Nightfall Read Online Free PDF

drug cartels had their tentacles
this far north. And now, she was being targeted by one, or someone
working for one, because of something she’d stumbled into purely by
accident.
    Her mountain of unpaid bills
was starting to seem like the very least of her
problems.
    “ Don’t worry,” Colin said,
giving her a thoughtful glance. “I’ll see what kind of protection
we can get you, in the event you have to testify.”
    “ Testify? ”
    “ About whoever approached
you in that parking lot.” He gave her a look. “It could be someone
important.”
    “ The guy with the white
hair?”
    “ I’m guessing it’s Ice Man.
He’s the link between the cartel and our firearms guy—a link we’ve
been investigating for a long time. But we’ve never had a positive
ID on him. Or even an eyewitness.”
    Holly gaped at him.
“You don’t have an
eyewitness! All I saw was some guy in a parking lot. He barely said
two words to me.”
    Colin shifted his attention
to the road, where the sign for the White Falls Inn had come into
view. Holly glanced at it, panicked.
    “ Colin, I don’t want to
testify. I want to deliver my flowers and go back to my life in
Bozeman.”
    He turned up a steep and
narrow driveway. “You will.”
    “ I’m serious! I don’t want
any part of this. I’ve got enough stuff to worry about with my
sister on my case and a struggling business and loans from art
school—”
    “ Just relax, all right? This
is all conjecture at this point.” His phone buzzed again as he
curved around a graceful driveway and pulled up to a white
clapboard house flanked by towering fir trees.
    A trio of men in tuxedos
rushed out to meet the van, followed by a blond woman in a black
pantsuit. This was Patty, the wedding coordinator Holly had met on
the few occasions when she’d been privileged enough to do an event
at the prestigious White Falls Inn. Patty had obviously recognized
her and was making a beeline for the Suburban, already barking
orders at the staff.
    Colin’s phone buzzed again
as the men yanked open the cargo doors. “Hey, you need a hand with
this?” he asked. “Because I need to take this call.”
    Holly shoved open her door.
“Take it.”
    “ I’ll be here when you
finish.” He checked his watch and a look of concern flitted across
his face. “Come straight back, all right? We need to get you safely
back to Bozeman before anyone realizes you’re here.”
    ***
    “ I have a lead on Ice Man,”
Colin told his boss.
    “ Shit, where you been? I’ve
been trying to get ahold of you.”
    “ You know that florist I
told you about? She may be able to ID him for us. Someone
approached her last night at Mae’s Truck Stop, right after she
pulled up in her van. I thought it was Lopez, maybe mistaking her
for Hooks, but—”
    “ Hooks is dead.”
    Colin’s blood turned cold.
“What?”
    “ They found him in a ditch
this morning over in Calvert County,” Bruce said. “Double-tap to
the head. And get this—his van’s missing. So looks like the swap
went down without us, only it wasn’t a swap, but a grab. Not only
that—his whole place has been looted. Guns, computers, phones,
everything. Someone swept through there like a horde of
locusts.”
    Colin tried to process the
information. The man he’d been closing in on for months was dead.
The person they’d hoped to bust and then flip so they could go
after the bigger fish—Ice Man and Lopez—was gone.
    “ Lopez knows we’re onto
him,” Colin said, watching uneasily as Holly pulled another load of
flowers from the back of the SUV. He turned away from her and
lowered his voice. “He’s shutting it down, eliminating loose
ends.”
    “ I know, I know. We’ve got
to move fast. So, what’s this about Ice Man? You said you have an
ID?”
    “ Slater.”
    “ Who?”
    “ Tom Slater. I think he’s
our guy.”
    “ You think Sheriff Slater is the Ice
Man?”
    “ He matches the witness
description to a T,” Colin said. “And besides, it makes