swore under his breath.
Deeds touched him on the arm. “So the pot wasn’t yours. So someone set you up. Okay. I believe you. But you’re the one who broke bail. You knew the terms, that you weren’t supposed to talk to anyone involved in the case, and you couldn’t help yourself.”
Cole couldn’t argue that one. He’d tried to contact Eve and had paid the price.
“Stay away from her, man,” Deeds advised, lowering his voice as if the kid jumping the curb on his skateboard could hear or care about their conversation. “She’s bad news.” Deeds’s cell phone rang, and he slipped it out of the clip on his belt. “Deeds.” A pause. “Oh hell…Look, I’m on my way.” He checked his watch, mouthed, “I’ve got to go,” and when Cole nodded, he sketched a wave, folded himself into his BMW, found his earbud, and switched to the hands-free mode of his cell as he turned the ignition.
As the sleek car roared away from the curb, Cole headed inside, but he knew he wasn’t going to take Deeds’s advice. One of his first acts as a free man would be to confront Eve.
Hang the consequences.
She had to keep moving.
Couldn’t waste time.
Eve headed to the cash register, pulling out bills. She didn’t want to think about her father’s culpability or innocence or anything else about the trial. It was all water under the bridge, and the fact that she’d wondered if Roy Kajak’s reference to “evidence” had something to do with Tracy Aliota’s death was just her own way of admitting she didn’t completely trust the father she’d thought she loved.
She finished paying her bill and walked outside to a day that was even gloomier than before. Purple clouds scraped the tops of the spindly pines in the perimeter of the lot. Raindrops pounded and splashed on the cracked asphalt, forcing Eve to make a mad dash to her car.
Samson howled in his cage, and as she shushed him she spied water on the passenger seat. Swearing under her breath, she grabbed the towel she kept in the car for just such emergencies. In the past few weeks the window had begun to slip a bit, refusing to seal. Kyle had looked at it a couple of times but hadn’t been able to repair the damned thing. She mopped up the small puddle then leaned across the bucket seat, pressed on the button to raise the window, and heard the electric motor whine to no avail. The glass didn’t budge. She’d just have to live with it and call a mechanic once she got home.
If she ever made it.
Her headache had dulled, the edges softening, and she wasn’t going to let something as inconsequential as the broken window bother her. She could even put up with Samson’s now-intermittent mewling.
She drove out of the lot and onto a side street before locating the ramp to the freeway again. Nosing her Toyota into the flow of traffic heading toward the gulf, she tried to relax. So Cole was a free man. So what? She wondered if he would return to New Orleans. Her sister-in-law was right about one thing: it was damned ironic that he had regained his freedom on the very day she decided to take the reins of her life again.
Fate?
Coincidence?
Or just bad luck?
Not that it mattered.
Because she wanted to see him again. Intended to face the bastard.
She had a hell of a lot of questions for him.
Within a few miles, the rain let up then stopped completely. Her wipers were suddenly scraping and screeching against the glass, and sunlight, so long filtered by the clouds, bounced off the pavement in bright, blinding shafts. Maybe things were getting better. Even the cat had stopped crying. Eve switched off the wipers just as her cell phone jangled. With one eye on the road, she pulled the phone from a side pocket of her purse and flipped it open.
She put the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
“He’s free,” a raspy voice hissed.
“Excuse me?”
The phone went instantly dead.
“Hello…?”
A tingle of fear plucked at her spine.
She wanted to think that someone had dialed her incorrectly, that the call had been a mistake, but she knew differently. The message was meant for her, to tell her that Cole had been released from prison.
“No shit, Sherlock,” she muttered, scowling as she tried to read the display on the small screen. Caller ID failed her: Unknown Number was all she learned for her efforts.
She dropped the phone into the pocket of her purse again and fought a tiny drip of panic. So some idiot had called to…what? Inform her? Warn her? Scare her? So what?
It was no big deal.
Then why did whoever called hang up?
Why not finish the conversation?
The gravelly, almost hissing timbre of the voice in those two small words, He’s free, caused latent goose bumps to rise on her forearms.
She glanced in the rearview mirror and felt the spit dry in her mouth. A dark pickup was following her. Surely it wasn’t the same shadowy truck she’d seen in the parking lot of the restaurant nearly an hour before? The one with tinted windows where a man had been smoking…?
Don’t go there, Eve. Don’t panic. You, of all people, know how dangerous that can be.
But her heart rate jumped and her palms began to sweat.
Don’t do this…. It was nothing. NOTHING! A phone call. Nothing more.
Her gaze flicked to the rearview mirror. Had the pickup closed the gap? Was he hanging on her bumper? She knew all about incidents where someone would intentionally rear-end a victim on the pretense of an accident, but when the victim pulled over, the assailant would get the upper hand, pull a gun or a knife or…
Her heart was pounding crazily now.
She stepped on the accelerator and switched lanes, speeding past an eighteen-wheeler carrying gasoline. The pickup followed, and her heart thumped even more wildly, and she considered calling 911.
Get a grip, she told herself. The guy’s just passing the semi. It happens all the time.
She was breathing shallowly again, and the cat, damn the cat, as if he were infected with her own fear, started yowling again. She checked the mirror as she shot past a minivan and two cars, the needle of her speedometer twenty miles over the speed limit. Fine. Let her get a ticket. Be pulled over by the police. That would solve the problem!
But as she flew past the last vehicle, the dark truck she’d thought was so malevolent lagged far behind, soon disappearing from view.
He hadn’t been following her.
It probably wasn’t even the same truck that she’d seen at the rest stop.
She’d overreacted.
Again.
“No
