Page 25 of Engaging his Enemy
Please. If you let me live, I’ll change my life. I swear it.
He’d be a better uncle to Wyatt, be a role model. He’d get a regular job that made regular money, be the kind of stand-up man his father had taught him to be. He’d ask Laney on a date and bring her flowers, treat her like a lady should be treated, not as a fuck buddy who didn’t matter beyond what she could do for him in bed. He sobbed.
The man dragged him through the warehouse, past scores of plastic drums, pulling to a stop before a tall, gray-haired man in a suit and tie. Ben’s guard released him, and he nearly fell on the ground. The gray-haired man smiled. “Mr. Sato. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person. I trust your family is well?”
14
Moto had all but given up on Ben showing his face tonight at all. For two hours, the men of HERO Force had been going over evidence in Ben’s case with Laney, and the bastard couldn’t even be bothered to join them. Moto was livid and questioning his brother’s innocence as they went over the case against him. He wanted to believe Ben wasn’t guilty, and he wondered if that was coloring his interpretation of the facts.
The coroner’s report was a grim and detailed explanation of a horrible death from suffocation and the physical effects of dropping a dead body almost a hundred feet onto granite boulders. It was the kind of grizzly death that would drive a jury to convict, to want to hold someone accountable, and Moto feared his brother would be it.
Far away in the Atlanta office of HERO Force, Logan was hard at work on the case, gleaning everything he could on DeRegina’s operations and his past activity at the Port of Savannah. They needed to know how to stop him, and looking at how he’d most recently been foiled seemed like a good place to begin.
Moto leaned over the crime scene photos as Trace used a capped pen to outline the tread of the tire track clearly defined in the mud. “Based on the weather that night,” said Trace, “the ground would have been damp enough to leave good impressions like these. Either this is the vehicle of the person who killed the federal agent or the killer and the agent magically appeared on that cliff.”
“Could they have been on foot?” Laney asked.
Trace shook his head. “No, the ground was too soft. See this?” He rummaged for another photograph and put it on top of the pile. “These have to be the footprints of the killer. They go from the tire tracks in the last picture to the edge, then back again, but without these drag marks alongside them.”
“Our victim,” said Moto.
“That’s right. Clues don’t get more obvious than this. Unless you’ve got kids cliff-jumping off of here, somebody went over that edge and died—our dead federal agent.”
Laney shook her head. “No cliff-jumping. It’s all boulders at the bottom. Water’s not more than five feet deep.”
A knock sounded on the hotel room door, and Razorback moved to answer it. “Those are your killer’s tracks right there, tire and shoe prints,” said Trace.
“And they don’t match Ben’s shoes and vehicle?” asked Moto.
Laney shook her head. “The shoes are three sizes too small, and the tires are from an SUV or minivan. He drives a sedan.” She sighed heavily. “The investigator says that doesn’t rule him out.”
“Well, it doesn’t,” agreed Trace. “He wouldn’t be the first perpetrator to wear uncomfortable shoes to throw police off the scent.”
“I didn’t do it,” said Ben from behind them.
Moto turned to glare at his brother. He looked bad, the side of his face swollen like he’d just lost a fight. “Where the fuck have you been?”
Ben crossed to the conference table, sat and dropped his head into his hands. “The warehouse.”
“What happened to your face?” demanded Moto.
“DeRegina’s men are watching Davina’s house!”
Moto furrowed his brow. “What are you talking about?”
“I wanted to see the warehouse for myself. See if they were really going to use it to import drugs. So I went down there—”
A red haze of anger colored Moto’s vision. “Jesus Christ, Ben.”
“I had to do a walk-through. I wanted to see it with my own eyes, and they were there.”
“Who?”
“DeRegina and his men! They were unloading fifty-gallon drums and putting them in the warehouse. They found me snooping around and brought me inside. Knocked me around a bit.”
Laney gasped and covered her mouth. “Are you okay?”
“No. He knew you were back in town, Zach. He knew everything. He knew you threw the ball to the dog with Wyatt. He knew I went to see Davina tonight. They’re watching the goddamn house.”
