Page 5 of Luck of the Devil (Harper Adams Mystery #3)

I stood on the wooden porch, watching as Malcolm descended the steps, my stomach twisting. I hadn’t decided whether I wanted to follow him.

Stubbornly, I refused to believe my mother had been murdered, but my stomach still lurched. I told myself I didn’t trust him, and yet I did.

What if he was right?

There was no way he was, of course, so wouldn’t it be great to prove him wrong?

There was no doubt he wanted answers, and now I did too.

Sighing, I gave into the inevitable. I followed him to his car and got in on the passenger side, then fastened my seat belt.

I started shivering from the chill, and I realized I’d just walked out in fifty-degree weather wearing a spaghetti strap top.

What an idiot.

But I was too proud to say I needed a jacket. “Are you taking me out to the country to kill me and bury my body?”

He let out a derisive snort. “Do you take me to be that stupid? My car was likely captured by a half dozen video doorbells. If I was going to kill you and go to the trouble of hiding your body, I would have been a helluva lot more discreet.”

“Wow. That makes me feel a whole lot better.”

“Good,” he said in that irritating smug tone as he backed his car into the street before starting down the road, away from downtown.

“Where are we going, Malcolm?”

“Guess you’ll see when we get there.”

I sank back into the plush leather seat and closed my eyes.

If I was on my way to my murder, at least I was going out in style.

Not that I really thought he was dangerous to me.

We’d reached a kind of truce, and even before then, I’d felt safe enough with him.

Sure, I’d seen him murder two men in cold blood, but I didn’t fear for my own life.

He’d done it out of his own form of justice.

I wasn’t a threat to Malcolm. Especially not in this state.

My hands had begun shaking so hard I shoved them under my legs to keep them still, and the sweat on my neck and back was making me stick to the seat.

Malcolm shot a glance at me, then held out his silver flask.

“I’m not drinking that,” I said, turning to look out the window.

Sighing, he pulled it back, unscrewed the cap, then took a small sip. “It’s not poisoned. See?”

“I never thought it was poisoned. I just don’t want a drink.”

It was a bald-faced lie. I was dying for a drink, and sitting on my hands was doing double duty—not just controlling the shaking but preventing them from snatching the flask out of his grip. I was stronger than my need for a drink, and I wasn’t giving in.

“You can’t just quit cold turkey,” he said in a softer tone. “You need to taper off.”

“I didn’t know you had an M.D. after your name.”

“It doesn’t take eight-plus years of school to know that quitting abruptly like that is hazardous to your health.”

My stomach cramped. He wasn’t wrong, but admitting he was right would be admitting I’d fallen down the slope further than I’d realized, and I wasn’t ready to face that yet. Not out loud.

“Give it a rest, Malcolm,” I snapped. “I’m not an alcoholic.”

“So why are your hands shaking?”

Goddamn him. “Because I’m cold!”

He didn’t respond, which only pissed me off more.

I glanced out the window and saw we were headed toward Wolford, the town north of us. “Are you planning to dump me at a treatment center?”

“And who the hell would pay for that?” he mocked. “You’re flat-ass broke, and I’m not sure your daddy’s in much better shape.”

Between my job at the law office and the money Vanessa Peterman had given me for finding her daughter, I wasn’t flat-out broke, still I doubted I had enough to pay for rehab.

But it was the latter statement that caught my attention.

I jerked my head to face him, instantly regretting the sudden movement. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Maybe your father isn’t as well off financially as he’d like people to believe.”

“What?” I shook my head. I almost asked him how he knew, but at this point I believed he knew just about everything that went on in this town. The real question was whether he was bluffing about my father’s finances. Then again, Malcolm didn’t bluff, at least not with me.

How financially bad off was my father? I felt sick thinking about the implications. Suddenly, this all felt like too much.

“Never mind,” I said, grabbing the arm of the door and looking out the back window. “I want out of this stupid field trip. Take me home.”

“Too late for that, Detective.”

“The hell it is. If you don’t take me home right now, I’ll press charges for kidnapping.”

He let out a genuine laugh that caught me by surprise and somehow loosened the cord of dread squeezing my heart.

“You don’t think I’d do it?” I demanded hotly.

“I think you’d rather kick my ass yourself,” he said with a grin. “You wouldn’t get the same satisfaction if you handed me off to the sheriff’s department.”

I had to admit he had a point. In a little over a month of working with him, my moral compass had shifted. The satisfaction from vigilante justice was hard to deny.

He cast a glance at me, his smile fading. “I have a job for you to do.”

“Oh,” I said, understanding finally sinking in. “This doesn’t have anything to do with me or my near panic attack. This has to do with what I can do for you.”

“Of course,” he said with a snide grin.

I wanted to slap it off his face, only he’d likely laugh at me and tell me violence was another symptom of detoxing.

Smug bastard.

“What do you expect me to help you with and why were you so willing to let the issue of my mother’s potential murder drop so fast?”

“There’s nothing potential about it,” he said, keeping his gaze on the road. “There’s no doubt she was murdered, and whoever did it is very good at covering their tracks, which makes me think it’s related to your father and his own illegal connections.”

Which meant—if she was murdered—that it might not have been because of me. “My father didn’t know who J.R. Simmons was when he started doing business with him and he regretted it.”

“Not enough to stop doing business with him.”

“He stopped when Simmons was killed.”

“He only stopped because the man was dead.” He shot me a glance.

“And don’t you try to deny his involvement or the fact he knew he was dealing with a dangerous man.

Simmons told him to let one of his stooges into Hugo Burton’s office the day after his disappearance, and he did it. He let the guy clean it out.”

“One could argue that my father was only cooperative because he knew he was dangerous,” I snapped.

“Exactly.”

I nearly countered that his statement didn’t make sense, but everything in my head was so muddled, I couldn’t be sure if it did or not.

“What do you want my help with? Don’t tell me you want to help me solve my mother’s supposed murder, because I don’t know what it could possibly have to do with you . ”

Only I did. He didn’t trust my father, and he’d already said he thought her possible murder was linked to him. But that still didn’t make sense. Why would he give a rat’s ass about my father other than his link to Malcolm’s deceased boss?

“All in good time,” he said good-naturedly.

“Your interest in her death has something to do with Simmons.”

“Nice to see your brain is still workin’.” He shot me a look, his brow lifted.

I ignored his insinuated despite the fact you're in withdrawal . “I’m not helping you with your vendetta against a dead man, Malcolm.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“Then what am I doing in a car with you?”

“Getting some air.”

“More like getting hot air,” I muttered under my breath, then my blood ran cold as I realized the bridge over Red River was looming in front of us.

While I knew this was where they’d found her body, I hadn’t been here yet. I hadn’t been prepared to face it.

“What are we doing here?” There was no way he didn’t hear the panic in my voice.

“Getting some air,” he repeated, but with more kindness than I was used to from him. He pulled over on the side of the bridge and turned on his hazard lights, then opened the door and got out.

I watched him through the windshield, my stomach twisting in knots. Was he playing some kind of game with me, suggesting my mother had been murdered? To what purpose?

But my stomach sunk as the truth hit me that whether she’d been truly murdered or not, I owed it to her to look at any evidence Malcolm had uncovered. And if there was something to it, then I owed it to her to find the truth and bring the perpetrators to justice.

I got out and instantly regretted not grabbing a jacket. The overcast sky kept the air chilly and there was a slight northern wind.

Malcolm was on the shoulder in front of the car, surveying the road, or more accurately, the black skid marks that still marred the concrete.

“It looks to me that she hit the brakes right here.” He pointed to the road in front of us. “And then the marks get darker as they get to the side of the bridge.” He pointed to the end of the bridge, where the bridge met the road on the other side.

Something in my brain shifted, and Detective Adams took over, shoving Grieving Harper out of the way.

I frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”

I scanned the skid marks again, then the landscape or the riverbank on the northern side. My heart began to hammer in my chest.

There’s no way her car went into the river from that side.

Shoving my rising panic down, I walked the length of the bridge, studying the trajectory of the markings. The angle was wrong. Everything about it felt wrong. I knew it in my gut, and I felt my instincts take over. I trusted them far more than my grief.

“These skid marks aren’t hers.” I said out loud, letting it sink in.

Malcolm didn’t react, just stood there for a moment as though he’d been waiting for me to get on the same page.

“Her car would have run off into the trees on the other side, not the water.”

“Could it have hit the river bank, then rolled in?”