Read Confidential Prey (Nick Teffinger Thriller) Online
Authors: R.J. Jagger
Confidential Prey (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (8 page)
Decker chuckled.
“That just goes to show you that you can trust a guy who murders for a living,” he said. “That was a misdirect. You were the target all along.” He exhaled and added, “There’s one more thing. One of the heads that’s going to roll once you and the FBI and everyone else in the world gets their hands on this briefcase is mine.”
“You’re dirty?”
“Yes. Don’t worry, though, I’m still going to hand the briefcase over. It’s time all this comes to an end, including my role in it. I’d like a 24-hour head start.”
“Let’s make it 72,” Teffinger said.
“That’s fair.”
At noon,
he picked up Raverly at her loft and drove her out to Red Rocks in the foothills. They took a stroll on a dusty path with the Colorado sun beating down.
“Did I say thanks for saving me last night?” Teffinger said.
“No.”
“I will.”
White gauze strapped into place with white tape covered most of the left side of his face. The cut was long but not deep.
The doctor who stitched him up was a plastic surgeon.
There would be a scar but it wouldn’t be of the Frankenstein type.
The path narrowed as it wound higher into the foothills.
The earth opened into an expanse to the eastern flatlands. They could see for fifty miles.
They walked single file with Raverly in front, climbing ever higher.
“You lied to me,” Teffinger said.
Raverly stopped and turned.
“About what?”
“About not knowing Peyton Rekker,” he said. “You went to his funeral.”
She tensed, as if caught.
Then she softened.
“I didn’t know him,” she said. “I went there with a friend of his. I knew her. I was there to support her. That was it.”
“You should have said that back when I brought it up.”
“I didn’t see the need.”
They walked
in silence.
Several magpies sat in a pinion pine.
Yellow butterflies dotted the grasses and bushes.
Raverly stopped and turned.
“You were right that I lied to you,” she said. “It wasn’t about knowing Peyton Rekker though. I’m going to tell you something horrible. You’re going to despise me and then we’re going to split up. It’s better that it happens now than later.”
Teffinger’s blood raced.
The woman was serious.
The stress was etched on her face.
“Go on,” he said.
She looked at the horizon, then at him. “I had a boyfriend last year by the name of Robert Wicks. We were headed to Las Vegas. I was driving, traffic was almost non-existent and I was paying more attention to the radio than the road. There was a car up ahead on the shoulder. A woman was changing a tire on the street side, slightly on the road but not by much. I didn’t see her until the last second. I swerved but it was too late and I ended up hitting her. It was Brooklyn Parks.”
“Brooklyn?”
She nodded.
“We were scared as hell,” she said. “We put her in the truck of our car and fixed her tire. Then we dumped her body in an arroyo way off the beaten path. Robert drove her car into Vegas and we ditched it in the north 40 of the Mirage’s parking lot.”
Teffinger stared at her.
He had no words.
“When I was passing you the message of Ashlyn White’s murder, I made a spur of the moment decision and threw in Brooklyn Parks. Later, you were trying to get to Michael Decker to talk to him. I was scared if you did, you’d find out that he didn’t know anything about Brooklyn. That’s why I took the lead in hiring the private investigator. If he found out who North’s connection was, I was going to keep it from you. You found out on your own through Paul Kwak, so at that point I had nothing to lose by showing you what the investigator found as well.” She held his hand. “I was scared, Teffinger. I was scared and trapped and didn’t want to lose you before I even had you.”
Teffinger shook his head.
Then he turned and walked.
“Teffinger!”
He didn’t stop.
“Nick!”
He kept going.
Day Sixteen
August 18
Thursday Night
Teffinger
left the Tundra at the trailhead with the keys in the ignition and hitchhiked back to Denver. He didn’t call Raverly all day and she didn’t call him.
He went home after work, made a sandwich then sat in the ’67 and drank beer.
Twilight came.
Night followed.
He couldn’t keep the rage up.
It was waning in spite of his best efforts.
Raverly killed Brooklyn but it had been an accident. What she did afterwards was wrong, extremely wrong, but it was the product of fear. Teffinger had done some pretty extreme things in his own life based on fear.
He was hardly one to throw stones.
Also, Raverly lied to him about Brooklyn.
To her credit, though, she told him the truth afterwards when she could have kept her mouth shut.
That counted for something.
He swallowed
what was left in the blue can, crushed in it his fist and dropped it to the garage floor.
He extracted soldier number seven from a small cooler in the back seat, popped the top and took a long swallow. It wasn’t as good as the first one but it was still pretty damn good.
He pulled his cell phone out of his shirt pocket and stared at it, deciding.
Then he called Raverly and said, “Why don’t you come over and let’s talk?”
“I’m on my way,” she said.
Try one of these.
Nick Teffinger Thrillers
Kill Theory
Attorney Prey
Confidential Prey
Bryson Wilde Thrillers
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