Ghosts & Echoes by Lyn Benedict Read Free Book Online

gave in. He wanted to be helpful. Needed to be helpful. Fine. Two sets of eyes were better than one. If Wright did anything she didn’t approve of, she could ditch his case. He might push and test and talk, but ultimately, she was in charge.
    “Robberies,” she said. “After hours, no alarm. Bayside’s the most likely target tonight. These guys are not stealthy in their planning. Execution, yes. Planning, no. They’ve just been running along the coast.”
    “Inside job? Do all the stores have the same alarm co—”
    “Nope,” Sylvie said.
    “Insurance fraud? Sometimes those things just spread. Like a copycat kill.”
    “The insurance companies are beginning to squawk, but they’d be screaming blue murder if they thought they were being swindled outright.”
    Wright frowned, pulled out a cigarette, and tucked it away again at her look. “So what are you going on?”
    “The path they’re taking. The merchant who hired me said she had more than her share of teenage looky-loos in the days before the thefts.”
    “Weekend boredom settling in?”
    “She doesn’t have the kind of business that gets the teens excited. Too pricey, too dull for their blood.”
    Wright insinuated himself into her space, reading over her shoulder. “An art gallery?”
    “Hey,” she snapped. “You want her reading your file? Watch it.”
    He shrugged. “I’m a cop. You can trust me to keep things confidential. Where else have they hit?”
    Sylvie slid the list over to him. He twisted his mouth, touched the cigarette pack again, and sighed. “I get the cell-phone store, the jewelry store, but luggage? That doesn’t sound like teens. Maybe someone used the kids to case the place.”
    “Good luck getting teenagers to do anything you want them to,” Sylvie said. “I assumed the luggage was taken to carry the loot. I’ve got bigger questions than who. Right now, I’m working on how .”
    Wright stiffened in the seat, his kneecap knocking against the passenger’s-side door as if he’d tried to put space between them. He tilted his head back against the headrest, baring the long line of his throat and chin, faint stubble illuminated by the streetlights. “They came to you for help. To you.”
    His voice betrayed a weird sort of hesitance, a thought he wanted to deny. Sylvie recognized it; Lisse Conrad, the art gallery owner, had come to her, and Wright, whose world had expanded recently, was learning a new sort of trepidation—that even things as normal as burglary might have an uncanny side. The Shadows Inquiries’ interview form, with its cloak-and-dagger double talk, had amused him, but this—the possibilities he had to accept—scared him.
    “It’s probably nothing more exotic than a well-connected burglar, and my client just picked me by chance,” Sylvie soothed. “More than one alarm company is involved, but an enterprising guy might job-hop, or hell, it might be a team of them, one at each company.”
    “True,” he said. “A good way to stay clear of jail is make sure there’s a lot of suspicion to go around.”
    It was true, plausible even. Sylvie didn’t believe it. The alarm companies registered people going in or out, recorded the codes they used; as far as the alarm companies were concerned, the stores had closed up shop and stayed closed all night long.
    Wright stretched, rolled his head on the headrest, cracking his neck; his shoulders popped next, and Sylvie winced. “Sure you don’t want to go on back to your hotel?”
    “Flat broke,” he said. “Near-death experiences are expensive. Even with insurance. Maxed out the credit cards to get here, to pay you, and pawned the wedding ring. What Giselle’s gonna say if I can’t buy it back before she notices—”
    Sylvie groaned. A stray indeed. What on earth was she going to do with him? His case really wasn’t the aim-and-shoot kind of thing, easy to accomplish. His case, if he wasn’t delusional, would take time.
    There was a hostel not too far