Then he laughed once. “You were supposed to panic. That was the story. Bounty hunter corners you at the unit. You shoot him because you can’t go back. Then you can’t live with what you did.”
Jade went utterly still.
My blood turned cold and clean.
Ike lifted the pry bar a little higher. “Frank said he’d have the rest handled. The gun, the note, the call, whatever made it read right. I was supposed to make sure the records disappeared and the scene looked ugly enough nobody dug too hard.”
Crystal’s hand flew to her mouth.
Jade moved first.
She kicked the bottom of the unit door.
The roll-up dropped halfway with a metallic scream between Ike and Crystal. It didn’t shut or trap Crystal inside, but it made Ike flinch and swing his focus toward the sound.
I crossed the distance before he recovered.
Ike lifted the pry bar.
I caught his wrist with both hands and drove him backward into the side of his truck. The impact shook the ladder rack. The pry bar scraped down the door with a long metal shriek. Ike grunted and slammed his shoulder into mine, heavy and dirty, trying to turn enough to bring his knee up.
He knew how to fight like a man who’d carried appliances down stairs and thrown drunk tenants out of rental houses.
That didn’t make him fast enough.
Jade came in from the side with the tire iron and struck the pry bar near Ike’s hand, not his body. The clang cracked through the lane. Ike’s fingers opened. The pry bar hit the gravel.
“Don’t,” she snapped when he reached for it.
He swung at her with his free hand.
I shoved him harder into the truck and hooked my leg behind his knee. He went off-balance, cursing, boots grinding in gravel. His elbow caught my ribs. Pain flashed hot under my arm. I took it, twisted his wrist behind his back, and drove him chest-first against the truck door.
Jade kicked the pry bar under my pickup.
“Crystal,” Jade called. “Box. Now.”
Crystal ducked under the half-lowered unit door, clutching the notebook and flash drive bag against her chest. She grabbed the banker box with the yellow tabs and dragged it behind the concrete divider at the unit corner.
Ike bucked under my hold. “You stupid son of a bitch. You think Frank won’t bury you too?”
“He can try.”
I pulled the cuffs from under my jacket.
Jade saw the metal and stepped closer with the tire iron held low, eyes on Ike’s free hand.
“You always bring those to a cleanout?” she asked.
“Only when the trash talks back.”
That almost cost me a breath.
I got one cuff around Ike’s wrist, hauled his arm tighter, and locked the other cuff through the ladder rack support. It wasn’t pretty, and it wouldn’t hold him forever, but it held him long enough for me to strip the phone out of his pocket and kick the pry bar farther away.
Ike spat into the gravel. “You don’t have authority to do this.”
“I have authority to stop you from killing people in front of me.”
