Dead and Gone by Jack Patterson (universal ebook reader .TXT) 📕

him. “I hope he doesn’t think you’re really the person he’s after and is tracking you by using your phone.”

“Me, too,” he said as he reached for his phone and turned it off. “Me, too.”

She turned back over and went to sleep.

Parker waited for a few minutes to make sure she was actually asleep instead of attempting to take a nap. When he was satisfied that she was asleep, he rolled his window down and glanced at the mile marker.

Mile number 303.

Then he flung the phone out of the window.

CHAPTER 9

CAL WOKE UP WEDNESDAY with a feeling that something wasn’t right. Call it instinct. Call it intuition. He didn’t care. He simply knew that something about Tanner’s accident—one he played over and over in his mind—wasn’t a freak event. It felt planned, if not perfectly timed. The idea had already gripped him that something else was at play that day, and he wasn’t ready to relinquish it.

“Are you all right, honey?” Kelly asked.

Cal rubbed his face. “Sure. Why?”

“You were awfully restless last night. I don’t know what was going on with you, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be in those dreams.”

“Did I say anything?”

She rolled over and gazed at him. “Not that I could make out. It was mostly gibberish.” She paused, looking him up and down before continuing. “I have no idea how coherent you were, but I didn’t understand any of it. Whatever it was, though, you sounded stressed out, paranoid even.”

“When am I not paranoid?” he shot back.

“Good point. It carries over from your waking hours to your sleeping habits. Lucky me.”

Cal leaned over and kissed her before climbing out of bed. “You’re an angel.”

She smirked at him before turning over and closing her eyes.

Cal got dressed and ate his breakfast, poring over a copy of the Charlotte Observer. It was a morning ritual that never escaped him when he was home.

He read a story about a man named Franklin Guyton who was wrongly imprisoned for twenty-five years before forensic evidence proved him innocent.

A quote from the article jumped off the page at him: “Sometimes the most obvious answers aren’t the right ones,” said Mecklenburg District Attorney Ashton Myers. “We all worked under the assumption that Mr. Guyton was guilty based on the standard of a preponderance of evidence, not the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. I’m happy to say that today the courts got this case right and reversed its course in overturning the conviction of Mr. Guyton.”

It was the first phrase that ate at Cal: “Sometimes the most obvious answers aren’t the right ones.”

For the NASCAR world, the obvious answer regarding Carson Tanner’s death was that it was an accident. His throttle got stuck and he struck the wall with such force that it killed him. That’s what it looked like anyway. Who would ever suspect anything different? After all, everyone who attends races—from the drivers all the way down to the six-year-old boy sitting on the front row—knows the inherent danger of zipping around a track at over a hundred miles per hour.

Yet somebody—or maybe more than just one somebody—was trying to tell Cal that the obvious answer wasn’t the right one.

He then picked up his phone and dialed Max Folsom’s number.

“Geez, Cal, it’s nine o’clock. Don’t you ever sleep?” Folsom griped.

“Sorry, boss. I didn’t work until one a.m. putting the paper to bed.”

“Put a little thought into it, okay?”

“Fine. I’ll call you back later.”

“No, no,” Folsom protested. “I’m already up. I might as well hear what this is all about—and it better be good.”

Cal took a deep breath. “Here’s the thing. I just can’t get it out of my head that maybe Tanner’s accident was anything but that.”

“Here we go again.”

“Please, hear me out,” Cal snapped. “Now, I went back and did some research on his old races last night and couldn’t find a single incident of him wrecking on his own.”

Folsom grunted. “There’s a first time for everything.”

“Sure, but he could’ve driven backward across the finish line and won the race on Sunday. Why risk it?”

Folsom sighed. “He didn’t, Cal. That’s why it’s called an accident. Get it?”

“No, I understand that. But something just doesn’t seem right about it all.”

“Why? Because someone slipped you a note?”

“And then sent me a message on Twitter. Someone is trying to tell me something.”

“I’m trying to tell you something too, so listen closely,” Folsom said. “Let it go. It was an accident.”

“For the record, I don’t like this.”

“Cal, based on your track record, I don’t think you’ve ever met a conspiracy theory that you didn’t like.”

Cal seethed. “I think the hunches I pursue speak for themselves. I’ve got a shelf lined with awards if you’d like to see them.”

“And you haven’t won an award since you’ve been here,” Folsom countered. “You know I like you, Cal, but you’ve got to stop with all this. It’s going to reflect poorly on the paper as well as impact your credibility as a journalist. Please don’t try to write anything to this effect or even put it out through one of your social media channels. Please, Cal. I’m begging you to stop with this fool’s errand.”

Cal banged his fist on the counter. “Fine. I won’t write anything about it. But I’m going to keep digging and I’m going to come back with something that you’d be a fool not to print.”

“Until that moment comes, don’t overstep your bounds. Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah. I got it.”

Cal hung up and tossed his phone onto the counter with disgust.

Kelly shuffled into the kitchen, bouncing Maddie on her hip. She rubbed his back with her free hand and kissed him on the cheek.

“What’s wrong now?” she asked. “You feel a little tense.”

He waved dismissively. “It’s just Folsom being Folsom. He and I don’t see eye-to-eye on this potentially explosive story about Carson Tanner.”

Her eyes widened. “Did something else come out about the accident?”

“No, but I did my own research and none of it makes sense.”

“Didn’t