Dead Wrong by Susan Sleeman Page A

nodded. “You’ll have the car towed to the state police crime lab so they can process the paint transferred from the van.”
    “Right. We should be able to get the manufacturer, make and the year manufactured from the transfer. That combined with the three digits you caught of the plate the other day and maybe you’ll find your suspect.”
    “You deal with the state lab often?”
    “Enough, why?”
    “Just wondered about the time frame for results.”
    “Seventy-two hours at the soonest. Probably longer.”
    Three days. Three days during which Mitch needed to make sure he kept Kat out of the killer’s sights. She didn’t know it yet, but she wasn’t going home tonight. No matter how strong-willed and independent she was, he would insist she spend the night with one of her siblings or at his house. He’d prefer she chose the siblings so that wounded expression didn’t make him do something dumb like hold her and promise everything would be okay.
    That was an empty promise if he ever made one. Nothing was ever all right. Nothing. He ought to know that by now.
    “I need to wait until someone from the lab gets here,” Franklin continued. “But Trooper Smith is ready to leave if you want a ride to your rental car.”
    “Thanks. I’ll get Ms. Justice.” It felt odd calling her anything other than Kat, but he didn’t want to draw attention to their personal connection.
    He skirted around his damaged car and swiped his hair off his forehead. A steady rain hissed down on them and, although the troopers gave them both slickers, a gusting wind had blown his hood off so many times that he finally gave up and left it down.
    As he approached, Kat looked up, revealing wet curls clinging to her neck. They looked cold against her creamy skin. He was temped to peel them free so he shoved his hands in his pockets instead. “We can catch a ride with the trooper.”
    She eased off the guardrail and groaned. “You as sore as I am?”
    “No, but I wasn’t assaulted last night.” He slipped a hand on the slick plastic of the poncho covering her arm and directed her across the road. She didn’t shake off his hand and that told him a great deal about her mood. He settled her in the front seat and climbed in the back.
    The trooper tried to make conversation with her, but she gave him one-word answers, and he finally stopped trying. As a former law enforcement officer, she was probably still running through the incident, trying to see if they could’ve handled it better. He was doing the same thing. He was confident they’d made the best of a bad situation, but he was uneasy about the gun. When he’d bailed from the car, he’d thought the vehicle was their only exposure and hadn’t expected the suspect to pull a weapon and open fire.
    The gun brought things to a whole new level. One they’d have to face head-on until this guy was caught. Mitch and Tommy were up to the task of protecting Kat, but it wouldn’t hurt to have help. When they got a moment alone, even though she was against involving her family in this, he’d suggest they do just that.
    When the trooper pulled up to a service station with a car rental sign out front, Mitch leaned forward. “You mind if Ms. Justice waits here while I get the keys?”
    “No problem,” Smith answered.
    “I’ll be right back.” Mitch hopped out and filled out the paperwork for a small sedan, got directions to the salvage yard then went out the side door into rain that seemed to be letting up.
    In the car, he shrugged out of his poncho and cranked up the heat so by the time he pulled up beside the trooper, warm air was flowing at his feet.
    Kat climbed in and struggled to get out of her slicker, the vinyl squeaking in protest.
    “Want help with that?” he asked.
    “I’m not fragile, you know.” She sounded mad about something, but he couldn’t see her face under the poncho to make sure. She ripped the poncho free and eyed him up for long moments. A hint of a spark had