by Jeff Abbott
“So? You were her best friend, Jane.” She’d broken a code among friends: no dating the ex-boyfriend, at least not immediately.
“And David was my neighbor. I wasn’t dating him.” She thought she’d test Amari, see if she knew what Kamala had said.
“I know that. But you looked very intense. I mean, c’mon. I’m not justifying this to you,” Amari said. “If your ex—and they’d only been broken up for a few days—was being all cozy with one of your best friends, you would want to know. Don’t say you wouldn’t.”
“All right. Did you hear what we were talking about?”
“Uh, no. I made eye contact with David and he shot me a laser look, so I didn’t.”
“Did you talk to Trevor or Adam when they came in?”
“Only for a second. Adam was looking for you. So was Trevor. He was frantic.”
“Frantic?”
“I guess he had something important to talk to you about. I didn’t realize you two were so tight.”
Why would he be upset? “Do you know why?”
“No.”
“Did you ever hear that David and I were going to take off to Canada?”
Amari laughed. “No. That’s a new one on me.”
“Are you still friends with Trevor?”
“Sure. Yeah.” She glanced at her watch. “He’s picking me up in a few. I’m helping him with something.”
“His party?” Jane asked.
“Yes. You coming?” She sounded a little surprised Jane knew.
“No, I wasn’t invited.” Then Jane quickly added, “Which is fine. I don’t really go much to parties.”
Amari didn’t invite her, either. “Well, he should be here soon.” She looked at the street, as if she had nothing more to say.
“Are you and Trevor dating?”
Amari raised an eyebrow. “Oh, no. We’re just friends. My boyfriend, Derek, is at the community college with Trevor. But I don’t keep a car here, and Derek and Trevor were going to pick me up so we could get food and beer and…” Her voice trailed off.
Jane pressed on: “I did talk to Trevor the other day at the coffee shop. I know we were friends when we were little. He was going to help me try to remember the night of the crash.” Yeah, big help he’s been. Notice how you haven’t heard from him.
“Jane, is there anything else you want from me?” Amari asked. “If not…”
“I think I want to warn you,” Jane said. “Someone went after the two paramedics who tended to David and me. The detective who investigated the crash for the Halls has gone missing. Or at least is not answering my phone calls and is not in his office.”
Amari’s mouth went thin in a frown. “That’s crazy.”
“Anyone who seems to be on the fringes of this story, they should be careful.”
Amari blinked. “But I did nothing, why would anyone blame me? It was your fault.”
“I think it’s Mrs. Hall. The suicide note I wrote was written months before. She and Mr. Hall kept that quiet. Would that have changed your opinion about me or the crash if you knew that?”
Amari’s frown didn’t move. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Once suicidal, always suicidal?”
“Well, no, of course not.” She crossed her arms. “You think Mrs. Hall is attacking people?”
Jane explained about Liv Danger and showed her the video on her phone of Mrs. Hall pulling her from the car and hitting her. “Oh, wow,” Amari said.
“I don’t think she’ll bother you. But…her grief, I mean, it’s consumed her. One paramedic had her house burned down. And the empty houses around her.”
“You’re not joking?”
“No. I’m not. She claims I’m doing this, I think it’s her. I don’t even have a car to drive to San Antonio and commit arson. She has the resources and the motive.” She put a hand on Amari’s arm. “If there is anything you remember or that you can tell me…”
“Um. Well. I stayed at Happy Taco for a while. I liked to study there. Mr. Hall came in, also looking for you and David. I didn’t text him, I wouldn’t have, but I think Kamala must have.”
Cal must have come in after the video footage ended. “Did you talk to him?”
“No. I don’t really know him. I recognized him from the football games. Kamala had pointed him out to me.”
Cal Hall, also in search of them. But only Kamala had found them. “Thanks, Amari.”
“Oh. There’s Trevor. I got to go. Take care, Jane. I hope…I hope you feel better soon.” Like the amnesia was a cold to get over. Amari hurried over to the road, where a large black truck waited for her, tinted windows, one of them sliding down to show Trevor Blinn and another guy—her boyfriend, probably—watching Amari hurry over to them.
Black truck. Large black truck. Like what Brenda Hobson had seen turning off High Oaks as the ambulance turned onto it to reach the crash site.
Trevor held up a hand in an uncertain wave. Jane stood, held up her phone, and carefully snapped a picture of the truck. Amari climbed in and Jane could see Trevor asking her a question. Glancing back with surprise at Jane. Then he drove off.
Jane texted the photo to Brenda. Is this like the truck you remembered?
The answer came five minutes later. Yes, it’s that kind of truck.
There were many black trucks in Texas. But there was only one driven by someone who had been actively searching for her and David that night.
She summoned a rideshare, was told it would take ten minutes to reach her, and so she pulled the file on her father again from her backpack and looked through it.
She found an envelope taped to the back of one of the photo sheets. She hadn’t noticed it before.
She opened it. Inside was a single photo of her mother and Cal Hall, kissing under an eave, standing in the shadow of a door. Her mother’s hand was along Cal’s jawline, and he was gathering her close to him for the embrace, his fingers tangled in her hair, pulling her close.
She stared at it for a long minute.
Where was this? She knew it but she couldn’t place it. The date stamp on the picture was two months before her father died.
She stared at the picture a long time. She could go straight to her mother and ask. Or go to Cal. Or go to Perri, and knife her in the heart with it. Hurt her like she’d hurt Jane.
Instead she put it in her backpack.
“You’re Jane Norton,” the voice behind her said.
She looked behind her. A man stood there. Thick arms, dark hair, a mouth like a slash. For a second she thought she shouldn’t say anything. But instead she said, “Yes.”
“I’m Shiloh Rooke. I was one of the paramedics that saved your life.” His voice was low and smoky.
“Oh. Yes. Thank you.” The man Perri warned her about when she brought the coffee. She didn’t want to thank him, didn’t want to talk to him, but it seemed rude not to and she could tell he expected it from her.
“I appreciate your kind thanks,” he said. “But I’ve had some misfortune that seems tied to your bad experience.”
She shoved the file back into the backpack, zipped it closed. “I have to go, a ride is coming for me…”
“I can give you a ride. We can talk about Cal and Perri Hall.”
“I don’t really have anything to say…”
“Weren’t you asking that girl about the Halls? The night of the crash?”
She realized with a shock that he must have sat close to them; with so many students walking by, she hadn’t noticed. “You think Mrs. Hall burned down Brenda’s house. You think she ruined my engagement. You think she made Randy Franklin disappear.”
“I don’t know what she’s done.”
“You showed that girl something on your phone. What was it?”
“Mrs. Hall attacking me at her son’s grave.” She rallied her courage; she did not want to look into those eyes of his anymore. There was nothing looking back; under the muscle and the strength she could feel the emptiness of him.
; “Show me,” he said.
“My ride is coming…”
“Show me, Jane, please.”
She did. He watched the video in silence. “Well, she seems not well.”
“David’s grave had been defaced with the words ‘ALL WILL PAY,’ she was upset.”
“If she’s come after me, and Brenda, and this investigator dude, like you said, where do you think she stops? Who is she warming up for? Who gets it in the end?”
Jane stuffed the phone back in her pocket.
“You? Your mama? They sure hate your mama.”
The rideshare car pulled up. “I have to go,” Jane said.
“They’re coming for you, Jane,” he said. “Maybe you and I can do something about that. Don’t you want to make that bitch pay?”
“Pay?” she asked, her hand on the car door.
“I read the articles. The ‘Girl Who Doesn’t Remember.’ I read how she treated you and your mama after the wreck. Outcasts in your own town. Blamed, suicidal supposedly, her boy a saint, you a waste. Wouldn’t you like to make them pay for what they did to you?”
“I just want to remember. That’s all I want. Just to remember.” Jane opened the door.
“They’ll come for you. ‘All will pay,’ right? How are they going to make you pay?” He leaned close to her as she got into the car, holding the door before she could shut it. “What more can they do to you? They’ve taken everything from you. What’s left?”
She felt cold and sick. The pictures of Laurel kissing Cal swam up before her eyes, and she slammed the door and the driver pulled away from the curb. Jane looked back through the window.
Shiloh Rooke was watching her, his hand held up to his face, miming a phone.
37
JANE WAITED FOR Kip Evander, the Halls’ attorney, in the parking lot, where she’d had the rideshare driver drop her off. She had seen his car once before, when he came to the Halls’ house and her mom had told her, “That’s their lawyer.” She knew he had a daughter a year younger than Jane, at the high school, but Jane didn’t remember her.
“Mr. Evander?”
The man walking toward the BMW, studying his phone’s screen, glanced up. He had a kind face, brown hair, stylish eyeglasses, and wore a very good gray suit. “Yes? Oh. Ms. Norton.” He sounded surprised.
“You know me.” She risked a smile.
He smiled back, but very briefly before returning to an utterly neutral look. “I recognize you.” He paused. “How are you doing?”
“I’m all right,” she said. “I wonder if you could talk to me for a minute about the car crash and the lawsuit.”
“Ethically, I can’t really disclose anything related to a client matter.”
“Please. I don’t want you to tell me a secret or anything.” She coughed, trying to cover her nervousness. “I just was wondering if you knew why the Halls dropped the lawsuit and settled for the insurance proceeds.” Because Cal Hall is kissing my widowed mother.
“Usually I advise all my clients to do that, especially in a case like this, one involving a minor driver.” He had a good voice for the courtroom, a Southern-tinged, theatrical baritone.
“I know Cal dropped it and Perri didn’t want to, but I don’t know why.”
He looked at her with sympathy. Not pity. Those were two different states. He blew out a long breath. “Grieving parents sometimes think a lawsuit will bring justice. Then they realize it won’t, because justice would be their child restored to them. I think Cal didn’t want to ruin you and your mother, given what you’d already been through with your father’s passing. It wouldn’t have brought David back.”
“I wondered if it wasn’t because there was some history between Cal and my mom. Like, you know”—she let the pause carry a weight—“an affair.”
“I certainly couldn’t say.” His gaze was steady on her. “I need to get home to my family now.”
“Because my family had a note, too. One David wrote to me, expressing that he was in danger on the day he died. I haven’t had it analyzed.” She made dramatic little air quotes around the last word. “But maybe the Halls didn’t really want the world to know that David was in a serious bit of trouble. Maybe my mom told Mr. Hall, and you, that note existed and that’s why he dropped the lawsuit. Could you nod yes or shake your head no?”
He was still. Then he said, “Such a note, if it existed, would have had limited legal value. It would have been hard to enter into evidence.”
She gave a ragged, soft sigh. “See, Mr. Evander, it’s a little disconcerting to know my own mother had physical evidence that could have, you know, maybe not cleared my name but it could have made all of my friends hate me a little less or even a lot less”—here her voice broke—“and she didn’t let the world know about it. I’m thinking the only reason she didn’t is because there was a deal. A trade-off. No lawsuit, no note.” She crossed her arms.
“You really should ask your mother, Jane.”
“She won’t tell me. And I don’t have a whole lot of peace of mind, but I would like to know the answer to this. I’m not going to do anything with it, except know it. If you can tell me. Ethically.”
“I cannot say.” He cleared his throat. “I could say that your mother met with Cal Hall in this parking lot before he came in to meet with me. I could see them from my office window. There was a discussion. She left. Cal stood for a long time in that lot, then he came in to meet with me. That was the same afternoon Cal dropped the lawsuit. Make of that what you will.”
There was a relief in knowing. “One other question. Randy Franklin. Is he the type of man to investigate someone without a client?”
“You mean just snoop?”
Jane nodded. “In hopes of finding compromising information.”
“Are you asking me if he’s a blackmailer?”
“I don’t know what to call it. He might call it insurance.”
“Then I would guess that the rumor he has some dangerous clients is true and you should stay away from him. Just a guess.”
“Thank you, Mr. Evander. Have a nice evening with your family.”
“You’re welcome, Jane. I hope life improves for you soon.”
It was an odd parting wish.
Kip Evander got into his BMW sedan, started it up, and drove away from her in the lot, never looking back at her.
She decided she needed to get home. She had a party to crash.
38
PERRI HAD NEARLY dozed off in the car when knuckles rapped hard against the driver’s-side window.
Shiloh Rooke.
“You here to burn down my house?” he drawled.
“No,” she said, rallying herself awake. “I tried your doorbell and you weren’t home. So I waited. May we talk?”
“What do you want?”
“I want to convince you I’m not the bad guy here. I’m not this Liv Danger.”
“And why would I believe that?”
“Listen, if I were coming after you because I bore a grudge against you for not saving my son’s life, I wouldn’t have just stopped at breaking up your engagement. You’d have a knife in your guts.” She tried to sound tough.
He laughed. “Oh, sure, Mrs. Lakehaven. You’re a real badass.”
“I know you think this is about you. And Brenda Hobson, and whoever else worked the crash. But it’s not. It’s about me. You’re just an innocent victim. Like me.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I can prove it to you,” she said.
“Let’s go inside and talk about it,” he said. “I make a real good iced tea.”
She didn’t want to be alone with him. He was barely taller than she was, but he was powerfully built. The way he smiled at her made her skin crawl.
“What’s that?” he asked as she brought the notebook with her.
“Proof,” she said.
He shrugged and walked into the house, her following. “You want iced tea?”
She didn’t but she said sure. This had clearl
y been his parents’ house; photos of the family were still on the mantel, in the hallway. The parents must be dead, she realized, and now the house was his. In a photo, a man who easily could be Shiloh’s brother wore an Army uniform, perhaps on a tour of duty.
She followed Shiloh into the kitchen. It was orderly, immaculate, neat as a soldier’s. He poured the tea from a pitcher, then added mint and lemon when she nodded. He poured his own, added a slug of Jim Beam from a bottle on the tiled counter. He raised the bottle toward her and she shook her head.
“I drank most of that when Mimi broke off the engagement,” he said. “I did not get a sympathetic vibe from you or your husband this morning, Mrs. Hall. I don’t think that in this moment you realize”—he smiled again—“I am the victim here.”
“I do realize that. So am I.”
“Yeah, you really looked helpless beating up on Jane Norton. I saw the video.” The awful little smile returned. “You sure got a lot of energy.”
“I know how the video looks,” she said.
“Do you?” He smiled. “Look, if it’s you and the husband pulling this little revenge, tell me, and I’ll concentrate on him. He’s just going to drag you down.”
“I’ve already filed for divorce,” she said. Why had she told him that? It only made his smile a little sharper. “And Cal would never do this. He’s a CEO, an investor, he wouldn’t dirty his hands or risk his reputation.” She was speaking too fast, telegraphing her nerves. He seemed like a man who could scent fear on the air.
Do this for David.
“And I am not Liv Danger. It’s Jane Norton and her mother.”
“And I believe you why?”
She showed him the notebook with the Liv Danger cartoon character. “Jane wrote these stories; my son drew the character. They always did this kind of stuff when they were little, I guess they thought they could design a video game around her.”
“And this proves what?”
“No one knew they had done this, except Jane.” She showed him the title page, where David and Jane claimed authorship of Liv Danger. “My husband and I never knew about this character. Only Jane did.”
“But she has amnesia. Why would she remember this cartoon character?”