Page 87 of Sinner's Secret

“Wait, that’s who that guy is?” Davis asked. “He’s been smiling like a loon since we arrested him.”

“I saw him. He smiled and waved at me too. I think the guy is more than slightly weird, but if he hadn’t caused that accident, I’d probably be tied up on a boat heading out of the city right now, wishing I could kill myself.”

No one said anything for a moment.

“Where is Baz?” Smith asked.

She shook her head and shrugged. “For all I know, he’s sitting out front of the station in his yellow cab.”

“Nika,” Smith said slowly. “His cab was crushed by two trucks yesterday with him inside it. He was pulled alive from the wreckage and taken away in an ambulance, but it was stolen right out of the hospital parking bay.”

Yvgeny had been right. Someone had made sure that not only the police knew about what happened to Baz, but her team knew what happened.

She had to be careful now, ask questions, sound confused and uncertain.

“What?” she asked. Before anyone could answer her, she put one hand up. “Let me see if I’m understanding you correctly. Baz and his car were crushed yesterday? He was taken to a hospital by ambulance, but he didn’t receive any medical care because the ambulance he was in was stolen?”

“Yeah. According to the paramedics who picked him up, they didn’t expect him to survive.”

She rubbed her face. “I don’t understand.”

“When we found the ambulance a couple of hours later, there were two dead bodies in it. Neither one was Baz. It was a pretty grizzly scene.”

“So, where’s Baz?”

“We don’t know,” Smith said.

“One of the dead men in the ambulance had his throat ripped out,” Williams said. “There was blood everywhere.”

“Who were they?”

“Their ID said they were from South America,” Smith said. “We’re still trying to get more information about them.”

Just how many people had Baz killed yesterday?

“Have you seen him?” Smith asked. “Baz.”

“It sounds like if I did, I would have been hallucinating,” she said dryly. “How could a guy go from getting squished to walking around in the space of a few hours?” She smiled weakly, and it wasn’t an act. “Why would someone steal an ambulance with a critically injured man in it? And if you found the ambulance a couple of hours later and his body wasn’t in it, where did it go?”

“We’re not sure he died,” Smith said slowly.

She frowned. “Was he critically injured or not?”

“According to the paramedics he was.”

“I’m very confused, and maybe it’s the lack of sleep and stress making my thinking a bit muddled, but...it sounds like you think he walked out of that ambulance. How is that possible?”

Now Smith looked a bit like he’d swallowed something that tasted awful. “I guess it’s not.”

She sighed. “Let’s stick to what we know. The human trafficking ring is definitely operating and I’m a target. Lieutenant Thomas was involved somehow and killed himself to avoid the consequences of not bringing me to wherever he was going to take me. I’ve got to wonder if anyone else in the department might also be involved.”

“We’ve been doing checks on everyone in this station,” Smith said. “But it’s going to take a while to get it done.” He paused. “Nika, you need to rest and recover. You’ve given us a lot of information. Let us take care of things for the next few days. You lay low.”

“They could just go quiet,” she said.

“We’ve got another officer who looks like you from a distance. We’re going to get her to go to your house and pretend to be you.”

“Is she here? I could switch clothes with her,” Nika offered.

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