Page 112 of Wild Escape

JD and I hovered at the front door along with Erickson and Faulkner. Mendoza and Robinson took the rear.

When the team was in place, I put a heavy fist against the door and shouted, "Coconut County! Open up. We have a warrant.”

I nodded to Erickson, and he heaved a battering ram. The jamb splintered, and the door flung wide.

We stormed inside, decked out in full tactical gear—vests, helmets, and AR-15s. We cleared the small sitting room to the left, then advanced into the living room. Two guys in their 20s sat on the couch, playing video games.

Mendoza and Robinson had breached the rear. We converged on the scumbags.

Surrounded by angry barrels, they froze with wide eyes.

"On the ground, now!" I shouted.

The coffee table was littered with beer bottles, a bag of weed, a bong, chips, and soda.

These guys didn't have much of an interior decorating style. The place was pretty Spartan—a giant flatscreen TV on a stand, a sound bar, a fake plant in one corner, an acoustic guitar in another.

The two punks complied and ate the pale blue carpet.

Erickson and Faulkner ratcheted the cuffs around their wrists, and I read them their rights. We split the perps up and had a little discussion while Mendoza and Robinson searched the rest of the house. It was a two-bedroom, two-bath.

We patted down the perps and confiscated their phones. Like a dumbass, one of them was still carrying around the burner that had appeared at the warehouse the night of Gabby's murder.

He was a skinny guy with dark hair, dark eyes, and a slender build. Mid-20s.

JD and I talked to him in the sitting room near the main entrance.

I showed him a picture of Gabby on my phone. "You recognize this girl?"

His guilty eyes rounded, and he swallowed hard. "No. I've never seen her before."

"If you lie to me, this isn't going to go well for you.” I laid out my theory. "Raj picked her up in his cab that night. He called you and your buddy. You met him in the warehouse district, took the girl, did unspeakable things to her, then killed her."

He looked stunned, then tried to cover, stammering, "I don't know what you're talking about.”

"Look, genius, I just took a cell phone from you that we tracked to the warehouse where Gabby was killed. Now, you better start talking, because your friend is already singing like a songbird.”

He swallowed hard again. "We didn't mean to do it,” he said with a sad face. “Raj called and said he had this drunk sorority girl in his cab. Said we should have a little fun.”

"Fun?" I asked, incredulous.

He gave a sheepish shrug. "I didn't think it was going to get so out of hand."

"Tell me exactly what happened.”

"Raj told us to come get the girl. We took her to the warehouse and waited for him. He met us there after he got off his shift.”

“You do everything Raj tells you?”

He shrugged.

"Which one of you dirtbags stabbed her to death?”

"It wasn't me, man. That was Raj. She'd seen his face. I told him to wear a mask, but he showed up without one.”

“Have you done this kind of thing before?”

“No way, man.”