Danica Winters - Mr Serious

Christina tapped her fingers on the car door. “That’s what you guys get all the time? No wonder you both have chips on your shoulders.”

He and his brother looked at each other and shared a smug grin. A few middle fingers were nothing compared to facing down a drunk man with a gun who wanted to kill him for some past injustice he felt he had suffered at the hands of the police. It was a strange feeling to know that most of the time, wherever he went, people despised him.

Sure, it was true most of the population weren’t criminals, but the people they worked with every day weren’t the general public—in his case, the criminals he worked with were even worse than Wyatt’s. For Waylon, when he was working on a base between deployments to war zones, the people he arrested were well trained in weapons and self-defense—his job was to handle trained killers. Wyatt just had to handle drunken idiots.

Wyatt parked his car next to a black Hyundai Genesis. “It was pretty beat-up by the time we got the report that it had been abandoned. You know how that goes,” his brother said, motioning toward the wreckage.

The car had a flat tire on the passenger’s side, and its windshield was shattered. For a moment, Waylon imagined Alli’s car on the side of the road, people smashing it just because they could. People had a strange, innate need to destroy things that stood alone or abandoned. It was almost as though anonymity was enough justification for them to give license to their destructive nature.

“I went over this car with Lyle, top to bottom,” Wyatt said, getting out and walking toward Alli’s car.

“What all did you find?”

Wyatt shrugged. “We ran fingerprints, but nothing came of them. And all we found inside was the normal crap—wadded straw wrappers and a few fries under the seats.”

“But nothing that you think would help us figure out where she could have gone?” Christina asked.

Wyatt looked over at her. “You and I both know she’s in Canada somewhere. She’s probably watching a hockey game, drinking Molson and laughing at how stupid she thinks we are.”

“She’s not like that. She knows you aren’t stupid. She just got herself into a bad spot, and it escalated. I don’t condone what she did, but there has to be more to it than we know. She had her problems, but I never thought she was capable of...you know,” Christina said. She looked down at the ground with what Waylon assumed was shame.

He wanted to tell her he was just as confused and upset a woman he had once loved had made such a stupid series of decisions, but there was no making any of what Alli did better. There was only bringing her back so she could pay for her crimes—and so he could ask her all the questions he was dying to ask. He just couldn’t understand how she had fallen into such a pit of self-destruction. Sure, she had never been exactly healthy, but he’d never thought she was capable of taking a life.

Then again, if he’d learned anything on the battlefield and as an MP, it was that all people were capable of pulling a trigger if the conditions were right.

“I’m sure when we find her we can get to the bottom of this,” Waylon said in his best attempt to make Christina feel better. From the tired look on her face, he had failed.

“So,” Wyatt said, opening the car’s door, “we did find a receipt on the floor on the passenger’s side. We tracked it down—it was to a gas station just outside Mystery. Alli filled up with gas, but beyond that there wasn’t anything usable.”

Waylon stepped beside his brother and leaned over the passenger’s seat. The car was filled with the dirty, stale scent of the long neglected. He pulled the odor deep into his lungs. Over the years he had been around more than his fair share of abandoned vehicles that had been left behind by people on the run. The one scent the car didn’t carry was the putrid odor of death. Its absence was really the only thing they had going for them—at least, for now.

He opened up the glove box. It was empty.

“We took all her documents out. They are in evidence, but there really wasn’t anything unusual, just her insurance card and registration.”

He closed it. “Huh.” He stared at the headliner for a second.

Almost as if it were a sign, a wayward fly crawled out from behind the black felt. He reached up and ran his fingers along the edge of the liner. It gaped where the bug had exited. His fingers brushed against something rough—paper.

He pulled the paper out and held it in his hands as he stared at the thing in disbelief. “You went through the whole car, huh?” He lifted the paper high for his brother to see.

“What’s that?” Wyatt asked, his mouth open slightly with shock. “I swear, we went over this thing from top to bottom.”

It was total dumb luck Waylon had found the paper. It was almost like the proverbial needle in the haystack, but he wouldn’t admit that to his big brother. “Hold up your hand,” Waylon said with a mischievous grin.

Wyatt frowned, but he played along, lifting his hand and extending his fingers.

“Oh, yep,” Waylon said. “It’s those stubby fingers that are the problem. You just couldn’t reach it.”

Wyatt balled his fingers into a tight fist, but he laughed. “Real funny, jackass. You just got lucky and you know it. In fact, it probably got loosened up when they towed the car.”

“Wait,” Christina said, “if you guys are done picking at each other, what is on it? Is it from Alli?”

Waylon opened the folded page. Inside was a note in Alli’s jagged, hurried scrawl. All it said was “I’m sorry. But, William, I don’t understand. Why?”

It was almost as if while she had been writing the note, she had been interrupted and she had stuffed it half written in the headliner. What in the hell was it supposed to mean? And why would she leave such an obscure note behind? Had she meant for them to find it, or was it meant for someone else?

He thought he didn’t hate Alli, but in this moment, the feeling threatened to overwhelm him.

Christina glanced over her shoulder and he could hear her breath catch.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Christina said, mimicking his thoughts. “What did she mean by ‘I don’t understand’? She’s the one who started all of this mess. She set the rules to this game.”

He handed the note over to Wyatt. His brother shook his head and slipped it into his pocket. “I’ll get this into evidence, but I have a feeling it’s going to be just about as helpful as the straw wrappers. Do you remember William Poe?”

Waylon had met the county tax appraiser a time or two in passing, but aside from Poe’s relationship with Alli and a brief mention of him in the newspapers thanks to the murder of his wife, Monica, Waylon didn’t know much about the man.

Waylon shook his head.

“Poe is like a greased pig,” Wyatt said. “Just when I think I can pin him down for something, he slips out of my grasp. I thought for sure he was involved with Bianca’s and Monica’s murders, but the guy always has an alibi. Always.”

“And from what I hear, it usually involves politics or a woman’s thighs,” Christina added.

Wyatt laughed. “And sometimes a combination of the two.”

“Did you check his alibi?” Waylon asked.

Wyatt looked at him with a raise of the brow. “Really? Dude, I’m not completely incompetent at my job.”

He instantly regretted asking his brother such a stupid question. Of course Wyatt knew what he was doing—Waylon hadn’t meant to step on his toes, but he was just so used to working alone, or rather, being in command, that coming here and being second in line in the investigation was out of his comfort zone.

“Boys, boys, you are both good at your jobs. Wyatt, I don’t think that’s what your brother meant,” Christina said, trying to smooth the ground between them. “Right, Waylon?” She put her hand on his shoulder and gave it a light squeeze.