Say Goodbye (Romantic Suspense #25) by Karen Rose

            “Of course I’m going to worry,” Tom snapped. “She’s already been in his crosshairs once.”

            “I know. But when that picture fills your mind, replace it with one of her grabbing her rifle and shooting rooftop snipers to save her fellow soldiers and innocent villagers.”

            He hesitated. “That sounds like personal experience talking.”

            “It is. My daughter is a cop. Says she’s following in my footsteps. Sometimes I wish she’d followed her father’s footsteps into culinary school. I remind myself daily that she is smart, highly skilled, and makes a difference.”

            Tom knew it was time to surrender. “I still don’t want Liza there, for the record. But I understand and I’ll do everything I can to make sure she and the others are as safe as possible.”

            “I knew you would. Now, get to work.”




GRANITE BAY, CALIFORNIA

            THURSDAY, MAY 25, 11:50 P.M.

            DJ blinked hard and rewound the camera’s video back to the point where he’d dozed off. Again. He was tired. And he hurt again. He’d pulled something dragging Nurse Gaynor from the car, and the ibuprofen he’d bought at a convenience store hadn’t touched the pain.

            He wished he had some of the pot that had once filled the basement of his home in Yuba City. Or the house he’d rented next door. The one the cops had seized. Fucking sonsofbitches.

            Kowalski had probably been pissed off by that more than the Ellis woman being tagged as a homicide. The marijuana in the grow house had been ready to harvest. He didn’t want to think of how much of his income the cops now held.

            Better than holding you in a prison cell, though. Which was true enough.

            After ensuring that Pastor’s new nurse wouldn’t even consider selling out to Kowalski, he’d borrowed a wig from Nurse Innes in case Kowalski’s men had returned to watching the gate. Then he’d driven Smythe’s Lexus back to the house and downloaded the video from the pink camera in the window. It was so boring. And this bed was so comfortable.

            He sighed and pulled himself up to sit straight against the pillows. He hit play, fast-forwarding until he came to the next vehicle that drove down the Sokolovs’ street.

            It was an older-model Mazda and was filled with so many boxes that they obscured the view of the driver. He noted the license number, just in case, but a beat-up old Mazda didn’t seem like it would fit into the Sokolovs’ neighborhood. The residents here tended to favor BMWs and Teslas. Like the one that had just driven by.

            He noted plate numbers for both the Mazda and the Tesla, then continued to fast-forward. And scowled. A gray Suburban approached the Sokolovs’ house but the windows were too darkly tinted for him to see inside. A few minutes later the Suburban reappeared, followed by an orange VW Beetle, and that driver’s face he could see. It was a face he knew.

            He hissed a curse. “Her.” The woman who’d shot him after Amos had taken the shot he’d aimed at Mercy. Daisy Dawson. Gideon Reynolds’s girlfriend.

            She was already on his list but seeing her face redoubled his determination to see her dead. He noted the license plate, paused the video, then opened a browser to check all three plates.

            The Tesla was registered to the same corporation as the black F-150 he’d seen that morning. That was interesting.

            DJ had googled the corporation’s name and had come up with a lot of nothing. But he had a hunch now and googled Karl Sokolov and Tesla. And, sure enough, a picture surfaced of Karl and his wife standing next to the fancy car, apparently on their way to a charity gala. The photo had been posted to the Facebook account belonging to Karl Sokolov’s marketing firm. The corporation didn’t bear the man’s business’s name, but it really didn’t need to. The connection was obvious.

            Sokolov had loaned his truck to Amos. They’d regret helping him, just like they’d regret helping Mercy and Gideon.

            He added the two Sokolovs to his list. If he could get Mercy and Gideon, all the others would show up to the funeral. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

            He ran the plates on the Beetle and the gray Suburban, expecting to see actual owners’ names, but instead he got another corporation, this one based in Maryland.

            The final plate belonged to the red Mazda that had been full of boxes.