Free Dark Waters (2013) by Toni Anderson

them. Called Kudrow. “Give me something to work with. I’m pissing in the wind here. Fucking Canucks don’t know a damn thing about anything.”
    “Here’s something.” He could hear the excitement in the other man’s voice. “Davis’s ex—Anna’s mommy—still lives in Victoria on Vancouver Island. It’s where the teacher grew up and where Davis committed his crime.”
    He felt a tingle low in his spine. She’d bolted for home. “Got an address for me?” He motioned for Marco to join him as he memorized the address, then hung up. He headed back inside the hangar and into the manager’s small office. “We need a flight to Victoria. Any chance one of your boys can give us a ride?”
    The grease monkey followed him inside, listening in on the conversation. “You find that girl you’re looking for?”
    Rand gave him a smooth smile. “Was the damnedest thing. She’s been spotted on Vancouver Island.”
    The grease monkey’s eyes slid away and Rand knew the fuckchop had lied to him. “I’ll give you twice the going rate if we can leave in the next thirty minutes.”
    The manager’s eyes lit up. “Andy here can take you.”
    “Sorry, boss, I’m going to have to order another part for the Skyhawk.”
    “I thought you said you were almost done?”
    “I just noticed a crack in the prop and we don’t have a spare in the warehouse.” Andy, the grease monkey, backed away a few steps and refused to meet his eye.
    Rand and Marco exchanged a look. If leaving a trail of bodies in their wake wouldn’t be a problem, this guy’s neck would have been snapped. Unfortunately they’d questioned too many people, and had been caught on several surveillance cameras. If they got nowhere in Victoria, Rand would come back and work on the bastard until he spilled more than his guts.
    “There’s another pilot heading to Victoria via Nanaimo in fifteen minutes. You can catch a ride with him.” The boss shouldered past his employee and Rand followed him out. Excitement started to spread along his nerves. Most soldiers balked at taking human life, but it had never bothered Rand. Murder was easy to hide in a war zone, but in a civilian world it was more of a challenge. He wasn’t worried. He knew how to escape and evade, and he had no intention of ever getting captured.



CHAPTER 4
    Katherine Plantain hurried to dress for breakfast. She shimmied into new linen pants and wondered if the neighbor’s teenage son had remembered to cut the lawn. She checked her wristwatch: 6:50 a.m.
    They’d agreed no cell phones on this vacation, but she’d nurtured that lawn back to life after Ed had removed one of her prized azalea bushes last fall. Damned if all her gardening efforts were going to waste for the sake of a thirty-second phone call. She turned on the phone and noticed she had a message from Anna.
    She smiled, then sighed. Thoughts of Anna always brought a pang. She’d failed her in so many ways and had no idea how to make it up to her, or how to fix things. But Anna didn’t need fixing and she’d made it more than clear over the years that she didn’t want her mother’s help. She’d made herself a good life in the States. Had a successful, fulfilling career. Except for that one blip, Anna was the most sensible, most levelheaded person she knew. They all knew who to blame for the blip.
    Anna was OK now, and she was also fiercely independent. Katherine put her phone to her ear and listened to the message.Her knees dissolved. She sank to the bed as her muscles turned to smoke.
    Davis was dead?
    She expected to feel relief, happiness even, but the image that flickered through her mind was him on his knees the day he’d proposed, and the look of love that had captured her already ensnared heart when he’d begged her to marry him.
    Ed stuck his head through the door and she jumped.
    “I thought we’d agreed no cell phones?” he chided sternly.
    “I was just reminding Nate to mow the lawn.” The lie tripped off her