by Tina Whittle
“It’s for real.”
“You been to the compound since he got out?”
“It’s not a compound, and no, I haven’t. I have no reason to see him, and if he wants to see me, he’ll let me know.”
Winston’s eyes gleamed. “I heard he keeps a gator pit out back, just in case he needs to make somebody disappear.” He clapped his hands like two jaws snapping together. “And that on the night of the full moon—”
“Never mind Boone. I have another question.” I pulled the old man’s photograph from my tote bag and handed it to Winston. “You know this guy?”
Winston examined it. His perplexed expression was genuine this time. “No. Who is he?”
“Vincent DiSilva, of Jacksonville. He might be connected to my situation with Hope.”
“How?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
Winston examined the photograph deliberately. Good. If Hope had been keeping secrets from him about the origins of that Bible, he might have some questions for her when she showed up again. Because bet my bottom dollar, she was showing up, and soon.
I jabbed my chin at the box under the counter. “That didn’t break, did it?”
He paled. “What?”
“Whatever it is in that box. Sounds delicate.”
He laughed nervously. “Souvenir shot glasses. You know how tourists are, always wanting something with a shamrock.”
I kept the smile plastered on my face. I didn’t believe a word coming out of his mouth. But there wasn’t much I could do about it at the moment.
I fished out one of my cards and handed it to him. “If you do see Hope, will you let me know? She may have gotten herself in over her head.”
“With what?”
“Bad stuff.”
He examined the card as if it were possibly counterfeit. “Sure. If she comes around. Which I doubt. Should I tell her you’re looking for her?”
I handed him a second card. “Yeah, do that. Tell her I’d like to make a deal. No tricks.”
His eyes went shrewd. He tapped my card against the hard grain of the counter. “Sure. But even if she is back in town, she’s got no friends in this quarter, not anymore.”
“She doesn’t need a friend, she needs an accomplice. And in Savannah, those are a dime a dozen.”
Chapter Eleven
Back at the hotel, I found Trey engrossed in paperwork in the adjoining room. I hopped up on the edge of his desk.
He moved his papers to the other side of his work space. “You’re wet.”
“It’s raining again.” I ran a finger across his shoulders. “You’re perfectly dry.”
“Of course I am. I haven’t left the room.”
“Are you sure?”
He frowned at me. “Of course. Why do you ask?”
“Because somebody was following me.”
His expression sharpened. “Where?”
“On River Street.”
“Why?”
“Good question.” I shook rain from my hair, which earned me a reproachful look. “Do you know why anybody would be tailing me?”
“No. Are you sure you were being tailed?”
“Yes. Are you sure you don’t know?”
“Yes.” He narrowed his eyes. “Was that an accusation?”
“No. Was that an evasion?”
“No.”
I smiled. “You sure about that?”
He put down his pen. “Tai. I wasn’t following you. We had a deal.” He sat back in his chair, his expression razor-sharp, but no longer annoyed. “I had no reason to follow you. If I’d wanted to see what you were doing, I could have gone with you.”
“The whole reason for following someone is that you suspect they’re up to something they wouldn’t otherwise be up to if you were actually right there with them.”
“I don’t suspect you of anything. And even if I did, that’s not my job.” He gestured toward the paperwork on his desk. “This is my job. Which I have been doing since you left.”
I examined the desktop. It was smothered in complex dense reports, with his neat notes on the yellow pad beside. He’d obviously been hard at work.
“Could it have been Phoenix?” I said.
“Marisa was with me.”
“She could have sent one of her minions.”
“I’m her minion.” He shooed me off the desk and pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket. “She could have engaged another agent for the assignment. I don’t know. But that’s not my main concern.”
“Mine either. I’m concerned about a wild card stalker. That’s why I was hoping it was Marisa.”
He polished the wood dry. Handkerchiefs were such useful things, good for evidence collection, first aid, turning hot doorknobs during a fire. Trey was the first guy I’d dated who always had one in pocket.
“Did you get a description?”
“No. The most likely culprit is Hope, but how would she know where to find me?” I had a sudden rush of suspicion. “You think John told her? Somebody at the hotel maybe?”
“I don’t know. But I’m filling out a 302 regardless.”
Trey tucked the handkerchief in his pocket and returned to the computer. He tapped out a lightning fast sequence, and the Phoenix log-in screen appeared. I grabbed a towel from the bathroom and scrubbed at my damp hair. Trey was always filling out 302s, Phoenix’s version of an incident report. They were the first step to going full corporate agent bad ass on some troublemaker.
He typed in the date and time. “Do you have a recent photo of Hope?”
“Sorry. I burned them all.”
Trey typed no photograph available. “Can you give me a description?”
“About my height, coffee-colored hair, thick and straight and hanging to her butt. Fashion model skinny. She’s got puppy-dog brown eyes, a Barbie-doll nose, a rosebud mouth, and no soul.”
Trey rendered my description into concrete info: five-six, dark brown hair, slim build. He stared at the screen, his index finger suddenly tapping out a syncopated rhythm. Cognition gear. Some idea trying to find purchase.
“Trey?” I moved to look over his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
He held up one finger. Wait. I waited. Another thirty seconds of wildfire typing, and the screen divided itself into a foursquare grid. I recognized this set-up.
“Four-plex security footage,” I said.
He nodded, kept typing.
“Of this hotel?”
“Yes. The main elevator specifically, the one we took.”
Indeed, there we were, getting off the elevator. The time stamp confirmed that the footage had been taken two hours ago. Trey fast-forwarded a few more seconds, then slowed the footage to real time. He pointed at the upper-left square. “Watch.”
I followed his finger. The footage wasn’t high resolution, but it was clear enough to make out Trey getting back on the elevator, the bellhop with the clubs too. Trey pressed the button for our floor. A woman swooped in as the doors started to close, smiling an apology.
My stomach dropped. “Omigod! That’s Hope!”
Trey blew out a breath. “I suspected as much.”
Onscreen, Hope stood closer to him than the space dictated. She was dressed in business attire, a fitted dark jacket and a pencil skirt chopped above the knee. She looked at Trey and her lips moved. Trey made some reply, and she nodded. And then she reached over and patted his bicep, her mouth curved in a flirtatious smile.
I got a surge of anger. “Oh no, she did not just put her hand on you.”
“Tai.”
“And you let her get close enough to do it!” I threw my towel on the floor. “You keep a five-foot barrier around you, all the time, and yet—”
“Tai—”
“You tell me to be careful and there you are, letting her paw you! I cannot believe you fell for that simpering, come-hither—”
“Tai!” He shook his head, eyes on the screen. “I didn’t fall for anything. Look again.”
Onscr
een, the elevator stopped, and Hope got off. She cast one last lingering look, but not at Trey. At the security camera itself. And I saw smug satisfaction shining there, like a warrior counting coup.
I swore fiercely. “I swear to God, I will claw her eyes out if she—”
“Pay attention.” Trey rewound to the moment she got on the elevator. “Watch it again.”
“Why? So I can get madder?”
“So you can tell me what you see.”
I refocused on the screen. As Hope got on, Trey took one step backwards to accommodate her. His feet remained shoulder-width apart, his eyes straight ahead in the disinterested pose of elevator riders everywhere.
Except that Trey’s seemingly casual posture was also neutral stance. Except that Trey’s body was a weapon, cocked and loaded.
“Tell me what you see,” he said.
I sighed. “I see you move out of range when she touches you. I see your left hand preparing for a block and strike. I see your right hand loose and empty and hovering near your gun, in case you need to draw.”
He waited. “And?”
I caught his drift and shook my head. He’d displayed not a single marker of sexual interest. And I knew what those looked like. I’d developed a handy playbook based on those.
“Nothing,” I admitted. “Not one iota of attraction.”
He blinked at me. “What?”
“Which means I owe you an apology. You’re not a libido-addled idiot.”
“No, I…I mean, yes, that’s true, but…that’s not…” He shook his head, frustrated, and returned his attention to the screen. “Watch.”
The scene played out, yet again. “She gets on, touches you, you back away, she notices the security camera—”
“No.” He tapped the screen. “She’s not looking for the camera. She’s looking at the camera.”
His point finally dawned on me. “She knew it was there.”
“Yes.”
“Which means she didn’t follow us here. She was already at the hotel, she knew we were coming.”
“And she’d already surveilled the premises.”
We sat there. Hope stared back, her black and white image mocking us, smarter than us, two steps ahead of us.
I whistled softly. “Damn. I need to up my game.”
Trey handed me the towel I’d thrown down, now folded into a neat square. “So do I,” he said.
Chapter Twelve
The next morning dawned gray, with sodden dense clouds in a low sky. The weatherwoman said to blame the tropical storm hovering offshore east of the Gulf Stream, sending sunshine and thunderstorms in alternating bands of clear and foul weather.
I’d showed up at the driving range anyway, hopeful that the deluge would hold off long enough for at least nine holes. I gave my new driver a practice swing, then retucked the cell phone between my ear and shoulder.
John’s voice sounded frustrated. “Look, I didn’t have anything to do with Hope showing up at your hotel!”
“So you keep saying.”
“Because it’s the truth.”
“Then how…hang on a second.”
I fished a tee out of my pocket and stuck it in the ground. Trey watched from behind the line, sticking out like an Armani-clad sore thumb. He’d agreed to go on the course, but refused to wear golf clothes, insisting that he wasn’t golfing.
I jammed the phone back against my ear. “So you have no idea who might have been following me? Or how Hope found out where we were staying?”
“No idea at all.”
“You’d better be telling the truth, or I swear—”
“Whole truth, Tai. Why would I lie?”
“Good question. I gotta go. But keep your mouth zipped, you hear me?”
I hung up before he could answer and shoved the phone in the pocket of my khakis. Trey checked his watch. Marisa and Reynolds were still in the pro shop with only ten minutes until tee time.
I picked up a ball from my bucket. “John says he didn’t leak our whereabouts to anybody, especially not Hope. He blames somebody at your end.”
“I checked with Marisa. There are no leaks at my end.”
“You sure about that? Reynolds seems like the talkative type.”
“He has no connection to Hope.”
“That you know about.”
Trey didn’t reply. He had his eyes on the horizon, where a curdled mass of clouds lay piled like wet laundry. He checked his watch again, brushing a piece of grass from his immaculate cuff.
“I’m taking care of the situation,” he said.
I gave my new driver a practice swing. “You know, Armani does make golf clothes.”
“I’m not golfing.”
“I saw some Italian leather golf shoes in the pro shop. Removable cleats, black on black.”
“I’m not—”
“Yeah, yeah. Not golfing. But Marisa’s right—how are you going to put together a security plan for a golf tournament if you don’t understand golf?”
“That’s why I agreed to come out here. To understand.”
“Can’t understand if you don’t play.”
I popped a ball on the tee, took my stance, then swung. It was a clean hit, a little hooky, but powerful. Trey watched, a glimmer of curiosity in his eyes.
I pulled the driver from his bag and handed it to him. “Forged titanium construction. Nice big sweet spot, good for newbies.”
He accepted the club, his brain calculating its measurements, heft, and tensile strength. He scrutinized the head, running his thumb along the grooves in the club face.
I shook my head. “Not like that. You’re holding it like a weapon.” I came up behind him, reaching around to place his hands properly on the grip. “Hold it like this, firm but light. Let the club do its thing.”
“What’s a club’s thing?”
“The swing is its thing.” I put my hands on his waist. “Head down, eyes on the ball. Ease it back on the diagonal, then…swish.” I moved him through a practice swing, feeling the ripple of his lats on the pivot, then stepped back. “Now try it for real.”
He swung the club back and forth gently, testing its balance. And then he pulled back, swung through, and sent the ball straight into the air with a sweet thwack like a champagne cork popping. It sailed through the air in a precise arc and landed two hundred yards downrange like it had followed a plumb line.
I stared at him. “Can’t you suck at something just once?”
He examined the club, then peered at the ball. “Apparently not golf.”
“So you’ll play?”
He handed the club back to me. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m here to understand the overall structure of the game. I can do that best by observing, not interacting.”
I dropped his driver back in the bag and didn’t argue further. His mind required distance and objectivity, and a golf course was an organic, almost sentient thing, ripe with chaos and distraction. He’d need every ounce of his formidable focus to get a grip on it.
I heard Marisa and Reynolds approaching from the clubhouse, Reynolds with his deep rich baritone, Marisa…laughing? She had her bag on her shoulder, a smile on her face. She even wore a skort, her platinum hair in a tidy knot at her nape.
She hoisted her bag into the back of her cart. “Are we ready?”
“We will be,” I replied. “As soon as we get Trey some shoes.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but I cut him off. “You can keep the suit, but we’re going back for the shoes. If you think pizza is hard on the Prada, you should try marsh mud.”
***
I rode with Reynolds, Trey with Marisa. The first eight holes went smoothly, but then on the ninth, she sliced one into the out-of-bounds and sent Trey to fetch it while she took a phone call. Reynolds and I sat in our cart and waited.
“You’re looking good,” he said. “Play much?”
“Not anymore.”
I didn’t tell him I’d grown u
p on the golf course, my dad usually being the club champion. I’d inherited his swing, but not his discipline, and got banned after I broke in one night and did some drag racing with the carts, sending one of them into the drink. I still remembered the sky that night, as open and limitless and miraculous as a fairy tale.
Reynolds pulled a beer from the cooler. “I hear you’re headed for the Expo tomorrow. I didn’t think that started until Friday.”
“It’s the vendor’s welcome barbecue. I’m meeting my aunt Dee Lynn there.”
“Does she sell guns too?”
“No, she’s a relic hunter. Digs and dives. Her specialty is Civil War artifacts, but she also finds jewelry, fossils, bottles.”
He stuck a cigar between his teeth. “Is she single?”
I laughed. “As single as they come, but you gotta be a brave man to tap that.”
Up ahead, Trey poked at the edge of the cattails, squinting at something beyond the waist-high sedge. I stuck some tees into my ponytail and reached for a beer. This could take a while.
I popped the cap. “A fundraising tournament, huh? Whose idea was that, yours or your sister’s?”
“Mine, but this is the first time she’s actually gone along with it. We’re reaching that age, you know. Legacy. She’s afraid I’ll fritter away my half of the estate. A tournament would keep me busy and fill the foundation coffers with friends and funds.”
I smiled at him. “Do you fritter, Mr. Harrington?”
He grinned around his cigar. “It’s Reynolds, m’dear, and yes, I fritter. Drives the old girl batty.”
Marisa waved us to go on without them, so Reynolds took the cart up to the green. I had the better lie, uphill from the cup, but he had three strokes on me. Reynolds was a steady, smart golfer, strong and long on the fairway, indolently precise with his short game.
We pulled our putters and headed for the green. “Do you collect Civil War memorabilia too?”
“No, I’m more of the genteel ne’er-do-well. Audrina’s the collector.”
I remembered my afternoon at her mansion—the hundreds of papers and books, the black-haired, blue-eyed wait staff. Yes, once Audrina wanted something, she wanted all of it, all for her.
“Everybody has their interests,” I agreed.
“Indeed. So I leave the business of collection to Audrina and that narrow-headed authenticator of hers, and I work the crowds. So to speak.”