“And you think he’ll come after me?” she asked.
“I think there’s a possibility he’ll come after both of us.”
“Oh my God,” she breathed.
“You need a dog. You need an alarm. You need a peephole. And we’re getting you a gun.”
He knew she’d turned her head his way when she whispered, “Coert—”
“Not arguing about it, Cady. You get all that or you move in with me.”
“I’ll get a gun,” she stated immediately.
Coert clenched his jaw.
He unclenched it to say, “We get you one, I’ll teach you to use it. It’ll be all good, Cady.”
“Okay.”
She said it but she totally didn’t believe it and he didn’t blame her.
“We get this done at the pound, I’ll get on the phone with my boys back in Denver. I’ve already got men at the station on calls with the folks in Nevada, Wyoming and Minnesota, sharing the link with them, others on the job of alerting local law enforcement what we’re on the lookout for. We all work together, one way or another, we’ll get him.”
“So you think he’s here now?”
“I think he’s here now.”
“You think he’s watching us?”
“I think he’s watching us.”
“Oh my God.”
He knew it was a tall order but he had to give it.
“Keep it together, Cady.”
She grew silent.
Coert did too.
She broke it.
“How did he find us? I mean, is it that easy to find people?”
Shit.
Shit.
“Coert?”
Shit.
His name came more urgent now because she felt his mood. “Coert!”
“Your investi . . . I mean, Moreland’s investigator.”
“I’m sorry?” she asked.
“He didn’t just keep tabs on me.”
“Oh my God.”
“That I got,” Coert told her. “He wanted to keep you safe so he kept tabs on all of them.”
“How do you know this?” she asked.
“Several years back, I broke into his hotel room and read the shit he was handing over about me. When I did, I found he had a lot of shit on that whole crew.”
“And . . . what? He worked for Lars on the sly?” she asked.
“I’ve no idea. And this might be jumping to conclusions. I just know I clocked him because I’m a cop. We notice when people are following us. Lars is a felon. He’d notice the same. And when Lars got out, my guess is Moreland would be sure to put that guy on him. And Lars is probably a whole lot better at breaking and entering than me.”
Cady said nothing.
“It might not be that,” he told her. “There aren’t a lot of Coert Yeagers in the world. Cady Morelands either. We wouldn’t be hard to find. That said, the rest of that crew would make it so they aren’t easy to find and only someone with investigative skills could find them. So it’s a stretch to put that two and two together, but maybe not that long of one.”
“I still don’t understand the fires,” she said unsteadily.
“I don’t know his state of mind, but I knew it back then. He was setting up to be the kingpin of Denver. He had schemes of taking out much bigger players than him to take over their operations. He was even making plans to build his army so he could take down actual gangs in order to get their turf. He was like a drug dealing Napoleon. He had delusions of grandeur. He had the charisma, and he was smart, but he didn’t have the kind of intelligence he’d need to see those kinds of plans through. He was not happy for more reasons than getting arrested and thrown in prison. He had big dreams and he was enraged when I killed those dreams. After he went down, he was paranoid that his crew had turned against him. The only one he trusted was Maria because he put her to the ultimate test and she passed. So now, I don’t know if he doesn’t give a shit if he’s caught again, but my hunch, he knows he will be caught but he’ll only give a shit if he’s caught before the job is completely done.”
“And the fires?”
“Distractions. Cover so he can get the job completely done. This was his MO. Back then it wasn’t fires, but to throw cops and enemies off the scent, Lars connived to have shit happen to turn attention away from the real shit he was doing that would put a focus on him and his operation. Now, you just got the deaths, one after another, easy to link individual murders in that crew with known associates in past felonies and pinpoint the perpetrator. But if you take your time, which he is, and the cops’ attention is turned to investigating an arson and not turned to investigating what appears to be a random murder, their focus on the fire, the fact it’s arson, the fact there were others before it with the same MO, doesn’t translate to linking that with what would appear to be random murders days or weeks later. And Lars is not a firebug. He’s a dope peddler. A good choice to go outside his norm giving him more of a smokescreen to put investigators off the scent. But just to say, in the mess of crime that can happen in places like Reno, Denver and Cheyenne, thin links like that can get lost. That slim link beefs up when Mills jetty goes up in flame and something happens to you or me.”
“Saved those for last,” she murmured.
Coert said nothing.
But he didn’t think that was where it was at.
The Minnesota fire and the ensuing murder had happened only three months ago.
So his guess was, he and Cady were just the farthest away and Lars simply worked his way east, and now, at the end of the road, he didn’t care what links were made.
Actually, his guess was Lars had no intention to go after Cady but she’d moved into Coert’s town, so she could end up being icing on his mindfuck of a cake.
“It still seems thin, Coert,” she noted. “How did you put it together?”
“Arsons with the same MO in those different places, I wouldn’t have if it didn’t happen in Colorado, Minnesota and here. Minnesota being the change of location to report for parole that one of the crew requested so he could go there and look after his sick mother. Add those together, run the other names, find them all dead, it fit together.”
“Are they all gone?” she asked.
“No. But there are only three of us left. You, me and Maria.”
“He can’t get to Maria,” she murmured.
“He won’t get to Maria. No way he’d take down his Josephine.”
“I never caught that,” she said like it was to herself. “You told me to watch for it, be careful around them but I never caught it.”
No she didn’t. She knew her friend was making exceptionally poor decisions, but she’d never caught how bad it was getting. Part loyalty. Part history. But mostly she’d been wrapped up in Coert.
“You weren’t watching as closely as I was, Cady,” he said gently.
“Yes,” she whispered then asked, “Do you think she knows he’s doing this?”
“She can’t have any contact with him, so unless he’s being clever, I doubt it.”
“He could write to her under another name that maybe she’d know but the prison people wouldn’t.”
Prison people.
He’d laugh if he wasn’t entirely freaked out.
“He didn’t strike me as a letter writing guy,” he shared.
“Right,” she murmured. He knew he had her gaze again when she asked, “Um . . . why are we going to the pound?”
“To get you a dog.”
“I know but . . . well, shouldn’t you be looking for him?”
“You need a dog.”
Again with the silence but this silence was weighty.
She broke it this time too.
“Five days to three weeks, Coert. It’s been five days since that fire.”
“He’ll come after me.”
“Your little girl.”
“Cady, he’ll come after me.”
“How do you know?”
He didn’t.
He just didn’t want her scared out of her mind.
“Dog, peephole and we’ll order you an alarm installed.”