Alez Kava - One False Move

He didn't hesitate, pulling them out of the ignition and handing them over. Okay, so what if Jared wanted to play games? He waited, expecting him to toss them into the gravel, so Andrew would have to search for them on hands and knees, slowing him down and maybe humiliating him one last time. But Jared didn't toss them. Instead, he called Charlie over, said something to him and gave him the keys in exchange for the gun.

Andrew's panic returned, an immediate banging in his chest. Christ! Was this guy crazy? Why had Andrew ever thought Jared would leave him alive? But he'd believed it, and now it was too late for a backup plan. Andrew's eyes darted back to the house, though he knew if the farmer weren't dead, he wouldn't be coming to the rescue. Jared wouldn't have left him without, at least, locking him in a closet or tying him up.

Jared inched the Chevy forward, enough that Jared was free to open his car door but so Andrew's door was still blocked by the bumper of the Chevy. Jared got out and looked at him, his eyes never leaving Andrew's as he came around to the passenger side and opened the door.

"Come on, Andrew."

Terror paralyzed him. Not only was Jared going to kill him but he wanted to humiliate him by making him crawl out of his own car.

"Why don't you just do it right here?" he managed to say.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"If you're going to shoot me, just do it. Do it right here. Right now." He couldn't believe the words actually made it over the gathering lump in his throat. He grabbed the steering wheel with his one good hand as if in a last defiant move. Why not here? Why not die in his brand-new car, the fucking car that was to symbolize his success, his new beginning?

"Andrew, get the fuck out of the car. We don't have all day."

When he still didn't move, Jared started to laugh.

"If you don't get out of the fucking car, man, I am gonna shoot you, you asshole. Come on. You're driving. Hell, when you drive this fucking Chevy after being spoiled by your Saab, you'll probably wish I had shot you!"

Slowly, reluctantly, Andrew crawled out of the car, banging his shoulder as he tried to protect his head wound.

In a matter of minutes they were ready to go, waiting while Charlie parked the Saab in the garage. Andrew watched it disappear behind the descending door and with it went any sense of hope he had left.

Andrew was just about to pull out, when Jared suddenly said, "Wait a minute. I forgot something."

Andrew didn't think anything of it until he saw Mela-nie's face, her wide eyes watching Jared run up the porch steps, her lower lip between her teeth again.

"What do you suppose he forgot?" he asked her. She didn't look at him. She didn't look as if she even heard him.

Then, just as sudden as her panic had been, so was her relief when she saw Jared come out the front door, jumping off the steps and jogging back to the car, too quickly to have done what she must have feared he would do. Andrew watched her entire body relax into the fabric of the seat and there was a hint of a smile. It had only been the farmer's red baseball cap that Jared had forgotten. He slung it on in an exaggerated gesture, making Charlie laugh.

Andrew, however, felt his entire body stiffen. It couldn't be. No, he was being paranoid. In his latest novel Andrew's killer goes back to take a victim's fedora, only it's in the dead of winter and the killer needs it for warmth, thinking to himself why not take it, the dead guy's not gonna need it anymore.

He watched Jared, smiling at the others as he climbed into the back seat. How ridiculous. How could he even be thinking about his stupid book? Except that Jared had commented about it, mentioning specifically about Andrew's fictional killer taking one of his victim's thumbs. Jared had paid attention and seemed fascinated by the book. But he was in and out of the house so quickly. And there hadn't been a gunshot. Christ! Things were bad enough, he didn't need to make them worse in his mind.

"So, Andrew," Jared said as Andrew started back down the long driveway, the gravel sounding like bullets firing against the metal. "We have matching caps now. I thought I'd help myself since I know for a fact that farmer's not gonna need it anymore."

Andrew met Jared's eyes in the rearview mirror, those dark, smiling, hollow eyes, and he knew. And Jared wanted him to know that this was his way of making him a part of all this, a part of his evil.

11:15 a.m. Hall of Justice

Grace shoved the second videotape into the VCR. She had decided to review the security tapes from the convenience-store robberies before she talked to Max Kramer again. The investigation was at a standstill, but she didn't like the idea of needing Max Kramer or his so-called witness. Bottom line, she didn't trust the guy.

The tapes had been reviewed over and over again. There wasn't much to see on any of them, anyway. The robber always wore a black mask over the bottom half of his face, a stocking cap, gloves, a dark-colored long-sleeve T-shirt and jeans. The picture wasn't as static riddled as the bank film, but not much better. The cameras in all three stores shot down at an angle from behind the counter and included the cash register and a slice of the store, a couple of aisles and usually the back freezer case.

She had already watched each of them once and was going through them again from the beginning. She hit

Play. Damn! She'd gone back too far. She kept doing it with the first tape, as well, expecting there to be more. She recognized her mistake because there had been customers in the store each time right before the robberies. But the robber always waited. He had to be outside, watching, anticipating.

Grace reached to fast-forward past the array of customers coming in and out of the camera's view. But she paused it instead.

That was odd. Had she picked up the first tape again by mistake? She stopped and ejected it. No, this was the second one. She pushed it back in, rewound it and hit Play.

She watched the back of the store where a young man- probably a teenager, it was difficult to judge from the grainy picture-walked in front of the freezer case. She hit Pause and left the image frozen with him suspended in midstride. She found the videotape marked #1 and slipped it into the small TV/VCR combo on the shelf below. She rewound it, making sure she went back far enough then she pushed Play and watched and waited.

There he was.

She hit Pause. She stood back and examined the two screens. It had to be the same kid, same spiked hair, same loose gait and baggy jeans and the same bright white high-top tennis shoes. It was the shoes that she'd noticed first. What teenager, especially a boy, was able to keep his shoes so white? Could it be a coincidence that he was in both stores just minutes before the robberies?

She opened her file folder and shuffled through to find the stores' addresses. One was on the north side. The other in West Omaha. The third in the northwest section.

She pulled out the third video. Two could be a coincidence. She replaced one of the others with this one, rewound and hit Play.

Nothing.

She rewound farther back and tried again. The store was busy. This must have been the afternoon robbery. The others had been at night. But this last one the robber must have gotten cocky and struck in the afternoon, in broad daylight.

Grace watched closely. She didn't see him. No walkthrough in front of the freezer case. There were others but not him. She rewound the tape again and started from the beginning one more time.

"Grace?"

She hit Pause, turned and looked up at Joyce Ketterson in the doorway to the small conference room.

"It's the call you've been waiting for. Zurich is on line two."