“Good night, Tara,” Luke said as they walked through the lobby.
“Have a good one,” she hollered over the sound of her radio, which was playing a hit from the mideighties.
Luke clattered down the ramp beside Mandy, thankful she hadn’t suggested taking the stairs. “Is everything all right at your house? No one’s tripped the alarm?”
“It’s all fine. Nothing new since two nights ago.” Her eyebrows furrowed. “Well, nothing except finding out about Camilla.”
“Do you think she’s capable of this?”
Mandy dug her hand into her bag, rooting around for her keys for several seconds before producing them. “I don’t know. I don’t know her. But a woman scorned, well, she’s capable of nearly anything.”
Luke nodded as the lights on her white SUV blinked. He glanced at the wheel as she opened her door, and the parking lot lights reflected off a puddle peeking out beneath her front bumper. “I think you’re leaking.”
“I know.” She threw her bag into the car and slid behind the wheel. “It’s been leaking antifreeze for a couple days. I need to have it looked at.”
He nodded. “You’ve had other things on your mind.” He put his hand on her door to close it. “Have a good night. Drive safe.”
“I will.”
The door clicked closed, and he stood silently watching her pull out of the lot and onto the major cross street. When she had disappeared, he moved toward his car, watching the pool of liquid in her empty parking spot to make sure he didn’t slip in it.
The yellowish lights above made the puddle’s color hard to distinguish, but it wasn’t a neon color like many antifreeze brands. In fact, it looked more like oil.
A knot in his stomach went taut, and he shifted one of his crutches to the other side so that he could bend almost all the way over. Stretching his arm as far as he could reach, he swiped a finger through the fluid. Dry and oily. Lifting it to his nose, he inhaled. It smelled like fish oil.
Like brake fluid.
Like her brake lines had been cut.
“Mandy!” He yelled her name, even as his throat closed. The strangled cry died quickly on the wind, and he ran as fast as his crutches would carry him to his car.
Get to her. Get to her. Get to her.
He had to find her before she couldn’t stop. Before she sailed through a red light or flew off a mountain road.
He flung his crutches into his car, gritted his teeth against the eruption in his knee when he bumped his leg and peeled out of the parking lot. He whipped in front of another car and floored it in the direction she’d gone.
She hadn’t given him her cell number. Too personal.
But this, this was beyond personal. This was a matter of life and death.
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