Page 34 of Storm and Tempest
“Not much call for random parts?”
“They do all right selling scrap metal.”
The car engine turned over, coughed, and then died. On the far side of the car someone said, “Hey!”
Ramon shifted back out of the window, and the trunk door popped open an inch or so. “Guess we didn’t need that crowbar.”
Jax climbed up to the rear. When he spotted the sergeant, he said, “Just looking. I know not to touch anything.”
“Your friend there is gonna answer some questions.” The sergeant glared at him, instead of Ramon. Which wasn’t really fair.
Jax didn’t want to wonder if Kenna was dead in the back of this vehicle. But the thought went through his mind anyway. For all his talk about keeping hope that she was alive, it was getting hard. It had been weeks since she was taken, and she seemed so far out of reach now that he had no idea how to get her back.
Surely someone out there knew where she was.
He peered into the back of the vehicle, but from what he saw, it was empty.
“Wanna back up?” The officer tugged on the door with a pair of gloves.
“I’m looking for a friend,” Jax replied. “A federal agent. I believe this is his car.”
“The VIN has been scratched off. No plates. So how do you know it’s his car?” The officer shot the question at him like an accusation that didn’t require an answer.
Jax reached for something. “The sticker on the window. It’s his.” He didn’t have anything better to offer than a sticker that indicated Elliot had run a marathon in his life—or the car’s previous owner had.
“He isn’t in the car. No one is.” The officer sighed. “Anything else?”
“Do you have any reports of a local hit-and-run? It would’ve happened about two months ago.”
“Are you a journalist?”
Jax shook his head. “Just asking questions.”
“No, we didn’t have any hit-and-run reports. I would know if we had because it’d mean something exciting actually happened in this backwater strip of desert.”
“Right.” Jax climbed down off the stack of vehicles.
“Don’t leave without showing me some ID.”
Jax glanced back. “You have good instincts. Transfer to a bigger department.”
“Can’t. Mom is sick and she’s local, so here I am.”
Jax nodded. He wandered back to Bruce and Ramon. “Elliot isn’t here.”
And neither is Kenna.
Bruce scratched his chin, then motioned to the car. “Someone slammed into him.”
“I saw that.” Jax went to get a closer look at the scrape.
Ramon said, “Someone with a black car collided with this one and probably forced him off the road. So, does that mean they took the FBI agent with them? Maybe we’re looking at a string of kidnappings, not just Kenna.”
“More likely he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Jax thought about it. “I hate to say this, but he’s probably in the desert in a shallow grave and we’ll never find him.”
Bruce said, “Your bureau can’t do some magic with forensic analysis and find the black car that hit him? They do that stuff on TV all the time.”
Jax shot him a look, then remembered where he’d seen a black car recently. With a scraped-up front corner, and red paint transfer. He whipped out his phone and called the number hehad for Amara. She didn’t answer, so he left a message that amounted to,Call me back immediately. When he hung up, he said, “Let’s go.” And over his shoulder said to the deputy, “We’ll get out of your hair.”
