Chapter 15

Jazz squatted next to the very flat tire. She ran her thumb over a thin puncture mark. Weird shape. Like a match for her knife blade if she'd stuck it into the tire.

She stood, letting her gaze travel across the parking lot, the hidden pockets of darkness beyond the lampposts.

Was the tire cutter still there, waiting for her to be vulnerable while she changed the tire? That was likely the point.

But how would anyone have known she was there? She always checked for tails. An unbreakable habit from her Army days that came in handy working for PK-9.

"Got a spare in the back?" Hawthorne's question nearly startled her. Forgot he was there.

"Oh." She pulled out her key fob and unlocked the back, walking to the rear of the SUV. The liftgate rose, and she reached inside for the cover that hid the spare.

"I'll get that."

She paused and looked over her shoulder at him. "I've been changing tires since I was six."

"Then it's about time you had a break, don't you think?" He gave her the charming grin that had shown up more than once tonight.

She backed out of the space, ending up much closer to him than she'd expected. She squinted at him to cover the flustered feeling that tumbled in her belly. "Afraid I can change a tire better than you, too?"

"Definitely." The glitter of humor in his eyes, so close to hers, sent a pulse of electricity down to her toes. Was it her or was it super warm outside tonight? That would explain the sparks of heat that tingled between her and Hawthorne.

"Okay, sure." She blurted the response and stepped back in an attempt to halt the mashup of chemicals rushing through her. He was a bestselling author who wanted to feature her in his books. He'd been nothing but professional all night. And sweet and kind…funny, caring. And oh-so easy to look at with his sculpted physique and—

But that wasn't the point. The point was, he hadn't shown any personal interest. Not romantic interest. Not the sparks flying, flame-fueling attraction she'd been battling all evening.

At least she didn't think so.

"Thank you. I'm honored to get to change Jazz Lamont's tire."

She reached for a laugh and her sense of humor, her lifesavers tonight. "At least this way, I'll get to tell everyone the Hawthorne Emerson changed my flat tire."

His rich laugh lingered as he brushed past her with the spare and jack. "Just no photos on social media, please."

"Aww, really?" She gave her best disappointed teenager imitation, earning another handsome grin as he crouched to remove the old tire.

Jazz's eyes lingered on the contoured muscles beneath the sleeves of his slim T-shirt. They flexed and coiled as he loosened the bolts. Even the muscles of his back rippled through the thin material of his shirt.

She cleared her throat and dragged her gaze away. She'd never realized there was more than one benefit to having a guy change her tire. At least when he looked like Hawthorne Emerson.

She stifled a snort at the thought. Nev would get a kick out of this story. Though she'd wonder about the suspicious cut in the tire, too.

Jazz's humor faded as she scanned the lot again. Eleven cars were parked there. Just Climb It didn't close until ten, so the vehicles could all belong to climbers inside.

She didn't see anyone inside the vehicles, but a person could easily hide by sitting low or ducking. If she had Flash with her or was alone, she'd go check them out.

But Hawthorne didn't need to know about the strange adventures of her life. He already thought she was weird—or unique, as he'd so carefully put it. She didn't want to risk scaring him off either. He seemed comfortable with danger on the pages, but it was different in real life.

He was a former marine. That said a lot. But most people wanted to leave that kind of danger behind when they left the military.

No, she'd solve this puzzle herself. Beginning with how the would-be shooter—assuming that was the intent of this stunt—had found her there. Since she always checked for tails and didn't predictably come to Just Climb It at this time on Saturday nights, that left one other option.

A tracker. Hidden on her SUV, probably. Unless someone had gotten to her things in her locker at the fair, but that seemed less likely.

"Must've driven over a nail, huh?" Hawthorne's question drew her attention to the famous author she really couldn't believe was changing her tire. And especially that he looked so good doing it. His toned forearms dangled over the top of the tire he'd removed and held propped up in front of him.

"Yeah, must have."

"Weird looking nail, don't you think?" His electric eyes pierced her with a stare above the tire rubber.

Her mouth dried. Did he suspect something? She tried to hide her swallow. "What else could it be?"

"I don't know." His head tilted slightly as he watched her much too closely. "But I get the feeling you do."

"Look, I'm gonna be honest with you." Christy Mason threw Hawthorne a glance over her shoulder as she walked on the staff-only path ahead of him. "I don't remember much about that night. I remember a lot more about the next morning, when the police showed up at my apartment to ask me questions."

The narrow path along the perimeter of the Logboat Adventure ride's interior didn't allow for Hawthorne to walk next to the ride operator as she did her closing inspection. Not very conducive to an interview about the night Sam died. But Hawthorne would take what he could get.

The other people he'd questioned tonight, those who had operated neighboring rides and food stands, hadn't remembered anything helpful. No one seemed to have noticed Sam or anything unusual. But they'd also pointed out that they never remembered anyone unless there was something unique about the person. They simply saw too many faces to recall.

Given the number of visitors still there when Hawthorne had arrived tonight, just before closing at eleven p.m., he could see why. He'd thought there would be significantly smaller crowds at closing than earlier in the day, but the number of visitors lingering for a last bit of fun was astonishing.

"That makes sense you'd remember the police showing up." Hawthorne was at least picking up some helpful information watching the young woman's routine for closing the ride. After shutting down the controls and leaving them locked, she'd headed through the staff entrance into the tunnel, where Hawthorne now trailed her for an interior check.

"Are you looking for garbage or people who didn't get out like they should have?"

The dyed stripe of blue in her short, bleached-blond hair glimmered in the soft lighting as she looked back at him. "Both, I guess." She stepped up onto the shoreline display and retrieved something with her gloved hand. Dropping it in the trash bag she carried, she scanned the area.

"Did you do this check the night before Sam Ackerman was found?"

"Of course. It's required." She grabbed some more bits off the display.

"Right. Did you see anything unusual when you did it that night?"

"You mean like a dead body?" She smirked as she stepped down off the display. "No, I think I would've noticed that. But the police thought I must've missed it."

She headed up the path again, and Hawthorne followed behind. "I was thinking more like something to suggest a visitor hadn't left or a missing boat. Maybe more garbage than usual left somewhere?"

"You mean like extra beer cans?" Amusement was obvious in her tone as she detoured onto the display again. "Jaden gets all hung up on that. But he doesn't work nights. I've seen plenty of visitors get on my boats with more than one can per person." She held up the two cans she found on the shoreline to emphasize her point.

"Do you often see passengers who are intoxicated?"

She snorted. "Oh, yeah. The nighttime crowd tends to be older than the daytime. Fewer kids, unless you count the stupid teens with fake IDs who think they're something as soon as they get a sip of this stuff." She dropped another can into the bag, then returned to the path.

Christy didn't look much older than a teen herself, but given she said she'd worked the fair for five years, she must look young for her age.

"Did you see a teen who fit that description during the evening?"

Christy paused, facing him this time as she crossed her arms and looked away. "The police asked me if I'd seen him. They showed me a photo of the body." Her posture tensed.

"I'm sorry. That must've been difficult to see."

"It's weird in real life, you know?" Her gaze bounced to Hawthorne's face, then away.

"Yes, I know." Most people thought they knew about death and killings, thanks to the saturation of gore and violence on TV and in movies. But the reality was so different. And so much harder to forget.

She took in a visible breath and brought her attention back to Hawthorne. "Nobody asked me about drunk punks that night." She looked up to the right. "Yeah. I actually saw a group of young guys like that. There were like four or five of them together. I remember because they kept trying to hit on me." Her pale lips quirked. "Like they didn't know they were a bunch of drunk slobs. They weren't all super young. The guys trying to pick me up were older, closer to my age then."

"How old was that?"

"Like twenty-one maybe? But I remember thinking they'd brought their kid brothers along 'cause a couple were scrawnier and stayed in the background."

Scrawny teenagers? Could Sam have been one of them? From the autopsy details in the police report and the photos, tall and scrawny would be a fitting description of him.

"Honestly, I had my hands full with that one dude who thought he was God's gift to women." She laughed and put a hand on her hip as the gears of Hawthorne's mind turned.

She probably wouldn't have noticed Sam's face at all. Not well enough to ID him from a photo of a dead body the next morning. While working at the fair, Christy must have seen thousands more people than Hawthorne had seen in his longer lifetime. No way could she notice or retain most of them in her memory.

"Did the guys go on the ride?"

"Yeah. Two times." She rolled her eyes. "I was afraid they were going to stay all night."

"But they didn't?"

"No. Lucky for me."

"Do you know what they did on the ride?"

"Probably drank and threw their cans on the display. I can't really hear what anybody's doing inside. The music is pretty loud."

The music. Both of the times Hawthorne had visited the ride, it wasn't running. He hadn't thought about the loud music that must play all the time when the ride was operational. So the group could've done anything inside and only fellow passengers would have been within range to notice. "Did any of the other visitors complain about the guys?"

"No." She shrugged. "That near to closing, I think everybody's kind of in the same boat." She laughed. "Get it?"

He smiled. "Yeah. I get it."

"Well, I'd better get back to it."

"You've been really helpful, Christy. Thank you." He held out his hand.

She held up her gloved hands, one holding the garbage bag. "You really don't want to do that." She shook her head back and forth.

He chuckled. "Probably right. Thanks."

She gave him a thumbs up before swinging away to continue her pattern.

He backtracked to the staff entrance, his mind clicking through new questions. Had Sam gone to the fair with friends that night? If so, why wouldn't they have come forward after his death? Maybe because they knew his death wasn't an accident.

Hawthorne pushed open the door and stepped into the night air, many degrees cooler than the daytime shift he'd had today.

The crowds that had been there when he'd begun interviewing Christy had finally disappeared. Now only staff members finished up at rides and walked along the wide paths that suddenly looked unnecessarily massive and empty.

Had Christy just given Hawthorne a clue that no one had before now? That Sam maybe wasn't alone. That he may have come to the fair with someone. That someone might know what happened that night.

For the first time, Hawthorne was starting to think Rebekah could be on the right track. He'd never doubted the possibility, but the evidence and police documentation had all pointed to an accident as the most likely conclusion.

Now, the scales might be tipping in the other direction. But the only way to know for sure would be to find out if Sam had been with someone—or multiple someones. That would change everything.

"Hey, Brent." Hawthorne lifted his hand to hail a food vendor he'd questioned earlier.

The man in his thirties glanced at Hawthorne as he locked the door of his food stand. "Hey, man. I'm heading out for the night."

"I know. I don't want to keep you. Maybe we can walk out together?"

"Sure." Brent Vaughn shrugged as he swung the strap of a messenger bag over his shoulder and started at a slow pace along the blacktop, his tired posture showing fatigue.

"I just learned from a ride operator that there was a group of four, maybe five, young guys who were drunk that night."

Brent shot Hawthorne a skeptical sideways glance. "That describes a lot of the clientele on a Saturday, man."

"Fair enough. Does that mean you saw a group like that the night Sam died?"

Brent cast his gaze to the starry sky as he trudged along. "I don't know. I could have. But I really wouldn't remember."

Hawthorne stifled a sigh. "Okay. Thanks for your time. Let me know if anything comes back to you, will you? You have my card."

"Yeah. Sure thing."

"Have a good night." Hawthorne lengthened his stride as he waved and headed for a shortcut to the Public Safety Center. Veering behind the Twirling Swings ride and the Torch Rocket ride, he reached the narrow path that wound behind their underbellies. Pretty dark now that the ride's lights were off.

Hawthorne activated the flashlight on his smartphone so he could walk without tripping over the cords that crisscrossed the blacktop.

How many other people would respond like Brent, with no memory of the group of guys that Christy had remembered? It wasn't likely Hawthorne would find someone who could identify any of them if the staff couldn't even remember the group at all. Especially now, two years later.

He blew out a breath. But he wouldn't give up. There were other ways to find out if Sam had been with a friend that night.

Images of the Best Life commune sprang to Hawthorne's mind. Made him want to shudder.

He'd really hoped this investigation for Rebekah wouldn't require him to go back there. He'd promised himself he would never go back. And that was a promise he still wanted to keep.

But who better than his family to know if Sam was alone or with a friend?

Rebekah had said Sam's mom still lived at Best Life, or at least she had when Rebekah left a year ago.

The police must have already asked Sam's mom that question, though. If she knew then that he'd gone with someone, she would have told the detectives. He couldn't see her hiding that information when the case involved her own son's death.

So Hawthorne probably didn't need to go and talk to her. He couldn't get in anyway. He'd been banned from Best Life since the moment he'd left.

He peeled off the narrow path and joined the wider one to walk the remaining distance to the Safety Center. He gladly abandoned thoughts of the cult to focus on his other mission. Hopefully, Butch would give him permission to view the security footage of the Skyride.

Or maybe Ted Renneth was the supervisor tonight. Either way, he didn't think they'd object to someone willing to spend hours reviewing the security footage leading up to the explosion that had killed their General Manager.

Jazz's face, the stunned horror in her eyes as he'd held her back from the body of her aunt, flashed in his memory, clenching his gut all over again. Didn't think he'd ever forget that sight.

Was the cult responsible for that? No pin had been found this time. They'd hardly leave a calling card unless they wanted the cult to get shut down, which Desmond Patch definitely did not.

And what about Jazz's flat tire tonight? He'd gotten a look at the puncture. The tire hadn't been slashed, but the clean slice looked very deliberate. Like a knife had been used to cut it intentionally. And Jazz had instantly started scanning the parking lot as if she'd suspected someone might be watching. Was she being followed? Harassed? Was it related to the sabotage at the fair?

Hawthorne steeled his jaw. If he found any hint on the security footage or anywhere else that the cult was involved in the fair incidents or endangering Jazz, he'd have all the more reason to revisit his old prison. The place that still held three members of his family captive.

And he'd personally make sure Desmond Patch finally paid for what he'd done.