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

get to the airport for their departure flights.

Perfect.

Cal snuck closer and laid his luggage around a corner, out of sight. He pulled out his cell phone and began tapping on it as he approached the woman at the end of the line. She huffed and stamped her foot as she looked around for someone to help her.

“Turning your car in, ma’am?” Cal asked coolly.

She sighed. “Finally. Yes, I’m ready to go.”

“Are the keys in the ignition?”

She cut her eyes toward him. “This isn’t the first time I’ve rented a car, bucko.”

“Why don’t I just email you your receipt and you can be on your way?”

“Fine. Can you help me with my bags?”

Cal forced a smile and hoisted the woman’s overweight luggage onto the ground. He pulled up the handle for her. She jammed a rolled-up dollar bill into his hand.

“Thank you,” he said. He pretended to check the odometer and tap on his cell phone until she disappeared into the elevator.

A whole dollar?

Cal jumped into the car and started to drive. He didn’t get more than ten feet before the customer who had been in front of the woman banged on his window. “What about me? I was here first,” the man said as he threw his hands up.

Cal swerved around him and turned the corner. He put the car in park and darted out to get his belongings. Then he was back in the car, heading toward the exit.

It was the perfect crime since no one would know the car had been stolen—at least, not until a certain woman called about a missing receipt. But by then, it’d be safely back in the rental car company’s possession with a head-scratcher of a riddle to solve.

Cal gunned it through a large swath of empty spaces. He whipped around a corner and was forced to hit the brakes.

The man who’d been following him to the airport stood in front of his car with his gun trained on Cal.

CHAPTER 40

INSIDE THE SAFE ROOM, Kelly pressed her feet against the door and leaned hard into the wall behind her. She called Cal again for the tenth time—or maybe the twelfth. By this point, she’d lost count.

Come on, come on. Pick up the phone!

Straight to voicemail—again.

This is getting old, Cal.

She ended the call and rubbed her face with both hands. With a deep breath, she tried to regain her composure. It wasn’t an easy task given that someone was staked out just down the street watching her—and that he was now missing from his car. The fact that Cal had lost his job over some ridiculous accusations didn’t help either. She wanted to punch somebody.

Kelly looked at the monitors again. No signs of any motion around the house.

While she waited for Cal to call her back, she decided to break the news to Folsom that someone had duped him.

“Folsom.”

“This is Kelly Murphy.”

“Oh, hey, Kelly. How are you?”

“I’d be doing much better if you weren’t firing my husband for things he didn’t do.”

“Now, wait a minute. I told Cal we’d look into it but I didn’t have a choice as I got an ultimatum from upstairs.”

“You are still ignoring the facts.”

“I just passed along all the facts I had, which was Cal was in a strip club on a company trip running up a huge tab on the company credit card.”

Kelly banged her fist on the wall. “You didn’t even give Cal the common courtesy to ask him if he did it before you fired him.”

“I promised him I’d look into it after he got back.”

“You need to reinstate him now and issue an apology—or I’m coming after you with a wrongful termination lawsuit.”

“Come on. Don’t be absurd. I still don’t have any proof contrary to what was sent to me.”

“I do. Cal sent me those pictures and I analyzed them. Any idiot who’s worked in a photo department and used Photoshop more than five minutes could recognize that these were faked.”

“That’s not what one of our photo journalists said.”

“Was it an intern?”

“If you can prove it to me, Kelly, come on down here. We’ll be putting the paper to bed shortly and you can show me what you’re talking about.”

“I can’t exactly do that right now.”

“And why’s that?”

“Someone is watching me right now and making sure I don’t leave the house.”

“How convenient.”

“I’m not lying, Folsom. It’s somebody connected to the story Cal’s chasing right now.”

“Yes, the story I warned him not to pursue. And now you’re in danger. He should’ve listened to me.”

“Maybe if you tried to support him instead of falling for some stupid picture someone sent you in an email, maybe he wouldn’t be in danger—or me either.”

“Spare me, Kelly. I think Cal’s a helluva reporter, but I’m not gonna stick my neck out for him when he’s acting like a crazy person. I told him this could happen, but he didn’t want to hear it.”

Kelly then dropped the phone and pressed her face close to the floor.

“Kelly? Kelly? What’s going on?”

She collected the phone and inched it toward her face. “Someone just fired a shot into the house—and I don’t know where it came from.”

“I’ll call the police.”

“No! That’ll only make it worse. I’ll take care of this and call you back once it’s sorted out.”

She hung up and lay prone, motionless.

Cal had paid good money to train her for a moment like this. She hoped she could recall everything quickly. Her life depended on it.

CHAPTER 41

JESSICA TANNER ITCHED her arm where the port injected fluids into her body. She was now awake, maybe more so than at any other point in her life. Powerful forces swirled at work around her. Some she recognized, others she didn’t. But it was all the same to her: Somebody wanted to suppress the truth about Carson’s death.

She tried calling Cal again in hopes that he might reconsider and help her. It seemed so unlike him to not help after making