opening the door when it blew up,” Clay said to Mary.
“My goodness, are you two all right? You don’t look injured, but...”
“We’re fine,” Joslyn said.
“You better make sure you get seen by a doctor,” Mary said.
“What happened?” People started to arrive from other streets in the area, gaping at the house. Mary was only too happy to tell them a dramatized account of the explosion.
Clay pulled Joslyn aside. “You sure you’re okay?” he asked her. She was tall but slender, and she seemed so delicate.
She nodded, although there was worry in her face. “Who rigged Fiona’s house to explode?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. But whoever did it is a ruthless killer.” He sighed and eyed the ruined shell of the house.
Joslyn shivered, even in the sweltering heat.
Clay had dealt with men just as ruthless when he’d been a street thug for that mob family in Chicago. He hadn’t killed anyone, but if he’d kept going down that road, who knows what he might have become?
That thought was like a dark blot on his soul.
Police sirens blared, and soon a squad car turned the corner and barreled down the street toward them, followed by paramedics. Clay’s shoulders tensed out of habit, and he relaxed them. He wondered if there would ever be a time when his past wouldn’t crop up in his present.
He answered the officers’ questions evenly, but that only seemed to make them suspicious, if the curious looks they threw at him were any indication. He submitted to the paramedic’s exam, but other than a few minor cuts from flying glass and debris, he was unhurt. Part of the door frame had hit him on the side and a chunk of plaster had glanced off his shoulder, but he shook off the bruises. He’d had worse.
He knew the exact moment the officers had looked him up and found out about his prison record. They had hard glints in their eyes as they approached him. “So Mr. Ashton, what are you doing here in Arizona? You’re a long ways from Illinois.” The officer’s name badge read Campbell.
“I came to see my half sister, Fiona Crowley.”
“And that’s it, huh?” Officer Talbot, the younger man, squinted up at him. “Nothing else?”
“Nothing else,” Clay said through a tight jaw. He might have been tempted to mention the phone call from his sister if it hadn’t been for the suspicion in their tones. Anything he said to them would only make things worse for himself, and he needed to be able to find Fiona and make sure she was safe.
“So you just opened the door and the house exploded? Kind of odd, don’t you think?”
“It might have been a gas leak or something like that.”
“You didn’t have anything to do with it?” Officer Talbot gave him a look that said, Yeah, right.
“I had nothing to do with this.” His voice came out a bit harsher than he intended.
“And Miss Dima...Dia...” Officer Talbot squinted at his notebook. “What’s your relationship with her?”
Clay gritted his teeth. “I just met Joslyn when we both arrived at the house at the same time. To see Fiona. Why is it that the police didn’t contact me, her brother, when her neighbor filed a missing persons report?”
Officer Talbot’s face turned pink and he glanced at his partner. “It’s under investigation,” he snapped.
Calm down. Clay had to calm down. His temper had gotten him in enough trouble in the past. He couldn’t afford to get in trouble now, when Fiona might be in danger. He wanted to walk away from these two men and the insulting ring to their questions, but he forced himself to stand in a relaxed stance.
Officer Campbell gave him a hard look, but then he said, “We have your hotel information and phone number. We’ll be in touch.” It was almost like a threat. However, the two men turned and left him. They began addressing the other people gathered on the sidewalk.
Joslyn came up to him, but paused when she saw his face.
“They were giving you a hard time?”
“Nothing unexpected.” Considering his prison time. But it still bothered him.
Her eyes sparked amber. “But you were visiting your sister.”
“Look, I don’t know how much Fiona told you—”
“She knew about your time in prison,” Joslyn said quietly.
“Well, it’s not something officers of the law can forget about.”
“I suppose you’re right, but you didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“They don’t know that.”
She sighed and looked away. He could almost hear her thoughts. She knew he was right. “Mary was able to give me the exact date she went to collect Poochie. Fiona’s been gone for three weeks, about the time of the stamp on the postcard she sent me.”
Clay frowned. “I just can’t imagine where she would go. Why did she need to leave? Is she really in trouble?” He wondered if it was even Fiona who’d reached out to him and Joslyn.
“I was going to drop by her workplace. Since it looks like Fiona doesn’t want to be found, I want to gather as much information as I can about her life here in Phoenix to try to predict where she’d go.” Joslyn eyed the officers. Talbot was flirting with a young woman, while Campbell was speaking to two men in business-casual clothing. “They say, out of sight out of mind, so did you want to come with me?”
Maybe the less the cops saw of him, the less likely they would be to blame him for the explosion. “Sure.” Right now, it was the only lead they had on where Fiona might be. After that explosion, he had a feeling this wasn’t a case of his sister going on a spontaneous vacation. He’d been worried before, but now his fear for her was like a boiling pot in his gut.
If there was something dangerous going on, he wanted to make sure he was there to face it head-on.
“We’re being followed,” Clay said, looking in the rearview mirror.
“Are you sure?” Joslyn angled herself so she could get a better look behind them through the passenger-side mirror, but all she saw were several white cars, a couple minivans, an SUV.
“The white Taurus, about four cars behind us.”
Joslyn tried to get a look at it, but could only see half of the blurry face of the man in the passenger seat of the Taurus. Still, the brief glimpse made her heart race.
“Do you recognize him?” Clay asked.
“No.”
“Me, neither.”
