Those were the vehicles belonging to Lloyd’s two local girlfriends, who’d been under surveillance for five weeks. There hadn’t been any sightings of Lloyd, but the feds remained confident their fugitive was being harbored by one of them.

Brandon skimmed the park, and his attention got caught on a small gray car. His pulse picked up.

“Check it out,” he told Antonio. “Southwest corner, by the tennis courts.”

The car pulled into a space beside the courts as Brandon’s police radio crackled to life.

“Possible sighting,” an agent said.

A large man climbed out of the little VW, making it look like a clown car.

“White male, approximately six-four,” someone said over the radio. “Blue shirt, white baseball hat, sunglasses. Can anyone confirm?”

“That’s him,” Brandon muttered just as a voice came over the radio.

“It’s him.”

Brandon gritted his teeth as he watched Lloyd look around the park. His attention settled on the green bench near the chin-up bars, where his contact waited. The CI had three foil-wrapped bundles beside him—two of which he’d purchased at the nearby taco truck and one that contained the cash he would give Lloyd in exchange for ten oxycodone pills.

Like most of Lloyd’s suspected clients, this guy worked out at the gym where Lloyd was a personal trainer. The CI had bought product from him before. Federal agents believed it was the Lloyd brothers’ lucrative drug business that had motivated them to want to silence Vanessa. They didn’t want her lawsuit drawing police attention to Mason or his medical clinics, which had been the target of burglars in two different states. When Vanessa became a problem they couldn’t control, they tried to get rid of her. And Leigh would have been collateral damage.

Brandon scanned the park. Still no kids on the playscape. He scanned the utility crew, the pink-shirted jogger, the blond dog walker strolling past the bench.

The dog walker stopped.

“Shit,” Brandon said.

“What?”

“The woman with the poodle. White shirt, near the bench.”

Antonio lifted his binoculars. “That’s a Yorkie.”

“Whatever. She’s right in the way.”

The woman stood between Lloyd and the bench, stubbornly reading her phone as her dog strained against the leash.

Lloyd knelt down and tied his shoe, looking around warily as he stalled for time. Seconds ticked by, and Brandon’s tension ratcheted up.

“Get off the damn phone,” Antonio muttered.

Lloyd pretended to tie his other shoe. Brandon held his breath.

The dog lady started walking again.

“Finally,” Antonio said.

Brandon released his breath as Lloyd stood and began moving again, his gaze scanning the park as he neared the bench.

He stopped, zeroing in on the utility crew.

Brandon’s gut clenched. “They’re blown.”

Lloyd glanced over his shoulder at the gray VW, possibly noticing the agent posing as a jogger now standing between him and his car.

“He sees us,” someone mumbled over the radio.