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He pointed out his silver Porsche, parked only a few rows away. “I’m over there.”
He beat her to the convertible and was strapped inside and had it started by the time she joined him.
“You okay?” he asked, noticing her grimace as she pulled the seat belt out and across her body. “You look kind of pale.”
Nodding impatiently, she explained, “That’s just my game face. Now if you’re done playing mother hen, try showing me what this fancy ride of yours can do. We don’t want to lose this guy again.”
Backing out, he wheeled around. Then the Porsche shot off like the finely tuned machine it was. But thanks to a school bus lumbering past to delay them from getting clear of the hospital exit, the yellow coupe’s rear bumper was nearly out of sight by the time he was able to safely get around the traffic slowdown.
“There, he’s turned off to the right! You see it? A canary yellow ’69 Camaro,” said Sierra, who had put her window down to crane her neck out the window. “Probably not another one in a town the size of this one.”
He cut her the briefest of looks. “You know your muscle cars.”
“Enough to know there could be some serious horsepower under that hood.” She shrugged. “My dad used to drag me to all the classic car shows back in Vegas as a kid.”
Though most of his attention was riveted on the tiny yellow dot ahead, he managed to pass her his phone. “Call Spencer, will you? Let him know you’re with me and tell him we’re in pursuit of a younger white male, midtwenties, slight build, with curly, dark hair and brown eyes. Tell him, too, about my father identifying him as the shooter.”
“Sure, I will, but—Ace,” Sierra said a moment later, as he watched the Camaro make a left into a residential neighborhood ahead. “Your phone just flashed twice, and now nothing. I think—yeah, it’s definitely dead. Broken, maybe? I see the glass is cracked.”
“Shooter knocked it out of my hand upstairs,” he said, knowing the battery had been fully charged when he’d arrived at the hospital. “Must’ve damaged it worse than it first looked like. Do you have your phone on you?”
She reached underneath the lab coat before shaking her head. “It’s not in any of my pockets. I don’t know what happened to it. You didn’t let the police take it last night, did you?”
“I didn’t let—It was probably lost somewhere in the ER or the parking lot, Sierra, while people were trying to save your life.” He tapped the brakes, slowing for a rangy black dog that ambled across the road as if it hadn’t a care in the world. “A life that you seem damned determined to toss aside, running off like some petulant teenager this afternoon.”
“I’d say you and Spencer and the rest have already done a fine job of tossing away the life I had,” she fired back, “so quit acting like I’m some ungrateful brat who needs to be corrected, or you can drop me off right here.”
“You’re the one who insisted on coming, helping me to find him.”
“I told you before I meant to earn that money Selina paid me. Earn it helping you to clear your name. I’m not welching on that promise—or a chance to score a little payback.”
“Payback?”
“Well, yeah,” she said. “You did just say this guy’s intent was to frame you and stage a murder-suicide, to kill both you and your father, right?”
“I don’t think I was his primary target, but he did say that’s what he meant to do,” Ace said, his stomach squirming as it hit him how close he and his father had come to dying in that room together. “When I think of my family, my daughter, you, tricked into believing that I’d been so consumed by guilt that I’d shot myself after finishing off my father—I could kill that son of a bitch myself, if I ever get ahold of him—”
“No, you absolutely can’t kill him,” she argued. “Not if you ever want any answers—or to truly prove your innocence. You have to use your head. And besides...”
“Besides what?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t have been tricked. I never would’ve bought you’d do anything like that—that you’d hurt your brothers and your sisters, and the daughter who believes in you, by doing something l
ike that.”
He swallowed past a lump, wanting to thank her but unable to find the words as he slowed to take the left turn where he’d spotted the Camaro disappearing. The neighborhood was older, with a mix of brick, stucco and adobe one-story homes, most landscaped with the rock and drought-resistant plantings common to the region. But many of the houses had walls that obscured backyards, and garages with their doors down that could hide a vehicle. “Where is he? Do you see the car anywhere?”
They stared at the long and empty street ahead. Running slightly downhill, it was intersected by three or four smaller cross streets before eventually curving off to the right.
“I don’t see him anywhere,” she started, craning her neck as she looked past a variety of vehicles parked along the street, none of which resembled the Camaro. “But keep driving. Maybe we’ll spot something, anything.”
“Not if he’s pulled behind one of those fences,” he said, trying not to sweat the telltale orange-pink glow splashed along the bottoms of the gauzy clouds to their west. Surely, they’d have his father’s shooter before sunset—or at least ahead of full dark. Ace vowed he wouldn’t let this chance slip through his fingers.
Their gazes traveled along the smaller lanes and between houses, desperately searching out the slightest glimpse of canary-yellow paint.
“This neighborhood looks familiar,” Sierra commented. “I think we’re only about a half a block from the apartment where Destiny Jones lived, just over there.”
She pointed partway down the street coming up on their left, where about a dozen school-aged kids, their skin tones ranging from dark reddish-brown to freckled ivory, were playing. Ace suspected the after-school game had started as touch football but appeared to be deteriorating as one of the larger boys sent a younger kid sprawling, causing an angry-looking pair of girls to get up in the aggressor’s face with their fists curled.
