Free Molly Brown by B. A. Morton Page A

that sense of something bad breathing down his neck. He was suffering from an overactive imagination, giving himself the creeps again, a sure sign he was tired and sore and he needed to go home. He missed the peace of the farm. He missed Lizzie and Joe.
    He also missed the shadowy figure concealed in a doorway a little way behind him, perhaps because the figure was more interested in watching than in being seen and had gained more than a little experience in doing just that, or perhaps because Connell’s head was so full of shit he couldn’t think straight, let alone see straight.
    Connell unlocked his car and slid awkwardly in behind the wheel, unaware that his every move, his every wince , was being duly noted and stored for future use.  He checked his watch. Time to get moving.
    He did just that and headed for an even less desirable spot.
     
    *  *  *
     
    The derelict warehouse where he’d tailed Gibbons and Scott the previous night looked less menacing in daylight. Connell was grateful for the long summer evening that meant, despite running so late, he was not at the mercy of anything inclined to go bump in the night. Not that he was scared of the dark, just naturally cautious of the sort of people and things that lurked within it.
    He sat in his car parked alongside the corrugated structure and studied the way the building leaned impossibly to one side. A reversing forklift, or even the leaning of a well-made man such as Gibbons, would be all it would take to nudge the building to the ground, and Connell hesitated before leaving the relative safety of the vehicle and walking into its cavernous space.
    The evening sun struggled through the grimy skylights and fractured through the gaps in the cracked, corrugated walls. The effect inside was one o f intermittent light and dark, the sunlight catching dancing dust motes and causing Connell to shield his eyes, while the darkness enveloped the far corners of the building and shrouded the isolated and abandoned machinery that had outlived its usefulness, but was too heavy to steal.
    There had been three cars parked up when he’d previou sly observed from the shadows, one belonging as he now knew to Frankie, but driven by Gibbons and Scott. The other could well have been Frankie’s own now that his involvement had been declared. But the third was as yet unknown. Connell flexed his stiffening muscles and scanned the abandoned compound, got a fix on where he thought the cars had been and checked the dirt with a scuff of his shoe for anything that may have been inadvertently discarded.
    Finding nothing, he wandered slowly into the belly of the building and listened distractedly to the steel frame as it creaked and cooled under the waning heat of the sun. At the far end up a rickety set of wooden stairs sat the remains of an office. The glass windows , that looked out onto the warehouse floor had long since been smashed, probably by kids, and the whole platform sat precariously on wooden legs that sagged with age and rot.
    Connell tested t he first step gingerly and proceeded carefully, with one hand on the rail. The office was, as he expected, derelict, covered in graffiti and reeking of urine and beer. Okay, so this was where the local kids hung out. Maybe if he could catch himself a local kid, he might find out was going on down here after dark.
    He stood on the top stair and stared down at the empty hull beneath him. His vantage point gave h im a unique view and he was able to make out what he hadn’t been able to see when his feet had been on terra firma - tracks in the dirt of the factory floor, lots of tracks from something big and heavy.
    If he’d still had a badge, Connell might have called someone smarter than him who could have done something astounding with a camera and come up with the brand of tire, model of truck and quite likely the name of the guy who’d driven it. But in the absence of such technology, Connell pulled out his cell phone and took some