wail of sirens grew louder. He turned so that she wouldn’t be able to see what was left of her car.
“I didn’t know you’re a cop,” she said.
“I’m not.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s a gun in that holster.” She cast another pained smile at him. “Unless you’re just happy to see me.”
He couldn’t believe she’d made another joke. But that was Miranda. Always trying to make other people feel better. He held her tighter against his chest.
“Hey, Darren. You okay, man?” Scott came running up to them, which meant he had left their car behind—and the package they were supposed to be guarding.
“I’m fine.” Darren felt the muscles in his jaw tense. He tried to keep his tone calm. “You were supposed to stay with the car.”
Scott shrugged. “You said the accident sounded pretty bad. I thought you might need some help.”
“What I needed was for you to stay with the car, like we agreed,” Darren said.
“Don’t worry about it. The coins are safe.”
Darren glanced around to make sure no one besides Miranda was in earshot. It was easier for Scott to not worry about massively screwing up the job. His mom ran Ford Security, and was unlikely to fire Scott since he was due to take over the company in a few years probably. Darren didn’t have that safety net.
“Let’s maybe not talk about that right now,” Darren said.
Scott cast one of his patented charming smiles at Miranda. “I’m sure we can trust this lovely damsel in distress to keep our secret.”
Darren bristled. Scott loved to flirt with every woman he met, and normally Darren couldn’t care less. But Miranda… She was off-limits.
Before Darren could stalk off with her, she cast a cold glare at Scott.
“I’m not a damsel in distress,” she said. “I was a damsel in a predicament.”
Scott looked over Darren’s shoulder at the crushed remains of her car. “Looks to me like you were a damsel in a pancake.”
“Better than a pickle,” she said.
The tightness in Darren’s chest loosened as he let out a laugh. If she felt good enough to make jokes like this, she was going to be okay. He was sure of it.
She leaned against him, stray hairs from her ponytail tickling his chin.
“Do you two know each other?” Scott asked.
Before Darren could respond, a pair of EMTs approached them with a gurney. Darren set Miranda on it, then reluctantly backed away. The next few minutes were filled with questions. Darren answered as efficiently as he could, and listened intently to Miranda’s take on what had happened.
From how she described what had happened to her, the person who’d been driving the SUV had caused the accident. Darren looked around, but didn’t see anyone in cuffs, and the back of the police cruisers were empty. He made a mental note to check in with his dad’s friends on the force and help track down the person responsible. Miranda had nearly been killed.
A wave of anger pounded through him, but he quickly suppressed it. He needed to stay clear-headed if he was going to be of any help.
The EMTs started to wheel her away, and Darren followed for a few paces.
“Do you need me to go with you?” he asked.
Her eyes filled with tears, but she smiled. “No, I’m fine. I’ll be back at The Red Thread before you know it.”
“Don’t rush it,” he said. “I understand the urge to get back to work and throw yourself into the job so you don’t have to think about what happened, but you need to take care of yourself. Listen to your doctors.”
“Yes sir.” She mock saluted him and laughed. She was still smiling at him as they wheeled her away.
A heavy dread settled into his stomach as he watched them close the ambulance doors. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d grown to care about her until that moment. And the last time he’d watched ambulance doors shut like that—
Scott clapped Darren on the back, startling him out of his worst memory.
“Now I understand why you’ve been so dodgy about having dinner with me lately,” Scott said. “If I was working a sweet little number like that, I’d keep the competition away, too.”
Darren glared at Scott, then turned and started toward their car. He should be focusing on their assignment, but kept thinking about Miranda.
The first time Darren went to the odd diner where she worked, it was because he was hungry and it was the only place that was open at one o’clock in the morning. Then he had chatted with her and decided to go back the next night. And the next.
He hadn’t wanted it to seem like he was only going to hit on her, so he’d kept going every night—even when she was off—acting like any good regular. But now he knew the truth about his visits. It was clearer than ever.
As soon as she was back at work, Darren was going to ask her out. For real—not just in his head. That decided, it was easier to get his mind back on the job.
“You shouldn’t have left the package unguarded,” Darren said.
The silver sedan the company had tricked out for transport jobs came into view. The doors were closed, windows up. When they reached the car, Darren tested the handle. Locked.
He let out a little breath, allowing himself to feel a small bit of relief. It vanished when he noticed that the passenger’s side floor mat was out of place.
“Did you check on the package while I was gone?” Darren was already punching in the code to unlock the door. He pressed his thumb against the sensor that would read his print and heard the click of the latch.
“Relax,” Scott said. “The doors were locked when we got here.”
Darren lifted the rug, then used his key to open the trap door in the floorboard. He pulled out the metal case that held the package—a set of rare silver coins from Ancient Greece. The museum had loaned them to a professor of Antiquities at the local University, and Ford Security was handling their transportation.
“Keep an eye out,” Darren said.
“I’m telling you, everything’s fine.” Scott wasn’t even trying to check out the area. He was just staring at Darren with a weirdly blank expression.
Darren turned back to the case, his dread growing. He entered the combination, then used another key to open it. He lifted the foam that kept the coins in place and his stomach dropped.
“What the hell?” Scott pushed against Darren’s side, trying to get a better view of the case—the empty case.
“Calm down.” Darren forced himself to follow his own advice, even though his mouth was bone dry and his heart was pounding. “Take me through it. What happened after I left?”
Scott ran his fingers through his spiky brown hair. “Nothing. I sat there for a minute, thought you might need some help, made sure the compartment was secure, locked up the car, and left.”
“No one approached you? No one was lingering in the area?”
“No. Dammit, Darren. I’ve had the same training as you. I know I don’t always act like it, but I know what I’m doing.”
Theory isn’t the same as practice.
Darren kept the thought to himself. The other guys they worked with were mostly ex-military and used that phrase to taunt Darren all the time. He wouldn’t use it against Scott.
“Maybe somebody cut through the bottom of the car.” Scott bent over the footwell of the passenger’s seat, feeling around in the secret compartment. He sat down heavily when he saw that the floorboard was intact.
“Those coins didn’t walk off by themselves. Somebody took them.” Darren scanned the nearby buildings.
The case had been secured to either Scott’s wrist or the lock bar in the secret compartment ever since the coins were in their possession. And Scott hadn’t been out of Darren’s sight in that time—until the accident. An accident that suddenly seemed very suspiciously timed.
Darren spotted an electronics store across the street. It was a long shot, but if the owner was trying to get a view of their front door, the angle might be wide enough to capture their car through the front window. The image would be too grainy for a solid ID, but it would give them a clue about what had happened.
Darren tapped his partner on the shoulder. Scott seemed disoriented. Almost dazed.
“Are you okay?” Darren said.
Scott blinked a few times, then shook his head. “Of course not. My mom is going to kill me. I’ve finally proven I’m the fuck-up she always thought I was.”
“Let’s focus on trying to fix this.” Darren nodded toward the electronics store. “They might have surveillance footage that can help.”
Scott slammed the door shut, then locked it. He stalked across the street next to Darren.
An electronic buzzer sounded as they entered the store. The guy behind the counter looked half-asleep. He didn’t even move until Scott threw a hundred-dollar bill on the counter.
“Can I…help you?” The guy stood straighter, eyeing the cash.
“Show us the recordings from your security cameras for the last thirty minutes,” Darren said.
The guy nodded, then snatched up the money and crammed it into his pocket. He turned around and started typing on the computer behind the counter. A monitor was mounted on the ceiling with three views displayed. As Darren had hoped, the street outside was visible. The camera views froze for a moment, then skipped before winding back.
“That’s far enough,” Darren said.
Scott’s gaze was stuck to the monitor. They watched as Darren emerged from the car, then ran off toward the accident. Moments later, a man appeared next to the car, appearing out of thin air.
“The footage is glitchy,” Scott said.
The cashier shrugged. “It’s all we’ve got.”
Darren focused on the image, memorizing everything he could. The man was about five seven, with a slender build and blond hair. He was wearing an overcoat that obscured the rest of his clothes. He leaned down to talk to Scott through the window. The details were too blurry to see exactly what was happening in the car, but after about a minute, Scott got out and closed the door.
The guy was holding out a small black pouch. Scott dropped something into it. Several somethings that caught and reflected the sunlight back at the camera.
“No way. No fucking way!” Scott turned to Darren. “I didn’t do that. I swear, I didn’t. That can’t be me.”
Darren ignored him—and the nauseated feeling rising up through his guts. He didn’t want to believe it either, but the guy in the footage who had stepped out of their car was wearing the same dark blue jacket and pale gray shirt that Scott was wearing. He had the same haircut, height, and build.
Scott looked back at the monitor in time to see the blond man tuck the black pouch into his jacket pocket and put his hand on Scott’s shoulder. He said something, then the footage glitched again. One second the guy was there and the next he was gone.
In the footage, Scott stood completely still for long enough that Darren wondered if the camera had hung. But then Scott started moving again suddenly. He put the case back in the car, closed the door, and walked off toward the accident site.
“I don’t understand.” The fight had gone out of Scott’s tone.
Neither did Darren. He shook his head. “Let me think for a minute.”
The blond guy had been waiting for them. He had shown up too quickly to not be expecting them. That meant he knew their route. All information about the assignment was confidential. Only a few people in their company should have known the details.
Which meant this was an inside job.
Darren couldn’t believe Scott was involved. Maybe the man who had taken the coins could perform some sort of hypnosis. Darren had never heard of any techniques that gave so much control that quickly, though.
“What the hell was that?” Scott said. He looked like he was in shock.
“We’re going to figure it out.” Darren walked around the counter.
The cashier finally perked up. “Hey, you’re not allowed back here.”
“It’s a little late for that,” Darren said.
He pulled a portable flash drive from his pocket and plugged it into the computer that ran the security cameras. The software was fairly standard. It only took him a few moments to find and copy the files he needed. He deleted the originals with a program he kept handy on the drive. No one would be recovering that data.
He walked back to Scott, pocketing the drive again, and said, “A little something for his trouble.”
It took Scott a minute to catch on, but then he pulled out his wallet and handed the cashier another couple of hundreds. Business at Ford Security was good, and the more than generous bankrolling from Scott’s mom helped with situations like this.
Darren put his hand on Scott’s shoulder and steered him toward the exit.
“We were never here.” Darren gave the cashier his most menacing stare as they stepped outside.