We sat there in the window for several minutes. I watched steady streams of tourists headed south to paradise. The pudgy young cop left and the tall girl resumed her duties behind the counter. The silver Audi drifted past again. Nine-minute intervals.
“I can’t take it anymore,” Hayley said. “No more of this.”
“No more of what?” I said.
“The lies. I miss my sister. She was all I had, and they took her away from me. I loved her. It’s all my mother’s fault.”
“Jeannie Kirkwood?”
“Jeannie Thurlow, Jeannie Connors, Jeannie Kirkwood—whatever the fuck her name is now. She’s an evil bitch whore.” She stroked the picture, her finger lingering on her little sister.
“That bad, huh?”
She nodded.
“You’re from New Jersey, right?” I said. “Newark.”
“Not just Newark,” she said. “We moved like ten times when I was a kid. Sometimes Philly. Sometimes New York. My mom went from man to man to man. Several of them were—really bad men.”
Her eyes filled up again. I hugged.
“Then,” she said, “along came Tiffany. The sweetest baby. I thought mom would change. She married Hank Connors, the man who was supposedly Tiff’s father but I don’t think he was. Hell, I’m not sure who my father was.”
She sobbed some more, stroking the picture of Tiffany as a baby. I waited and hugged.
“Tiff was my world,” she said. “My little Bug-boo.”
“She looked up to you a lot,” I said.
“I tried. But Tiff had one thing going for her that I didn’t. She was smart. I mean, not just ordinary smart, but people-smart. She figured out how to manipulate early on, just like mom. Tiff got total strangers to pay for movies for us at the mall when she was eight. She’d go on the subway and pretend she was homeless and beg for money with this long sob story about mom dying of cancer. She’d come home with two hundred dollars sometimes. Nine years old. Two hundred dollars, like it was nothing. She could do accents, sound like she’s from Texas or England if she wanted. She made stories up on the fly that were so good sometimes even I believed them.”
I took the picture of Tiffany when she was twelve, standing with Jeannie and the man with movie-star looks in front of the Lakewood Ranch sign.
“Who’s this?” I said.
“Bobby Kirkwood,” she said. “My mom’s third husband. I hated him. He moved us down here to Florida. He had hands that went—everywhere. He was why I ran away with Vernon.”
“What happened to Tiffany?”
“One day, she just up and ran away. She was obsessed with the idea of South Beach. I was worried, but not worried. I knew Tiff could take care of herself, and she was better off away from mom and that Bobby bastard. Sure enough, three weeks later, Tiff calls me from Miami. Says she found a job that pays a lot of money.”
“Then what?”
“Then things went quiet for a while, a long while. Life went on. Then, one day my mom shows up at Vernon’s house and tells me Tiff died in a car crash.”
“In Miami?” I said.
“No,” she said, “home in Lakewood Ranch. Which is really weird, because it was never in the papers. Nobody heard of it. We had a funeral and buried her. And that was that. I was devastated. I cried for months. Then—one day, out of the blue—Tiff calls me.”
“That must have been a shock.”
She sobbed again for a while. I held her.
“I nearly had a heart attack,” Hayley said. “Tiff says she’s on someone else’s phone and can’t talk. She says she’s alive and made a mistake, that she’s getting paid a lot of money to pretend she’s someone else and she thinks the woman killed her daughter, the girl she’s being paid to impersonate. She said the husband is a pervert, too. Something about sex parties.”
“Then what?” I said.
“Then I had a visit.” She looked around, the fear enveloping her again. “Three big men in suits. A tall older woman with this awful short white hair told me that I needed to keep my mouth shut or . . .”
“Or what?”
“Or they’ll kill me,” she said. “I believed them.”
“A tall woman with short white hair?”
“Yes.”
I took out my phone and looked up Kelly Alves online.
“Is that her?” I said, turning the screen to face her.
Hayley looked like she saw a ghost and nodded.
“Yes,” she said, “that’s her.”
Hayley jerked and sat up. She looked at her watch. She wiped her eyes and moved to leave.
“I have to go,” she said, “I have to get to my shift at the Horseshoe. I’m on till two. I don’t even know why I told you all this. That woman and those men will probably show up again and kill me.”
“Hayley,” I said, “I have a plan—a way to free you and your sister from all this. But I need your help.”
“A plan? What kind of a plan?”
“A good one. Will you help me?”
She fought back more tears, nodded, and squeezed my hand.
FORTY
I WATCHED HAYLEY GET INTO HER CAR AND DRIVE away from Hendree’s. I sipped my coffee and waited.
At 4:13 p.m., the silver Audi drove by again. I sat and waited and sipped some more. At 4:22 p.m., it passed again. Z is as precise as a Swiss-engineered timepiece. I’m counting on it. As soon as he passed, I finished my coffee and went to the men’s room.
There, I took off my shirt and pants to reveal the camouflage clothes I had bought at Walmart. I put on the head wrap and dark sunglasses again. I removed the gun belt from my jeans and secured it over the pants, which were as light as underwear. Then, I checked my guns and ammo, holstered them, and tied my clothes into a tight ball.
If it’s possible to be dressed like an Army Ranger and walk casually out of a Hendree’s in the middle of the day, I think I pulled it off. I went out the side door, past the smashed security camera and Drive-Thru toward the dumpster. There, I retrieved the duffel bag I had dropped earlier and continued on into the woods about a hundred yards.
I stuffed my clothes in the duffel and removed a tactical bag, which I attached to my belt. Next, I took out the Remington 870 I had borrowed from Luther. I loaded it with 00 shells. I built a brush fort from straggly branches. Then, I removed a pair of binoculars from the duffel, zipped it shut, and buried it under a pile of leaves. I looked at my phone. 4:30 p.m. I went to my chosen hiding place and focused the binoculars on the road in front of Hendree’s.
At 4:31 p.m., the silver Audi drove by.
Then again at 4:40 p.m. Then every nine minutes until 5:34 p.m.
The woods were quiet. They were oddly similar to woods back home up north. Lots of leaves and underbrush. Lots of pine needles. The only major difference was down here the squirrels are red and fearlessly approach you. Back home they’re gray and run from you.
At 5:43 p.m., the silver Audi A5 pulled into the parking lot and parked next to my rental car. I couldn’t see his face through the tinted windows. He just sat there.
I’m hoping he’s shitting his pants right now, thinking he lost me. If he’s the egotist I believe he is, he will need to figure out what I did and how I did it.
That’s not the sensible thing to do. Sensible would be to wait until Hayley walks out of The Horseshoe at two a.m., shoot her from a distance, drive back to Miami, and relocate me there.
But Z is not sensible. He’s cocky. The fact he sat out in the open at the Leucadendra Country Club watching me with a smile, as well as the slowdown on 5th Street near my apartment told me all I need to know about him. He believes he’s unbeatable. I’m counting on his overinflated ego to obsess over how I got away. If I’m wrong, then I’ll have to get over to The Horseshoe before two a.m.
I’m betting it won’t take that long.
At 6:03 p.m., Z got out of the car. Unmistakably him, scraggly tousle and all. Clothes still wrinkly. He looked around and walked in to Hendree’s.
&n
bsp; If I were a sniper, I could have taken him right there. I’m good, but I’m no sniper.
I pictured him inside, likely sitting in the same window seat where Hayley and I sat. He’s probably sitting so he’s facing the same direction, trying to think like me. The thought of him sitting there baffled made me smile.
At 6:23 p.m., he walked out and got back in his car.
A squirrel crawled down a tree and perched on my head. His little paws dug through the head wrap like tiny needles. I jumped involuntarily and momentarily jerked the shotgun. The squirrel scuttled off.
Shit. If the barrel of the gun caught the sunlight, it may have glinted in his direction and alerted him to my hiding spot. My breathing got heavy and fast. I did my best to slow it down.
At 6:43 p.m., Z backed out of the parking spot, drove around Hendree’s slowly, merged into traffic on Highway 301, and was gone.
My pulse quickened. My sweat glands kicked into high gear. I took a sip of water from the bottle in my tactical bag, attempting to prevent dehydration.
At 6:52 p.m., he didn’t drive by. Nor at 7:01 p.m. No more nine-minute intervals.
Shit, where is he?
My breathing became unsteady and lightheadedness washed over me. My muscles had been locked in the same position for so long that they were beginning to twitch. I forced ten deep breaths, focusing on relaxing my body.
I tried to think like Z. He probably went back to the Best Western and looked for signs of me there. I’d bet he went to the Horseshoe to see if Hayley made it there. He’d confirm that and find a space to hide so he could shoot her when she leaves.
But no, he’s not going to do that. He’s got it out for me, and he’s going nuts right now wondering where I am.
At 7:15, the daylight began its long slide. It was still an hour or so before sunset, but the shadows were longer. I watched and waited as the world slowly turned red, then purple, then blue-gray.
At 8:11 p.m., I heard something. In the past three-and-a-half hours, I had become one with the unique sounds of this little patch of woods. I knew the squirrels by their footsteps and the birds by their tweets. I had even named them. But this was a new sound.
My mouth was drier than the Sahara, but I couldn’t take a sip of water now. I needed all my energy for pure focus.
I listened and waited. Listened and waited.
I heard the sound again. Over near the dumpster, I think. I trained my sights over toward its bulky mass. Something moved. Sweat poured from my fingertips around the trigger of the shotgun. I could hear my heart beating in my ears.
Then I saw a silhouette moving into view. It’s him. He stepped out from the side of the dumpster.
I knew it. I knew he’d come back. He couldn’t let it go, just like I thought. I know you, you bastard.
He had been looking inside the dumpster, maybe thinking I was hiding there. I had thought about it, but I liked where I was better.
He took his time, slowly pacing the parking lot. His gun was out, low and to his side. It was a long silver handgun. I’d guess a Luger. He finished inspecting the parking lot and then glanced over toward my location in the woods.
My heart skipped several beats.
Steady, Titus, steady. Wait.
I could almost hear his thoughts. He’s flabbergasted that I eluded him. He’s wondering if I walked through the woods and out onto the next street, which was about three hundred yards behind me. It must be tearing him up that my rental car is just sitting there.
He walked to the edge of the woods, only about fifty feet from the brush fort now. I sensed his muscles as they tensed. It was all I could do to prevent myself from shaking.
He moved in graceful slow-motion, soaking in every sound. He wasted no energy, allowing his instinct to guide him as he slithered from tree to tree in a zig-zag pattern. Something inside him knows I’m here. He’s good. He knows how to move around the trees and shadows so that he’s never a clear target. That’s why I still need him to get closer. I had sweat completely through the camouflage clothes now, my pulse pounding in my ears. I could see his wrinkles now, only about ten feet away. I tried to swallow, but there was nothing there.
I saw the glint in his eye and the sharp inhale as he saw the brush fort. He immediately emerged from behind a tree, turned a little to his right, and fired two shots into the pile of branches and leaves.
“Wrong,” I said as I stepped out from behind a different tree.
He was quick, turning his gun toward me from my standing position facing his left side ten feet away.
But he wasn’t quick enough.
I fired the shotgun. His silver gun swirled into the air as his entire middle, wrinkly shirt and all, exploded in a mass of red. The shocked expression on his face said it all. He died in sheer disbelief that I had outwitted him.
His body, nearly cut in half from the brutal force of the shotgun shell at so close a range, plopped down almost silently onto the leaves. Then, everything got very quiet.
I had a sudden urge to vomit, but I swallowed it down and waited. I have no idea if anyone heard the shots. They were surely loud, but the Hendree’s was as quiet as the woods.
I listened some more. Nothing changed.
Then, my knees wobbled and I fell. I couldn’t hold it back this time, the bile crashing up through my throat and out onto the ground.
I began to shiver in full-body spasms. I was suddenly very cold, even though it was still a blisteringly hot summer evening in central Florida. The clothes I had been wearing were soaked through. I was breathing, but I felt like I was underwater, or like a bag was over my head even though I was out in the air.
Everything took about ten fast spins around. I felt lightheaded and recognized the sickly sensation of unconsciousness coming on. I gripped the tree hard, digging my hands into it, concentrating on the sensation of the spindly bark digging into my skin to keep myself from passing out.
Two minutes later, my head and body were just lucid enough for me to collect my belongings and walk to my rental car. I got in and closed the door. Being inside behind the wheel felt like a luxurious suite.
I was lucky. I’m not sure if the sound of gunshots in the woods are common in Starke, but nobody seemed to have heard them. Even so, I’d better get out of here before that pudgy cop returns.
It took another five minutes for my hands to stop shaking enough to turn the key and start the engine.
FORTY-ONE
RIGHT AFTER THE PORT ST. LUCIE EXIT ON FLORIDA’S Turnpike heading back to Miami, my phone rang.
I looked at it. Unknown number.
“Hello,” I said, “this is Titus.”
“Where the fuck is it?” said a female voice I recognized.
“Hi, Tiffany.”
“What did you do with my fucking duffel bag, asshole?”
“I have it. It’s safe, no worries.”
“I bet it’s fucking safe, dickhead. Where the fuck is it? I need it—now!”
I laughed.
“So,” I said, “let me get this straight. You hide two million one hundred seventy-five thousand dollars in my apartment—yes, I counted it—and you are mad at me because I found it? Is that what I’m hearing, Tiffany?”
“You weren’t supposed to fucking find it!” she said. “You said you never look down there.”
“I don’t. But I did.”
“You’re such a fucking asshole! That’s my fucking money. Hey wait. Whoa. Fucking whoa. Why did you call me Tiffany?”
“That’s your name, isn’t it?”
There was a long pause.
“That’s my show name,” she said. “Mistress Tiffany. Why are you calling me by my show name?”
“Because it’s your real name,” I said. “Tiffany Connors from Newark, New Jersey, daughter of Jeannie Connors, sister of Hayley Shores.”
The amber highway lights flickered by for a good long time. The baby woke and began to cry.
“Fuck you!” said the girl I knew as Allie Hayes, but I heard
tears behind it. I pictured her with some confused lackey kid she had bamboozled into taking her to L.A., both of them standing right now in my dinky little apartment.
“Tiffany,” I said, “please—please let me help you. The only way I can help you is if you let me. We need to develop some trust. I took this case to find you. I found you. I found the real you. I also found the real Allie, but I was six years too late to save her. It’s time for all of us—including me—to become real and fix things. It can all be fixed. We can make this right for all of us.”
“Fuck you!” she said again. But she didn’t hang up.
“Tiffany,” I said, “there’s someone here who wants to say hello.”
I handed the phone to Hayley, who was leaning between the front and back seats to feed the baby in the car seat. With a mother’s skill, she took the phone with one hand while keeping the bottle in the baby’s mouth with the other.
She glanced at me for a brief moment with eyes full of tears.
“Tiff?” she said. “It’s Hayley. Yeah, it’s really me. Yeah, I’m with Titus. Sorry, I’m feeding the baby. Yeah, I had a baby girl. You have a niece, Tiff. You need to see her. Her name is Tiffany just like yours, and she’s beautiful.” Her voice cracked. “Tiff, it’s okay. Titus is helping us. He’s a good man. You need to listen to him. He has a plan. A good plan.”
I smiled over at Hayley, tears in my own eyes as the faint glow of Miami grew brighter on the horizon.
FORTY-TWO
REXFORD J. HAYES’ OFFICE ON THE 29TH FLOOR OF AN obscene glass skyscraper in downtown Miami wasn’t quite as spacious as the deck of an aircraft carrier. Floor-to-ceiling windows presented a spectacular view of Brickell Key, the port, South Beach, and the Atlantic. The walls were covered with pictures of Rex cutting ribbons in front of construction projects, Rex shaking hands with former Presidents, and Rex smiling broadly on the cover of magazines. The furniture was modern Romanesque. The walls were fine wood paneling. The decor was a stately blue-and-gold.
The desk was the size of Delaware. Each leg wore the head of a dour-looking carved lion. There were three chairs on either side. Rex’s was a high-backed leather CEO special that probably cost more than a Dodge Ram. The other seven were Dante chairs with hand-carved designs in the wood.
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