Read No Going Back for Free Online Page A

station had ever been there.
    Crime scene tape fluttered on the desert breeze, like bunting after a celebration but as a more sinister reminder to the world. Here people had died: senseless slaughter. Standing there among the damp ashes, I could picture the wraiths of the murder victims standing beyond the ring of yellow tape, staring back at me with sunken eyes. They were probably wondering why I was there. This wasn’t my battle; sadly I couldn’t help them. I could not exact retribution from their killers.
    Or could I?
    Perhaps I was mistaken and what had occurred here did have something to do with the missing women. I had an odd feeling that tickled the back of my brain, something I’d come to recognise over the years. Cops call it a hunch . The army I belonged to called it rapid intuitive experience or RIE. Then again, maybe it was simply wishful thinking. I was once cautioned that I couldn’t save everyone. That was infinitely apparent; a good number of people I cared for had been killed despite my best efforts. But, if the people who’d died here had done so under the guns of those responsible for taking Jay and Nicole, at least I could try to avenge them.
    I heard the car coming along the road, then its tyres juddering on the rumble strip as it took the ramp to the gas station. When a Navajo County police cruiser pulled up alongside my GMC, I can’t say I was particularly surprised.
    I just stood there, looking at the devastation, and waited for the officer to approach me. He was a young man, thick about the shoulders and neck, his dress shirt straining around his overdeveloped biceps. He’d doffed his Smokey Bear hat while in the car but, as he approached me warily, he jammed it over his crew-cut as a sign of officialdom. Then he laid his hand on the butt of his sidearm.
    ‘Excuse me, sir?’ His teeth were very white, offset by his permanent tan, and vivid against the night. ‘Can I ask what business you have out here?’
    The cop had most likely been briefed to spin by the gas station regularly. It wasn’t uncommon for looters to go to a scene of destruction, or ghoulish souvenir hunters either. Family members of those murdered sometimes had to see where their loved ones had died, as a form of closure. And then, sometimes, the perpetrators of a crime also liked to return and view the aftermath of their work. By the way he studied me from head to toe he was determining which bracket I fitted into.
    ‘I’m just taking a look, Officer,’ I said.
    He waved at the fluttering crime scene tape. ‘You see that, sir? It means keep out . You shouldn’t have come back here.’
    ‘It was broken when I arrived.’
    ‘That doesn’t make any difference, sir. It still says “Do Not Cross’’, and it’s an offence to do so.’
    I paid his last comment no mind. Instead, I slowly reached for my jacket pocket, letting him see exactly where I was reaching. His fingers hovered over his service pistol, but I was posing no threat. I pulled out a folding wallet and opened it for him. ‘I’m a private investigator. I’m looking for two women who might or might not have been through here.’
    The cop accepted my wallet, and studied it. It couldn’t have been easy in the darkness, but there was enough of a glow from his cruiser’s headlights to see the heading on the licence inside. ‘You’re a long way from home,’ he concluded. He didn’t clarify if he meant Florida, or if he was referring to my English accent. I didn’t take him up on it.
    ‘I was employed by the father of one of the women. He was sure that his daughter and her friend would have passed this way around the time the gas station was robbed.’
    The cop moved closer to me, and he appeared to be checking my belt line. ‘Are you carrying?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You mind if I check?’
    ‘Go ahead,’ I said, holding my arms out. ‘I’ve a folding knife in my back pocket, but that’s all you’ll find.’
    I was glad that I’d left the revolver