Oliver watched in disbelief as the young woman who called herself a pet detective—whatever that was—ran toward the two thugs whaling on her car with baseball bats.
It wasn’t any of his business what she did. Heck, the way she was yelling, she might even know them.
Of course, they were damaging her property.
His conscience gigged him but he stood his ground. If she didn’t have any better sense than to walk up on a pair of thugs with baseball bats, was it his obligation to step in and save her ass?
Something heavy settled in his chest as he watched her waving her free arm in the air and yelling at them to stop. Neither asswipe bothered to turn or respond. She might have been squaring off against a pair of Rottweilers. If they did get nasty, she’d have about as much chance of survival as that Pom she carried.
She saves puppies, mate.
“Bloody hell.”
Oliver pointed to his dog. “Stay.” He dropped Jackeroo’s leash and took purposeful strides to wade into a fight he could not walk away from.
He’d waited a beat too long. Even as he fell into a trot he saw her grab the arm of the man nearest her and yank. “Stop. Stop that!”
Hoodie number one swung around, yelling, “Get off me, bitch.” He stiff-armed her with his free hand, palm to her chest.
She staggered back two stuttering steps before she lost her balance and landed, hard, on the pavement.
Wookie, ejected from her arms on impact, erupted in an indignant flurry of barks, snapping at the assailant’s ankles, taking the man by surprise.
The moment gave Oliver the distraction he needed to surprise her assailant from behind.
He grabbed the guy by the back of his jacket and spun him around. Simultaneously, he grabbed the bat and jerked.
Caught off guard, his opponent stumbled forward. Oliver met him with a sharp left jab to the face. Never his best punch, since he was right-handed. But it was enough to stagger the guy backward into the side of the car and make him release the bat in stunned surprise.
Oliver took the bat and heaved it as far away as possible. It sailed over the row of shrubbery and fell with hard rattling sounds on the sidewalk on the far side.
He was vaguely aware of people running toward them from the beach, whether out of a desire to help, or simply to watch the battle. But he couldn’t wait to find out.
He pointed the second miscreant. “Clear out. Now.”
“What the fuck? You want some of me, too?” The second hoodie grinned evilly as he rounded the car hood, swinging his bat repeatedly with both hands, as if he were practicing a bleachers-clearing home run.
Even though it was balmy, both men had laced their hoodies tight around their faces in disguise, making them look like twin Kennys from South Park. It also limited their field of vision, Oliver realized with a smile.
He didn’t fool himself into thinking that because the second guy was short and much slighter of frame, he would be easy to shut down. Judging by the pimples visible on his nose and chin, he was seventeen or eighteen, only half Oliver’s thirty-four years. But he had cunning on his side.
Oliver ducked back as the kid swung the bat in an arc through the space where his head had been a second before. Then he lunged forward, shoving the teen’s wrists with his right hand to continue the momentum that twisted him at the waist, and shoved the heel of his left hand up into his chin. He heard the teen’s teeth click together as his head snapped back. Oliver followed with a headbutt that buckled the kid’s knees and he slipped toward the pavement, bat loose and rolling away.
A woman’s cry behind him warned him of the first hoodie’s recovery.
Oliver ducked as he turned but the fist thrown his way still caught him on the bony ridge above his eye. He saw stars as white-hot pain radiated through his skull. He knew the skin had split before blood ran into his eye. Tired of playing fair, and not willing to take any more abuse, he aimed a kick at the guy’s crotch.
With a girlish yelp of agony, he went down.
“Oh no you don’t! Come here.”
Oliver swung around to find that the pet detective was on her feet again and trying to scoop up the Pom, who seemed determined to evade capture a second time. He whistled to Jack, who came instantly alert to the ancient command to herd, and moved in on the little dog in crouch mode.
The Pom stopped short, barking and quivering but offering no more resistance to the woman, who grabbed his trailing leash.
A tingling sensation made Oliver whip around. The home-run king was still on the ground, cupping his nuts and moaning so pitifully Oliver almost felt sorry for him. But not enough to keep him from scooping up the abandoned bat. He waved the tip of it under his opponent’s nose. “Are we having fun yet?”
The teen groaned and kicked out weakly. “Get off me.”
“You’re a fuckin’ maniac!” His fellow hoodie had staggered to his feet but he backed up as Oliver turned toward him. He glanced nervously at his companion. “Come on! We’re done.”
“I don’t think so.” Oliver grabbed the first guy by the elbow and jerked him to his feet. “The police are going to want to talk to you lot.”
“No.” Oliver turned his head in the direction of the voiced objection.
The Pet Detective had come up beside him. Her eyes were still big with shock but her voice was steady. “Let them go. It doesn’t matter.”
Taking that as his cue, the first hoodie jerked free of Oliver’s grasp and ran.
Cupping his family jewels in both hands, his accomplice limped his way through the hedges and back onto the street, where a car was waiting to whisk them both away.
Oliver waited until they had disappeared before he turned to the woman he’d been defending. “What the hell was that all about?”
“I—ah.” She was saved from finishing by a sheriff’s department cruiser pulling into the parking lot.
* * *
Deputy Sheriff Sam Lockhart shook his head as he looked over the damage to Macayla’s Honda, which included broken windows, two blown tires, and fenders bent into free-form art shapes. The City of St. Pete Beach was a barrier island community whose law enforcement jurisdiction fell under the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office.
Though Sam wasn’t the only officer on the scene, Macayla was grateful that Lockhart had taken the lead. He and she were friends. Had been since high school. The two other deputies who’d answered the call were interviewing the hotel employee who’d called 911, and a couple of tourists who’d taken video of the altercation with their phones.
As he approached Macayla, she prepared herself for his interrogation. Just because they were friends didn’t mean he wasn’t going to give her the third degree. Long and lean, with freckled skin and a somber long face that made him seem older than his twenty-seven years, Sam was a law enforcement officer, first and last. Friendship wouldn’t patch over the incident. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t get around him.
She mentally straightened up as his basset hound gaze settled on her. “You won’t be able to drive away from the scene of the crime this time, Macayla.”
“This time?”
Both she and Sam glanced at the man who, to be honest, had probably saved her bacon twice in the past thirty minutes. He was standing a few feet away, legs braced and arms crossed over that magnificent chest. Behind his back, two teenage girls were checking him out. He’d already identified himself to Lockhart as Oliver Kelly of Canberra, Australia—nailed it.
Right now he was staring at Macayla as if she’d just kicked him in the shin. “You’ve been attacked before?”
“Not me personally.” Not that it was any of his business. She had been avoiding thinking about the events that had taken place three weeks earlier. Now she was going to have to redouble her efforts.
“Excuse me.” She moved past Lockhart to reach through the shattered driver’s-side window and extract her purse.
Lockhart put out a hand to stop her. “You can’t do that, Mac. You’re tampering with evidence. Nothing can be moved until the crime unit is done.”
Mac reluctantly withdrew her hand. “Believe me, they never touched the inside of my car. They were only interested in the outside.” She avoided another survey of her beyond-damaged Honda. It hurt too much. “You want fingerprints, try the hood or the passenger-side door one of them slid down after being struck.”
Lockhart glanced at Oliver. “That would be your doing?”
The big man nodded. “He swung a bat at me first. I tend to take a thing like that personally.”
Lockhart nodded. “I’m getting a picture. What prompted you to come to Miss Burkett’s aid?”
“An overdeveloped sense of chivalry.” Oliver adjusted the single-use ice pack the officer had given him for his bleeding eye. “Two on one didn’t seem like a fair fight.”
Macayla rolled her eyes. “I could have handled that.”
He grinned. “That was obvious from the way you were holding down the pavement when I stepped in.”
Lockhart’s attention swung back to her. “You were attacked?”
Mac shrugged. “I tripped.”
“You were stiff-armed onto your back, the most vulnerable position there is.”
Lockhart looked from one to the other with a thinning of his lips. “You two known each other long?”
“No—five minutes.” Their answers collided.
“We’re strangers,” Macayla added for clarification.
Lockhart turned his attention to Oliver again. “Where were you when you noticed the disagreement?”
“It wasn’t a disagreement,” Mac cut in. “I had been chatting with Mr. Kelly about his dog.” She pointed to Jackeroo, who stood patiently by his handler. “That’s when two guys jumped through the bushes with bats and began caving in my vehicle.”
Lockhart kept his gaze on Oliver as he asked, “Why your car, Mac?”
She shrugged. “Who knows? But they did pick it out. I saw them looking at license plates of other cars before they decided to destroy mine.”
“So they knew whose car they were after?”
“They knew which car they were looking for. There is a distinction.”
“So, which is it? They wanted to destroy that car. Or they wanted to destroy your car, Mac?”
“How should I know?” Mac ducked the officer’s narrowing gaze and her savior’s skeptical stare by setting Wookie on the grass, but held on to the temporary leash she’d dropped over his head. It was clear from his struggling that her rescued pup needed to pee.
Lockhart paused a second before saying a little too casually, “Too bad a big fella like you couldn’t have detained at least one of them until we arrived.”
Oliver didn’t so much as glance at Mac, but she could feel the heat of the debate going on inside him from five feet away. Finally, all he said was, “Yeah. Too bad.”
Lockhart watched him a beat longer. Then he turned back to Mac. “Got any guesses as to why someone would want to decommission your ride?”
Mac rolled a shoulder. “Because it’s an eyesore?”
He shook his head. “You always had attitude, Mac. But this is serious. Attacks like this are usually meant as a warning. You owe anyone money? Missed a payment of some kind?” The look she gave him curdled the remains of his breakfast yogurt in his stomach. “Don’t suppose you recognized either of the attackers?”
“Not really.” From the corner of her eye she saw the Aussie’s gaze narrow and knew he didn’t believe her. After all, she’d asked him to let the attackers go. Why the hell should he care, anyway?
“Want to take a guess?”
“I’d rather not.”
Lockhart stepped in close to her, cutting off Oliver from her view as his voice dropped to a near whisper. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with your reporting a shooting over on the mainland three weeks ago?”
“Not now,” Mac said under her breath.
“Yes, now.” Lockhart’s cop face dropped into place as he pointed toward his cruiser. “If you’ll just step over there for a minute, Miss Burkett.” Clearly he wanted to discuss this further, in private.
Reluctantly, Mac complied, but only because she didn’t want to make any more of a spectacle of herself than she already had. Jefferina preached that keeping a low profile was rule one in the PI handbook. Or maybe it was number two, after, “Be safe.”
When she reached the deputy’s cruiser she spun around. “Okay, Sam. What do you want?”
“I want you to tell me what’s going on. Weren’t you told to keep a low profile until the St. Petersburg police investigation is done? Which, in my estimate of the events this morning, you’re doing everything but.”
“I was only doing my job this morning, luring a dog out from under a dumpster. That’s not exactly high-profile stuff.”
Lockhart glanced at Wookie, who was trying to hump his leg. “Geez. Curb your beast, Mac.” He gently shucked him off with the calf of his other leg.
Mac reined in the little stinky ball of terror. “So, what’s going on with the case, Sam? It never even made the papers. It’s been three weeks and nobody has told me squat.”
“That’s because there’s nothing to tell.”
“Come on, Sam. It’s me. You must have heard something via the grapevine.” She’d learned from Jefferina that first responders gossiped among themselves like sorority sisters at a sleepover.
He scratched behind one ear. “I can tell you this much. They don’t have a body. No suspicious gunshot wounds were reported by any emergency room in the area that night. None of the residents on the block would admit hearing the verbal altercation or a truck peeling out, let alone gunshots. Word is, without your video, the department wouldn’t have taken you seriously.”
“What about the call to nine-one-one?”
“It came from a burner phone. The neighborhood is full of pay-as-you-go phones.” He gave her a sudden sharp look. “Could the attack this morning be tied to the shooting you say you witnessed?”
Mac took a deep breath to suppress the shock of nerves erupting behind his reminder of how close she had come to being a second victim of the crime they discussed. “I don’t see how. The—ah, shooter never saw me. The sound of the police sirens approaching made him change his mind about investigating the shadows I was hiding in. I’m still not certain if he knew I was there. Maybe he was just being paranoid.”
“It takes steady nerves to shoot a man and then search for witnesses, instead of hightailing it away from the scene of the crime. That points to a cold-blooded type. Professional.”
“Hit man?” She resisted the very idea. “What about the video I took? Wouldn’t it be helpful in identifying the men?”
“It might be. If there was a suspect. St. Petersburg police have been tight-mouthed about there even being video. No one’s seen it.” He gazed at her hopefully. “What’s on it?”
“Can’t say.”
The police had been quite clear about her not discussing the footage. To her dismay, it wasn’t as sensational as she was sure it would be when she’d taken it. She hadn’t caught the shots being fired. All she’d captured were shaky infrared images of two people moving behind the truck and then one man striking the other in the head with a bright object before flipping him into the back. There was a brief pan to her feet, reddish toes glowing inside her boots.
“I heard from a buddy in the department that they found some blood on the driveway. But without a body to match it to or witnesses to the shooting, there is no crime. The police have back-burnered the investigation until further evidence appears.”
“But—”
“No buts. My advice, let it alone.”
She let his advice sink in. Even for her, the events of that night three weeks ago were fast becoming more like a bad dream, without sharp edges or focus.
“There is some good news on another front. Only you didn’t hear it from me.”
Mac nodded. Sam was practically a one-man BuzzFeed.
“The necropsy report on the dogs you found? They were identified as the missing greyhounds.”
In the uproar of the aftermath of the shooting, it had taken the police a while to home in on the reason she gave for being in the neighborhood in the first place. She was following a tip about the missing racing dogs. The source of the stench in the neighborhood was traced to the house in whose bushes she had been hiding when the shooting took place.
“What happened to them?”
“They’d been poisoned and left to rot. Vet said it looked like a last-minute job. A smarter criminal would have simply buried them in the yard with no one ever the wiser.”
Mac swallowed convulsively as his words drew a picture she didn’t want in her head. “Who would do that?”
“The prevailing theory is that the pair were taken for ransom.” He stared at her before adding, “The owners refused to pay.”
Mac frowned. She hadn’t spoken to the greyhounds’ owners. When Jefferina passed the job on to her, she’d never said anything about a ransom. Only that it was police business. “How much was the ransom?”
“Small, what we call a scrap metal crime.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the payoff from a crime is equal to what a petty criminal can make from fencing stolen scrap metal. A couple of hundred dollars, at most. It’s a petty crime that often stays under the police radar.”
“Why?”
“Because pet owners just want their animals back safely, and quickly. The ransoms often aren’t much more than people offer as reward for the return of a lost pet. So they just pay up and contact the police afterward.”
“But the greyhounds were winners. They’d earned big purses. Why wouldn’t the owners pay a ransom to get them back?”
Lockhart shrugged. “Not everyone has your tender spot for animals. Many breeders consider racing dogs a disposable commodity. They’re uninsurable because they suffer so many injuries on and off the track. And there’s plenty more in the kennels where they came from.”
Macayla thought that over. Dog racing had a dubious and increasingly unfavorable image among many people in the United States. She was strongly in that category. Each year, nationwide, thousands of dogs were killed or injured in the sport. In Florida alone a racing greyhound died, on average, once every three days.
“If you’re right, then why did the owners go to the police? And then go to the additional trouble of hiring me to find them?”
“Maybe they wanted the thieves caught before they could do it again.” Sam smiled finally, and it turned his somber face boyish. “Despite the outcome, I think you do good work, Macayla.”
Uh-oh. The only time Sam called her by her full name was when he was feeling sentimental toward her. She and Sam had dated exactly one month, in eleventh grade, and decided they were better friends. That stuck. At least for her. “How’s Shay?”
His smile held. “Fine. We’re talking about setting a date.”
Mac socked him in the arm. “Go on, you dog! Congratulations.”
Sam’s ear tips pinkened. “Not now, Mac. Official business.”
“Right.” Mac picked up Wookie, unconsciously wrinkling her nose against the stench. “I need to get my quarry back to his family. If that’s all right.”
“Unless we get some new information…” He shrugged.
“I’m free to go about my life. Yay, me.” She sounded much more confident than she felt. But bravado was all she had at the moment. “Thanks, Sam.” She put a hand on his arm for emphasis.
Lockhart looked from her hand back over his shoulder. “That the new boyfriend?” He glanced past her to where the other two deputies and Oliver Kelly were observing them with interest.
Mac snorted. “Mr. Down Under? So not my type. Though I suppose I do have to thank him for stepping in.”
“Yeah. I don’t want to think what might have happened if you’d had to defend yourself alone.”
The look of concern on Sam’s face prompted her to be more honest than she had been. “Okay. I may have an idea who’s behind this prank.”
“Prank? They totaled your car.”
“I know.” Without an automobile, she didn’t have the means to do her job. “But if I’m right, the instigator will want to make things right. Without police involvement.”
Lockhart was scowling again. “Don’t be stupid, Mac. If you’re in some kind of trouble, you need to get in front of this. Talk to me. I can help.”
“I’m not in trouble. If I need help, you’ll be the first person I call. I promise.” Mac made a production of crossing her heart with a finger.
He just shook his head. “Stubborn.”
He added a few more notes to his notepad and then said, “We’re done. You can take your things out of the vehicle when the crime unit is done. Meanwhile, I’ll call a tow.”
Mac shook her head. “I can’t afford that.”
He grinned. “I thought the doggy PI business was booming.”
“Not new-car booming.”
He nodded. “The tow is on the city.” He looked down in distaste at the barking bit-of-fluff dog Mac held. “Ask Franklin to reimburse you for services. You were on the job.”
“Toss in your cleaning bill, as well. As hazard pay.”
Mac cut her eyes toward the source of that masculine comment.
Oliver had approached them. He stood a few feet away with his feet braced and his powerful forearms crossed, watching her. So far, he hadn’t interfered with her version of the story. But she could tell by the stiff set of his shoulders that he was pissed about something. Probably his eye hurt like hell. Still oozing blood, it had puffed up until it was almost closed, but he had refused the offer by Lockhart to call the EMTs.
“See you later, Mac.” He nodded at Oliver. “Sir.”
Mac offered Sam a finger wave. “Thanks for being here.”
Rather than try to dodge him, she turned to Oliver. “You’re free to go now. Thanks again.”
He didn’t bat an eyelash. “Do you have any idea who did this, or why?”
“Not really.” As close to an outright lie as she could tell with him staring her in the face. “And, really, this is none of your business.”
“You could have said that before I took a punch.”
“I didn’t ask for your help.” The way he looked at her, all wounded-warrior offended, made her immediately ashamed. “Look. I appreciated your help. Really.” She laid a hand on his arm without thinking about it. “And I’m sorry about your eye. You should get that looked at.”
He grimaced as he touched it. “I’ll manage. What are you going to do about transportation?”
Mac gave her car a sad glance. “Call a friend to come get me.” She looked down at the animal wiggling in her arms. “I have to get this little guy back to his owners before I take care of anything else.”
Oliver told himself that she was right. None of this was his business. Still he heard himself saying, “I can drop you off with the dog. And maybe I should get my eye looked at. It hurts like bloody hell.”
Mac frowned. “I know a doctor who won’t charge you, since it’s me bringing you in.”
She expected him to refuse, since he was good and pissed off. So it stunned her when he suddenly grinned and said, “Sounds like a plan.”