in the truck-stop parking lot?
Deal! Her brain almost barked the order at her, and she stiffened. If she could say nothing else about herself, if there was one thing she knew about herself for certain, it was that she dealt with life’s curveballs. All of them.
She sat up straighter, drew a breath and thought, All right. This is how it is. Now what was she to do about it?
There was one thing she knew instantly, of course. “Well, you’ve successfully made me afraid to go home alone.”
“I’m sorry. Like I said, I’m not sure you’re at risk. But equally, I can’t be sure you’re not. You saw something that nobody was supposed to see. You saw the driver of the other truck, right?”
“Yes. He came in for coffee, too.”
“And you saw the transfer of cargo.”
“I think I did. It’s not easy to see that parking lot clearly from inside the restaurant at night.”
“But you mentioned it. Others may have mentioned it after they heard what you told the police. Regardless, if I was that other driver, I’d be feeling a bit edgy. You could identify him. Maybe you could describe his truck. He might lie low and wait, but then again, killing Ray seems awfully stupid to me. If you want a quiet operation, you don’t draw attention to it by murder.”
She looked straight at him. “Do you think Ray was killed because of me?” The thought made her heart quail.
“Actually, no. I suspect Ray had irritated them in some other way. Maybe by talking about coming into some money. Something made them think he was a liability. But again, that’s my guess. I’m not even going to be sure of that until I see the accident reports.”
“How will you do that?”
“I’m going to talk to the cops in a few days.”
He couldn’t have said anything more likely to make her believe he was exactly what he said he was. “Why would they talk to you?”
“Because I’m here on behalf of my company. And they’re going to do a background check on me and find out I used to be a cop just like them. They’ll talk.”
She nodded, believing it. Cops were a tight bunch.
“As for your apartment…if you don’t mind me knowing where you live, I’ll go home with you and check it out. Then I’ll leave and you can rest comfortably.”
She sat quietly, common sense battling with more primitive needs. She liked this man. She liked his attention, but what did she really know about him? She’d seen couple of IDs, but she had no way of knowing if they were real.
For all she knew, this was flimflam, and she didn’t have any means of checking it out. So…did she want him to know where she lived? Heck, the way he had glommed on to her might put him squarely on the side of the wrongdoers. If there were any wrongdoers. She couldn’t even know that for certain.
All she knew was that he seemed determined to frighten her and then set himself up as her savior. When she thought of it that way, her internal alerts started to go off.
“No, thanks,” she said, standing. “Don’t follow me.”
There were other ways of dealing with all of this, but none of them involved inviting Buck Devlin any further into her life. As for going home alone, she did that every night, and she’d never been afraid until this man had suggested it.
All of a sudden she didn’t like him.
Turning on her heel, she walked to the car, leaving him sitting on the bench behind her. Something smelled fishy, and when things smelled fishy it was best to stay away.
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