Page 22 of Fire Fight
The sheriff blinked slowly, then cursed under his breath, and I grinned. I was deeply pleased to have caught him off guard—to know Crew hadn’t told him about this.
“For the record, you’re talking about Crew Lawless?” he gritted out. “My little brother?”
There was nothinglittleabout that man, but I was glad I’d guessed correctly that Lane was older.
“The very same. He was on shift on Wednesday, but Thursday morning, we met for breakfast at the diner and spent a few hours going over the incident reports. Then I went back to my motel room and pored over them myself.”
“Fucking Crew,” he whispered, then blanched when he realized he’d said it on the record. “Sorry. Then what happened?”
“I had lunch, then came to see you.”
Succinctly, the sheriff relayed for the record the details of our meeting, giving me a moment to sip some water and attempt to conjure up more of what exactly had happened to me.
Unfortunately for him, I still had nothing for memories beyond leaving the Swallow but a smoking pile of ash.
“On Friday night, Black Betty and I took a ride around town, checking out a few of the crime scenes, and then went to the Swallow.”
“Black Betty?” the sheriff interrupted.
“My Suburban.”
“Black?”
“What gave it away?”
He shot me a warning look. “We found one with Colorado plates abandoned in the lot at the Swallow,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s mine. Where did it end up?”
“Towed it to the impound lot at the auto body shop, but you can get it back with no charge once the doctors let you out of here.”
I heaved a sigh of relief. The last thing I could afford right now was having to pay a monumental towing bill and impound on top of all the medical bills that would likely wipe out my entire savings.
“Oh fuck,” I breathed as another thought occurred to me.
“You remembering something?”
“I had a bag,” I explained. “Had my wallet, keys, taser, and other necessities in it. Is it…do you see it around here anywhere? Or maybe my phone?”
God, my head hurt too fucking bad to be worried about this shit right now, yet I couldn’t stop.
The sheriff stood and walked around. “No,” he said. “Maybe the staff is keeping that stuff elsewhere? Or maybe it perished in the fire?”
“Maybe,” I conceded, though there was no conviction in the word. Likely, my attempted murderer had disposed of my things prior to leaving me in that building to die, making it more difficult to identify me in the event I didn’t survive, which was exactly what they’d been banking on.
“So anyway,” I pressed on, rubbing my fingers over my forehead in an attempt to ease the ache, “I ordered a beer, chatted up the bartender—Benny, you said?” He nodded. “Obviously, he wasn’t very forthcoming, and told me to give it up and leave. I wasn’t about to do that, but after an unfortunate collision that ended with me wearing my beer, all I wanted was to take a shower and crawl into bed.”
“Did someone do that on purpose?” he asked.
“Nah,” I assured him. “I accidentally bumped into a woman and wound up dumping my beer on myself.”
“Were those the only two interactions you had at the bar?” I nodded, bracing for what I knew came next. “So you left?”
“I tried,” I corrected. “Almost made it back to my SUV before someone attacked me.”
“Did you see anything?”
“No. They came at me from behind and hit me over the head.”
