Page 68 of To Die For

“Who else could they be?” said Shore. “I mean, Dwayne had ’bout much money as we did and then he gets a caranda house? Some weird shit goin’ on. Ain’t no free lunches, right, Kor?”

“Amen to that. You get money like that, bro, you got to pay for it somehow, someway. Pay the piper, pay the damn piper. Maybe the devil.”

“And you never questioned him about it later? After he got the car and this place?”

Shore said, “Tried to. But all he said was he won the lottery. Over and over.”

“Over and over,” agreed Rose. “Man sound like a broken record.”

“And Alice?”

Rose looked at Shore before speaking. “From then on, Alice looked mighty scared sometimes, ain’t you say, bro?”

“Scared shitless, I’d say.”

“No free lunch, like you said, Dozer,” observed Rose.

“So she thought Dwayne had done something that would come back to bite them?” asked Devine.

“Well, Alice was fuckin’-A right ’bout that, wasn’t she?” said Rose, before chomping down on a thick slice of bacon.

CHAPTER

31

LATER THAT AFTERNOON, DEVINE WASdriving down the dirt road away from the Odoms’ home when he observed something curious. He stopped, got out, and looked at the skinny line in the middle of the dirt road. Devine knelt down and more closely examined the tire track. He took out his phone and compared the track with the one he’d taken a picture of last night.

Perfect match on the tread. So the mysterious silent rider had come here as well. But how had the person tracked him? Devine thought for a few moments and then concluded that the person had ducked back into the woods and then taken up the tail on Devine when Devine had passed by after escaping from the kidnappers.

Yet, something seemed off about that theory; only he wasn’t sure what.

He drove on and arrived back in Seattle over two hours later. But he kept a close watch behind him. He never saw an e-motorcycle or any other vehicle back there that was with him the whole ride.

He turned in his trashed rental, and was being read the riot act by an irate agency employee until he flashed his badge and instructed no one to touch the vehicle. He called Braddock, explaining what had happened.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes with a scrub team,” the detective said.

Braddock, Beth Walker, and other CSI team members showed up nineteen minutes later.

They looked in astonishment at all the blood on the seats and the cracked windshield, the blown-out rear window and all the bulletholes. Devine had told them what he’d done to turn the tables on his captors.

“Lucky thing they weren’t into seat harnesses,” said Braddock.

“And quick thinking on your part, Travis,” said Walker admiringly.

“You fight with what you have, not what you wish you had,” he noted.

“There should be enough in here for DNA analysis,” opined Walker.

“Guess the rental company wasn’t too happy,” said Braddock.

“Don’t think I’m ever going to hit their premium club status.”

“So you went to Ricketts, then what?” asked Braddock.

Devine gave them a more detailed account of the attack, as well as his meeting with Eric King and his wife.

Braddock sipped on a cup of coffee and said, “So they basically stonewalled you.”

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