Free Broken by Matthew Storm Page A

someone had
mistaken my street for a NASCAR track, and then I heard car tires screeching to
a stop. It was followed by a ruckus at the door as a familiar voice shouted at
the uniforms standing watch outside to get the hell out of his way. I sighed.
This had been inevitable.
    Dan Evans barreled into my house like a wrecking ball,
his eyes wild. Sarah stood up to greet him. “Captain, I was…” she began.
    “What in the holy flying fuck ?” Dan interrupted.
    “Captain…” Sarah tried again.
    “No!” he snapped, stabbing a finger at her. He came over
to where I was sitting and looked down at me. “Get up!”
    I stood, not really wanting to make eye contact with him.
“Hi, boss.” I’d been trying to sound cheerful to lighten the mood a bit, but it
ended up sounding kind of pathetic.
    Dan put his hands on my shoulders and began patting me
down. At first I thought he was checking me for weapons, but I quickly realized
he was trying to see if I was hiding an injury. It was the kind of thing he’d
expect from me. “I’m not hurt,” I said gently.
    “Shut up,” he said. He knelt down on the carpet and ran
his hands down each of my legs.
    “He never hit me,” I said. “Ruined a jacket, though.”
Todd’s closest shot had punched a nice in-and-out hole in the arm of my jacket,
but the bullet hadn’t even grazed my skin. I wasn’t sure where it had wound up.
The CSI guys would find it eventually.
    Dan stood up again. He glared at me for a moment, then I
saw his face crack. He put his arms around me and hugged me tight.
    I had been expecting him to chew me out. This was…not
that. I put one arm around him and patted him gently on the back. “It’s okay,”
I said. “I’m okay.”
    He pulled back. “This is really fucking far from okay,”
he said. He took a deep breath, then went over to look at Todd’s body. One of
the Medical Examiner’s guys was bringing in a gurney. In a minute they’d hoist
Todd onto it and take him away.
    Dan put his hands on his hips. “Who the fuck is this
guy?” he asked.
    Sarah started to talk but Dan waved her off. “From her,”
he said, pointing at me.
    “One of Davies’s drivers,” I told him.
    Dan grunted and knelt down to get a better look at the
body. “Name.”
    “Todd something.” Dan gave me a dark look. “I don’t know
his last name!” I protested.
    Dan took a moment to examine Todd’s body, then he stood
up. “Why did he come after you?”
    The best lies are mostly made up of the truth. You just
change some of the details. “He had an affair with Heather Davies,” I said. “I
caught him on it this morning when he was driving me around. I think he was
afraid I’d rat him out to his boss, so he came over to make sure I couldn’t.”
    “Did he say anything to you?”
    “He told me he was afraid Davies would kill him if he
ever found out, when I talked to him before. I told him I’d keep the affair
quiet, but I guess he didn’t think he could take the chance.”
    Dan grunted and looked around the house, then motioned
Sarah and the two other homicide detectives into a corner. I took a seat on the
couch and watched as Sarah took the lead and described the progress of the
attempted hit to the others. The bullet hole in the door. The others in the
walls, which had been marked with tape by the CSI team. The confrontation
behind the couch. She even pantomimed my striking Todd in the throat, actually
coming close to the way I’d done it, although Sarah had no martial arts
training and her “karate chop” looked comical to my eye.
    She had all of it right, except I hadn’t told her that
Todd had been acting on someone else’s orders. Or that I was sure Heather
Davies and her daughter had been abducted from their condo. That would have
been the smart thing to do, of course. But if I did, Dan would throw me over
his shoulder and carry me straight to a safe house, and the SDPD would take
over my case.
    My case? I was a little surprised at
myself. I