Another Man's Treasure (Roy Ballard Mysteries Book 8) by Ben Rehder

Author:Ben Rehder [Rehder, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fraud, private investigator, Mystery
Publisher: Ben Rehder
Published: 2022-05-12T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

When I joined Mia and Catrina in the parking lot, Mia said, “I was just telling her what a great job she did in there.”

Catrina nodded her thanks. “I’m still a little scared, though. Maybe I’m overreacting.”

I thought the odds were almost nonexistent that Luther Wonsley or Bowie Peppers would attempt to harm Catrina now, but what if I was wrong? Her recorded statement was valuable, but it wasn’t a foolproof way to ensure that Luther Wonsley would leave her alone. He might try to scare her into recanting her statement, or a slick defense attorney might find a way to keep it out of any future legal proceedings.

I said, “We promised to do our best to keep you safe, and we’ll do that.”

Mia had already been thinking this through, apparently, because she said, “You and I will stick together until this is over. Okay?”

Catrina nodded. “That would make me feel a lot better.”

Mia added, “I say we get a hotel room for tonight and figure out the longer term tomorrow. You good with that?”

“Absolutely,” Catrina said.

Mia and Catrina had followed me over here in Mia’s car, so now we’d split up. I walked with them over to the Mustang, and after Catrina had gotten into the passenger side, Mia quietly said to me, “You’re good with this, right?”

“Of course,” I said.

“We’ll go to my house first and get some clothes, and then over to her place. Then I’ll text you and let you know where we’re staying for the night.”

“Sounds good.” I hesitated for a moment, then I said, “I know you don’t have a gun anymore, but...”

“We’ll be fine.”

“Want to borrow my brass knuckles?” I asked. “Or maybe some nunchuks? Hey, I got a leather sap. I opened a Raymond Chandler novel and it fell out.”

“I have a Taser,” Mia said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yep.”

“Which one?”

“Pulse.”

That made me feel somewhat better. Some folks used “Taser” and “stun gun” interchangeably, but a stun gun required close range; you had to press it against the target’s flesh to inflict a painful shock. A Taser, on the other hand, fired a pair of pronged darts tethered to the weapon by copper wire. It inflicted pain and it incapacitated muscles. So you could drop a guy from fifteen feet and keep the voltage going for up to thirty seconds. Not foolproof, but a damn good less-than-lethal weapon, which was why so many cops carried one holstered on their duty belt.

“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” I said.

“You going to call Randy and let him know what’s going on?”

“Will do,” I said. “I’ll text him right now.”

We stood there for a moment longer in silence, my eyes holding on hers. In the old days—meaning just five or six months ago—I would now step forward and give Mia a kiss. Hold her tight. Make sure she understood how much I loved her. That I would do anything to make sure she was safe.

But these were the new days. Now I had to give her some room.

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