Shatter (Unbreakable Bonds 2)

“Umm… sure. What can I do for you?” the stoner inquired, lifting his eyes from the tiny computer screen to look from Snow to Hollis and then back to Snow.

“My girlfriend dropped her car off here the other day. She did a total fucking number on it this time. Trashed the entire driver’s side when she sideswiped a cop car and then clipped a telephone pole.”

Hollis snickered behind him while the stoner on the other side of the counter winced. “Your girlfriend is a total idiot,” Hollis teased.

Snow spun around and gave Hollis a hard shove in the shoulder, causing him to rock back a step. “Fuck you!”

“Why the hell you still with her, bro?” Hollis said. There was so much laughter sparkling in the detective’s eyes that Snow was having trouble keeping a straight face. “You can do better than her.”

“Hell. Nobody gives head as good as my girl.”

Both Hollis and the stoner laughed loudly, and some of the tension left Snow’s frame.

“Dude, that’s a pretty good reason,” the stoner admitted, shaking his head. “Why don’t you tell me your girl’s name? I’ll look up to see if they started on her car.”

“Nah, she said you won’t be able to get to it for another couple days. Parts or something,” Snow said with an absent wave of his hand. “I just need to get in the glove compartment and get my damn badge for work or my boss is gonna have my nuts.”

“Oh fuck man!” the stoner groaned.

“Look, I got her spare key.” Snow held up his own keys in his hand, being careful to hide the Lexus fob in his fist. “You mind if I just go in your lot and find the car? It’ll just take me a minute.”

“Yeah, sure man. Go for it.”

Snow grinned and gave Hollis a playful shove back toward the door. He wasn’t surprised the guy was willing to let Snow and Hollis wander around the lot. They both seemed harmless and it meant he didn’t have to haul his own ass out into the cold.

“Why do I feel like that was the first time you ever uttered the word ‘girlfriend’?” Hollis mocked as soon as they were away from the office.

Snow snorted, shoving his hands back into his pockets to keep them warm. “Because that was. You?”

“What?” Hollis nearly stumbled to a stop, his blond eyebrows jumping to his hairline.

“Ever had a girlfriend?” Snow prodded.

The cop shrugged and continued into the large lot filled with cars, trucks, and minivans — all in various stages of repair. Fat snowflakes were steadily covering them, painting them all a speckled white, while the wind swirled around little drifts across the broken blacktop. “Ehh… tried in high school a bit. Didn’t really work for me. Haven’t gone back.”

They walked around the lot in silence for a couple of minutes, searching for the black delivery truck that witnesses had described, but they weren’t seeing it. Snow huffed in frustration, standing in what felt like the center of the lot and turning in place. The truck had to be there. No way Gidget was wrong.

“Hey!” Hollis shouted, jerking Snow’s attention to him. He found the detective pointing to the far corner where a tall black delivery van was half hidden beside a truck and a large van that looked like it had escaped from the eighties.

Snow quickly started moving toward it and Hollis was at his side in a couple of steps. His heart pounded in his chest, hope squeezing his lungs so that he could hardly draw a breath. As they cleared the last row of cars, they could easily see the extensive damage done to the front passenger side and the black paint scraped across the front fender. The exact same damage that would have been caused if the driver had come up alongside of Melissa and rammed her SUV into the on-ramp.

Hollis circled back and forth in front of the truck, and then squatted by the front bumper. He didn’t touch anything, but he did snap a few pictures on his phone.

Snow walked around to the driver’s side and reached for the handle.

“Hey now,” Hollis called out. “I know you know better than to touch. I want to call out a team to go over it because I’m sure you’re right. This is it.”

Snow stood on his toes and stared into the driver’s window. Gratton had sat in that fucking seat and deliberately ran his friends off the road. He was pretty sure that Rowe had been the intended target and his gut twisted in fury. He wanted to get inside and look the seat and floorboard over himself, wanted proof.

Growling, he wished he’d not caved and called the cop—but he’d felt like maybe they owed him one after he let them off the hook the night before. He thought again about Geoffrey and that micro cam on the choker. He was pretty sure the dirty-minded little guy had gone home with that camera.