The Dead Won't Die by Joe McKinney Page A

father’s work was going to blow all that apart.”
    â€œOh,” said Kelly. She sat back in her seat and traded a worried look with Jacob.
    â€œWhat did you do with your father’s work?” Jacob asked. “Did you try to show it to anybody? One of your father’s friends, maybe?”
    â€œFriends of my father’s are hard to come by these days,” Chelsea said. “The same people who want my father’s research have been smearing his name all over the place. They’re blaming him and his research for the wreck of the Darwin .”
    â€œOh God,” Kelly said. “Baby, I’m so sorry.”
    â€œAnd so that’s it?” Jacob asked. “There’s nobody you can turn to?”
    â€œWhen they caught me, I was at the Terminal. I was going to see my aunt Miriam. She works in the shipyards in El Paso, where they make the aerofluyts.”
    â€œWhat did you do with your father’s research?” Kelly asked.
    â€œI wedged the notebooks behind a toilet in the women’s bathroom.”
    Kelly raised an eyebrow.
    â€œIt was the only choice I had.”
    â€œWe’ll make it work,” Jacob said. “We get the notebooks back and get them to your aunt Miriam. Is that the plan?”
    â€œI can’t ask you guys to help me,” Chelsea said. “These people are trying to kill me.”
    â€œAnd they just tried to kill us, too,” said Jacob. “The way I look at it, we don’t have any other choice but to help you. Kelly—what’s wrong?”
    In the backseat, Kelly suddenly looked ill.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œWe have to ditch this car,” Kelly said.
    â€œBut why?”
    â€œJacob, look around you,” Kelly said. “Don’t you think they can track this car? I bet they’re on the way here right now.”
    She was right, of course. Jacob had learned that about Kelly over the years. She usually was right, and she never failed to remind him of that.
    He patted Chelsea’s shoulder and pointed toward a narrow lane behind some nearby houses. “Pull the car into that alley over there. We’ll leave it behind all those bushes.”
    â€œBut she can’t walk to the Terminal,” Chelsea said. “It’s on the opposite end of the island from here.”
    â€œWe’ll figure something out,” he said. “Now hurry. Let’s hide this thing.”
    Chelsea drove into the alley. It was dense with brush and swallowed the car almost immediately. Jacob moved a few branches around to cover the back end, and together they headed back for the main road.
    No one seemed to notice them. The street was quiet. There were a few pedestrians walking the sidewalks, but they all seemed absorbed in their conversations. A few cars went by, but nobody stopped, or even slowed, to check them out.
    â€œWhere to?” Jacob asked.
    Kelly pointed to a restaurant halfway down the block. A hand-painted sign hanging above the door said S EAWALL C OFFEE H OUSE . “There, I guess? We can get out of sight, at least.”
    â€œIf they’re really looking for us, they’ll go door to door,” Jacob said. “A public place like that will be one of the first places they look.”
    Jacob pulled his shirt over the pistols as best he could, hoping the bulges wouldn’t show. The last thing he wanted to do right now was attract attention.
    â€œProbably. But they’ll definitely see us if we wait out here.”
    â€œYeah,” he said. “That’s true.”
    The restaurant, which must have been built to be someone’s house many years earlier, was now a coffee shop and bakery, with tables and chairs crammed together in the front rooms and black-and-white pictures of Old Galveston hanging on the walls. A long, low counter stood off to their left, and Jacob could see loaves of artisanal bread and cookies and muffins in the glass cabinets. One of Jacob’s