what you aim at, yeah, got it. You still could have missed.”
Her eyes flashed green fire.
“I’m going to release you,” he said. “But be warned. If you go for your knife it won’t end well.”
She glanced longingly at the thick, six-inch blade lying on the ground a few feet away. Where she’d hidden the thing he didn’t even want to know.
She shrugged. “I’ll get it later.”
“Don’t count on it.” He let go of her wrists.
She frowned and tossed her long mane of hair out of her way, before crossing her arms beneath her generous breasts. “What are you doing out here?” she asked.
“Investigating the disappearance of the man who owns that car. And I’m the one asking questions. What are you doing out here? Since I don’t see any cuts or bruises, I’m going to assume you weren’t in that car when it crashed. But I didn’t notice any other vehicles parked beside the highway, either.”
“I live around here.”
“For some reason that doesn’t even surprise me. Where? In a tree house?”
Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “As a matter of fact, no.” She fluttered her fingers over her shoulder, the moonlight glinting on the half-dozen rings she wore. “A few miles that way.”
“Uh-huh. And you just happened to be wandering through the Everglades at ten o’clock at night.”
She shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a walk.”
At his skeptical look she added, “A long walk.”
“Of course you did.” He retrieved his gun from where it had fallen when she’d kicked his legs out from under him and pulled his cell phone out again.
“What are you doing?” Her voice sharpened as if in alarm.
He gave her a curious glance. “Calling the police. Is that a problem?” He shoved his gun in the holster at his waist.
“It is if you’re trying to have me arrested. I told you I wasn’t shooting at you.”
“Call me an idiot, but I believe you about that. I’m calling to report that I found Calvin Gillette’s car. They’ll need to process the scene and get some men out here to search for the driver.”
Some kind of emotion flickered across her face, so quickly he couldn’t identify it. Anger? Fear? Or something else?
“Did you see the man who drove that car?” he asked again.
A low rumble sounded from the direction of the bushes where Faye had emerged a few moments earlier.
Jake yanked out his gun and shoved Faye behind his back as he whirled around. Was the panther still out here, stalking them? Or was that more of a curse than a growl? Was Gillette hiding in the trees, armed, ready to make sure Jake didn’t make that call?
A full minute passed in silence. No more growls or curses. No rustling of leaves to indicate anything, or anyone, was there. He cautiously straightened and turned back to Faye.
She was gone.
So were her knife and her rifle.
Damn it.
He clenched his hand around his pistol. The one potential witness to whatever had happened to Calvin Gillette had just disappeared. She’d probably orchestrated that growl to distract him. Maybe she was a ventriloquist and a gypsy fairy all rolled into one.
The growl sounded again, closer, vibrating with malevolence.
Jake sprinted to the car, yanked the door open and jumped inside.
After notifying the Collier County Sheriff’s Office about finding Gillette’s car, Jake was told there weren’t any available units to respond yet and that he should sit tight and guard the scene. He waited, sitting in Gillette’s car, watching the woods in case the anticipated panther showed up. But the cat never appeared. Neither did the police. Had he known it would have taken all night, he would have gone home and gotten a much better night’s rest than he had in the car—panther or no panther.
While waiting for the police, Jake had given in to the urge to search the car, carefully using his shirt as a glove. But he’d found nothing. He’d also called his client to update him on his progress.
By the time the police arrived and managed to cut through the chain link and get their teams into the clearing, the sun had been up for over three hours.
Jake shifted his weight against the pine tree behind him. The police wouldn’t let him accompany them as they searched the woods for Gillette, so he was stuck here waiting, and watching the crime scene techs process the scene. But the hurried manner in which they were working had him clenching his jaw so tightly his teeth ached.
“Something bothering you, Mr. Young?” Scott Holder, the Collier County deputy in charge of the scene, said as he stopped beside him.
“It just seems as if your men are in an awful hurry.”
Holder crossed his arms. “You’re not from around here are you?”
Really? This again? Jake was tempted to check whether he was wearing a sign around his neck that said “Outsider.” He shook his head. “No, I’m not from around here, not originally. I just moved from Saint Augustine a couple of months ago. Why?”
“If you knew this area, you’d understand how to interpret the signs.”
So they were back to signs again. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, if you look at the branches that were broken along the path the car took to get in here, you’d see they’re turning brown. They aren’t freshly broken. This crash happened several days ago, probably the same day the driver went missing.”
He seemed to be waiting for Jake to say something. “I understand what you’re saying, but what’s that got to do with processing the scene?”
Holder smiled the kind of tolerant smile one would give a toddler. “Any clues outside the car that could have helped us figure out where the driver went have been washed away in the heavy rains we’ve had. So there isn’t much point in spending hours and hours scouring the mud. As for the car’s interior, we’ll process that back at the station. But I haven’t seen anything that will help with the investigation. Where Gillette disappeared to is just as much a mystery now as it was when his friend reported him missing.”
Jake still didn’t agree with going so fast when processing a scene. But he bit back any further comments. He couldn’t afford to make enemies of local law enforcement. His long-distance business partner, Dex Lassiter, wouldn’t appreciate it if Jake’s first big case in their joint venture damaged their chances of cooperation from the police on future cases.
Holder crossed his arms and braced
