Page 185 of Eight Years Gone

Jagger glanced to his right as the passenger inched his left arm toward something to the side of the console.

Jagger quickly stood on his knee in the back seat, using his new leverage to grab the guy by the back of the neck and slam his face into the guy’s knees as he dove farther forward to snatch up the pistol on the passenger side floor.

The passenger moaned as he sat up with blood spurting from his nose. “You fucking broke my nose.”

“Who the fuck are you, man?” the driver said with his hands up as Jagger slid the rack back and held the barrel against the driver’s temple.

“The only thing you need to worry about is getting the hell out of here before I make you both disappear. And I promise I’ll find you if you ever contact Colton again.”

He got out, stepping aside as they peeled out of their spot.

Jagger released the magazine, putting the clip in his pocket as he dismantled the pistol in seconds, letting the pieces drop to the street before he kicked them into the sewer.

He glanced up, realizing that Grace and Colton were staring at him through the picture window. “Damn,” he whispered as he held Grace’s huge blue eyes.

He waited for Grace to let him back inside, staring at her clutching Colton’s hand. “Let’s get home. We obviously have a lot to talk about.”

Grace nodded. “I’ll just—I need to lock up.”

“I’ll follow you and Colton back to the house.”

Grace nodded again. “Sure.” She let her brother go, reaching for her purse and laptop with unsteady hands, then walked out, waiting for them to step out before she secured the lock.

“I’ll be right behind you.”

“Okay,” she said as Colton walked to his pickup parked next to Grace’s Sorento, still not saying anything.

* * *

Sushi had been forgotten as Jagger, Grace, and Colton sat around the kitchen table. No one had said much, as Grace made everyone a cup of tea before they took their usual seats.

He’d wanted answers immediately, but he’d watched Grace’s jerky movements as she’d hurried around the kitchen, gathering tea bags and honey, recognizing that she’d needed a few moments to steady out after the troubling developments over the last twenty minutes.

Jagger didn’t touch the steaming drink as his eyes wandered from Grace’s uneasy gaze to Colton’s, eager to get straight to the point. “I think the obvious question here is, what the hell’s going on? And we want the truth this time. All of it.”

Colton nodded. “Those guys, Jimmy and Greg, they do work at the car dealership where I was washing cars.”

“These are the same guys that were here the other day?”

Colton nodded again. “Jimmy, the guy with all the tattoos, does some of Ray’s mechanic work. Greg does other stuff.”

“Why is a mechanic telling me you owe him a ride?”

Colton blew out a long, quiet breath as he fiddled with the paper tab on his tea bag. “Because Ray runs a chop shop in the autobody shop. At night.”

Jagger closed his eyes as he rubbed at the tension knotting the back of his neck. This just kept getting better and better. “And how involved in this chop shop were you?”

“I wasn’t.” Colton looked from Grace to Jagger as he adamantly shook his head. “I had no idea anything was going on when I took the job. I know Jimmy from school. He graduated a couple of years ago. We played basketball at the park sometimes. He put in a good word with Ray when I mentioned that I was looking for more work—something other than just the pizza place.”

Colton slid unsteady fingers through his hair. “Ray’s a fucking pillar of the community. Everyone in Millsdale knows who he is. My mom was glad when I told her I would be washing cars for him. I’d been working there for a couple of months before I started noticing that things seemed off.”

“Like what?” Jagger wanted to know.

“Like I rarely ever saw Jimmy there during a shift, but he’d regularly pull his truck into the garage when the shop closed for the night. I asked him about it once—just giving him a hard time. He told me he was fixing his truck off the clock. I believed him until I started noticing that Ray’s tow truck guy was picking up totaled vehicles and putting them in the fenced-in yard behind the shop. A couple of days later, a car or truck of the same make and model would always be sitting in one of the bays.”

Jagger sighed. “They’re re-vinning them.”

Colton nodded. “Yeah.”

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