“No problem. Let us know when he turns up, and we’ll do the same.”

“Thank you.” I hung up and glanced over at Max. “I have to find him.”

“You can’t go alone,” he protested. “Where are you even goin’?”

“I’m going to see if someone ran him off the road coming home from Ewing,” I said, tugging on the strings of my apron.

“Why would someone run him off the road?”

“Maybe you should ask your father,” I snapped as I tossed the apron onto the counter.

“My father?”

I started for the back. “I have to go.”

He grabbed my arm. “Let me come with you.”

I turned back to face him and pulled out of his hold. “Wyatt’s not working tonight. There’s no one here to cover the bar.”

“You can’t go alone, Carly. Especially if my father’s involved.”

“And you can’t leave the bar.”

“Marco’s my best friend. If you think something happened to him, I’m coming.” He waved Ruth over and told her she was in charge.

“What’s goin’ on?” she asked. “Does this have something to do with Bingham comin’ in?”

Oh crap. Bingham. He would be out back waiting for me in a few minutes. “No. I’ll explain later.” Or at least I’d come up with something to tell her.

I stopped in the storage room to grab my purse and quickly checked to make sure my gun was loaded.

“What the fuck’s goin’ on, Carly?” Max asked in a growl from the doorway.

I checked the safety on the gun, then dropped it back in my purse before looking up at him. “I’ll explain what I can on the road. I’m driving.”

He opened his mouth to protest, only to close it again without saying anything. My car was a lot smaller and newer than his truck. It would be better at handling the curvy mountain roads.

But Bingham was already waiting for me as we walked out the back door, leaning back against his SUV. He shot Max a dark glare. “I ain’t talkin’ to him. Just you or no deal.”

“I can’t talk at all,” I said on my way to my car. “I have to go somewhere.”

Bingham pushed away from his truck, his body tense with anger. “This is a one-shot opportunity,” he said. “Talk to me now or not at all.”

I stopped walking and gave him my full attention. It was going to take some fancy footwork to smooth his ego. “I’m really, really sorry, Bingham, but this is an emergency.”

His jaw set and a hard look filled his eyes. “You are not my puppet master, Carly Moore. You do not get to say jump and expect me to do it. You’ve already irritated the shit out of me. You either talk to me now or not at all.”

I held out my hand. “Bingham, I’m not trying to jerk you around. I swear.”

He moved closer, until he was less than a foot away from me. Max took a step toward him, but I held up my hand to hold him off.

Bingham ignored him entirely. “Do you know how bad it’ll look if I let you get away with this?”

“Who’s going to know?” I pleaded. “I won’t tell.”

He gestured to Max and said in disgust, “Him.”

Max lifted his hands. “I’m not any part of this. This is between the two of you.”

But Bingham didn’t look swayed.

“Look,” I said, “I’ll either call or come by your place tomorr—”

“No.” His voice was menacing. He pointed to the ground. “Either now or not at all.” When I didn’t answer, he said, “I do not make concessions for people. They make concessions for me. I think you have overestimated my gratitude.”

What was I doing? Marco was probably at home in the shower. I was throwing away the opportunity to find evidence to nail Bart to the wall, and it would probably take me five minutes, ten minutes at most. Even if Emily had had questionable motives for sending me to Bingham, he might have real, solid information. What difference would ten minutes make?

But images of Marco lying dead in a ditch flashed before my eyes. He might already be dead, but what if he wasn’t? What if I got to him in the nick of time?

I wasn’t going to waste a precious second.

I shook my head and started rushing to my car. “Sorry, Bingham.”

“Don’t you call me again, Carly Moore!” he shouted after me. “You may not like the welcome I give you!”

But his last words were muffled once I got in the car. I started the engine and shot out of the parking space, nearly taking out Bingham in the process.

I was going to pay for that one.

Whipping out of the parking lot, I turned right onto Main Street, my tires squealing in protest.

“Jesus Christ, Carly,” Max shouted. “What the fuck is goin’ on?”

I shot him a brief glance, then shifted my attention back out the windshield, driving well over the forty-five MPH speed limit. “Someone threatened me this morning. He said if I didn’t stop, someone I cared about would have an accident.”

“Who threatened you?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t recognize him, but he made himself very clear. And since he broke into Marco’s house to tell me, it seems logical he’d go after him first.”

“Was Marco there?”

“No. He’d already left for work.”

“What did he want you to stop doing?”

I hesitated. I loved Max like a brother, but I didn’t one hundred percent trust him, and neither did Marco. “I’m not at liberty to say, but”—I shot him another glance—“I think your mother knows.”

“Is that what she talked to you about last night?”

“She was rather cryptic, but yeah.”

“Carly, if this has something to do with my dad…”

I shook my head. “I can’t think about that right now. I just need to find Marco. Where do most of the accidents happen on the highway from Ewing to Drum? Do you know?”

“There’s a couple of places known for accidents,” he said in a quiet voice.

“The guy this morning insinuated many of them aren’t accidents.”

He pushed out a long breath. “I would agree with that.”

“Why doesn’t anyone do anything about it?” I asked.

“What’s there to do, Carly?” he asked in exasperation.

“You can take out an army one soldier at a time,” I said as I gripped the steering wheel in a death lock. “Or you can take out the general.”

“You’re really tryin’ to bring my father down?” he asked in disbelief. “Wyatt told me you were, but I didn’t think you were so foolhardy.”

I pressed my lips together. Damn Wyatt for telling his brother, not that I was surprised. I was more worried about who else he might have told.

“Was it one of my dad’s men who showed up at Marco’s?” He sounded panicked.

“I don’t know. I’d never seen him before. Not even at the tavern. Don’t most of his guys come in from time to time?”

“Not all of ’em,” he grunted. “What did he look like?”