Say Goodbye (Romantic Suspense #25) by Karen Rose

            DJ’s fists clenched and he had to draw a breath to calm himself, because he was angry. Furious. And tempted to throw his laptop into the wall.

            But you can’t kill him if you can’t track him. And you can’t track him without your laptop.

            When he’d sufficiently calmed, he examined the truck’s interior. There was someone in the back seat, but the windows were covered by shades, too dark for him to see any details other than the fact that they were small.

            That could be Abigail, he thought, encouraged. When he found out where Amos was living, he could kill him, grab the kid, and deliver her to Eden. That would make Pastor happy, at least.

            Hitting play, he shrank the video screen so that it was side by side with the browser tab he opened next. He could keep an eye on the video as he ran a search on Amos’s license plates.

            He stole a lot of the information he came across, but he paid for the search tools that he used. They were more reliable and, as he’d found out the hard way, could make a critical difference when approaching a new customer or supplier.

            “Well, fuck,” he muttered when the results flashed on his screen. The truck had been bought by a corporation. That was going to take a little more time.

            He’d maximized the video screen, focusing again on the traffic up and down the street, when his sat phone buzzed. Startled, he jumped a little, then groaned. It was Kowalski.

            “Where the fuck are you?” Kowalski shouted when DJ hit accept.

            DJ bit back a shout of his own. “Why?” he asked calmly. “Why are you shouting?”

            “You are on the fucking news! Your stupid face is on the fucking news! I told you to make it look like natural causes!”

            Shit. Mrs. Ellis. DJ hadn’t believed the cops would buy it.

            “I did everything you said,” he replied, keeping the defensive challenge from his tone.

            “No,” Kowalski said coldly, and his stone-cold quiet was far scarier than his screaming had been. “You did only a third of what I told you to do, and now her house is crawling with cops.”

            “I killed her. I didn’t leave a trace. I even fixed her fucking door after I broke in. What didn’t I do?” DJ demanded, exasperated.

            “The friend. Remember her? The one the old lady called?”

            DJ’s blood chilled and his gut clenched. Fuck. “I got her number from the caller ID on old lady Ellis’s phone.”

            “But you did not kill her.”

            No, I didn’t. How had he forgotten? Pastor. That was how he’d forgotten. He’d gotten the call from Coleen and he’d immediately packed up and headed to Eden. “Shit,” he whispered.

            “Yeah. Shit. You are an idiot. She discovered the old woman’s body. I thought for a while that the police would search her place and let it go, but no. She told them you were antisocial and that the old lady feared you, so they brought in a forensics team, who found the cameras that you didn’t cover up. Now they know someone was watching her.”

            DJ swallowed hard. Dammit. “I—” His heart was pounding hard. Damn you, Pastor. And damn me for being at your beck and call. “I’m . . . I’m sorry. I fucked up.”

            “You think?” Kowalski asked coldly. “The cops believed the old bitch’s friend and now your fucking face is on every TV and computer screen. Way to go, kid.”

            DJ bristled. He was so damn tired of being browbeaten. He was also annoyed, because he’d hoped yesterday’s office building hadn’t had cameras. He couldn’t fix that now.

            But Kowalski was right about the Ellis situation. He needed to fix that. “What can I do?”

            Kowalski sighed. “I already took care of it. Where are you right now?”

            “At a hotel,” he lied. “My father is in the rehab center and I wanted to stay close for the first day or two.”

            “Okay.” Kowalski sounded weary now. “You owe me, though. I had to pull strings to get your name cleared.”