Free Hell on Wheels by Julie Ann Walker Page A

direction as my mugger, mind you. I started after him—”
    There was a collective gasp heard around the table.
    “Yes, yes,” she rolled her eyes and pressed forward before anyone could throw in their two cents about what a colossally dumbass move that had been. “I know. Stupid, right? But I was so sick of feeling like I was going crazy. Don’t worry, though. One of the guys who helped me fight off the mugger kept me from following.”
    Ozzie whipped open a paper-thin laptop, tense fingers poised above the keys like a snake getting ready to strike. “Vehicle make, color, model?”
    Young Einstein had dropped his charmingly affable facade. Now he was all business. This was his specialty. Give the kid a few scant bits of information, and he could use his crazy-mad computer skills to find you the remaining pieces of the puzzle because, according to Ozzie, everything could be accessed through the World Wide Web and the lightning-fast fingers of a clever hacker. And Ozzie was as clever as they came.
    “Sorry,” Ali shook her head. “I’m about as good with cars as I am with computers. It was black, I can tell you that much. Black and big. Like a Ford Explorer or a Chevy Tahoe.”
    “So it was a domestically made SUV?” Ozzie asked, already typing away on the keyboard while his eyes remained glued to Ali’s face.
    Mad skills.
    Frank congratulated himself for about the thousandth time over his decision to recruit Ethan Sykes away from the Navy.
    Again Ali shook her head. “I’m not sure. But I did get a picture of the license plate.”
    Ozzie instantly stopped typing. In the resounding silence of the room, you could’ve heard the proverbial pin drop.
    Becky was the one to break it. Of course .
    “Kick ass , sista. Way to keep your head about you.”
    Ali blushed prettily and bit her lip. Out of the corner of Frank’s eye, he thought he saw Ghost’s jaw twitch.
    “Thanks.” Ali smiled. “But before you congratulate me too much, I’m not sure it’ll be that much help. It’s fuzzy.” She pulled her BlackBerry from the back pocket of her jeans and punched a few buttons. “By the time I grabbed my phone, the vehicle was pretty far away, and I had to zoom way in…”
    “Did you give the photo to the Jacksonville Police?” Frank asked, wondering what the local PD had to say about the incident.
    “I did.” She made a sound of disgust. “And when I laid out my theory linking the guy who’s been following me and the mugger, they paid me some pretty nice lip service. Secretly, I think they went in the other room and swirled their fingers around their temples. Look, I know the story is crazy, but I’m convinced I’m right. Those two men are linked. Everything that’s been happening is linked.”
    She handed her phone to Ozzie who glanced at the screen before his fingers started flying over the keyboard again.
    “It’s North Carolina plates. That last digit there,” she tapped her phone with one fingernail, “it looks like either a B or an R…or maybe a 3.”
    “Doesn’t matter,” the kid said. “I can work with it.”
    “You can?” Ali’s eyes brightened. “The Jacksonville police said it was too blurry to do anything with.”
    “The Jacksonville police don’t have my image enhancement software,” Ozzie boasted, the excitement on his face making him look about twelve years old, which made Frank’s trick shoulder start to ache.
    Thirty-nine certainly wasn’t headed for the rocking chair, but with the kind of life he’d led, closing out his fourth decade meant that there were aches…and pops…and shit that just didn’t work right anymore. His trick shoulder being the most annoying of all his current ailments.
    He reached for the bottle of ibuprofen he kept in his hip pocket and quickly swallowed a couple of tablets without benefit of water before shoving the Dum Dum back in his mouth.
    “Good job, by the way, “ Ozzie added.
    “Thanks,” Ali accepted his offhand compliment and