“I would not kid you, ma’am.”

She didn’t want to overplay. The less said, the better. “If I had the time, I’d be pissed or worried, but I don’t. How soon can you fix it?”

He rose up, threading long calloused fingers through his hair. “I’ll get it up on the lift right now and pop the tire. Give me fifteen minutes.”

“You’re an angel.”

He shook his head as he slid behind the wheel of her car. “Not even close. But thank you for saying so.”

Jason held out his open palm, and she dropped her keys in his hand. He drove her car onto the lift and then got out to operate the controls.

He moved with an ease that telegraphed confidence that she bet had made Marsha and Hadley melt. Far from the metrosexual males she had worked with at the station, he was rugged. No buffed nails or facials for this guy. Given a different set of circumstances, she might have taken him for a whirl.

With a pneumatic drill, he removed the lug bolts and pulled the tire off as if it weighed nothing. On the workbench, he inspected it. “Whoever did this destroyed the tire. There’s no patching it.”

“Seriously?” Had she really destroyed her tire? And how much was that going to cost her?

“Yep.” He grinned, regarding her with eyes that danced with humor. “You know, if you wanted to ask me questions, you could have just asked. You didn’t need to ruin a good tire.”

Nikki could have tried to bolster up her pretense, but she knew the time had come to cut her losses. “Do you have a new tire?”

He moved a few inches closer. “A hundred and fifty bucks will cover the tire and the labor.”

“Fine.” She was fairly sure her credit card had not fully maxed out.

“Be right back.”

He returned minutes later with a new tire. “Shouldn’t take long now.”

“You know why I’m here. Mind if I ask you a few questions while I wait?”

“Fire away, sugar.”

“How long did you work with Larry Prince?”

“About nine months, give or take.” He hefted the new tire onto the car and hand tightened the lug nuts.

“Why did you quit a couple of weeks before Marsha Prince vanished?”

“I quit because he was cutting back my hours. I couldn’t make my rent, so I headed to Florida to work for a friend.”

“And ended up doing time in prison.”

He looked over his shoulder at her and grinned. “Shit happens.”

“Did you kill Marsha Prince?”

“Cops were here earlier asking me the same question. The answer is the same. No, I did not.”

“Were you sleeping with her?”

He reached for the drill, and its whir-whir silenced her questions for a moment. “She was of age, and the sex was consensual. I’ve always liked the ladies, and the good Lord has seen to it that they like me back.”

“Who do you think killed her?”

“I always thought Hadley did. She was always jealous of her sister, and they fought a lot that last summer.” He set the drill down and turned the tire. Satisfied, he lowered the lift.

“What did they fight about?”

“Anything that was bugging Hadley at the time. She was a manipulator. Face of an angel. Heart of the devil. Someone you wanted to tread softly around.”

“Could Mark have killed Marsha?”

“I don’t think he had the stones.”

“Could Mark have killed Hadley?”

Jason paused, staring at the tire. “Like I said, I don’t think he had the stones, but if there was a woman who could tune a man up and piss him off to the point of murder, it was Hadley.”

“What about Skylar?”

The humor in his eyes dimmed. “That kid is a survivor. She’s alive and well.”

“That sounds like wishful thinking.”

“It’s not. It’s fact.”

“I did a little research on the woman who owned the storage unit. She has no idea how the trunk got there.”

“That so?”

“It really was a perfect hiding place. She’s eighty-eight, and it’s not likely she keeps up with her unit or visits very often.”

He stared at her with an intensity that made her feel as if they were the only two people in the world. “That’s fascinating.”

“Someone wanted me to find Marsha. But what keeps chewing on me is why now? Why after all this time?”

“I’m not the kind of guy to ask a complicated question like that. I’m a simple man at heart.” He rested his hands on his hips. “How about you and I get a drink tonight after I get off work? I might have all kinds of good things to tell you.”

She smiled. “How about I take a rain check on the invitation?”

“I’m always here, sugar.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Wednesday, August 14, 4:30 p.m.

Alexandria, Virginia

Thirty-Three Hours after the 911 Call

When Vaughan and Spencer arrived at the police station, they went directly to Captain Preston’s office. The captain, in his midforties, was tall, with a naturally dark complexion, and wore a perpetually skeptical glare. Vaughan knocked, and the captain waved them in as he rose and said, “That’s right. Do what you can. Now I got to call you back.”

Preston’s phone’s receiver landed in the cradle with a firm click as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Foster showed up thirty minutes ago. He said he wants to confess to his wife’s and daughter’s murders. But I’ll warn you, he seems like he’s high on pain medications.”

“So we can’t use anything he says in court,” Vaughan said.

Spencer shook her head. “Has he said where he stashed Skylar’s body?” she pressed.

Preston pursed his lips, as if pausing to control anger. “He said it doesn’t matter where his daughter’s body is now. She’s with the angels.”

“The hell it doesn’t,” Vaughan growled. “I want to know what happened to that kid.”

“That’s what I thought.” Preston nodded in the direction of the interview rooms. “He’s all yours.”

“I’m on it.” Vaughan stopped in the doorway, his mind already turning with questions. “Does Foster drink coffee or soda?”

“Coffee,” Preston said. “One sugar.”

“Thanks.”

Vaughan paused at the break room and made a fresh pot of coffee. He offered a cup to Spencer, but she declined, and he then poured one for Foster and the other one for himself. A packet of sugar and a stir stick, and he was ready to go. He had learned a long time ago that if you wanted a man to talk about his crimes, he had to believe you were his friend.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Spencer said. “It’s too easy. All of a sudden, he wants to talk? What about his lawyer? He can’t be happy about this.”

His eyebrows knitted. “Sometimes it simply is. Let me talk to him alone. I don’t want this to seem like an interrogation.”

“I’ll be across the hall, watching on closed-circuit television.”

“Perfect.”

Legal pad tucked under his arm, he entered the small interview room, where Mark Foster sat at the table. Foster cradled an empty foam cup marred by small divots dug out by his thumbnail.