Nick of Time by John Gilstrap Read Free Book Online Page B

time alone as he could.
    Seven minutes was the limit of Carter’s endurance. He carried the drinks back upstairs. Chris didn’t even turn around as he said, “She’s on her way to someplace in Virginia called Brookfield.”
    Carter stopped, dumfounded. “You know that already?”
    â€œYep. She’s going by bus to meet a guy named Brad. Give me a couple more minutes and I can get you a last name, too.”
    Carter froze. He felt the blood draining from his head and helped himself to the edge of Nicki’s bed. “Ward,” he said.
    â€œExcuse me?” Chris took the soda from his host.
    â€œHis last name is Ward. Brad Ward.”
    Chris stopped typing and pivoted in his chair. “You know him?”
    Carter closed his eyes against the realization. This was a terrible turn. “Keep looking, please, and pray that I’m wrong. The Brad Ward I used to know was bad news through and through.”
    The detective’s eyebrows fused as he swung himself back to the keyboard.
    Carter owed him an explanation. “Years ago, when Nicki was just a little girl, our neighbors next door were professional foster parents. Never really got to know them. My guess is, they knew what I did for a living and kept as low a profile as possible. They’d sometimes have four or five foster kids staying with them at a time. Brad Ward was one of them. He lived there for a couple of years, in fact, starting when Nicki was in fourth or fifth grade. He was a good-looking kid, athletic with a quick smile, but he was much older. In high school. And Nicki had an enormous crush on him.”
    â€œPuppy love,” Chris offered.
    Carter winced at the memory. “Well, you’d like to think that. Certainly, it was innocent enough on Nicki’s part, but I was never quite sure about Brad. Seemed to me he was milking it. You know, strutting around the yard half naked. He always had time to talk to Nicki when she was outside—and she was always outside when he was.”
    â€œYou think he’s a perv?” Chris asked the question as he typed, and turned instantly apologetic for the lightness of his tone. “I’m sorry.”
    Carter waved him off. “Something about the kid bothered me. Made me nervous. He made Jenny nervous, too, and there was never a better personality barometer than she.”
    Chris scowled, leaned in closer to the monitor, then typed some more. “That’s him,” he proclaimed. “Brad Ward.”
    â€œCan you run his record from here?”
    Chris looked wounded. “You’re kidding, right? Do wild popes shit in the woods?” He typed some more then waited for the modem to finish screeching before he started up again. “This is a piece of shit computer, Counselor,” he said. “You can go out and have dinner while the pages load.”
    â€œYou need to go back to the office, then?”
    Chris shook his head. “No, I can make it work. Just be happy that you’re not paying by the hour.”
    In the silence that accompanied the detective’s new concentration, Carter tried to figure out why Brookfield, Virginia, rang such a bell with him. He knew that he passed the signs south of Washington on I-95, but that didn’t seem quite right. There was something more substantial in his memory, but he couldn’t pull it up.
    â€œSo, what happened to this Brad kid?” Chris asked. His fingers didn’t slow a lick while he spoke.
    â€œHe moved away.”
    â€œThe whole family, or just him?”
    â€œJust him. One day he was living there, and the next day he wasn’t. There were lots of rumors about all of them, but like I said, I was never on the greatest terms with the Bensons themselves, so I don’t know the details.”
    â€œWhat kind of rumors?”
    â€œThat it was an abusive household, that Brad was responsible for some local break-ins. That sort of thing.”
    â€œDid you