Chapter 23

DANNY HAD been awfully quiet for a long time. I glanced at him again and frowned, arms crossed, as he watched a meticulous CSI take photos of the vehicle. I kept my mouth shut. Mostly because I couldn’t imagine anything I could say that would appease him.

I almost jumped when he spoke, his voice soft enough for only me to hear. “So who put the car here?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“You didn’t ask?”

His irritation gave my own irritation a good kick-start, and I scowled. “It’s not like they have a manual for this kind of thing,” I said. “I’m learning as I go along.”

“Mmhmm.”

There was so much unspoken meaning in that “mmhmm” that I wanted to send it to the FBI for proper analysis. My diagnosis was 30 percent skepticism, 30 percent annoyance, 30 percent “are you crazy?” and 10 percent “am I crazy for even entertaining it?” Yeah. Fuck the FBI analysis. I knew Danny well enough, and that breakdown was probably accurate.

I took a deep breath and tried to be reasonable. “I’m guessing they were going to dump the car even deeper, but the wheels got stuck. Probably didn’t anticipate how wet the ground is here.”

“It’s the Everglades.” Danny arched his eyebrow. I glared at the sexy barbell. “What did they think? Smooth sailing on marsh?”

“I said it was a guess.”

“Mmhmm.”

“And can you stop with all the fucking mmhmms?”

We stood in silence and watched CSU do their thing. We were shoulder to shoulder, but we could’ve been miles apart. I swallowed. Guess I should’ve floated the tipsters lie to Danny after all. He wasn’t handling the truth too well. I could also do without all the looks I was getting from the rest of the team.

The CSI with the blonde braid finally stopped with all the fucking photos, and Danny cleared his throat. “You good?” At her nod he gestured to Gonzalez. “Pop the trunk.”

I held my breath, but when Gonzalez finally crowbarred the trunk open, there was nothing but the usual trunk paraphernalia—empty gas container, a can of Fix-A-Flat, and a spare tire. Disappointment all around.

Strange divots in the trunk lining caught my eye. I leaned in a little, just to make sure the divots weren’t part of the trunk design. They weren’t.

“What is it?” Danny demanded.

“Footprints.”

He met my gaze grimly. At some point she was in that trunk, kicking for all she was worth. Hard enough to leave impressions in the trunk liner.

I made my way to the front of the car, where the door had been left ajar. Danny trailed behind and handed me a pair of gloves. I snapped them on and leaned into the car.

“Look how far back that seat is,” Danny murmured from behind. “We know Amy wasn’t driving.”

When Gonzalez moved for the passenger-side door, Danny shook his head. “Just one person,” Danny instructed. “We don’t need everyone tramping all over the evidence.”

Gonzalez rolled his eyes but stepped back. He was already pissed because I had found that car. “Check the visors,” he snapped.

Of course I’m going to check the fucking visors. I almost bit my own tongue off, trying not to retort in kind. I checked both visors only to find registration information for Dinah Greene. An insurance card. A fast food flyer. I checked the other side carefully. A couple parking stubs.

I ran a gloved hand under the seat and felt in the nooks and crannies. And then snagged my hand on something sharp. “Fuck,” I muttered.

“What? What is it?”

“Something stuck me.” I tentatively reached back into the hole until I grasped the small item. I pulled it out gingerly. “A key.” The plastic fob had splintered and made a sharp edge. “A key to what, though? Safety deposit box?”

“Looks like the key to a storage locker.” At my inquiring look, he shrugged. “I had a locker once to store my wave runners before I sold them.” He squinted at the fob. “You see any numbers on it?”

I flipped it over and over in my hands and checked every spare inch of the fob and key. “Not quite that lucky.”

“Great,” Gonzalez drawled. “So now we just have to comb every storage locker in every storage facility in the tristate area. That’s just great.”

“Hey, you wanna lay off?” Kevin growled. “This is the best piece of evidence we’ve had in a long time. Don’t be jealous because you didn’t find it.”

“Jealous? Of that freak?”

“Hey.” Tab’s voice was all business. “I don’t care how we found it, only that we did. Unless I’m mistaken there’s still a girl missing.” When they didn’t answer her, she prodded, “Right?”

I tuned them out as I turned the key over in my hands and stared at it. “It’s going to take us forever to search all those units. And I’m betting there’ll be no financial trail.”

“Can’t you just—” Danny glanced around. “—you know.”

My eyes narrowed. “Can’t I what?”

“Can’t you ask her?” Danny finished, his mouth a tight line.

Damned if that sentence didn’t sound like it had air quotes around it. “No,” I said shortly. “I can’t ask. I don’t know where she is right now.”

“We’ve got to get this processed for prints.” He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “And we’ve got to search this area.”

“Her killer wouldn’t go through so much trouble to hide the car and bury her out here. If he was going to do that, he’d just leave her in the car.”

“Well, unfortunately for me, my lieutenant does not accept ‘because Rain said so’ as a good reason not to follow protocol.”

I swallowed a four-letter reply.

IT WAS dawn before they found her.

Or what they assumed was her. Of course the remains would have to be processed to be sure. DNA extractions, testing, the whole nine. But I knew it was her.

The normally pitch-black area was lit up. I stood slightly past the yellow-and-black crime scene tape and watched the anthropologist, a short, stout woman named Callie, gather Amy’s remains. She worked at the speed of slow and used a small trowel to place them into buckets organized by quadrant.

Danny stood a short distance away, close enough to touch. From the look on his face, he might as well have been on Mars.

I moved closer, so our shoulders bumped briefly. “You okay?”

“Hmm? Yeah.” His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Of course.”

It was going to be a long day. For everyone.

“We’re about a mile or so from where we found her car,” Danny murmured. “Do you think she knew she was going the wrong way?”

“I don’t know.”

I certainly hoped not. From my best guess, she probably woke up in the trunk and tried to kick her way out. Eventually she probably calmed enough to find the trunk latch and get out. Only to be confronted with miles and miles of thick vegetation. It was tough land to navigate, even if you weren’t disoriented and injured.

“You really saw her, didn’t you?”

I was quiet for a moment. “Yeah.”

He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“You’re the one who brought it up.”

“Well, I’m putting it back down.”

“Fine by me.”

“I need some time to think.”

“I said it’s fine.”

Of course it wasn’t. He checked his watch and grimaced. “You should get home. Get some rest. No need for both of us to be here.”

As much as I wanted to argue, I was so tired I was starting to see double. I wanted a shower and a bed, ASAP. I took a few steps toward the car and then turned around.

I bit my lip and thought of Anna. Maybe Ethan was wrong. “They don’t all end this way,” I said.

It was clear Danny was thinking of her too. “Yeah.” His jaw was so tight it looked like it might shatter. “They do.”