Page 50 of No Escape

“You’re here to find her, ain’t ya?” Alex threw his head back in a loud laugh. “She’s one of your own.”

“What did she say?” Will asked.

“The same things you did,” Alex grumbled. “Then hit me in the nose!”

Charlie took out his phone and glared at the screen. “Dammit… The local press is reporting that Valerie assaulted Alex. That she came here to kill him at the behest of John Murphy. Sensationalist trash.”

“We need to find her, Charlie,” Will said. “If she’s now assaulted one of the potential targets, regardless of her reasons, it’s possible some police officer might get a twitchy finger and take her down.”

“I know.” Charlie sighed, rubbing his brow in worry. “But how do we know where she’ll go?”

Alex Murphy looked around nervously as if hoping to avoid their gaze. Will read his body language immediately.

Lunging forward, Will grabbed him by the collar. “What do you know?!”

Charlie pulled Will back. “Calm down, Doc. I’ve never seen you like this.”

Will could feel his hands trembling with adrenaline. He had lost himself for a moment. He tried to regain his composure.

Charlie turned to Alex Murphy. “You’ve got two choices. You can go to jail or you can tell me what’s going on and I’ll see if I can get your charges dropped. What’s it to be?”

Alex shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Charlie asked forcefully.

Now recomposed, Will tried to use his psychological skills again. “John Murphy wants you dead. That means you have the same connection to him as the victims. We have a list of John’s family in the local area, but there are twenty names. I have a feeling he won’t go after all of them. If you won’t tell us why he’s only targeting some of his family, you can at least tell uswhohe might target next.”

Alex looked to be pondering things for a moment. “Okay. I can do that. Maxine Reynolds and Julian Leonard. And Joshua. They are the only ones left besides me who were there that n—” He stopped himself from going any further.

“So he’s killing family members who were present at something?” Will asked, searching his mind for answers. He remembered back to John Murphy’s personal history.

“His wife,” Will finally deduced. “It makes sense, does it not? You were all present at his wife’s death.”

Alex Murphy glared at Will and his eyes flickered with guilt.

“Jenny Murphy drowned, didn’t she?” Charlie asked out loud.

“Yes,” Will said. “But something happened… Something that would make John Murphy blame all of you… I wonder if you maybe didn’t help her when she drowned?”

“That’s a damned lie!” Alex Murphy finally snapped. “We heard her out there, but we didn’t think she was drowning. I… I don’t know what we thought. But we don’t deserve to die for it!”

“And this is what you don’t want the reporters to know about?” Charlie asked.

Alex nodded.

“In case they insinuate that Jenny Murphy’s death was more than an accident…” Will said.

“It was an accident,” Alex said mournfully. “But you know what the press is like. They’ll have a field day with it. The family name has been through enough.”

“Can you give us Maxine Reynolds’s and Julian Leonard’s addresses?” Charlie asked.

“No, I don’t talk to them,” Alex said. “Look ’em up in the phone book.”

Will’s attention was suddenly drawn to the commotion outside. The sound of raised voices and shuffling feet was impossible to ignore. He glanced at Charlie, who had also noticed the disruption.

“What’s going on out there?” Will asked, his curiosity piqued.

Charlie shrugged, equally puzzled. “Not sure, but it looks like the reporters have found something new to swarm over.”

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