CHAPTER 3
Tonight, Hayley was working with Kitally on the Steven Dow case.
His wife, Mrs. Beverly Dow, had hired Lizzy Gardner Investigations to find out if her husband was cheating. Lizzy didn’t usually take on infidelity cases, but for whatever reason, when Beverly Dow had shown up at the downtown office, Lizzy hadn’t balked. She had merely drawn up a contract, asked the woman to sign on the dotted line, and forgotten all about her.
If Lizzy’s work ethic continued on this way for too long, Hayley knew she would be forced to talk to her about it. But for now, Hayley kept track of every move Lizzy made and did her best to clean up after her.
After watching Mr. Dow on and off for the past two weeks and getting nowhere, Hayley and Kitally decided to do things a little differently tonight.
Hayley sat in her Chevy, slumped down behind the wheel, her gaze set on the club across the street. Kitally was tonight’s bait, and she had been inside the dimly lit place for forty-five minutes already. Lizzy would not be pleased to know what they were up to—their plan to catch Mr. Dow in the act might be considered entrapment by some—but Hayley really didn’t give a shit. The man was a skank. Period. He needed to be taught a lesson.
According to Beverly Dow, at least twice a week, Mr. Dow told his wife that he had to meet a business client. Sometimes he wouldn’t return home until sunrise. Beverly wanted to know what her husband was up to—that meant recordings and pictures, too.
Boredom set in, and Hayley’s thoughts drifted back to Lizzy. She’d shown up at the office every day, in between funerals and hospital visits. If she wasn’t in the office, she was teaching kids self-defense and trying to act as if nothing in her world had changed. She was obviously just going through the motions, and it was difficult to watch, knowing that any moment now she was going to slam into a wall and it was going to hurt bad. Nobody could keep his or her emotions bottled up forever.
But Hayley didn’t think she should be the one to tell Lizzy it might be a good idea to let some of those emotions out instead of hoarding them all inside, pretending everything was just fine. That would be hypocritical—Hayley herself wasn’t exactly in touch with her own feelings, and she was fine with that—so she said nothing.
She’d just arrived at this conclusion when she saw Kitally stumble out of the nightclub. Her body swayed; the long dreadlock hanging down her back did, too. She bumped into the side of the building and had to catch herself. Hayley was about to go after her when she saw Mr. Dow exit the bar, rush forward, and put a hand around Kitally’s waist, leading her away, keeping her from falling on the sidewalk.
Figuring Kitally was putting on a show, Hayley grabbed the camera, zoomed in, and took a couple of pictures. When Kitally nearly toppled completely over, the sleazeball scooped her into his arms, his hands all over her as if he were trying to steady her.
Something was wrong with this picture. Kitally could handle her alcohol and this was no act, which meant Mr. Dow had slipped something into her drink. Shit.
Hayley took another picture, then set her camera on the passenger seat and turned on the engine. When Mr. Dow pulled out onto the road, she was ready to go. She followed his black Mercedes to a stoplight. Although this had been the plan all along, the plan had not included the man slipping something into Kitally’s drink.
Her nerves were jangled. More than anything, she wanted to slam her car into the back of his shiny black luxury car. Instead, she held in her anger, determined not to lose her cool or, more importantly, Kitally.
When the light changed, the Mercedes shot away from her with a screech of wheels.
He was wise to her.
Hayley’s Chevy Impala was a piece of shit, but the tires and the suspension were solid, taking curbs as if they were nothing more than a rough patch of road. He was going close to sixty on a narrow street packed tight with cars parked on both sides. Usually she wouldn’t worry so much about Kitally. She was a tough girl. She could handle herself when she was sober, but not like this.
Hayley sped up, almost caught up to him when he took a sharp left.
More screeching of tires. She yanked hard on the wheel. Her Chevy felt as if it might topple. The road took her straight up a ridiculously steep hill. On both sides of her the landscape was open fields dotted with trees and shrubs and covered in waist-high grass after the recent rains. She knew this area. Although she’d never come this way, at the top of the small mountain was what the kids called Makeout Hill.
Her Chevy puttered a bit on the incline, and she lost sight of his taillights. She leaned forward, as though that might give the old car a little help.
As she continued up, she caught sight of a dark shadow heading downward through the middle of the hill to her left where there was no road to speak of, just a foot trail. His lights were off. That son of a bitch!
An old, dilapidated wood fence was the only thing stopping Hayley from being able to do a little off-road driving and follow him. To hell with it. She turned off her headlights, then turned toward the fence, surprised when she was able to plow right through. The terrain was bumpy, but if she was careful not to hit any trees or rocks, she might be able to catch up to the asshole.
There he was. She caught a glint of chrome in the night and then could see the shadowy silhouette of his Mercedes hiding in the blackness beneath an oak tree with wild, gangly branches that shot out in every direction. Her lights still off, she banked sharply and shot toward him through the tall grass. She didn’t let up on the gas. Her body felt like a broken piston as she was joggled over the uneven ground; she could only hope nothing big enough to stop her was hidden in the grass. If he saw her coming, he certainly didn’t do anything about it. She ground her teeth together right before she rammed into the driver’s side of the Mercedes.
In the last instant before impact, it occurred to her that Kitally was in the car. She hit the brakes. Then the crash. And then silence and a bit of steam curling out from under the hood of her Chevy. Its engine stayed on, though. The thing was a tank. She threw it into park, grabbed her baton, and leaped from the car.
The air bag had not deployed, and she could see Dow behind the wheel. She tried to open the driver’s door, but it was locked. The window had cracked upon impact, and she only needed a little help from her baton to shatter glass.
Dow appeared dazed. A trickle of blood oozed down the side of his face, either from the Chevy’s impact or the flying glass from the shattered driver’s window.
She reached through the window, unlocked, and then yanked open the door. She grabbed a fistful of shirt and heaved him out onto the ground. For a few seconds, he remained facedown, eating dirt. He pushed the upper half of his body upward, seemed to gather his wits enough to feign outrage. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
It was all she could do not to permanently crease his head.
Instead, she pulled his keys out of the ignition and tossed them into the high grass. Then she opened the back door and saw Kitally crumpled on the floor.
Hayley touched her shoulder. “Kitally, are you all right?”
Kitally moaned.
She was alive. A spurt of relief was quickly replaced with raging hot fury.
Mr. Dow had managed to get to his feet.
“You sick fuck,” she said as she extended her baton and whipped him across the cheek. More blood. She didn’t care.
He held up both hands.
She smacked him across the wrist.
He was back on the ground, screaming in pain.
She raised the stick high in the air. “What did you give her?”
“Nothing, I swear.”
“Bullshit. Was it Rohypnol? Tell me what you gave her or I swear I’ll break both your legs.” She sighted down the baton at one of his knees, then raised the stick high again, ready to strike.
“Gamma 10. I didn’t give her much.”
Leaving him alone, she returned to Kitally, hooked the strap of her bag over her shoulder, and then pulled her outside into the fresh air. With one arm around Kitally’s waist, she led her, stumbling, through the high grass to the Chevy’s passenger door.
Once she had Kitally inside and the seatbelt latched, she got behind the wheel, turned on the headlights, backed away from the Mercedes, and drove slowly away, following the trail of flattened grass until she found the spot where she’d knocked over the fence.
Back on the road, she stopped to take a breath.
Kitally opened her eyes and groaned. “Did we get him?”
“Yeah,” Hayley said before driving off. “We got him good.”