Wounded Animals (Whistleblower Series Book 1) by Jim Heskett

disappearing into a row of cars.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER TWELVE
     
     
    I drove through Denver, clutching the business card in one hand. No doubt in my mind at all that Darren had appeared at the airport deliberately, to send me Wyatt’s latest effort to recruit me. Things like that just don’t happen in real life.
    Plus, he’d said he had to catch the shuttle, but the rental car shuttles picked up at the terminal, not from the parking lot. That was one small detail they hadn’t fact-checked beforehand.
    All of these events of the last few days were connected, but I couldn’t figure out how. Nothing in my life made sense anymore.
    Grace. Finding her was all that mattered.
    I’d called everyone I knew who had been close to her. I’d impulsively confronted her boss, and that had been a dead end.
    Kareem’s warnings about going to Dallas still galloped through my head. The old magic man had warned about grave things coming from Dallas. Had my trip there caused Grace’s disappearance?
    Was this all my fault, or had she left me for some unrelated reason?
    I needed answers, so I went to the only place I knew of where I might be able to find Kareem: Ernie’s Bar. Despite having no reason to assume he’d be there, it was the only place in the world I’d ever seen him before. The internet had no trace of a Kareem Haddadi in America, so there was no hope of getting an address for a home visit.
    I pulled into the gravel parking lot around dinnertime, and my stomach growled accordingly. A handful of cars out front. I had a suspicion that Kareem didn’t have a car; maybe he didn’t need one. Maybe he flew in on a magic carpet or a broomstick, sprinkling fairy dust as he arrived to wipe the memories of those who may have seen him.
    I slammed the car door behind me, feeling the tension worm through my back and neck. If he wasn’t here, I didn’t know what I was going to do next. A tiny glint of hope of finding Kareem was all I had left.
    Inside the bar, I welcomed the dim lights, the sounds of clinking glasses, and the smell of fried foods. I waved to the bartender and took a seat at a back booth, the same one Kareem had been sitting at before.
    Something ancient murmured from the jukebox. I hadn’t even noticed it last time I was here because I didn’t realize bars still had those things. Some kind of obscure classic rock.
    After a couple minutes, the bartender came to my table, pen and notepad in hand. “What’ll it be today?”
    “Burger with bacon, fries, and a Guinness. No, wait, something lighter. Fat Tire.”
    “You got it, chief. Want that burger well done?”
    “Sure.” He turned to leave, but I caught his attention. “You don’t remember me coming in here the other day, do you? I was with a guy, kinda Middle-Eastern looking. We left together.”
    “Sorry, don’t take it personal, but it’s hard to remember faces.”
    I waved him off. I could see most of the bar from my perch at the rounded booth. There were five people on barstools and another four or five at tables, none of them the man I was looking for. One man at the end of the bar caught my attention: he was wearing a suit, his posture slumped with his elbows on the bar. He was staring longingly at the line of bottles. Bad day at work, probably. He was the same person I’d been just a few days ago.
    My food came and I scarfed it down. Being kidnapped at the police station and then having to fight off my kidnappers at the top of Eldorado Canyon had given me quite an appetite.
    The Fat Tire didn’t last long, so I ordered another. And then another. After that, I switched to rum and Diet Coke.
    The bar’s front door opened a few times in the first couple hours, and each time, a gurgle of hope pulsed through me. After the fourth disappointment, that hope abated to a small trickle.
    After rum and diet number three, I got up to take a leak. The world spun as I stood, and I laughed because everything had seemed so normal when