“I am really worried about her,” Jolie confided, after I’d locked the apartment and joined her in the parking lot. “And not just because of the broken arm.”
I nodded. “Do you think the guy with the van was really working for Alex? He’s three kinds of a bastard, but I can’t imagine him siccing somebody like that on Greer.”
“I don’t know,” Jolie said. “Maybe it was connected to the blackmail.”
“Did she tell you anything more about that?”
Jolie shook her head. Looked up at the apartment, and shuddered visibly. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. “This place gives me the creeps.”
“Tell me about it,” I replied.
We stopped off at a supermarket on the way back to Greer’s and made her go inside with us, so we could run interference if another sicko came out of the woodwork and tried to nab her.
The three of us stocked up on wine, French bread, various cheeses and every other decadent thing we could think of, and then went on to Pennington Palace.
As promised, Alex had vacated the premises.
His car was gone.
Most of his clothes were gone.
His Rolex was gone.
Fine by me.
I stashed my trash bag in the guesthouse, which was half the size of the one at Clive and Barbara Larimer’s place, but still equipped with a plasma TV and all the modern kitchen appliances. There was even an alarm system, and I made a mental note to change the code and check under the bed for a hole in the floor.
“We forgot to get coffee,” Jolie told me when I entered the kitchen via the patio. Greer was at the table in the breakfast nook, bathed in sunlight. She looked so alone, even with Jolie and me right there.
“I cannot function,” I said, “without coffee. I’ll go get some, and you look after Greer.”
Jolie nodded and handed over her car keys. “Drive carefully,” she said. “I’m still making payments.”
I grinned. “Careful,” I said, “is my middle name.”
“Like hell,” Jolie retorted, but she was grinning.
I’d picked up two cans of java and all the stuff that makes it palatable, and I was headed back to Greer’s when suddenly I got that tingly feeling, and the little hairs stood up on my arms and legs.
Somebody was in the car.
Besides me.
Impossible. Like any good paranoid, I’d checked for stowaways when I put the coffee in the backseat. Thanks to Heather, Geoff and Barbara Larimer, I was in a semipermanent state of mistrust.
Still, the air felt almost electrified.
I risked a glance into the rearview mirror, gasped and bumped off the road, onto the shoulder, coming to a jostling stop. The driver of a blue Escalade honked furiously as he/she/it roared by, narrowly missing my back bumper.
I turned in the seat, my heart pounding.
My passenger was about seven years old.
She wore a tutu, leotard, tights, all pink, and one ballet slipper.
“Gillian?” I asked.
Her gaze sought mine, landed.
Ice formed in my veins.
She nodded.
“Please tell me you’re not—”
A tear trickled through the grime smudging her face. I noticed the grass stains on the knees of her tights, the rip in one side of her tutu.
“Can you talk?” I scrabbled for my cell phone, remembered I’d left it at the apartment, plugged into the charger.
Gillian said nothing, but her eyes were round and eloquent, and their message was clear.
Help me.
She was dead.
Tucker and the others hadn’t found her in time.
How could I help her?
I wanted to climb into the backseat and gather her into my arms, tell her everything would be all right, but I sensed that she didn’t want to be touched.
“Nick?” I asked hopefully, looking around the interior of Jolie’s Pathfinder.
Nothing. By now, Nick had his ticket. He was onboard the glory train.
I swallowed painfully.
“Honey, can you tell me what you want?”
Her eyes pleaded with me, but she didn’t make a sound.
I watched as she faded slowly away.
And then I sat there, beside the road, shaking.
When I felt I could drive again, I drove to the nearest phone.
It was outside a convenience store, and I wondered distractedly if this was the place where Greer had almost been forced into a madman’s van.
I fumbled for change, dropped it, gathered it and tried again.
Tucker answered on the second ring. “Darroch,” he said.
I started to cry.
“Mojo?”
I sniffled. Got control of myself. “Tucker,” I said, “Gillian’s dead.”
“I know,” he answered, his voice hard with anguish and disbelief. “We just found her body half an hour ago. In a ditch alongside a desert road.” Pause. “Which begs the question—how did you know?”
“I saw her.”
“The way you ‘saw’ your ex-husband?”
I sobbed. “Yes.” If he didn’t believe me, I didn’t know what I was going to do. The burden was too big to carry by myself, and the image of that poor, frightened child, in her ruined ballet clothes and missing a slipper, was seared into my brain, probably for all time and eternity.
“Her stepfather was arrested twenty minutes ago,” Tucker said, his voice toneless.
I felt a tug at my arm and looked down.
Gillian stood beside me, a tiny ghost ballerina, her eyes huge with sorrow.
“Did your stepfather do this to you?” I asked.
Slowly, somberly, she shook her head from side to side.
A woman walked by, staring at me. I could understand her horrified interest; she couldn’t see Gillian, so from her perspective, I was talking to nobody.
“Tucker,” I squeaked.
“What?”
“You’ve got the wrong man. Gillian says her stepfather wasn’t the one to—to hurt her.” I swallowed hard. I hadn’t chosen this new path or talent or curse or whatever the hell it was; it had chosen me. And whether I liked it or not, whether Tucker liked it or not, I was involved. I knew I couldn’t turn my back on a child who needed me, dead or alive.
I had a visual of Tucker running splayed fingers through his hair. “She’s actually there? Right now?”
“Right here, right now,” I said.
Gillian’s eyes filled with tears.
Tucker thrust out a sigh. “Listen, Moje, I know you mean well, but you can’t be part of this. You’re not—official. You don’t have a badge or a P.I.’s license.”
I held out a hand, and Gillian took it. Her grasp felt small and solid and stone-cold. “No,” I said, “but I have a heart.”
He swore under his breath. “You’re not going to back down, are you?”
I squeezed Gillian’s hand. “No,” I repeated.
I’d just stumbled into my next case.
ISBN: 1-55254-671-3
DEADLY GAMBLE
Copyright © 2006 by Linda Lael Miller
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Deadly Gamble Page 31