on the far side of the closet. She parked the suitcase by the front door and dragged open the other closet door.
She unzipped the first duffel bag and peeled back the top, releasing a stream of air between her teeth. Stacks of bills were nestled neatly in the bag, and she clawed through them all the way to the bottom.
Hugging a few thousand dollars to her chest, she stumbled backward until the back of her legs hit the bed. She sat.
What did it all mean? Were she and Larry bank robbers who’d had a disagreement? Lottery winners who couldn’t decide how to split their windfall?
She dropped the cash on the floor and returned to the closet. With both hands, she pulled the money duffel off the other one and unzipped the bag on the bottom. This time she swayed and grabbed the closet door to steady herself.
She ran her fingertips along the plastic baggies in the duffel, which looked like they were stuffed with ice chips—but this ice didn’t melt. She snatched her hand back from the drugs packaged neatly in the bags.
With her heart hammering in her chest, she swept up the hand towel she’d dropped next to Larry’s body and darted around the room, wiping down surfaces from the bathroom to the TV remote to the duffel bags and all the doorknobs and handles in between.
Maybe the dead man had keeled over from a heart attack or a stroke or an aneurysm, but she had no intention of being here when the cops showed up.
She zipped up the drug bag and hoisted the money bag back on top. She gathered the stacks of bills from the floor where she’d dropped them and froze.
She had no purse, no ID, no memory. How could she make her getaway, find herself with no money?
The cash in her hands felt solid, sort of like a crutch, something to hold on to. She needed this money now. If it turned out she was a drug dealer, she’d return it to...someone. She’d pay it back once she discovered her identity.
She stuffed the money into the suitcase by the door and added a few more stacks for good measure. She’d count it later. She’d use just what she needed to get by.
All the excuses she reeled out for herself couldn’t quell the sick feeling in her stomach. She’d make this right, but she couldn’t leave her fate to strangers when she didn’t even know her own story.
Larry’s body emitted a tinny classical tune, and she dropped the money on the floor. She tiptoed toward him and crouched down, clutching the towel in her hand.
A light glowed from the front pocket of his shirt, and she plucked the phone out, using the hand towel. The cell slid off of his body and landed beside his arm.
Squinting, she leaned forward. The display flashed a call from an unknown number, and then went dark. Drug dealers and bank robbers probably didn’t store contact names and numbers of their associates in their phones.
Since she was hovering over the body anyway, she swiped at the man’s pockets where she’d touched him. She would wipe down the car, take her suitcase and hit the road—first stop Timberline, the name of the town on the slip of paper in her pocket. She was about to rise when a dinging sound stopped her.
The phone lit up again, but this time a text message flashed on the display.
She hunched forward and read the text aloud to the dead man. “‘Did you get the girl? Rocky’s...’”
In place of an adjective for Rocky’s emotion, the texter had inserted a little devil face with smoke coming out his ears. Rocky must be very, very angry.
Was she the girl who had to be gotten? Would’ve been nice if the texter had used her name to give her a head start on reclaiming her identity.
Cell phones could be tracked. She pushed to her feet and finished wiping down every possible surface in the room. When she was done, she tucked a corner of the towel in the waistband of her jeans and peeked out the door.
She’d leave the car here—those could be traced, too. She might be Hazel McTavish from Seattle, but she needed to do a little research before stepping into Hazel’s life.
But before she left without the car, she wanted to check the trunk first. She’d found a bag of money, a bag of drugs, what next? A bag of weapons?
Poking her head out the door, she cranked it from side to side. The people at this motel didn’t seem to be early risers—probably because they were sleeping off the night’s activities or had used the room for just a few hours.
She kept her head down and scurried to the compact, unlocking the trunk with the key fob. It sprang open and she used the towel to ease it up.
Chills raced up her spine and her mouth dropped open in a silent scream as her eyes locked on to the vacant stare of her second dead body this morning.
DEA Agent Cole Pierson turned away from the dead woman’s stare. Money, drugs, dead bodies—and he hadn’t even officially clocked in yet.
He returned to the motel room, where the odor of decomposing flesh had started to drift through the air. He swiped the back of his hand across his nose. Someone had left the heat blasting in here, which had accelerated the process of the body’s breakdown.
Cole still had no problem identifying the deceased—Johnny Diamond. Whatever had happened in this seedy motel room, it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving dirtbag.
The King’s County Sheriff’s Department had descended on the room like a pack of ants at a picnic. One of those ants, Deputy Brookhurst, approached him with a wide grin.
“Quite a haul for you DEA boys, huh? Crank, cash and Johnny Diamond.”
“Now we just have to piece together the rest of the puzzle. Where’d he get it, where was he going with it and who were his contacts? Oh yeah, and who offed him?”
With the toe of his boot, Cole prodded the black duffel bag on the floor, containing hundreds of thousands of dollars of methamphetamine, bagged and ready for the street. Then he wedged his hands on his hips and surveyed the room. What had Diamond been doing in this flea trap?
Why risk stealing a car, murdering the owner and stuffing her body in the trunk with this much cash and product on hand? Diamond had been a slick adversary from the day he’d burst onto the drug scene four years ago. He’d managed to keep out of their clutches precisely because he’d avoided missteps like this.
Maybe Diamond had been planning to cash out and head for a tropical island somewhere. Cole smoothed his gloved hands over the pile of money stashed in the other duffel bag and frowned.
“Brookhurst, are you sure your guys didn’t touch the cash?”
“Hold on.” Brookhurst widened his stance and hooked his thumbs in his pockets like some movie star cowboy. “Are you accusing my boys of something?”
“Stealing? No. Did they move it around? Reposition it? Run their hands through it?” Cole held up his own hands. “Hey, I wouldn’t blame ’em.”
Brookhurst’s puffed-up chest deflated. “I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”
Cole traced the uneven grid of the money stacks with his fingertip. “The bills are stuffed into the bag in tight rows, but those rows are messed up at the top—as if someone thumbed through the money. You checked Diamond’s pockets?”
“I told you—a set of keys with a flower key chain in the front pocket, wallet in the back pocket. Had maybe a hundred bucks in his wallet.”
The county coroners parked a gurney next to Diamond’s body. “We’re ready to take him if you’re done with him.”
“Copy us on the autopsy and toxicology reports. You still think it looks like poison?”
One of the coroners held up a plastic bag containing the bottle of water