Kill the Messenger by Tami Hoag

snapped, still looking at him via the rearview.
    “I’m sorry,” Jace said. “I knew you would react. If you screamed, you might have attracted somebody. Like a cop.”
    Eta swiveled around, scowling at the boy crouching on the floor of her backseat. Boy. He claimed he was twenty-one, but she didn’t believe him and couldn’t look at his sweet face and call him anything other than a boy.
    “And just why don’t you want cops looking at you?” she asked, taking in the scrapes and bruises on his face. “What you been into, Lone Ranger?”
    “Someone tried to make roadkill out of me on that last run last night.”
    “People in this town get crazy when it rains.”
    “Did you see anything on the news about the lawyer Lenny Lowell?”
    “I don’t stay up for the news. Ain’t never anything on it that ain’t bad. Who’s Lenny What?”
    “Money,” Jace said. “My last run. The lawyer.”
    “Oh, yeah. What about him?”
    He tossed a folded section of the
Times
on the passenger seat. “It’s in there. Someone killed him last night. After I made the pickup.”
    Eta stared at him. This boy would no more kill someone than her mother would get up and dance the hoochie-coochie. But he was afraid of the cops, and someone was dead.
    “The cops are looking for me,” he said. “I might have been the last person to see the guy alive—except for who killed him.”
    “So you tell them what you know,” Eta said.
    “No way. No way I go to the cops. I was in that office last night. I touched things. My fingerprints are there. They get me in the box, match my prints . . . It’s a slam dunk for them. No.”
    “But, honey, someone tried to kill you,” Eta said reasonably.
    Jace looked incredulous. “And you think they’d believe me? I don’t have any proof of that. I don’t have any witnesses.”
    “Honey, have you looked in a mirror today?”
    “All the more reason to consider me a suspect. There was a struggle. Eta, you’ve got to help me out here. The cops are going to show up at Speed sooner or later. They’re going to ask a lot of questions.”
    “You want me to lie to the police?” she asked, frowning. “That’s not good, son. If you’ve got nothing to hide, then don’t hide nothing. I’ve known a lot of cops in my day, a lot of homicide detectives. They get the scent of something, they’re gonna track it down. And the harder you make it for them, the harder they’ll make it on you.”
    “Eta, please. You don’t have to lie to them. Just—just stall them.”
    The boy had the clearest, bluest eyes she’d ever seen. And all they were filled with now was fear.
    He reached out and put his hand on her forearm. “Just tell them you don’t know anything about me.”
    I
don’t
know anything about you,
she thought. In the couple of years she’d known him she hadn’t learned a thing about him. She didn’t know if he had family, didn’t know where he lived, didn’t know what he did away from the job. He was still a mystery. He wasn’t antisocial, he was quiet. He wasn’t an introvert, he was a watcher. If he had a steady girlfriend, no one at Speed knew about it. He laughed at a joke, had a smile that could have sold movie tickets, but most of the time the look in his eyes was . . . careful. Not quite suspicious, but not inviting anyone in either.
    Eta sighed. “What you gonna do, J.C.? You gonna run?”
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    “That’s no good answer, you. You run, I guarantee they’ll hang this thing on you. Then what? You run for the rest of your life?”
    He closed his eyes, took a deep breath that made him wince, then sighed. “I’ll figure it out. I have to. I just need some time.”
    Eta shook her head sadly. “You won’t let anyone help you.”
    “I’m asking you to help me. Please.”
    “What do you need? You need a place to stay?”
    “No, thanks, Eta.” He glanced away, embarrassed. “If you could advance me some cash . . . You know I’m good for it.”
    “I