Page 118 of Luck of the Devil

James Malcolm didn’t want to worry his attorney? I wasn’t sure why that surprised me, especially after everything else I’d learned about him. I’d seen them together, and I was guessing they were friends.

“So what’s the plan?”

He sent me a quick glance. “How do you feel about firing on them?”

“They haven’t shot at us yet,” I said. “And they’re definitely close enough to take some shots and expect to hit us. Which means they don’t want us dead.”

But why didn’t they want us dead? In case we didn’t have the papers with us? So why not ambush us somewhere else?

Or maybe this was how they operated.

“Did my mother’s car have paint marks or dents on the side panels?”

His brow furrowed as though wondering why I was asking about my mother, but then I saw the realization hit his face. “There was a dent, but the report says it likely happened when she ran off the road.

Red-hot anger burned in my chest. “Ten to one those fuckers ran her off the bridge.”

He made a face. “You might be right.”

My gut told me I was. “My father met with that woman either to warn her my mother was collecting evidence, or maybe the woman found out and told my father to control her.”

“That makes sense.”

We drove for another minute, our speed hitting eighty. Thankfully, the road was empty, but if we encountered another car, we’d be putting innocent people in danger.

James’s phone rang and I pressed answer on the screen.

“What did you find?” James barked.

“Nicole Knox, age fifty-nine. She’s a bit reclusive, but I found a photo. I’m sending it to your phone.”

The phone pinged, and I picked it up and realized it was locked. James grabbed my hand and held it up to his face to unlock it, then released me. I pulled up his messages, and gasped when I saw the photo. It was a surveillance shot of a woman in a parking lot, and she was very clearly the woman who’d shown up at the bank and my mother’s house.

My gaze jerked up to Malcolm. “It’s her.”

Which meant we likely had the mob on our tail.

“Get a team together,” James said, “because even if I lose them, they’ll be back.”

“It’ll take at least an hour,” Carter said, his voice tight. “Maybe longer.”

“Do what you can.” He reached up and tapped the screen to end the call. He was silent as he gripped the steering wheel. “We have two choices. One, we keep heading into town and try to lose them in a public place.”

“If we lose them, that means they get away,” I said. “What’s the other?”

“We take a side road that’s about a hundred feet ahead, then turn the tables on them and get them to pull over.”

The second option sounded like the more dangerous one, but the only one that meant we’d get answers. “Take the side road.”

“You sure?” he asked, his voice softening. “It’ll likely involve a shootout.”

“If we lose them, you’re right. They’ll be back.”

“We can wait for backup and hunt them down ourselves,” he said. “I highly doubt Nicole Knox is in that car.”

“She was at the bank this morning, so she might still be in the area,” I said. “We can get them to take us to her.”

His brow lifted as he considered my suggestion. “And then what?”