Playing Dead_ A Novel of Suspense - Allison Brennan [10]
“Just thinking.”
“Funny how you never mentioned you were house-sitting for Nolan while he’s at Quantico.”
Mitch didn’t show a physical reaction. “How’d you hear?”
“Nolan called in last week for some of his files and mentioned it in passing. I remembered he lives only two blocks from Claire O’Brien. So I drove by a couple times, just to check it out, and surprise, I saw you sitting and talking with her at Starbucks Sunday morning. I didn’t have a chance to call you on it in private until now.”
Trying to come up with a lame excuse or lie would only damage Mitch’s friendship with Steve. “You knew I was looking into O’Brien’s case.”
“I didn’t think you were playing with O’Brien’s daughter.”
“It’s not like that, Donovan.”
“Don’t jerk me around, Bianchi. You’re playing a dangerous game here. Meg will draw and quarter you if she finds out you’re working the O’Brien case after you were removed. The only reason you’re on this assignment is because you’re the only diver we have in-house.”
“It’s complicated.” Mitch had to tell Steve the truth. In some ways, he was grateful that Steve had confronted him. Mitch could use a fresh mind to go over the details.
“We have a twenty-minute drive,” said Steve.
“We’ll talk later. I need to lay it out for you. I still don’t know enough to draw any solid conclusions.”
Steve’s mouth tightened. “Don’t screw with me anymore.”
“I won’t.”
“Seven o’clock, tonight, Fox & Goose, and you’re paying.”
“Fair enough.” Mitch didn’t want to meet at the Fox & Goose—he and Claire were supposed to go there tonight to listen to friends of hers who had a band—but Mitch wasn’t picking Claire up until eight. An hour with Steve, then he could drive the five minutes to Claire’s place. Steve would be long gone.
He planned to tell Steve all about his deception. Everything from his research into the O’Brien-Taverton murders to O’Brien saving Mitch’s life to Mitch befriending Claire under false pretenses. The truth about everything, except for how close he and Claire had become over the last couple months. Mitch couldn’t acknowledge to Steve—to anyone—that his feelings for Claire had moved far beyond professional interest.
They drove in awkward silence. Mitch looked through his notes on Oliver Maddox. He first learned of O’Brien’s connection with the law student through the prison visitor logs. Mitch had looked for Maddox after the prison break, ostensibly because O’Brien might have tried to contact him. But he’d been pulled from the O’Brien case almost immediately. Politics or jurisdictional grandstanding, he didn’t know which. He should have stopped then, but when Mitch found out that Maddox had been missing since a week before the earthquake, his instincts told him something was rotten. He put a BOLO on Maddox with his license plate and description.
Now they had Oliver Maddox’s car and a grossly decayed body at the wheel. After four months the victim would be impossible to positively identify at first glance. Hell, a floater after twenty-four hours was green and sloshy and hard to ID.
Mitch’s instincts told him it was Maddox. Disappeared without a trace, and now his car was found underwater.
Accident? Or murder?
The narrow, two-lane road to Isleton that followed the meandering Sacramento River was one of the most dangerous in the county. Accidents were common, especially during rain or the deadly fog that often descended upon the San Joaquin Valley. There was no guardrail to protect a motorist from going into the river. Once in the water, most accident victims didn’t survive.
The California Delta covered over 738,000 acres. Hundreds of miles of waterways cut through the Delta, the water coming from the Sierra Nevadas through not only the Sacramento River, but numerous smaller rivers and creeks. They all eventually converged before merging with the