I reached my truck, threw myself into the driver's seat, and locked the doors. I jammed the keys into the ignition and sped out of the parking lot, my breath coming in ragged gasps, my jaw throbbing from the punch.
When I was five miles away and sure I wasn't being followed, I pulled into an empty gas station parking lot to catch my breath.
I picked up the ledger from the passenger seat. The book had fallen open during the fight. I stared down at the exposed page under the dim yellow light of the streetlamp.
It was a list of payouts Sterling had made in the week leading up to Elena’s death.
My eyes locked onto the very last name on the page.
Payment: $50,000. Recipient: Davis Auto Repair.
My stomach dropped into an empty, freezing abyss.
Davis Auto Repair. Arthur Davis was the mechanic who had serviced Elena’s sedan the day before she died. He was the man who told the police that the brake lines must have ruptured due to rust.
He wasn't just a mechanic. He was my father’s best friend. He had known Elena since she was a baby.
And Sterling had paid him to kill her.
CHAPTER 3
The rain was falling harder now, drumming a steady, violent rhythm against the roof of the truck. I sat in the empty gas station parking lot for a long time, staring at Arthur Davis’s name in the ledger.
The physical pain in my jaw from the fight was nothing compared to the cold, hollow betrayal spreading through my chest.
Arthur Davis had attended Elena’s funeral. He had stood in the cemetery, wearing a cheap black suit, crying into a handkerchief. He had hugged me. He had patted Toby on the head and told the boy how much his mother had loved him.
And he had taken fifty thousand dollars to cut her brake lines.
I closed the ledger, my hands shaking with a rage so profound it felt like clarity. I placed the book and the black waterproof case into the glove compartment and locked it. I put the truck in gear and pulled back onto the road.
I didn't go back to Mrs. Gable’s house to get Toby. Not yet. I couldn't look at my nephew until I understood exactly how deep this betrayal went.
I drove across town toward the industrial district. Davis Auto Repair sat at the end of a dead-end street, surrounded by chain-link fencing and rusting car frames. It was past eight o'clock at night. The garage was supposed to be closed, but I saw a single, dim yellow light spilling out from the frosted glass of the office window.
I parked the truck a block away and walked the rest of the distance in the rain.
I didn't bother knocking. The side door to the office was secured with a standard deadbolt. I wrapped my jacket around my elbow and shattered the small glass pane next to the handle, reached inside, and unlocked the door.
I stepped into the office. The smell of motor oil, old coffee, and cigarette smoke was overwhelming.
Arthur Davis was sitting behind his cluttered metal desk, staring at a computer screen. He was a man in his late sixties, with thinning grey hair and grease permanently stained into the creases of his hands. When the door opened, he looked up, startled.
“We’re closed—” he started to say, but the words died in his throat when he saw my face.
He didn't ask what I was doing there. He didn't ask about the broken window. The color drained completely from his weathered face. He knew exactly why I was standing in his office.
I walked slowly across the linoleum floor until I was standing directly in front of his desk.
“Marcus,” he whispered. His voice was trembling. “Marcus, please.”
“You went to her funeral, Arthur,” I said. My voice didn't sound like my own. It sounded hollow, scraped out.
He put his hands on the desk. They were shaking violently. “I didn't know what they were going to do, Marcus. I swear to God. Sterling just said he needed the car disabled. He said he needed to stall her from getting to the city council meeting. I thought the brakes would just give out in the driveway. I didn't know she was going to take the mountain road.”