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  The moment she said the name, the mechanic’s eyes widened to almost twice their size, looking almost cartoon-like. “You know her? You know Eva?” he cried. “Then you know what she’s like. She’s crazy. Hell, that witch’s got her old boyfriend tied up in a room. She threatened to kill his family if he didn’t cooperate.”

  Yes! She knew it. She knew there had to be a reason why Ethan was involved in this.

  For just one blissful second she felt the rush of relief. But the very next moment Scottie forced herself not to get excited just yet. They still had to find where that worthless witch was keeping Ethan.

  She pushed a yellow lined pad and a pen in front of the frightened mechanic. “If you ever want to walk outside and breathe fresh air again, Marty, you’re going to write down the name of everyone who’s involved in this and you’re going to tell us where we can find them.”

  “You mean like their addresses? I don’t have addresses,” Marty cried.

  “How do you contact them?” Bryce asked.

  “I don’t,” Marty said. “Eva calls me, gives me instructions.”

  That meant that there was an incoming number on the mechanic’s phone. “Okay, Marty, this time you’re going to call her,” Scottie said, handing the phone that had been confiscated earlier back to him. “Tell her you’ve thought it over and you want more money or you’re going to go to the police.”

  Marty looked terrified. “Are you trying to get me killed?”

  “No, we’re trying to get a bead on where Eva is calling from.” Because she had a feeling that was where her brother was being held prisoner. “You have to keep her on the phone long enough for us to do that.”

  Marty shook his head almost violently. “No, I can’t!”

  “Tell her you want a bigger cut. That the police came to the repair shop, asking questions, and if you’re going to risk everything, you want more money.” Scottie could see he was digging his heels in. “Think of the alternative, Marty,” she told him pointedly. “I guarantee you won’t like prison.”

  Drawing in a shaky breath, the mechanic nodded. “Okay, I’ll call her.”

  “Atta boy, Marty. Way to be a team player,” Bryce said. He already had Valri on the phone. “Valri? I need you to trace a phone. We’ve got a call going in to a suspect’s number and we want an address.” He gave her the number of the cell phone placing the call. “This is for all the marbles, Valri,” he told his sister. “Great.” He looked at the mechanic. “Okay, start dialing,” he instructed.

  “You’ll protect me?” Marty asked nervously, practically begging.

  “Count on it,” Scottie said.

  Taking a deep breath, the mechanic swiped open his phone.

  Chapter 19

  The mechanic’s hands were visibly shaking as he tapped the “return call” directive on his phone screen. The phone on the other end rang six times. Marty was about to terminate his attempt when he froze.

  Someone on the other end of the call was picking up.

  “What do you want?” the female voice snapped. “I told you no more houses right now.”

  Marty’s eyes darted back and forth between the two people on either side of him. Scottie waved her hand at the phone, directing his attention back to the person he was speaking to.

  “I—I want a bigger cut,” Marty blurted.

  The request was met with silence at first. And then the woman said frostily, “You’ll get what we agreed to. Now don’t call me again until I tell you to—”

  Watching him, Scottie made a rolling motion with her hands, indicating that he needed to stretch this out, then deliberately held up her badge. Marty looked as if he was ready to come out of his skin.

  “U-um,” he stuttered, “the police were here, asking questions.”

  “What kind of questions?” the woman on the other end demanded.

  “Just questions,” he answered nervously. “I didn’t tell them anything.” The momentum in his voice built. “But you said they wouldn’t catch on to me. That I was safe. If I’m going to risk everything, I—I want more money.”

  “Yeah, we’ll talk,” the woman snapped just before the call suddenly went dead.

  Marty looked at Scottie, raising and lowering his shoulders haplessly. “She hung up.”

  “Valri, did you get it?” Bryce asked anxiously, talking into his phone.

  “There wasn’t enough time to pinpoint the location, but I narrowed it down to a three-block radius,” Valri told him, sounding far from happy with the results. “The call was coming from somewhere between MacArthur and Adams, along Mira Loma.”

  Bryce tamped down his disappointment. “Better than nothing,” he told his sister. “You did good, Valri.”

  “I could have done better,” she answered, frustration echoing in her voice. “Keep me posted. I want to know how this goes.”

  “Will do.” Ending the call, Bryce put his cell phone back into his pocket. He saw that Scottie was already on her feet, ready to rush out and search the area.

  “Can I go now?” Marty asked anxiously, pushing back his chair.

  Bryce put his hand on the man’s shoulder, anchoring the mechanic in place before he could rise.

  “You get to stay as our guest a while longer, Marty. We’ll get back to you,” he said. “Keep an eye on him,” he told the police officer right outside the interrogation room door. “I’ve got to go tell Handel what’s going on,” he told Scottie. “We’re going to need backup.”

  Instead of nodding, or going with him to see the lieutenant, she was already on her way out. “Good. I’ll meet you there.”

  “No,” Bryce called after her. “You’ll wait for me,” he ordered. But Scottie had already raced out of the squad room. “Damn it, woman, why can’t you ever listen?” he demanded sharply. The urge to run after her was strong, but there was no getting away from the fact that they were going to need backup.

  Biting off a curse under his breath, Bryce hurried to the lieutenant’s office.

  * * *

  Scottie had a hunch.

  It wasn’t anything more than that, but the place she was thinking of fell within the area Valri had narrowed down for them as she’d triangulated the incoming cell phone signal. There was a strip mall located on the corner of MacArthur and Avocado, just beyond Adams. Scottie knew that there was a restaurant there that had changed ownership as well as its names and the kind of food that was served there over the last thirty years. She remembered now that Ethan had told her that Eva’s late grandfather had owned it once and her family had lived above the restaurant.

  It had been a Greek restaurant at the time, before it became a Chinese restaurant, then a restaurant that served hamburgers and fried chicken. Its last transformation had been to a homey restaurant that had specialized in barbecue ribs and buffalo wings, but eventually that had gone out of business, as well. That was its current state.

  That didn’t, however, change the fact that there were living quarters above the restaurant.

  Scottie upbraided herself for not remembering that fact sooner.

  Parking her car a full block away from the strip mall, she carefully made her way to the abandoned barbecue–buffalo wings restaurant. There was a lock attached to the front door, barring entry. Working her way around to the back of the restaurant where deliveries had once been made, she tried that door. It presented no challenge. She picked the lock she found there in seconds.

  Entering, Scottie drew out her weapon, held her breath and very slowly—just in case they squeaked—made her way up the back stairs. As she came closer to the landing, she could hear the sound of several raised voices, arguing.

  “Look,” a deep male voice was saying. “We’ve got enough. We blow this place and lay low for the next six months or so. They’re not onto us yet. And if pretty boy here
doesn’t like our travel plans, we can leave him here. In a nice, tidy grave. He can’t be the only nerd who knows how to hack security systems.”

  “I’m with him,” another voice, deeper than the first, agreed. “We don’t need deadweight. Emphasis on the word dead,” he added with a laugh that made Scottie’s blood run cold.

  She wanted to go in, but held herself in check a moment longer. It was better to know how many people she was up against before she barreled in.

  “This is my plan, we’ll do it my way.” This time the hard, raspy voice she heard belonged to a woman.

  That had to be Eva, Scottie thought, which made three people in the gang. Counting Ethan, that made four. Maybe that was all there was. She recalled there were five members the first time Ethan had been caught, but maybe they could only find four this time.

  “You jerks can be replaced,” she heard Eva snarl. “He can’t.”

  “I count two votes to your one,” the man with the deeper voice said. “You’re outvoted.”

  She hadn’t heard Ethan say anything yet. Why? Was he the one who had been shot, after all? Was he—?

  One of the men cursed and then something like two barely audible “pops” went off. Her heart began to pound. Was that a gun? With a silencer? Who shot whom?

  Afraid she’d already waited too long, she knew she couldn’t just stand outside the door any longer. Her brother’s life could be at stake—if he was even still alive.

  Bryce’s face flashed before her eyes a second before Scottie slammed opened the door with her shoulder. Pain radiated all through that shoulder as she focused on the lone person standing in the room.

  A woman with blue, green and pink hair.

  Eva.

  Scottie instantly trained her gun on the woman. Only then did she see that her brother was in the room. He had duct tape over his mouth and was tied to a chair that was up against what she assumed was the computer that he used.

  Her throat almost closed up. He was alive!

  “Drop the gun, Eva!” she ordered.

  The woman spun around on her heel. “Well, well, well, look who it is, Ethan. It’s your big sister to the rescue again. She figured out where to find us. I guess you’re not the only one with brains in the family.”

  Tall, sexy and dressed all in black, Eva Wilkins was holding a gun with a silencer on it, just as she’d surmised. Eva had her gun trained on Ethan.

  “And everything was going so well, too,” Eva jeered. And then her eyes narrowed. “If anyone’s dropping a gun, it’s going to be you, Big Sister. Drop the gun or your little brother’s going to have a hole in that brilliant head of his.”

  “I wasn’t born yesterday,” Scottie told the woman. “I drop my gun and you shoot him anyway.”

  Eva’s face darkened. “I haven’t done it yet, have I? I just shot those two other jerks because they wanted to get rid of Ethan. That should tell you something.”

  “It tells me that you’re psychotic and enjoy killing people,” Scottie told her.

  A nasty laugh escaped Eva’s lips. “Good one. You didn’t tell me that your big sister had an even bigger mouth, Ethan.” Eva slanted just the slightest glance in his direction. “Oh, I forgot, you can’t answer me because I gagged you. You really never did have an appealing voice anyway. But your hands, well, that’s another story, isn’t it? Those magic fingers of yours could just do wonders. On the computer and on me,” she added.

  “I really was shooting for a happily-ever-after, you know, pardon the pun,” Eva added. Her voice grew hard. “Now I’m only going to tell you this one more time. Put the gun down, honey, or say goodbye to your little brother.”

  Eva’s expression was hard as she cocked the trigger of the gun she was holding. The weapon was still aimed directly at Ethan.

  Her eyes shooting daggers at the woman, Scottie slowly bent and, never taking her eyes off Eva, placed her weapon on the floor in front of her.

  Eva’s smile bordered on pure evil. “Just as I planned,” she pronounced. “Say goodbye to your Big Sister,” Eva told Ethan as the woman aimed the weapon directly at her.

  A single shot rang out.

  Scottie ducked the moment Eva had told her brother to say goodbye, diving for her weapon. But she realized a heartbeat later that it wasn’t necessary. Because Eva was no longer standing. She was on the floor. There was a single bullet hole dead-center in her forehead, blood oozing out of it.

  Clutching her gun, Scottie scrambled to her feet and swung around, ready to shoot whoever was behind her.

  “I guess that wasn’t part of her plan,” Bryce said, looking down at the dead woman’s utterly shocked expression.

  Stunned, Scottie lowered her weapon to her side. “How did you find me?” she asked. It couldn’t have been just luck that had Bryce arriving on the scene just in time.

  “I had Valri track the signal from your phone,” he answered simply.

  Squatting beside Eva, he checked to make sure she was dead, then made his way to the other two bodies on the floor. They were both dead, as well.

  Scottie hurried over to her brother to take the tape off his mouth. The moment that she did, Ethan started talking. “I didn’t want to help her, Scottie. I swear I didn’t. But she had that ape of a brother of hers kidnap me, and then she told me if I didn’t help her, she’d kill you. And I know her, Scottie. She would have done it.”

  Scottie couldn’t begin to describe the relief she felt at finding her brother alive.

  “I believe you,” she told Ethan. “And what matters now is that it’s over.” She looked around at the three bodies on the floor. “Really over.” Using her jackknife, she quickly cut through his ropes. “Do you know where she stashed the stolen goods?”

  Her brother was slightly unsteady on his feet. “My legs have gone numb,” he explained. He fell back into the chair that had been his prison for most of the last month. “But I overheard them talking, so I’ve got a pretty good idea where everything is. She gave it to Rubin to fence.”

  She looked at the two dead men on the floor.

  “Which one’s Rubin?” Bryce asked.

  “That would be me.” Scottie turned to see a giant of a man standing in the doorway. This had to be Eva’s brother, she thought. The next second, she felt Bryce pushing her behind him to shield her.

  “Looks like you went and had a party without including me,” Rubin said. “That’s okay. More for me,” he concluded. If he was upset to see that his sister had been shot, he gave no indication.

  “You might as well give up,” Bryce told him, silently cursing the fact that he had holstered his weapon. “Backup will be here any moment.”

  “Backup? Is that the best you’ve got? I’ll be gone by the time they get here. And they can handle the cleanup.” Rubin smirked. “I don’t believe in loose ends.” Saying that, he swung his gun toward Ethan, aiming it at him.

  Scottie screamed, “No!” and dove at the gunman just as his gun went off. Because she butted into him, Rubin’s aim was thrown off.

  The giant of a man emitted an animal-like cry as he crumpled, thanks to the bullet that caught him in the back of his knee. A barrage of curses followed.

  Startled, both Bryce and Scott looked to find Duncan standing exactly where Rubin had been a moment ago. The gun in Duncan’s hand was still smoking.

  “You delivered my son, I saved someone who’s obviously important to you,” he told Scottie. “I’d say that makes us even.” Temporarily holstering his weapon, he said, “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m your backup. At least until the others get here.”

  Bryce looked at him, confused.

  “Valri called me. Your backup got caught up in a traffic jam. Something’s really got to be done about the power grid in this city,” he commented. “That’s the second time traffic lights hav
e gone out in a month.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” Scottie said, blinking back tears as she addressed the words to both Bryce and his brother. “Both of you.”

  “Well, I don’t know about him—” Bryce nodded toward his brother “—but I’ve got an idea how you can thank me,” he said in a voice that was low enough for only Scottie to hear.

  “Let’s put a pin in that for a second,” she said, an amused, sexy smile playing on her lips. Turning toward her brother, she said, “You realize you’re going to have to come into the precinct and give your statement.”

  “I will do anything that you and the police department want me to,” Ethan said, rotating his shoulders as he tried to get feeling back into them, as well. “I just want this whole nightmare to be behind me. And first thing tomorrow, I’m going to the animal shelter and getting a big German shepherd.”

  Scottie looked at him, at a loss where he was going with this. “Why?”

  “Because nobody’s going to try to kidnap me if I answer the door with a German shepherd standing next to me, snarling.”

  “Is that what happened?” Bryce asked. The sound of approaching sirens cut through the air and was getting louder.

  Ethan nodded. “Eva showed up at my door and said she wanted to talk. I opened the door, told her there was nothing to talk about, and the next thing I knew, I woke up here, all tied up.”

  “You were tied up the entire time?” Scottie questioned.

  “No.” He sat again, obviously still feeling weak. “I got bathroom breaks and they untied my hands when they wanted me to work on the computer, or when they gave me something to eat. But for the rest of the time, I’ve been a prisoner here since Eva had me kidnapped.” He stopped for a moment, as if collecting his thoughts. “I did manage to convince them that it was smarter to conduct the robberies when no one was home. Otherwise, I think a lot more people would have been hurt besides Rubin.” He nodded toward the man who was cursing up a storm, saying his knee was shattered. “He got shot during the last break-in, but it was just a flesh wound,” Ethan added.