Motor Mouth (Alex Barnaby 2)

“They said they wanted to talk to me.”

“And they couldn’t do it by the bench?”

“Looking at it in retrospect…”

I broke a can of soda off from the six-pack and handed it to Hooker. “Boy, you don’t know much. You wouldn’t last ten minutes as a woman. I guess Huevo really doesn’t want anyone sitting on that bench.”

“It’s the cars. He wants his cars. All the while they were kicking me they wanted to know where I’d stashed the cars.”

“Did you tell them?”

“Of course I told them. They were kicking me!”

“Did they do any damage? Are you okay?”

“Remember when I hit the wall at Talladega and flipped four times? I’m a shade past that.”

“Cracked ribs?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Internal bleed

ing?”

“Hard to tell, but I’m not coughing up blood, so that’s a good sign. They could have kicked a lot harder. They didn’t want to kill me. They just wanted to get my attention and tell me Huevo was serious.”

“We should leave. I wouldn’t want them to think things over and come back to take a shot at seeing what I know.” Been there, done that.

Hooker limped to the SUV and gingerly eased himself onto the passenger seat. I got behind the wheel, hit the door locks and took off.

“I think we should return to the hotel and regroup,” I told Hooker. “And I’ve been thinking about the chip. There might be people who could back their way through the circuits and find out exactly what it does.”

“I thought we knew what it did.”

“I’d like it to turn out to be some kind of illegal technology, possibly traction control, but I can’t say that I know what it does. I’m thrown by the fact that it was just sitting in the knob without a connection to an electronic system. And I don’t know why there were two chips.”

“Do you know anyone who could find out?”

“Yes, but no one in Miami.”

I’d just turned onto Fourth, heading for Collins. I was driving on autopilot, trying not to let Hooker see how rattled I was, trying not to burst into tears because he was hurt. I stopped at a cross street and looked right. A car moved through the intersection. Hooker and I vacantly stared ahead at the car. It was another black BMW. Absolutely unremarkable…except for the big dog nose pressed to a rear side window.

“Beans!” Hooker shouted.

I was already on it. I had my left-turn signal blinking and a white-knuckle grip on the wheel. I had to let two cars go through before I could move. I took the corner, and we were both sitting forward, our eyes glued to the BMW. I followed for three blocks, keeping the BMW in sight. The BMW sailed through a yellow light, the car in front of me stopped for the red, and the BMW disappeared from view.

I did my best to run the BMW down when the light changed, but had no luck. The BMW was gone, last seen heading north.

“At least we know Beans is okay,” Hooker said.

More than could be said for Hooker. His eye was getting puffy and a brilliant magenta bruise was flowering on his cheek. I gave up on the search for Beans and headed back to the hotel.

“You could use some ice,” I told him.

“Yeah, and it wouldn’t hurt to have some Jack Daniel’s swirling around it,” Hooker said, eyes closed, head back on the headrest.

I drove to the hotel with my heart aching and my mind working hard to sort through the jumble of bad luck and terrible events that had occurred in the last four days. I needed to make some sense of it all. And I needed to find a way to fix it.