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

She hadn’t finished her sentence before he darted down the concourse in the direction he thought he’d seen Cal walking. He wove in and out of passengers in search of Cal. He ran outside toward the shuttle bus bay and scanned the line of passengers.

Nothing.

He sprinted toward the front of the line and watched one of the buses begin to roll. Running down the side, he strained to see inside the tinted windows.

Then he noticed Cal.

CHAPTER 38

OWEN BURNS FINISHED HIS DINNER and returned to the hotel, with little conversation. It wasn’t unusual for him to go quiet on the night before a race. He always had plenty on his plate and his crew gave him all the space he needed to process and ponder what needed to take place in order to achieve the best finish on the track. But Burns’ mind was anywhere but on the track tonight.

He washed up in his room before he decided to meander downstairs for a drink.

Burns sat down at the bar and ordered a gin and tonic. Slumped over his glass, he stared at the liquid and wondered how he’d ended up here, in this place, in this moment, in this stage of his life. He’d made friendships that would endure long after he left the sport. And one of those friends was gone, likely at the hands of someone else he believed to be his friend. It made him sick to think about.

“You look like you could use some company,” a woman said as she slipped onto the seat next to him.

Burns didn’t look up. “I could use another drink.”

“Rough night?”

Burns recognized the fishing expedition the woman was on. He refused to bite.

“Rough week.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

Burns grunted and signaled for the bar tender to get him another drink.

“If it’s all the same to you, lady, I prefer to be left alone. Got a lot on my mind.”

She put her hands in surrender and slipped down the bar next to another unaccompanied man staring at his drink.

“Desperation is so unattractive,” a woman whispered into his ear.

He turned around and saw Alexa Jennings.

“Who peed in your cornflakes?”

He took another sip and set his glass down. “Todd Cashman. The jerk won’t let me check out the video footage from his truck.”

“And you thought he’d just hand it over?”

“I held out hope that there was a sliver of humanity left in the man.”

She scooted out the bar stool next to him and sat down. “You put far too much stock in your fellow humans. Don’t you know everyone is prone to let you down—especially Cashman.”

Burns shook his head. “My plea to help us quickly turned into how the revelation of such news would ruin his image and detract from his victory. He declined—and not so gracefully either.”

“So, what are you gonna do now? Do you still need my help?”

“We’re gonna get that tape—and you’re gonna help me do it right now.”

She stood up. “I’ll get my coat.”

Burns waved her off. “You won’t need your coat.”

CHAPTER 39

CAL FISHED HIS CAP out of his bag and pulled it down low on his face. He donned his jacket and pulled the collar up. The less recognizable, the better. By his best calculations, he only needed to disguise his face for another ten minutes before he could get his own transportation again.

He slumped into his seat on the open-air shuttle and scanned his fellow passengers’ faces. With the images of his attackers seared into his memory, he’d know it if he saw them.

Seated in the middle of the shuttle, he glanced left. A pair of couples relived their exciting week in Phoenix and discussed how much money they won at the blackjack tables—and they wanted to share these memories with everyone else on the bus.

Cal glanced right. A loner in tattered jeans hugged his guitar case. Two men dressed in suits typed furiously on their smart phones.

Cal relaxed and began to wonder how sophisticated the people tailing him were. Did they bug his phone? Did they put a GPS tracker on him? He couldn’t be sure, but he doubted it. If they were more high tech than he surmised, he hoped incompetence or laziness would supersede their capacity to find him.

His phone buzzed. It was Kelly.

He wanted to answer it and tell her that he was okay—for now. But he didn’t want to reveal to anyone that he was on the lam, even if he felt like he’d correctly profiled the shuttle’s passengers.

Cal touched the screen and sent the call straight to voicemail.

She’ll forgive me later.

The bus made a hard right and lurched upward toward the drop-off point outside the car rental terminal. Once the bus stopped, Cal waited as passengers boxed him in while reaching for their luggage. He exited the bus and headed for one of the terminals downstairs.

Cal’s palms began to sweat as he walked downstairs. If Cal had a rap sheet, it would’ve looked harmless enough. Breaking and entering in college for a prank on a classmate, dash and dine on a dare, failure to pay a parking ticket. And though none of them earned him any jail time or even a note on his record since he’d never been caught, he considered what he was about to do—and what would happen if he did indeed get caught this time.

His cadence down the steps felt ominous to him. Something bad was about to happen—he just hoped it wasn’t going to happen to him. But at this point, he felt as if there was no other choice.

In the bowels of the car rental garage, Cal identified one of the understaffed, discounted outfits. He recognized it as a startup company hoping to wedge its way into an already saturated market. By the looks of it, he figured they wouldn’t be around much longer. The cars were already five deep and there was only one person processing harried customers, who were itching to