Authors: Alex Kingwell
Who was he fooling? Physical contact with her was a very a dangerous idea. He was barely hanging on to control as it was. His throat feeling tight, he forced himself to turn away.
Sitting down on the bed, he slipped the clean tourist T-shirt over his head and pulled on his dirty khaki shorts. They needed some clothes, food, and another car. They’d have to find out where he could put her on a bus. God, he didn’t want to do that. But he had to. Walking over, he nudged her awake.
For a moment it seemed she didn’t know where she was. She laid perfectly still, eyes darting around the room before they stopped on him on the bed opposite her. Sitting up against the headboard, she pulled the cover over her, rubbed her eyes. “What time is it?”
“Almost noon.” He stood up. “I’m going to go to the mall across the street to pick up a car, get some clothes and stuff. Then we can get something to eat at the diner.”
“Maybe somebody there will know where I can pick up a bus to Riverton,” she said.
“We’ll ask. Do you want to come shopping?”
She shook her head. “I’d rather not get back into dirty clothes, if you don’t mind.”
Leaving the stolen car in the motel lot, he crossed the four-lane highway at a set of traffic lights, walked down to the car rental agency, and signed out a small blue hatchback. At the department store, he grabbed a cart and spent ten minutes tossing in toiletries and clothes, and another five minutes in the women’s underwear section before settling on a stretchy sports bra. In the checkout line, he remembered her blister and went back and picked up a pair of sandals, guessing her size.
Back at the motel, he parked in front of one of the rooms on the other side of the U, walked over to the stolen car, and took five minutes to wipe it for prints, knowing his would be on file from his days in the military. That finished, he knocked on the door and waited for Emily to release the chain to let him in.
Thanking him, Emily grabbed a T-shirt, shorts, and underwear and went into the bathroom to change. When she emerged five minutes later, the clothes looked at least a size too big but she didn’t seem to care. He used the bathroom to shave and change his clothes.
At the diner, which was nearly full with a lunchtime crowd, they found a booth near the back. The waitress, a middle-aged woman who moved with the efficiency of someone who’d spent years on the job, dropped off menus and came back a few minutes later with coffee and took their orders.
When she’d gone, he said with a teasing smile, “I didn’t know chefs ate burgers and fries. Last night you didn’t have much of a choice, but you do now.”
She took a sip of coffee. “Just because I work as a chef, doesn’t mean I’m a food snob. Besides, it will be fast and hot and I’m way too hungry for a salad.”
The same waitress brought soup to a middle-aged couple in a booth across from them. The woman leaned over, said something to the man, and he took off his ball cap and set it down on the seat. Matt turned to Emily. Scrubbed clean, she looked young and fresh. He loved the way she absentmindedly touched the scar on her forehead. And so beautiful it took his breath away. He swallowed, tried to put the thought she would soon be out of his life out of his mind. “Tell me more about your family. You haven’t mentioned your father.”
“My father died when I was eight. A heart attack. My mother is my family.”
“That must have been tough.”
“My father had a lot of stress, from his job. He owned two hotels and he worked all the time. He was wealthy but he never really got to enjoy it. And he spent so much time working, I never really felt close to him.”
The waitress came with their food. He took a bite of his club sandwich. “Your mom runs the hotels?”
“She sold one, kept the other. She’s a good businesswoman, works very hard. Runs a tight ship.” She smiled wistfully. “She’s very different from me, very social, extroverted. She’s like you in a way, has to have everything planned out.”
He grimaced. “You don’t make that sound like a good thing.”
She speared a French fry with her fork. “I didn’t mean it to be. She just does what she has to do to get the job done. It was very hard for her after my father died, being a single parent and running a big hotel. I looked after myself a lot, moved away when I was eighteen, and went to college.”
“So you’re very independent.”
“I learned early on the value of looking after myself. Amber always said I brought myself up. In some ways I was closer to Amber than to my own mother.”
“But you came back to Riverton?”
“A year ago, my mother asked me to work as a chef at the hotel. I had done a year of law school and needed to make some money to be able to go back. It didn’t really think I would stay working for my mother. But she can be very persuasive.”
He finished his club sandwich and pushed the plate away. “Will you go back to law school?”
“I think so, as soon as I extricate myself from my mother.” She made concentric circles with the bottom of a wet water glass on the table. “She’s got a boyfriend. I think I told you about him. They’ve been together a few years, so that might make it a bit easier.”
The waitress picked up their empty plates and said she’d be back with the bill. He turned to Emily. “What’s the boyfriend like?”
“They were friends for years, but now it seems to be developing into something more serious. I don’t know him that well. He’s a judge, very reserved. She likes him, that’s what matters.”
After a while, Matt said, “Tell me more about your cousin. What was she like?”
“She was wonderful, smart, and principled. She was an addiction counselor for teenagers and she was really good at it. She really believed in standing up for the little guy.”
“But she got addicted to drugs herself?”
“Happens more than you think. But she got off them. It took time, but she was clean.”
“How old was she?”
“She was three years older than me, twenty-seven when she died.” She brushed a stray strand of hair back from her forehead. “But we always got along really well. Our mothers are sisters. And they’re the same, hard to please. She got along better with me than she did with her sister. We could really understand each other.”
“Tell me about her sister.”
“Celia’s about as unlike Amber as you can imagine. She’s very confident, focused, interested in making money. Amber liked reading and hiking. Celia’s a partier. She sells real estate, and she’s very good at it, keeps winning awards for selling so many of them.”
“Do you get along with this Celia?”
“I’m kind of on her shit list right now. She told me I was sticking my nose where it didn’t belong and upsetting her mother.”
“What did you say to that?”
“I didn’t have a chance to say anything. We were talking in my apartment. Celia got up and left. She slammed the door on her way out.”
The waitress dropped off the bill. After leaving a tip, they made their way to the cash register near the front door. A television on the wall behind the counter was tuned to a news station. The volume was off, but the announcer’s words streamed across the bottom of the screen. A picture of a young woman flashed on the screen. Something about her eyes hinted at a resemblance to Emily.
The bill paid, he turned to Emily, who watched the television with a desperate look in her eyes. His heart squeezed.
The announcer said the death of Riverton resident Amber Williams was now being treated as a homicide. She said a man was being interviewed by police and showed a video clip of a guy being escorted into the police station. It cut to a clip of the police chief.
“That’s Jason, Amber’s boyfriend,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, as the announcer switched to the next item.
They walked out into the parking lot. Emily had her head down, seemed to be trying to digest the information. She didn’t say anything, but he could almost see the wheels in her head turn.
When she looked up, her eyes were wet. “How could he?”
“I don’t know, but they must have some evidence against him.”
“I have to find out what it is. I have to talk to the police chief. That was him on TV.”
He grimaced. “What if it’s a trap?” What if she was right about not being able to trust the cops?
“What do you mean? What kind of a trap? They wouldn’t announce they had a suspect if they didn’t have something.”
His stomach knotted. “They didn’t say he was a suspect. Just that they were interviewing a man. That could mean anything.”
“I still have to find out.” She stopped at the passenger side of their rental car, her hands in fists at her side. “Did you ask where the bus station is?”
He walked away from the car. An idea that had been slowly building came into sharp focus. He couldn’t let her face this alone. Who was he kidding? He’d known as soon as he woke in the hotel room and watched her sleeping he couldn’t bear never seeing her again. It was no use trying to talk himself out of what he knew he was going to do.
Walking back, he stood in front of her, dipped his head to meet her eyes. “I’ll go with you.”
She shook her head. “Why would you do that?”
“You know the saying, if you save someone’s life, you’re responsible for them forever? That’s what it’s like. I’m invested in you.”
Scowling, she rolled her eyes. “That’s the biggest line of crap I’ve ever heard. You barely even know me.”
“You might not like the real answer.”
“What real answer?” She gave him a blank look. “What are you talking about?”
There was no choice but to come out and say it. “I’m beginning to like you a lot. I don’t want to see anything bad happen to you.”
She backed up into the car. “I can’t let you do this. You don’t even know me. You don’t know how messed up I am. How messed up my life is.”
“More messed up than this?” He gave a little smile.
Her shoulders slumped. “Actually, yeah, and it’s going to get even get messier.”
“Just let me take you to Riverton, no strings attached. We’ll see after that.” He gestured to the direction of their motel room, cutting off further argument. “Let’s get our stuff.”
They walked back to the room, stuffed their belongings into plastic bags. Emily waited in the car while he went off to pay for the room.
When he returned, she gave him a long look. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I know.”
She met his gaze for a moment, her eyes reflecting a mixture of hope and despair. “Okay, I agree, but you have to understand that you’re not responsible for my safety. And you can back out at any time.”
Nodding, he started the car, smiled to himself. Maybe he had a chance after all.
And it didn’t matter what kind of conditions she put on it. He did feel responsible. She was one gutsy woman, and she would see this through to the end. So would he.
Even if it meant walking into a setup, because some instinct told him it was. And he always paid attention to his instinct.
C
lutching her arms to her chest, Emily stared through the side window of the rental car. It had started raining by the time they got back on the road, and tiny beads of water distorted the mountains and forests outside the window like an impressionist painting.
Matt glanced over. “What are you thinking about?”
She couldn’t tell him. The fact that he was putting his life at risk for her burned a hole in her stomach. It made her realize her feelings were a lot more complicated than she’d thought. She wanted him out of her life, safe. But that was her mind talking. Her body was telling her something different. When he was around, every nerve in her body came alive.
Realizing he was waiting for an answer, she pinched her lips together, forced her mind back to Jason’s arrest. “It doesn’t make sense. I wonder what sort of evidence the police have, because I find it hard to get my head around the idea that Jason killed Amber. I mean, what would his motive be? They seemed to be really in love.”
“We’ll try to find that out today. They must have something to go on.”
“If it’s true—and that’s a big if—in some ways it would be a relief.” She rubbed the back of her neck. The windshield wipers thumped back and forth in a soft rhythmic dance. “On the other hand, if he didn’t do it, we’d be back to square one.”
He reached over, squeezed her hand. “Can you call your mom? See what she knows?”
She shook her head. “She won’t talk to me about it.” He shot her a puzzled look, but she didn’t want to explain, at least not now.
They reached Riverton just before four in the afternoon and drove straight to the police station, a two-story redbrick building near the downtown area. At the counter, she asked to see the chief about Amber’s case and waited while the secretary made a telephone call. When she got off the phone, the woman said the chief was busy but a detective would see them if they were willing to wait. They sat down in a small waiting room.
“Can I get you a coffee?”
She tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair. “No, thanks, I’m already too jittery.”
He asked a few questions about Jason Hatt, but there wasn’t much she could tell him. Leaning back in his chair, he closed his eyes, stretched his legs out in front of him. She flipped through half a dozen magazines without interest, tried to ignore her churning stomach.
Forty minutes later, a tall, slim man walked up to them. After introductions, Detective Sam Fisher led them down a long, narrow hallway to a small room at the back of the building. There were three chairs and a desk in the room, and it looked like it was used for interviewing suspects, with a two-way mirror, nothing on the walls, uncomfortable chairs. Everything about it seemed designed to put people on edge. Fisher took the chair behind the desk and they sat across from him.
Fisher put a manila file folder, unopened, on the desk in front of him. “You asked for an update on the Amber Williams case investigation.” He looked at the folder, adjusted it with his fingertips until it was lined up straight. Satisfied, he looked up. “A week ago, I was asked to review the evidence.”
No explanation was offered for why he was asked to review the case, and she made a mental note to ask that question later.