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CHAPTERFIVE
Dexter
Normally I’d have welcomed a trip to the scrap yard. Darrel often had useful information to pass on that I could fit into my broader understanding of the criminal activities in this city. But Logan’s silent brooding in the driver’s seat left me with an unnerving sense of uncertainty.
I didn’t understand his reaction to Madelyn at all. We’d all been surprised to see her, I was sure, and given the circumstances, it’d thrown us off balance. But Logan had seemed outright hostile. I had no idea where that animosity had come from.
It was true that he’d barely talked about her in a personal way in the past few years, but he’d always seemed fond of her back when they had socialized more. I’d never heard him say anythingnegativeabout her that would explain him treating her like an annoyance.
I didn’t know much about her in general, of course—really only what Logan had said here and there in the early years of our friendship and observing her occasionally in the halls when we were in high school. So maybe there were factors I wasn’t aware of. I hadn’t found her annoying, though. She’d shown real determination, and she hadn’t acted offended by my quirks the way people sometimes did.
I’d have thought Logan would have appreciated those qualities too. Definitely the determination part, anyway.
But the tension remained in my friend’s shoulders through the entire drive. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and let out a huff of breath.
I bit back the urge to ask him what was going on. From past experience, I knew that asking a direct question about a subject that clearly discomforted him wouldn’t get me a straight answer. Better to just watch and glean what I could as the situation played out.
There were other things I could ask that weren’t likely to get his hackles up. I frowned as I thought over everything Madelyn had told us. “Do we think that the trinket box in Madelyn’s car—the one that was her father’s—was significant to the theft? Was it the real objective?”
Next to Logan, Slade stretched out his legs and cocked his head as he considered his answer. “From the way she described it, it didn’t sound like anything all that exciting.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
Slade flashed his typical grin at me. “Then I must be right.”
Logan cleared his throat. “It’s impossible to know how significant or not it is until we’ve seen the investigation through to the end. It’s important to her, anyway. It was meaningful to him. Maybe it mattered to someone else too.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Slade said breezily, but he shot a sideways glance at Logan. It occurred to me that he’d noticed the other guy’s tension too—and was doing his best to diffuse it. Slade was much better at that sort of thing than I was. “Therehasbeen a pattern of car thefts on campus, though. It’s not like this was out of the blue.”
“No,” I said in exaggerated deadpan, “I believe they were red, black, silver, and now green.”
Slade snorted, and even Logan cracked a bit of a smile. Humor might not be my specialty, but I’d learned that playing up my tendency to take things too literally could often get a laugh. Out of my friends, at least, since they caught the joke rather than thinking I was just confused.
“That’s a good point, though,” I went on, more seriously. “When we know there are already car thieves operating at the university, it’s most likely to be just a random coincidence that they happened to target Madelyn’s vehicle this time. Maybe they were hanging around in a good position to clone the fob at the worst possible moment for her.”
“It’s about time we took those pricks to task anyway,” Logan said. “Four cars in two months—that’s a lot, and right under our noses in our main domain. We’ve got to shut the assholes down before people start to think the place is easy pickings under our watch.”
“You’ve got to give Madelyn that much credit—she knew who to turn to.” Slade shook his head. “Those other idiots taking the case to the city police, who of course just shot them back to useless Camp-Po. Their cars were probably long gone before anyone even really looked around for them. Man, I’d have given my other leg to have the chance to retrieve that red Mustang the one guy lost and take it for a little spin…”
Logan glanced at him, raising his eyebrows. “We wouldn’t have been taking any stolen cars for a joyride.”
“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have wanted to. We both know that’s utter bullshit.” Slade cackled. “But I’d have been good and waited until the owner told us we could have a little fun, out of his utter gratitude. Wouldn’t have been a bad thing to have a guy who can afford a Mustang owing us a favor either.”
“Or whose family can afford a Mustang, at least,” I said automatically.
“Yeah, yeah. Same difference.”
“Well, we’ve already established he was an idiot,” Logan said, but his voice sounded lighter now. “Favors are great, but rich idiots aren’t. Anyway, we’ll shut the thieves down and send them packing, and no one else will lose their precious vehicles or whatever they’ve stashed in them.”
He spoke with a confidence I knew was justified. Ever since we’d set up shop as the Vigil once we’d arrived at the university, where we were far enough away from our families that we weren’t worried about how they’d react to our unusual “hobby” like we’d been in high school, we’d handled dozens of cases. We’d pretty much always figured out the source of the problem and dealt with it.
I wasn’t totally sure why the other guys were so committed to our extracurricular activities, but for me piecing together those puzzles was absolutely exhilarating. It was a hell of a lot more enthralling than working through my Chemistry and Forensic Science coursework.
That involved puzzles too, but also a lot of busy-work, and most of it theoretical. Even the actual crimes we studied were ones already solved, just for practice. It was all leading to actual practice, of course, but with the Vigil, I didn’t have to wait. I got to dig my hands right in and untangle the mysteries before anyone else had.
Still, as Logan pulled into the scrap yard’s parking lot, a familiar knot formed in my stomach. I’d never meant for our quest for justice to become quite as intense as it had… but it was mostly my fault that we’d tumbled this far down the rabbit hole. Even if my friends never blamed me, I wasn’t going to forget that fact.
“Darrel’s still in,” Logan said, tipping his head toward the small building just beyond the chain-link gate. Dusk was creeping over the yard, and light was glowing through the office window. “If these jerks are trying to get a major car theft ring going, they’d need to set up a connection with someone who can disassemble and move the parts quickly. Four cars just on campus—who knows how many they’ve grabbed around the city and other places nearby. There’s a good chance he’ll know what’s up.”
