Chapter 3 - The Man Who Should Have Disappeared

The first sound of a siren was so faint Delaney thought she'd imagined it. Then it grew louder, carrying along the ruined service road from the direction of the county highway.

The man searching the brush heard it too.

He stopped near the fence and looked over his shoulder. The older man was already moving toward the vehicle, shouting orders that Delaney couldn't make out over the alarm. One of the larger men ran after him. The other stayed with the prisoner, a knee pressed into the man's back.

Delaney lay still. The ground seemed to pulse beneath her ribs. She did not try to stand until flashing blue light reached the far end of the clearing.

"Sheriff's office! Hands where we can see them!"

The man holding the prisoner rose abruptly. For a second he looked prepared to run. Then he saw the two deputies advancing from the road and lifted his hands. The second large man was caught halfway to the vehicle.

The older man didn't hesitate. He climbed behind the wheel of the Harrow truck and accelerated toward the narrow exit on the far side of the clearing. A deputy shouted for him to stop. He didn't. The damaged window glittered as the truck disappeared behind the trees.

The deputies didn't fire. One remained with the two men who had surrendered while the other moved toward the prisoner. Delaney saw a knife cut through the binding at his wrists. The tape came away carefully. He tried to sit, then stopped, bracing one hand against the earth.

"Is there anyone else out here?" the deputy called.

Delaney waited until he had repeated the question before moving. She emerged from the honeysuckle with her hands visible, aware that she looked like another intruder crawling out of the ground.

"I'm the one who called," she said. "He saw me. The older man wanted them to find me."

The deputy guided her away from the ditch and told her to stay where he could see her. She watched emergency medical workers arrive and attend to the prisoner. He refused the offered stretcher at first, then nearly collapsed when he tried to stand.

A woman in a dark jacket stepped out of another vehicle and spoke quietly with the deputies. Her face was drawn with concentration rather than surprise. She introduced herself to Delaney as Detective Irene Shaw, assigned to major crimes in the county.

"You gave dispatch good directions," Shaw said. "Can you tell me what happened before we arrived?"

Delaney described the vehicle, the grave, the gray tape, and the order to have the man buried before dawn. She explained the damaged passenger window and why she'd thrown the cleat. Her voice shook when she reached the moment the older man ordered his companions to find a witness.

Shaw wrote steadily. "Do you know any of these men?"

"No. But I know the company on the truck."

"Harrow Property Services?"

Delaney nodded. "They evicted me. Eight months ago. I lived in a room on River Street. Their name was on the notice."

Shaw looked up from her notebook. She didn't call the connection a coincidence, but she didn't suggest it proved anything either. "Do you still have the notice?"

"I think so. In my boat."

"Your boat?"

Delaney pointed toward the docks and explained that the cabin cruiser had been abandoned long before she started sleeping in it. Shaw listened without changing her expression. Delaney had learned to expect a different kind of silence when people discovered she had nowhere to live.

"We'll make arrangements so you don't have to go back there tonight," the detective said.

Delaney wanted to ask who was paying for those arrangements. Instead, she looked toward the ambulance. The man they'd almost buried sat with a blanket around his shoulders. He was speaking to a medic, his face marked by bruising and dried blood. When he saw Delaney watching, he raised one hand.

Shaw followed her gaze. "Do you know who that is?"

"No."

"His name is Gabriel Rourke."

Delaney had heard the name. People at the docks spoke of Rourke freight contracts and the crews who received jobs nobody asked questions about. She'd also heard rumors about the man himself: that he controlled much of the illicit trade moving along the river, that even other criminals were careful around him. She had never imagined meeting him barefoot in the mud beside a grave.

"The man they were burying?" she asked.

"Yes. And that means what you witnessed is going to bring more attention than either of us wants."

Gabriel motioned toward them. Shaw told Delaney she didn't have to speak to him. Delaney hesitated, then approached with the detective beside her.

Gabriel looked tired enough to have aged years since she first saw him. He had dark hair, a sharp face, and a steady gaze that made his injuries seem secondary. His wrists were red where the binding had cut into them.

"You broke the window," he said.

Delaney nodded.

"Why?"

"Because they were going to bury you."

He glanced at the clearing. "That part wasn't in doubt."

"You told me not to run."

"One of the headlights was swinging toward the fence. If you'd stood up, they'd have seen you."

Delaney remembered the beam passing over the leaves. His tiny warning had been meant to keep her out of sight, not to ask her to remain and rescue him.

"You could have pointed me out," she said.

"I could have."

He didn't offer an explanation for choosing not to. He looked toward Shaw, who had been watching closely.

"The man who left is Gideon Sloane," Gabriel said. "He runs the property contracts."

"For whom?" Shaw asked.

Gabriel's attention returned to Delaney. "For companies tied to me."

The words made her stomach tighten. The name on the vehicle and the man in the blanket were not separate mysteries after all.

"Harrow took my home," she said.

Gabriel's expression altered almost imperceptibly.

"Where?"

"River Street. They said the building had to be cleared. I had three days."

Gabriel looked down at his injured hands. "That operation was supposed to be reviewed months ago."

"Reviewed?" Delaney repeated. "I slept outside because of it."

He did not ask her to forgive him. Instead, he said something that kept her awake long after Shaw arranged a safe room for her and took her formal statement.

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"Harrow was never authorized to put people out that way."

Delaney had believed the eviction was a terrible event that belonged to her past. Now she wondered whether somebody had broken the law to make it happen—and whether Gabriel Rourke knew far more about it than he was ready to admit.