Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
Trixie couldn’t keep the smile off her face. She’d received a random text from an unknown number that had vanished soon after she read it. But she’d read it and she couldn’t get the words out of her mind.
Unknown: He says to tell you he loves you.
It couldn’t be from anyone other than Paul.
She wanted to reply back to tell him she loved him too, but the message was gone and she hadn’t memorized the number. For all she knew that number had only existed to send her that one text message. First the cookies and now a text. What other gifts was her sweet man planning on sending her?
A shout of “Oh shit!” drew her attention to the employee breakroom. She walked in just as several hollers of “Go, go, go!”, “Damn!”, and “Holy shit, how fast is he going?” came from the crowd of employees standing around the television on the wall.
Trixie couldn’t remember the last time she’d spotted the employees actively watching the television.
Occasionally, it was flipped to the weather channel or the news, but for the most part it remained on a random channel while muted with the closed captioning on.
To find five employees huddled around it now was odd to say the least.
“What’s going on?” she asked, pulling a rag out of her back pocket to wipe her hands. She’d been on her way upstairs to the bathroom. She wasn’t exactly clean.
“Boss!” Gary waved her over. “Check this out. I’ve never even seen a motorcycle like this. Look at it go!”
She edged her way forward, Trinity moving to stand in front of Gary rather than standing beside him. Trixie’s eyes landed on the television.
The widescreen showed a local news station spokesperson who sat in a helicopter reporting on a high-speed chase below involving a stolen prototype vehicle and state police. The chase was approaching ten minutes and had reached speeds of up to one hundred and seventy miles per hour on the freeway.
“…move over. Do not attempt to block the motorcycle. The police are setting up additional roadblocks and are encouraging citizens to remain off the roads. We do not yet have an identification on the driver of the stolen vehicle, but we are being told its new technology makes it a formidable opponent against the polices’ older models… ”
Trixie didn’t hesitate. Her insides were screaming at her.
She knew exactly who was driving that damn motorcycle.
It was the way he drove. Despite the dozens of police cars after him and the numerous obstacles in his path, he was confident, smooth, and cocky.
She just knew. She just had no clue why. And that text… It hadn’t been random.
Trixie rushed into the hall and ran up her stairs. She pulled her phone out of the pocket of her coveralls. Lee had given her a number to contact him in case of emergency only. Well, this qualified in her book, even if it didn’t in his.
His voice was rushed and frustrated. “Not now, abeja.”
“What the hell is going on?” She entered her apartment and turned on her television. It didn’t matter what channel. All the local news stations were covering the car chase. “Is this some sort of set up?”
“I can’t talk—”
“Don’t tell me you can’t talk about it!” she cried out, flinching.
The motorcycle just narrowly missed being pancaked between two eighteen wheelers.
“Why are the state police after him?” Lee was a city police detective.
Cayden’s deal as a criminal informant was with Lee.
She didn’t know what it meant for him if he was caught by a state trooper versus a local police officer.
There was silence, and then Lee said, “They apparently got an anonymous tip about the theft.”
“Can’t you call them off?” Her eyes never left the screen. She was tracking his movements like he was plotting out a map just for her. “The bridge,” she murmured.
“We can’t call them off or Carver will know it’s a set up—”
“He’s headed to the bridge!” she shouted at her brother. “Why is he going there when they’re lifting the drawbridge?”
“Shit,” she heard Lee curse. Then he shouted something at someone else away from the phone. “I have to go—”
“You bring him back to me, Lee. I don’t care if Carver gets away. You bring him back to me!”
Lee hung up without offering her such a promise.
Trixie clung to her necklace like it was her lifeline to the drama outside, her eyes fixated on the television.
She needed him to be okay. But why the bridge?
The motorcycle was fast, but was it that fast?
He must be planning on jumping as the draw was being opened.
The police cars certainly wouldn’t be able to follow.
The news helicopter turned as the shiny silver motorcycle did.
As Trixie had anticipated, he was heading straight for the opening drawbridge.
The motorcycle had a straight line up. The police had set up barricades, but they were only wooden sawhorses.
Likely because the bridge behind them was opening.
They thought that was a deterrent, but they didn’t know Cayden. Not like she did.
The prototype motorcycle smashed through the barricades, splintering them and squeezed perfectly between two police cars. She could see the bridge opening. It had some good height to it. God, could he make that?
The motorcycle suddenly veered, the tires turning awkwardly against the clamps of the bridge.
It fishtailed. For a split second, Trixie thought the move had been intentional because the motorcycle was now facing away from the bridge.
Was he trying to head back the way he came?
Had he realized he couldn’t make the jump?
But then the rear tires collided with the sidewalk and the motorcycle fell, skidding to the edge of the bridge. Sparks flew as something large toppled over the side of the bridge. For a moment, the motorcycle teetered like a child’s play toy on the edge of the bridge.
Then it slid, scraping along its side, down into the watery depths of the gulf.
Trixie didn’t pause. She couldn’t even remember making the decision to go.
All of a sudden, she was in her car. She wasn’t sure how she got herself there safely.
Her body was moving on its own and she was just along for the ride.
The only thing her mind kept thinking was the cadence he’s not dead, he can’t be dead, he’s not dead…
Her heart even beat to the tempo of her inner mantra.
The fifth precinct was a madhouse. There were cops running everywhere. No one was even manning the tinsel-decorated front desk. Cops dodged around her, ignoring her or glancing away so she couldn’t catch their attention. Didn’t matter. None of them were who she was looking for.
But the station was so big, and she had no idea if Lee was even here. She hadn’t asked earlier where he’d been. She was still clutching her necklace. Had she driven with it in her hand? Maybe she should call Lee.
Trixie had watched enough cop shows to know she was standing in a bullpen. She never understood why cops called it that. It was a large room full of desks, not cows.
A tall man in his early forties exited an office next to her shouting, “Tell them I don’t care what it costs! I don’t care what it takes. And someone get me some goddamn answers from those divers!”
As the man stepped back into his office, Trixie caught sight of his name stamped on the glass door. Captain Lucas Holloway. Her heart leaped. Lee’s note had mentioned a Holloway.
She rushed after him. The man’s brows furrowed at her approach. Mind, he probably wasn’t used to young Latina women dressed in coveralls and covered in motor grease cornering him in his own office.
“My name is Beatriz Romero,” she said before he could order someone to have her removed.
The man’s shoulders stiffened, and as she’d hoped, his eyes lit in recognition. “Shit. Shut the door, Ms. Romero.”
She did as she was told but didn’t take the seat he offered. She was too jumpy to possibly sit still. “Is he alive?”
Holloway ran a hand through his salt and pepper hair. “I don’t know. We have divers in the water now to find out.”
“What happened?” she demanded. “And don’t give me some bullshit about police procedure or keeping me safe. I just watched the love of my life crash a prototype on the news and I don’t know if he’s alive to come home to me. Talk.”
Holloway, though, was not a man easily intimidated. “Lee wasn’t kidding about you. You’ve got some serious balls on you, Ms. Romero.”
“Trixie,” she snapped. “We can discuss what genitalia I do or do not have later. Tell me about Cayden.”
He studied her carefully for a moment. He was still standing behind his desk. Maybe he felt he couldn’t sit unless she did.
“He stole the motorcycle,” Holloway finally admitted. “I can’t tell you all the details, but it wasn’t the real prototype. He was supposed to take it to Carver and where he believed Carver was stashing the drugs he hadn’t yet moved.”
Sounded simple enough. Cayden stole the bait, bait leads Carver to the trap. Obviously, though, it hadn’t been that simple. “What went wrong?”
He shook his head. “Not sure. Somehow the state police got involved. Cayden made the decision to keep going. He said he could get away. He still wanted to get the motorcycle to Carver. He was wired, so we were able to communicate with him. Then suddenly he cut out. We lost the connection to the bug we had on him too. We couldn’t hear him or trace him.
We were blind, and then…” His voice trailed off. “Well, you saw.”
She forced herself not to remember what she’d seen. Once was one time too many. “Did Carver call in the tip? Did he know that Cayden was working with you?”
“It’s always a possibility.” From the look in the man’s eyes, the police captain thought it was more than a possibility. Trixie did too. Why call the state police over local?
“Where’s Lee?” She needed to know her brother was safe too. She needed to know both of them were safe.
“Out looking for Cayden.”