The Sixth Man (Sean King & Michelle Maxwell 5)

Carla Dukes. There was no mistaking the lady with her big, blocky shoulders. Sean checked his watch. Nine o’clock. The woman was pulling very long hours. Maybe Cutter’s was just that sort of place.

He ducked down again when another car passed. A lot of traffic for this time of night in such an isolated place. He’d raised his head just in time to see the driver. He’d had on his interior light, glancing down at something.

Sean ran to his car, fired it up, and spun onto the road. He sped up, caught sight of the car’s taillights, and then fell back a bit.

Although he was nervous about being spotted, Sean managed to keep the other car within sight, losing it only briefly on turns before it came back into his sight line on the straightaway. They finally turned off the main road, away from the ocean, and headed inland for about two miles. Another set of turns, and Sean was growing more nervous. There was no way the guy could not have spotted him. The three cars slowed. Dukes turned into a small subdivision of newly built cookie-cutter homes. Probably built, Sean assumed, to house the personnel at Cutter’s Rock and spark a whole series of downstream employment. Now all the country needed were more murderers to put away and the economy would simply boom.

Dukes pulled into the driveway of the third house on the right.

Sean was surprised when the tail car turned down the same road, passed Dukes’s house, and turned left at the next block. Did the guy live here, too? Was he just driving home and not tailing Dukes?

Sean parked his car, got out, and started walking. He turned up his collar both because of the cold and also to help hide his face. Dukes’s house was a small, vinyl-sided two-story with a minuscule front porch. There was also a two-car garage that Dukes had pulled into. Sean watched the garage door crank down on its chain track.

About fifteen seconds later the lights came on inside the house. Probably the kitchen, thought Sean, since most floor plans followed that design.

Sean kept walking, turned left at the next block, and looked for the other car. The street was dark, no lights except for meager ones coming from the occasional house. People here were apparently early to bed. Sean could see his breath and not much else. His gaze swiveled from side to side. The houses here had garages, too, and if the guy had pulled into one, Sean had lost him. He mentally kicked himself. What he should have done was keep driving after he knew where Dukes lived until he reached the next block and then wait there to see what house the other car had turned into. It was a mental error leading to a tactical mistake that a man like Sean King deemed personally unforgivable.

He had drawn near to a dirty, heavy-duty Ford F250 workhorse of a truck parked on the street in front of a two-story identical twin of Dukes’s house when it happened.

The car he’d been looking for had been hidden by the mammoth truck. It pulled out hard and fast, its engine whining with the effort, and bore down on him. Sean threw himself into the bed of the truck. He landed on top of some tools and a coil of heavy chain that jabbed hard into his ribs and stomach. When he looked over the edge of the truck’s bed, the only thing he saw were the winking lights of the car before it turned back onto the lead-in road. A few seconds later the car and its driver were gone. Sean drew a short breath and pulled himself up. He felt around his rib cage where the tools and chain had impacted.

The lights in the house snapped on. Sean clambered out of the truck as the front door of the house opened and a man was framed there in the light. He had on boxers and a white T-shirt and his feet were bare. In his hand was a rifle.

“What the hell’s going on?” the man bellowed, as Sean came into view. The man edged the rifle muzzle in his direction. “What are you doing to my truck?”

A dog started barking from somewhere.

“I’m out looking for my dog,” Sean said, pressing one hand against his side where he felt something wet. “It’s a white lab, named Roscoe. I was here visiting Mrs. Dukes on the other block and he jumped out of my car. I’ve been looking for him for over an hour. I thought he might have jumped in the back of your truck. I’ve got a truck just like this and he rides in the back. I’ve had that dog for eight years. I… I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

The gun barrel lowered as a woman in a pullover sweater and leggings joined the man at the door. The man said, “Our old mutt just died. Like losing a kid. You want me to help you look for him?”

“I appreciate that, but old Roscoe never did like strangers.” Sean pulled out a piece of paper and wrote something on it. “Here’s my phone number. I’ll leave it in the back of your truck. You see Roscoe, you can call me.”

“Okay, will do.”

Sean put the piece of paper in the truck bed and pinned it there using a can of paint that was in the truck.

“Thanks, and good night. Sorry to disturb you.”

“No problem. Hope you find him.”

Thank God for dog lovers.

He walked on, got in his car, and drove back to Martha’s Inn. He limped up to his room. He’d banged his leg jumping into the truck. He took off his shirt and examined the bloody puncture wound in his side. That had also come from landing on a pile of tools and chains in the back of the truck. As he cleaned himself up, Sean wondered whether he had just encountered Ted Bergin’s killer.

He gingerly lowered himself into bed after downing a couple of Advils. He was going to be stiff tomorrow. He mentally chastised himself for not getting the license plate number of the car. But as he thought about it, he never remembered seeing it clearly.

He picked up the phone and called Eric Dobkin. The man was now on duty, riding in his state cruiser. He was about fifteen miles from Martha’s Inn. When Sean explained to him what happened, Dobkin thanked him, said they’d get a BOLO out on the car and driver, and clicked off.

Next he called Michelle’s cell phone. There was no answer. That was unusual. She almost always answered her phone. He phoned again, left a message asking her to call him. Hundreds of miles away, he felt helpless. What if she was in trouble?

He lay back against the pillow, trying to make sens

e of everything that had happened thus far but finding no answers.

CHAPTER

22