Familiar Trouble by Carolyn Haines

Author:Carolyn Haines [Haines, Carolyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: KaliOka Press
Published: 2017-07-10T04:00:00+00:00

Aiden felt his head where a huge knot had formed. He’d been clocked. The events slowly came back to him. He’d been following the man behind the bookstore, climbing the fence, cutting across the back streets of Wetumpka until he rounded a corner and was struck in the head with something hard.

“Damn.” Aiden had gotten careless. He’d been so hell bent on catching the man he assumed was Benjy that he’d failed to use the necessary precaution. And he couldn’t even swear that the fleeing figure was Tammy’s weird employee. Aiden had only caught a glimpse of someone leaving the back of the store and escaping over the fence. The man was the same size as Benjy, but it was the furtiveness of the person that made Aiden follow. He’d moved quickly so as not to lose him. He hadn’t expected an ambush. Which was the whole damn problem. He hadn’t thought the man he was tracking had been aware. He’d underestimated his foe. And that was a rookie mistake.

He used his cell phone to call backup to the alley, unable to ignore the irony of the Christmas music and laughter he could hear from the street only a hundred yards away. He propped himself up against the wall and glanced toward the Coosa River that flowed so tranquilly by the town. Some of the old timers had told him that back in the day, Wetumpka was a wide-open gambling and prostitution center for the riverboats that came up the Alabama waterways. Now it seemed lawlessness was trying to gain a new foothold.

A patrol car turned down the alley and the high beams made him blink. He was momentarily blinded.

“Are you hurt?” Rob Sieck asked as he hurried forward with two deputies. They grabbed Aiden and gave him support. “Can you walk?”

“I’m fine. Cold and humiliated. I was chasing someone and he got the drop on me.”

“Who?”

Aiden didn’t have an instant answer. “I thought it was Benjy Miller.”

“Tammy’s helper?” Rob didn’t hide his concern.

“I didn’t get a good look. I saw someone behind the bookstore acting furtive. I had a hunch Benjy might take a runner, so I pursued him. I never saw who it was, and to be honest, I can’t see that Benjy could get far enough ahead of me to set up an ambush. Maybe it was someone else.”

“We’ll take you to the station and you can grab a hot shower and warm up. Put on dry clothes that don’t smell like the inside of a dumpster.”

“I need to check at the Book Basket.”

Rob put him in the back of the cruiser. “I drove by the bookstore and Tammy was there with a dozen customers. McNaughton brought the list of people he told about Tammy’s astrology project by. You should sit at a desk and make some calls until I’m certain you’re okay.”

Aiden didn’t argue. There wasn’t a point. When Rob made up his mind, there was nothing to do but comply. And a couple of hours of desk duty sounded okay.

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