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“I don’t need a babysitter, Noah.” She shook her head. She needed away from him, just for a little while. “Stay out of knife fights at night, and maybe you won’t have to worry so much.”
She had checked the wounds this morning when they awoke, rebandaged them, and she was amazed he hadn’t bled to death while he was taking her.
“I have to go.” She slid into the car. “Don’t forget Becca Jean’s car this afternoon. She has a heavy class load over the next few months and I want to make sure there’s nothing more wrong with it than resetting the computer chip.”
“I’ll take care of it,” he bit out. “Dammit, Sabella. At least be careful.”
“I’m always careful.” She gripped the steering wheel and stared back at him, infuriated. “You’re the one that doesn’t know how to stay out of trouble.”
She gripped the door handle, pulled it from him, aware that she only did it because he allowed it, and started the car.
A second later she was pulling out of the parking lot and glancing in the rearview mirror to see him putting his cell phone to his ear.
She wondered who her babysitter would be.
Noah watched as the little BMW pulled into the parking lot beside the two-story brick house and Sabella went inside.
Micah Sloane and John Vincent were taking turns keeping an eye on her when she wasn’t with Noah. Noah hadn’t intended that she be out of his sight for long. And he didn’t like her running around town without him. There were too many unknowns in this case and not enough information yet.
Shaking his head, he punched in the speed dial for Micah, let him know to watch her, because there was no doubt she would catch him tailing her, and went back to the pickup he had been working on.
Delbert Ransome was Mike Conrad’s cousin. He’d brought the truck in when the other two garages in town couldn’t fix the revisions he’d made to the motor to add to its power and to the traction control.
Delbert liked to take the spiffy little four-by-four into the mountains and act like a damned fool. He worked for a neighboring rancher, Gaylen Patrick, and liked to brag about how close he was to the bank president, his cousin and one of the most powerful ranchers in town.
Biting off a curse, he threw an irritated look toward the house again and grabbed a mechanic’s creeper before lying back on it and rolling beneath the engine to see what the hell Delbert had done to the new motor.
It was clean. Delbert like to keep the motor power-washed and looking nice and pretty. He hadn’t been beneath the motor for long when he found it. The flashlight he was using skimmed over the odd shadow, then came back. There, lit by the powerful little light, was something he knew Ransome couldn’t have imagined he’d missed in washing the motor. A small clump of mud, mixed with something darker, and lodged in its underside, a clump of black hair and dried flesh.
He slid out from under the truck, checked to see if the other mechanics were watching, then levered himself up and pulled two small vials and a penknife from the toolbox along with several tools he wouldn’t be needing.
He moved back under the vehicle, scraped the samples from the motor into the little plastic vials, capped them, then pushed them into his jeans pocket until he could get the vials to one of the other men to take to the bunker.
Gaylen Patrick was on their list of suspects as being involved with, or heading, the Black Collar Militia. He had the contacts and the cash. And now, one of his main ranch hands would be implicated in the deaths.
If the DNA matched any of the bodies that had been found, then they had a main player, and hopefully more information.
And the danger would rise.
Noah checked the underside of the truck again, looking for more samples and finding several lodged in various areas of the motor, tucked into places Delbert’s power washer hadn’t been able to reach.
Stupid bastard.
He stored the samples and let the motor go. Checking into it more deeply for the problem with the traction or power could lead to complications. If Delbert thought the garage had done no more than an overall test, then when he was arrested for those samples he wouldn’t pin the blame on Sabella’s head. Or Noah’s.
Hiding a smug grin, he called over to the mechanic he suspected was a plant, and put him on the truck instead.
Noah knew for a fact he’d found everything incriminating in there, and what was left, the sallow-skinned little mechanic working on the truck wouldn’t find. It was tucked in too deep. Just enough left to incriminate Delbert when the truck was taken apart.
Noah went upstairs to the apartment, and recorded the positioning of the remaining evidence, the areas from which he had scraped the hair and skin samples, folded the paper around the vials, and wrapped it all together with heavy rubber bands before pushing it into the pocket of his jeans again and returning to the garage.
It would be a few hours before Nik could safely leave, without being noticed, and head to the bunker. Going over t
o Sabella’s friend’s car, he looked it over carefully, while keeping the mechanic working on the truck in close view.
If he found anything, Delbert would be there fast to pick up the truck. If he didn’t, the mechanic would keep doing what he was doing now, scratching his head and checking the fuel injection. Those samples weren’t anywhere close to the fuel injection.
Noah saw Sabella pulling out of the driveway to the house, and a few seconds later Micah’s car pulled out of a nearby street and followed behind her. She was covered, but it bit his ass that he wasn’t the one covering her, protecting her.
