The words stung, and he momentarily looked away.
“Put your clothes on. We need to get out of here,” he said.
His brother got dressed. He wore ragged jeans and a denim shirt missing a button. His shoes were worn out, and he wore no socks. He didn’t own a watch. It was a sad statement for someone who’d been on the planet for as long as he had.
They started to leave. Taking the real estate brochure off the night table, he waved it in his brother’s face.
“What’s this about?” he asked.
“I was going to buy a house,” his brother said.
“With what money?”
“Dexter was going to give it to me.”
He wanted to ask his brother how that worked, but didn’t want to stay there any longer than he had to. He slipped the GLOCK back into his pocket, and they went outside to the parking lot. He unlocked his car, and Logan started to get in.
“We need to tell the manager you’re checking out,” he said.
“Fuck him,” Logan said. “He set me up.”
“We still need to tell him.”
“What are you, a fucking Boy Scout?”
“Shut up, would you?”
The entrance to the motel office was on the side of the building that faced the parking lot. As they got close, a large man emerged from the shadows, and blocked their path. He was dressed in black and cradled a sawed-off shotgun. It was Dexter.
“This is what happens to rats,” Dexter said.
Then he pulled the trigger.
Chapter 10
Logan shoved him hard.
Growing up, it had been one of his brother’s favorite tricks. They’d be standing on the playground and Logan would give him a playful shove, sending him a few inches off the ground. Then his brother would laugh like hell.
This shove was harder, and he landed on the pavement, where he rolled over until he was lying on his back, looking upside down at their attacker. Without hesitating, he drew the GLOCK from his pants pocket and returned fire.
His awkward position ruined his aim, and none of his shots hit their target. Dexter wasn’t interested in shooting it out, and he ran to the street, where a black sedan idled at the curb. Dexter tossed the shotgun through the open back window, then jumped in.
The sedan peeled out. By now, Lancaster was on his feet, and he ran into the middle of Nebraska Avenue and got off two more rounds. The sedan’s back window imploded, and the vehicle took a corner on two wheels and vanished into the night. He could hear screaming and saw people on the corner running for dear life.
Back in the parking lot, he found Logan sitting on the pavement with his back against a car. The lower half of his body was blood soaked, his breathing tortured.
Lancaster crouched down, and Logan managed a weak smile.
“You saved my ass,” Lancaster said. Then added, “Again.”
“Guess I’m good at something,” his brother whispered.
Skip came out of the office holding his cell phone.
“An ambulance is on its way,” the manager said.
“Go out in the street, and hail it down,” he said.
Skip lowered the phone but didn’t move.
“You heard me,” he barked.
Skip went and stood on the sidewalk to wait for the ambulance. Lancaster didn’t want him to overhear their conversation, and he lowered his voice.
“How bad did he get you?”
“Bad enough,” his brother said.
Logan shut his eyes and started to fade away.
“Don’t you dare die on me,” he said.
His brother’s eyelids lifted. His eyes were swimming in his head, and he appeared stuck between the here and the hereafter. He took a deep breath and spoke, the words barely a whisper. “A priest once tried to convert me in the joint. He said that Christ saved a robber who was being crucified with him. I guess it’s never too late, huh?”
“You’ve got to keep fighting,” he said.
“It’s over, Jonny. I’m done.”
“Come on. You can do it.”
Lancaster took his brother’s bloody hand and squeezed it. Logan closed his eyes, and his head flopped to one side.
“The ambulance is here,” Skip called from the street.
The EMS team took over. The lead was a feisty woman with short-cropped hair. She looked into his face and instantly knew.
“Was he your friend?” she asked.
“My brother,” he said.
“I’m sorry for your loss. At least you were here to comfort him.”
“I tried.”
He wanted to cry, and retreated into the office. There was a folding chair beside the TV, and he dropped into it, burying his head in his hands. A strange feeling overcame him. Logan was the last relative he had, and now his brother was gone. He was alone in the world, and the feeling made him immeasurably sad.
Skip fixed him a cup of coffee from a pot that had been brewed hours ago. He sipped the hot liquid, thinking back to the cell phone he’d found on the bed in Logan’s room. Logan had been talking to Dexter when he’d come into the room, and he guessed Dexter had heard enough of their conversation to decide to take Logan out of the picture.
“I saw you shoot at that car through the window,” Skip said. “Did you get those sonsabitches?”
“I’m pretty sure I nailed the driver,” he said.
“They’ll get theirs. The bad ones always do.”
He finished his drink. Logan had told him a lot of crazy stuff, and he needed to write it all down, and share it with the police. He was still no closer to finding Skye, and realized that her rescue would have to wait while he dealt with Logan’s murder.
He got his courage up, and went outside. EMTs had covered his brother’s body with a white sheet. It made Logan look like a ghost, and he shuddered.
A police cruiser was parked sideways in the entrance, its bubble light flashing. A pair of uniformed cops were busy roping off the area with yellow police tape. The officers wore rubber gloves, so as not to contaminate the crime scene.
Skip came outside, and identified himself to the cops. One of the officers pulled Skip aside to get a statement. There was no rushing the process, and Lancaster leaned against a parked car while he waited his turn.
His thoughts drifted back to his childhood. Logan had been screwing up for as long as he could remember, but their parents had always given him a pass. He guessed it had something to do with Logan rescuing him at the mall. Logan had saved the day, and every bad thing he’d done after that had been ignored.
The officer finished with Skip and approached him. His name tag said Montalvo, and he was a Latin guy of about thirty. Montalvo asked to see his ID. As he produced his driver’s license, Montalvo spied the detective’s badge attached to his wallet.
“Are you a cop?” Montalvo asked.
“Retired. I’m doing a private job,” he said.
“For who?”
He handed him a Team Adam card. “I was working a case in which Logan was involved, so I came to talk to him.”
“The motel manager said the deceased was your brother.”
“That’s right. I hadn’t seen him in twenty-five years. He was recently paroled.”
“What was the job you were working?”
“I was trying to find a teenage girl that was abducted in Keystone four days ago. Her grandmother, Elsie Tanner, was murdered.”
“Your brother was involved in that?”
“Afraid so. I was going to turn him in, but he got shot.”
Montalvo scribbled furiously into his notepad. It was every uniformed officer’s dream to one day become a detective. That promotion often hinged on how the officer handled a high-profile case. If the officer did an exemplary job, the top brass would notice, and he’d get rewarded. Logan’s murder was such a case for Montalvo.