Predator (17 page)

R
yan sat in the ambulance with Krista, watching out the open back doors as police and fire fighters worked around his smoldering Jaguar. His chest felt as though a vice was clamped over his heart. The smell of burned leather, rubber, and metal wafted up from the ravine, and smoke still hovered like a low-lying cloud.

Krista shivered as if she sat in subzero temperature, and the red knot on her temple signaled a possible concussion. The EMT turned off his pin light. “I don’t think you have a concussion,” he said, “but you need to be checked out by a doctor. We’d like to transport you to the hospital.”

“No, I’m fine. It doesn’t even hurt. I want to stay here and talk to the police.”

“The police can interview you at the hospital.”

Ryan squeezed her hand. “You have to go, Krista. I’ll come with you.”

She turned her fierce gaze to him. “But those guys are still out there, Ryan. They tried to kill us. We have to give the police all the information they need to find them, now.”

“But ma’am, you were both thrown around pretty good. As a precaution—”

“We don’t have time for this!” Krista got out of the ambulance.

Ryan followed her. “Krista, are you sure?”

“Where’s the officer in charge?”

Ryan looked down the embankment and saw an officer with a camera. “Maybe there. Krista, I want to make sure you’re all right.”

“I’m fine, just like you! The Jaguar has great airbags.” She stormed over to the cop who’d questioned them originally.

Ryan didn’t know why his brain seemed so sluggish. His thoughts moved in slow-motion, as though the live-stream video of his life had hit a snag. But Krista was right. They had to help the police find that truck.

The ranking officer, Sergeant Rutherford, had them sit in the backseat of his car, where he could question them.

“When did you first notice that you were being followed?”

Ryan tried to steady himself. “I’m not sure. Maybe at my house, when I was pulling out of my driveway.”

Krista looked at him. “Really? You didn’t say anything when you picked me up.”

“I didn’t think they were following me then. I just remember noticing headlights behind me, and thinking someone else was up and at ’em kind of early. I didn’t notice
them behind me all the way to your house, so they must have kept their distance.”

“So it’s possible that they were waiting for you to come out of your house?”

“I guess so, but how would they know I was leaving then? I had the interview for this morning, but I didn’t tell anyone except Ian. Krista, you probably told your dad, right?”

“Yes. No one else.”

Sergeant Rutherford shook his head. “Actually, I saw a promo about it late last night when I was getting ready for my shift.”

Ryan met his eyes. “A promo?”

“That’s right. The
Today Show
mentioned you were one of their guests this morning.”

Ryan raked his hand through his hair. “That explains it. Word got out, and someone who didn’t want me talking did this.”

“Who didn’t want you to talk?”

He gave him a list of the men who sat on his board.

“Did you recognize any of them in the truck?”

“No. It was dark. I didn’t recognize the truck, either.”

He gave him a description of the truck, but half the population of Texas had trucks like it. Since they didn’t have the tag number, they were hamstrung in finding the shooters.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t go home,” Rutherford said. “You might not be safe there.”

Ryan thought of the truck turning around and driving off after the car went up in flames. “They think I’m dead. They didn’t see us get out of the car before it blew. That’s why they took off.”

Rutherford scribbled something in his notebook.
“Maybe it would be a good idea to let them keep thinking that until we find them.”

Krista shook her head. “I can’t let people think I’m dead! My dad has been through enough.”

“And Ian.” Worried his friend would hear about his accident, Ryan pulled out his phone, dialed Ian.

It rang four times, and he expected voicemail to pick up, when Ian finally answered. “When are you going on the air, man? I’ve seen enough beauty secrets and recipes to last me a decade.”

“Not going on,” Ryan said. “Someone tried to kill me. My car exploded.”

“What?
Who
?”

“We don’t know. It could be related to Ella’s case…or it could be someone at GrapeVyne. No matter who it was, you need to leave my house. If they get word that I survived the crash, they may come there to finish what they started.”

“Wow.” Ian hesitated a moment. “All right, I’m packing it up right now. Guess I’ll keep working at my house.”

“No, that may not be safe either. Watch for a black truck, man. They have guns.”

Suddenly, Ryan heard a crash over the phone line, and Ian cursed. Then the phone clattered, and he heard Ian yelling.

“Ian!” Ryan yelled. “What’s going on? Ian!”

There was a sound as loud as a freight train, then the phone cut off. “Something just happened,” he told Sergeant Rutherford. “I’ve got to get to my house.”

“I’ll take you,” the cop said. As he called dispatch to get a car to Ryan’s house, he started his car.

As the siren came on, Ryan and Krista hooked their seat belts. Ryan stared out the window as they drove toward his house, praying that Ian was safe, that he’d only broken the
phone. That was possible. He could have knocked the lamp over. The crash could have been the base breaking. Maybe he dropped the phone when he tried to pick it up.

Krista’s soft eyes contemplated Ryan as he tried to call Ian back. But there was no answer.

“They got to him,” he whispered. “They did something…”

They were silent as they flew through town, siren roaring. Radio transmissions crackled back and forth, but Ryan couldn’t understand what they were saying.

As they rounded the curve to Ryan’s house, he leaned forward, hands gripping the front seat. As his house came into view, his chest closed tight. He couldn’t breathe.

Flames engulfed his home.

Ian!

Ryan was out of the car before it came to a complete halt. The police officer who’d beaten them to the scene stopped him from running toward the house. “You can’t go in there.”

“But my friend is in there! We’ve got to get him out!”

“Over here, buddy!”

Ryan swung around and saw Ian sitting in the backseat of a police car. His laptop was on his knees.

Ryan almost collapsed in relief. He went to the car and slapped his hands on both sides of Ian’s face, smacked a kiss on his forehead. Then he looked into Ian’s bloodshot eyes. “What happened?”

Ian shook his head. “No idea. I was talking to you on the phone when something came flying through the window. It rolled across the floor. A grenade or some kind of bomb, I guess. I dropped the phone and ran out the front door, and I saw a black truck taking off. Just like you described.”

“Did you see who it was?”

“No. I tried to run after them to get their license plate, but I lost them. When I came back, the house was on fire.”

Ryan tried to think. “It had to be Willow. They were trying to destroy everything we had against them. Maybe they knew you were snooping last night.”

“Well, they didn’t get everything.” He held up his laptop. “I was holding this when it happened.”

“Guard it with your life,” Ryan said.

Ian gave a nervous laugh as he hugged the laptop to his chest. “I think I just did.”

T
he interview room at the police station was too cold, as if the city leaders had decided not to spend money on heat. Krista sat next to Ryan, unable to control her shaking.

He put his arms around her, rubbing her arms to warm her up. He looked at the two detectives across the table. “Do you have a blanket anywhere?”

Pensky, the detective who was investigating Ella’s, Megan’s, and Karen’s cases, left the room and came back with a blanket.

Ryan took it and draped it around Krista.

“Why are you working on this case?” Krista asked the detective. “Do you think it has something to do with Ella’s killer?”

Pensky looked at Detective Sanders, assigned to Ryan’s case. “We don’t think it’s related, but Detective Sanders asked me to join the investigation to make sure.”

“But this is about me,” Ryan said, “not her. It was my house that was burned. Krista was just an innocent bystander.”

“That looks to be the case,” Sanders said. “We have a car on your street now, Krista, watching to make sure nothing is attempted there. But I wanted Detective Pensky to know the details, just in case there’s any crossover.” He shifted in his seat, glanced at his notes. “We’re working on questioning the board members of Willow.”

“If it was any of them, they’ll have alibis,” Ryan said. “They wouldn’t do it themselves. They have plenty of money. They’d hire someone.”

“So if you’re right,” Sanders said, “and they’re the ones who wanted you dead, what were they trying to cover up?”

Ryan told them about Ian’s suspicions. He knew it was over their heads. Though these men seemed competent, cyber crimes were probably out of their league. He urged them to call in the FBI’s cyber crimes unit.

“Is there anyone else you can think of who might want you dead? An old enemy from outside the company? A competitor?”

“No competitor would consider me a threat after yesterday. But yeah, I might have enemies. You don’t run a billion-dollar business and not have a few enemies here and there. But I don’t think they’d go as far as wanting me dead.”

“Who’s next in line for your position?”

“Well, Ian would have been, but he got fired too.”

“Did Ian blame you for his firing?”

Ryan stared at him. “No, not at all.”

“But he knew when you were going for the interview this morning, right?”

“Yes, he was at my house when I left.”

“And he was still there when the explosion happened.”

“Yes.” Ryan leaned forward. “Where are you going with this, Detective?”

“We just have to consider every possibility. You two built GrapeVyne together, right? Yet you were considered the owner, and you were the one who got a hundred million when you sold it.”

“That’s because I invented it, wrote most of the code that got us off the ground, and I got the funding when we were getting started. I’ve been the owner from Day One. He’s never had the slightest problem with that.”

“That you know of.”

“Look, he got pretty rich too. He was given a huge bonus to stay on when I sold the company. He has a seven-figure salary.”

“Had.”

Ryan grunted. “You don’t know him. He’s my best friend. He knows we can start over with something even more innovative than GrapeVyne.”

Someone knocked on the door, and a female officer stuck her head in. “Detective, we just got a call that Ian Lombardi’s house was robbed this morning. Some officers went by there with him on the way here, and they found the place had been ransacked, computer equipment taken, all of his files, financial records…”

Krista gasped. Ryan turned back to the detectives. “See? He’s a victim too!”

“Robbery’s a far cry from a murder attempt and a bombed house. We’re not saying he had anything to do with it, but he could have staged this. We have to question him.”

“You’re way off-track, man. Can’t you just consider that everything I’ve told you is true, and they hoped to kill him in my house? His car was there, man. They knew he was inside.”

He looked at Krista, saw the doubt in her eyes.

“Ryan, he had access to Ella’s and Megan’s pages.”

“Don’t even think it,” he said. “Ian’s my best friend. He would never do this to me.”

D
avid’s alarm went off some time after Krista left the house. Throwing off the blanket she’d covered him with, he got up and went into the kitchen. The coffeepot was full of hot coffee. He poured himself a cup and turned on NBC, hoping he hadn’t missed her interview.

He zoned out as they were doing a cooking segment outside Rockefeller Center, debating whether to use charcoal or propane.

He thought of Krista in the television station, getting her hair and makeup done, and going on TV to talk about Ella’s death. How could she do it? The death was so fresh to him, the wound still so wide open, that he could never go on national TV and answer questions intelligently.

He thought of how sweet she’d been to him lately, how she’d made him meals and covered him with the blanket
this morning. He was like an old man at only forty-eight, wandering around the house with his mind turned to mush. She’d be better off without him.

He thought through his options for suicide. Ideally, he would find the murderer and kill him, then turn the gun on himself. But what if he never found the killer? Could he go on, knowing he was out there somewhere?

The knowledge that he didn’t have to endure the pain much longer was the only thing that made life bearable. So how would he do it?

He had to think of Krista. He didn’t want her to find him, so he couldn’t do it at home. He’d do it somewhere else, in a way that was least traumatic for whoever did find him. He thought of driving down to Galveston and shooting himself on the beach. But what if a child came along and discovered him? That would traumatize them for life.

Maybe pills were the way to go. He could just fall asleep in a hotel room somewhere. But where would he get the pills? And what if someone found him and revived him? Pills could cause him some kind of lifelong disability that would linger and make life even worse.

He could drive off a bridge, but that might kill others. No, he didn’t want Krista to have to live with that too.

The thought of his suicide’s effect on others was getting in his way. There was no way to do it without hurting someone. For the first time it seemed mean, and he’d never been a mean person.

Ryan Adkins’ name on TV snatched his attention away from his fantasy. He turned up the volume.

“We’ve just learned that two of our guests this morning, Ryan Adkins, formerly of GrapeVyne Corporation and Krista Carmichael, sister of Ella Carmichael who was found dead in Houston a few weeks ago, were in a car accident
on the way to our Houston affiliate. We’ve also gotten a report that Ryan’s house was burned in a fire this morning. We have no information on the condition of Ryan or Krista, but we’ll keep you updated as we know more.”

David’s heart bolted. He grabbed the phone off the wall, tried to think of Krista’s number. What was it? He dropped the phone and reached for his cell phone, pressed his speed dial. It went straight to her voicemail.

He grabbed the phone book and tore through it, looking up the number to the closest hospital. He dialed it, then asked the lady who answered if Krista Carmichael had been admitted. After a delay while she looked, the woman told him she hadn’t.

He didn’t know what to do. He tried Krista again, but it still didn’t ring through. Quickly, he looked in the blue pages for the number to the police department. Which precinct would work this case? He finally just called the one closest to the television station.

When someone answered, he blurted, “This is Krista Carmichael’s father. She was in an accident. I’m trying to find her—”

“Hold on, I’ll transfer you to the officer working the case.”

The case.
He held on, waiting, praying that Krista had survived.

“Detective Sanders.”

David’s voice came out hoarse. “This is David Carmichael. I’m looking for my daughter Krista.”

“Yeah, she’s here with me.”

“Then…she’s alive?”

“Yes, she’s fine. Want to talk to her?”

“Yes!”

His heart almost leaped through his chest as Krista took the phone.

“Dad?”

“Krista, I heard on TV—”

“Dad, I meant to call you, but then the thing with Ryan’s house fire distracted me…We were run off the road and someone tried to kill us.”

“Who did this?”

“We’re trying to figure that out now.”

“Krista, you get away from him! I’m coming to get you.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll wait here for you.”

He hung up the phone and dropped into his chair. Was he going to lose his last family member? He didn’t know if he had the strength to deal with that.

He threw on some fresh clothes, then headed to the police precinct. As he drove, sorrow crushed him, and the joy of finding Krista alive wasn’t enough to pull him out of it. A sense of more impending doom floated over him like a thunder cloud.

The nightmare wasn’t over yet.