“Is there anything you can tell me?”
“Alas, no. Gavin never mentioned any suspicions about an affair, and those kinds of rumors never reached my ears. Having met Chelsey, I also suspect she knows how to be discreet.”
Stride was frustrated. “All right.”
“However, I can pass along one bit of information,” Broadway said. “I don’t know whether it will be helpful.”
“What is it?”
“I told you I was doing an audit of my personnel, looking for connections that might prove useful to you. I was particularly interested in whether Hink Miller had a friend who may have assisted him in the kidnapping plot.”
“Did you find someone?” Stride asked.
“Well, yes and no. I found someone with a connection to Hink, but it’s unlikely they’d be partners. If anything, this man would have loved to put a bullet in Hink’s skull just for the hell of it. Apparently, the two of them both worked at the same bar a few years ago. Hink was a bouncer. He caught this man slipping something into a woman’s drink, and he dragged him outside and delivered a beating that broke three of the man’s ribs. Had I known this, of course, I wouldn’t have hired either one of them. Apparently, Hink told someone about the incident when he saw the man at one of my parties. Not long after that, Hink developed legal problems of his own, and I fired him, so the story never made its way to me.”
“Who was this other man?” Stride asked.
“A bartender,” Broadway replied. “Quite a popular one with the ladies. His name is Mick Galloway, but he goes by the nickname Jagger.”
Stride swore and hung up.
“Get an alert out on Serena’s Mustang,” he told Maggie. “We need to find her right now.”
Delaney’s eyes burned across the front seat of the car.
The man called Jagger had one hand on the wheel, and the other hand was pointing a gun at her chest. He sped down the southbound lanes of I-35, and already, Duluth was several miles behind them. In the back seat, she heard Serena groaning, starting to awaken.
“You murdered my mother,” Delaney said, spitting the words at him.
Next to her, Jagger shot an eye at the rearview mirror. His gaze kept going back and forth between the teenager and the highway. Delaney wanted a moment of distraction — something, anything — when he wasn’t looking her way, and then she could knock the gun from his hand.
“You made it look like she killed herself, but it was you,” she went on.
“I really didn’t want to kill Nikki,” he replied, as if the decision were something casual, something that meant nothing to him either way. “That wasn’t part of the plan. I figured the police would arrest her for the hit-and-run. Once the cops had the Toyota, they’d put her in prison.”
Jagger’s face was black with shadow. When he turned his head, all she saw were his eyes. “Nikki made it easy. I figured she would. When I went over there that Saturday night, I made sure she partied hard. It wasn’t just the booze. I spiked her drinks, too, so when she crashed, she was out. At that point, all I had to do was take the Highlander and go looking for Jonah. When it was done, I came back and parked the truck in the garage. Nikki was still out cold. I didn’t think there was a chance in hell she’d remember me being there.”
Delaney glanced out the window. The nighttime forest whipped by beyond the guardrails. She knew what was going to happen next. When they were far enough away, when Jagger felt safe, he’d shoot them both and leave their bodies somewhere in the woods.
“But she did,” Delaney murmured. “She finally remembered, didn’t she? My mom remembered what you did. It was you, not her.”
“Yeah, she was starting to put it together,” Jagger went on. “She came into the bar, and it was the first time since the accident. She said you were staying with your grandparents, and she was alone, and did I want to buy her a drink? But I wasn’t crazy about being seen with her. I said we should go back to her place. Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe that’s what started triggering things. We got to the house, and the longer we were there, the more she kept looking at me. Like something wasn’t adding up. She started going on about Saturday night, saying she couldn’t remember what had happened, but she felt like we’d been together. That was when I knew. She had to go.”
Delaney squeezed her eyes shut. She swallowed down her grief and fury. It had all been for nothing. It had all been a hideous mistake. Her mother hadn’t done anything wrong. She hadn’t been behind the wheel of the Highlander. And what Delaney herself had been forced to do — to make it all go away—
This man.
This man was the devil. He’d killed Jonah Fallon on the road. Killed her mother. And now he was going to kill her, too.
Jagger gave her a sideways look, sensing her rage on the other side of the car and guessing how much she wanted to put her hands around his throat. “Don’t even think about it.”
She breathed hard and turned her head away. She watched the woods come and go. There was nothing she could do. She’d failed her mother. She’d ruined both of their lives. For nothing.
Then Delaney heard Jagger mutter under his breath. “Shit.”
She looked across the car in time to see a highway patrol car passing in the opposite lanes, heading north. Jagger tensed as his eyes locked on the side mirror, watching the squad car disappear, waiting to see what it did. Delaney looked back, too, praying, hoping. The squad car drove, and drove, and drove, getting farther away from them like a pinpoint of light. She wanted to cry with disappointment.
Then Jagger swore again.
Much louder this time.
Flashing lights erupted on the car behind them. So did its siren. The squad car wheeled into the median to reverse direction. The police were coming after them. Immediately, Jagger’s foot shoved down on the accelerator, and the engine of the Mustang growled. The car took off.
He wasn’t watching her anymore. He was focused on the mirror and the road.
This was her chance. Through the darkness, Delaney saw an overpass looming over the freeway. She counted off the seconds as they bore down on it, and then she leaped across the seat at Jagger.
With one hand, she forced away the gun.
With the other, she grabbed the steering wheel and spun it hard, sending the Mustang careening toward the concrete pillar of the overpass.
41
Serena didn’t know how much time had passed. She remembered the harsh squeal of brakes, the twisted tearing of metal, and then the thud of impact and the sensation of flying. After that, nothing. She blinked, opening her eyes. Her muscles groaned with pain when she tried to move. Up was down, and down was up, and when she managed to orient herself, she realized that she was on her back on the roof of the car. It had flipped. When she moved her hands over her body, sharp fragments scraped her fingers. Glass. There was glass everywhere.
Light dazzled her eyes from outside. A flashlight. The rear car door was open, the frame twisted. She squinted, seeing the concerned face of a highway patrol officer leaning into the Mustang.
“Are you hurt, ma’am?”
Serena had no idea if she was hurt or not, but she said, “No. Get me out of here.”
“The paramedics are on the way. We should wait for them.”
“Officer, I’m Serena Stride with the Duluth Police. Is there anyone else in the car? Anyone in the front seat?”