Page 49 of Owen

Razor nodded and seemed to struggle to stay with them. “Phone…nightstand.” His eyes went toward the bedside table. “Code…1914. Get.”

Sophie understood his directions and ran across the room to open the drawer. Inside was an old phone—hopefully the one that Razor said contained the images of the manifest and possibly Quinn. “Got it,” she said and turned back to them. Owen was rocked back on his feels looking at Razor who had gone completely still. “Is he…?”

“He’s dead. Surprised he could say that much with the wound he had. Knife.”

“It’s under the couch. He told me.” She pointed, but Owen made no move to retrieve it.

“What else did he say?” he asked.

“Just that it was Wilson who killed him.” Killed. Because of her. “Did you see him?”

“The guy I chased fit Wilson’s physical description, but he wore a mask. His car, though, was a black BMW with the plates covered. Sound familiar?”

She nodded. That car was one of Wilson’s vehicles. She’d wanted a break in the case, but not this. Not death on her hands. “What do we do?” This was way out of her wheelhouse.

“We get out of here to someplace safe. Wilson could come back. He knows he was seen.” Owen rose to his feet. “We’ll take the murder weapon with us. I don’t want Wilson to remove it while no one is here.”

“Right.” She looked around the apartment and saw a kitchen towel hanging from a hook. After grabbing it, she approached the knife.

“I can do it,” Owen said.

“No, I’ve got this.” She carefully wrapped the towel around the knife before picking it up. Her stomach revolted, but she kept herself in check.

“Have you got the phone?” Owen asked.

“In my pocket.”

“Let’s roll.” He took her arm and led her to the apartment door where he used the edge of his T-shirt to close it.

Once outside, she sucked in a deep breath, amazed and grateful that they’d met no one else in the building. As soon as they were in the truck, Owen put it in gear and bolted from the parking lot. He didn’t slow down until they were in the parking lot of a big box store. At her feet on the mat, the knife lay wrapped in the towel.

“We should go to the police,” she said, not wanting the weapon in her possession a moment more. Her mind was still trying to process what she’d seen. After all the things she’d seen while investigating various seedy goings on, she’d thought she was prepared for death, but she wasn’t. It had terrified her, and only self-preservation had kept her moving.

“Not like this,” he said. “We’ll look guilty.” He nodded toward the knife.

“Maybe we should have left it.” But he was right, Wilson might have returned for it and hidden any connection to the crime.

“We couldn’t do that either.”

“Then what?” Her voice was becoming more shrill, so she forced herself to take a breath. She was safe for the moment and so was Owen. But a man had just died, and someone had to pay for that crime.

“We need a third party to deliver the evidence to the police. Someone trustworthy.”

“Ethan?” she suggested.

“I don’t want to drag him into this. It could put Helen at risk.”

That was the last thing Sophie wanted, so her mind scrambled for other possibilities. “What about my editor? Jude has a good relationship with the police. He could do it.”

“That could work,” Owen agreed.

She called Jude and asked him to meet them without explaining what they needed. Twenty minutes later Jude slid into the back seat of Owen’s truck where it was parked at a fast-food restaurant near the newspaper’s offices.

“What’s this about?” Jude asked.

Her editor paled when she told him about Razor’s death and the murder weapon. Something told her to hold back any information about the phone that was now in her purse. After how dismissive Jude had been of the idea of the pictures being useful, she wanted to look at them first before handing the phone over to anyone.

“We need to get the knife to the police and let them know that Razor is dead, so they can open an investigation,” she said, concluding her story to Jude. “Can you do it?”