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With no time to ponder the question, she rounded the corner, she stopped abruptly at the sight of a slightly built female officer, a long, dark brown ponytail trailing down her back as she used a flashlight to peer inside the dented Camry’s tinted windows. As Sierra stepped back out of sight, her stomach tightened as the cop drew her holstered weapon—as if she expected to find a clown car’s worth of additional trouble out of Vegas. Or maybe, at the sergeant’s direction, she was looking for some excuse to arrest Sierra, too.
It was enough to convince her to ditch the damaged Camry sooner rather than later, so after waiting until the ponytailed officer climbed into her patrol vehicle and drove away, Sierra headed for a small car lot she’d spotted when she’d first driven into Mustang Valley. In a rundown area not far past a biker joint called Joe’s Bar, Alonso & Sons was marked by older model vehicles, sagging strings of tired-looking plastic flags, and hand-printed signs boasting E-Z Credit and Make Your Weekly Payment Here!
In less than an hour’s time, she’d made a deal, trading the Camry, which was years newer than any of the beaters on the lot, for a low-mileage older Chevy with the Arizona plate attached and no nonsense about tax or registration, since she didn’t haggle over the cash price. After she slipped a few hundred dollars extra his way, she had the salesman repeat the words, “I don’t know the guy who bought it. It must’ve been my old man who sold him that car.”
“Perfect.” Climbing into the sun-faded blue Chevy, she checked some notes she’d made soon after her arrival in Mustang Valley, after conferring with Nikolas Slater, the PI Selina had originally hired to find Ace. Though Nikolas had seemed less than enthusiastic about Sierra’s insistence that she meant to bring in Ace, he had been professional enough to give her a few helpful pieces of information he’d uncovered—including the address of the witness who’d reported the missing man’s supposed confession.
Gratified to find the information quickly, Sierra verified the location on her phone before heading to check in with Destiny’s neighbors over at her small apartment complex, tucked within a residential neighborhood only a few blocks from downtown. Here, too, evidence remained of the trembler that had struck the region, including one tumbled-down garage and a modest dwelling with a blue plastic tarp over a collapsed roof on an addition. For the most part, however, the area appeared to have moved on, thanks in large part, she’d heard, to the efforts of local volunteers.
Few of the second-floor residents answered Sierra’s knocks, and of those, none claimed to know the attractive blonde in her early thirties who’d vanished so abruptly. The only person willing to talk at all was a bony older man with jutting ears who used her introduction as the launchpad for a diatribe regarding the “troubles” with young women these days.
“They’re out there takin’ over every kind of man’s job, and blowin’ about as free as tumbleweeds instead of settlin’ down to raise good families,” he said over the sound of his whistling hearing aids, waving toward Sierra’s bare left hand with a pucker of disapproval. “You ask me, we were better off back when a gal went from her daddy’s house straight to her husband’s, with no time for courtin’ trouble in between.”
“Yes, sir,” Sierra said, raising her voice to be sure he heard her. “Appreciate the information, but you’ll have to excuse me...” she added, already edging toward the staircase and the promise of escape.
“And another thing. Back then the women used to dress like ladies,” he continued, his speckled scalp flushing beneath the thin, white strands combed across it as he scowled over her jeans and dusty boots, along with the form-fitting tactical charcoal jacket she found so useful for stowing gear and hiding weapons. “Put on some pretty lipstick or maybe some nice earrings before their man came home to dinner on the table.”
“Thank you, sir, but I really have to go and find Ms. Jones now,” Sierra repeated, frustrated. So often it seemed the only people who ever wanted to talk when she was on the job were the type who had, not useful information, but a lifetime of opinions they couldn’t wait to unload.
As she turned to flee, the clump-slide of his rapid steps echoed on the landing just behind her.
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“Wait!” he called.
She froze, eyes closing, before turning with a tight smile that she hoped disguised her grimace. “Yes?”
He lifted one hand from his walker to point down over the railing. “You maybe oughta ask that fella right there about my missing neighbor. I’ve seen him here a few times, comin’ out of her apartment. My guess is that he’s pickin’ up some of her things before the landlord tosses ’em.”
Sierra looked down toward the parking lot where a thick-necked man with a black soul patch, wearing a gray sweatshirt and a cap with the Arizona Cardinals logo, held a large cardboard box near the open rear gate of a beat-up dark red van. He stood frozen for a moment, his dark eyes flicking a wary look from the old man’s outstretched hand to Sierra’s face.
“Hi, neighbor. Just moving in?” she called down to him, offering what she hoped would appear a friendly wave as she took a couple of more steps toward the staircase.
“Didn’t you hear what I just told you?” the old man put in, his words ringing off the concrete landing. “That’s Destiny Jones’s boyfriend, clearin’ out her stuff.”
In the lot below, the man in the ball cap cursed, shoving the box into his van and slamming down the hatch.
As he raced to jump inside, Sierra pounded down the steel stairs, shouting after him, “I just have a few questions, that’s all! I swear I’m not a cop!”
But he was peeling off by the time she reached the lot, moving too fast for her to catch more than the first few digits on his license plate. Digging out her keys, she climbed into her new ride, cranked the engine and took off in pursuit. But the van’s head start enabled the driver to lose her in the tight maze of mainly residential streets.
Defeated, she pulled over in front of a small neighborhood park where she grabbed her cell, thinking of calling 911 and asking the dispatcher to have police put out a Be On the Lookout alert. But what could she say that would get anyone to listen to her?
Instead, she impulsively pressed to connect with Ainsley Colton’s number from her list of recent callers. On the second ring, Ace’s younger sister, an attorney for Colton Oil who’d seemed especially concerned about her brother’s welfare, picked up.
“Can you believe it?” she blurted, clearly upset, before Sierra could get a word out. “They’ve gone and transferred him to the jail infirmary first thing this morning—and they still aren’t letting me or anybody from the family see him. Poor Nova’s going crazy, knowing he’s this close and she still can’t meet him.”
“You need to listen to me, Ainsley,” Sierra said brusquely, though her heart twisted at the thought of Ace stuck behind bars on what she was now more certain than ever was a setup. “If you really want him walking free again, I need you to make a call for me now without wasting time with a lot of questions. Can you do that?”
“Of course I will,” she said, pulling herself together with admirable efficiency. “Just tell me what you need.”
Sierra ran it down for Ainsley, asking her to reach out to Spencer and tell him that she’d spotted Destiny Jones’s alleged boyfriend fleeing her apartment. After rattling off a description of the man and vehicle, along with the partial plate number, Sierra added, “You need to see if he can have his patrol officers pick this guy up before he gets too far, because I’m certain he knows something—and Destiny’s the key.”
Once she ended the call, Sierra resumed driving, cruising the streets as she tried to plan out her next move. As she crossed over the main drag, she instead spotted something else of interest—the same slim, neatly dressed male teller who had tried to catch her attention before the bank manager asked her to leave.
Turning to follow him, she watched him head into Java Jane’s, probably on his break, and decided to seize on the opportunity.
Finding no open parking spaces nearby, she quickly hung a right, intending to make the block. It was then she caught a glimpse, several cross streets ahead, of the deep red van she’d lost earlier.
