“Maybe it wasn’t her?”
“It sure sounded like her. I knew her voice immediately.”
Joslyn blew out a breath. “And the handwriting on that postcard was pretty close to hers. I recognized it.”
Clay rubbed his forehead. He knew what he had to do, but didn’t like being forced to approach Martin again, like a servant asking for a favor. “I have Martin’s extension at his office. I’ll give him a call and ask about Fiona.”
The look Joslyn gave him implied that she understood what he hadn’t said, saw the emotions churning in his gut whenever he thought of Martin. But she also understood, as much as he did, that Fiona came first.
There was a small hallway off the front foyer of the museum that offered them some privacy, so he headed there and pulled out his cell phone. He found Martin’s phone number and dialed.
He tasted acid at the back of his throat as the phone rang. When a man’s voice answered, he almost couldn’t speak and had to swallow before he said, “Martin? This is Clay.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Crowley’s not available at this time. This is his assistant. May I help you?”
Clay felt both relief and frustration. “Please ask him to call his stepson as soon as possible. It’s about Fiona.” He gave his phone number, but he had a feeling Martin wouldn’t call him back. Not to be dramatic, but simply because to Martin, Clay didn’t matter.
When he hung up, Joslyn asked, “He wasn’t in?”
“I left a message, but Martin doesn’t always return my calls.” Actually, Martin almost never returned his calls.
“He might since this is about Fiona.”
“But if he’s involved in all this, he’s not going to want to talk to us.”
She sighed. “I’m afraid you’re right.”
They exited the front double doors of the museum into the bright sunlight, and the heat slapped him like a ten-foot wave. Clay had to pause to adjust to the change in temperature. That’s when he saw it.
Just a slight movement from the farthest end of the parking lot stretched out in front of them. Clay squinted in that direction, but didn’t see the movement again.
He’d lost the men following them, hadn’t he?
“What is it?” Joslyn’s voice was low but sharp. Her eyes also scanned the parking lot.
“I thought I saw...I don’t know what I saw.”
“How could they have found us?” Deep in thought, she began lightly rubbing a strange-shaped scar above her left eye. It seemed she wasn’t aware she was doing it. “Maybe your rental car...I’ll have to check it.”
“Check what?”
“Maybe they put a tracker on your car or mine when we were at Fiona’s office.”
“That’s kind of high-tech. Then again, if they’re the same guys who rigged Fiona’s house, I guess I believe they could do it.” Clay kept sweeping his gaze over the parking lot even as they headed to his car.
“Don’t unlock it just yet.” Joslyn began circling the car, checking the rims, finally dropping onto the sizzling asphalt to check the underside of the vehicle. “I don’t see anything.”
Clay hadn’t stopped looking around, but they were the only ones moving around out here. The other cars in the lot seemed empty, and he couldn’t see the white Taurus, although many of the cars were white. He’d noticed that about Phoenix—lots of white and light-colored cars, probably to combat the heat. “Let’s get out of here.”
The inside of the car was a furnace and he cranked up the air-conditioning.
“Even if we don’t know for sure that they followed us here, we should take precautions,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Maybe there’s a tracker on our clothes. Or maybe they found a way to clone one of our cell phones, and that’s how they’re trailing us.”
“People can do that?”
“It takes special equipment, but yeah.”
And men who had access to explosives might have access to that kind of equipment. “Okay, so where to?” He backed out of the parking stall.
“The nearest mall.”
Clay kept an eye out behind them as they drove, but he couldn’t spot a tail if there was one. He had done his fair share of tailing people back in his mob henchman days, but even then, he hadn’t been great at noticing them following him. How ironic that he could have used some of his criminal skills now. Still, he didn’t regret getting out of that life, paying his dues. He just wished he could feel as though he had finally settled that debt.
There was a mall a few miles away that looked rather new, with a cluster of golden-red buildings rising up at the side of a freeway, surrounded by empty lots of stone and dirt. “Is this good?” he asked.
“Yes. We don’t want anything too upscale. They may not have the burner phones we need.”
They walked through the outdoor mall until they found a phone kiosk, and Joslyn bought several burner cell phones.
“We need that many?” Clay asked.
“You never know.” After Joslyn had paid using cash, they walked away and she said, “Plus, I noticed the kiosk didn’t seem to keep good records. If anyone knows we went here, they might have a hard time figuring out which phones we bought, and their numbers.”
“That’s good thinking.” He’d had to find people for his bosses every so often, but it had never been an intricate business like this, and he’d never had to try not to be found.
The next stop was clothes shopping, so they could replace the ones they were wearing, just in case they were being tracked that way. There wasn’t an all-in-one clothing shop at this mall, so they went to a men’s store first. “I can’t just get athletic shorts and a T-shirt?” he asked her.
“If we need to talk to people, they’ll respond better if you’re better-clothed.”
“I don’t need a suit, do I?” Clay inwardly groaned. He wasn’t uncomfortable wearing a suit, but in this heat, it would be torture, even though all of the places had air-conditioning.
Joslyn’s eyes twinkled like chips of amber, as if she could guess what he was thinking. “No. Just something that doesn’t look like you just played basketball with the fellas.”
He found some khaki shorts and a short-sleeved polo shirt, which he wore out of the store, and carried his old clothes in a bag. He caught Joslyn looking at him appreciatively as he stood in line to pay. When she saw he had noticed, she blushed and turned away.
Other women had given him double takes often enough for him not to be embarrassed by it, especially
