Chapter Forty-six
“I’m coming. Who is it?” I called out.
His shoes crunched the dirt and pebbles on the concrete floor as he entered the house. Every nerve ending in my body tingled now, and I heard a humming sound in my ears. I swallowed and rubbed my hands on my sundress, the same dress I’d been wearing when I went to walk myself out of drinking, only a few hours ago.
Paul Walker entered the kitchen, his long legs in blue jeans and his protruding gut encased in a white Guys and Dolls Fishing Tournament t-shirt. He was even taller than I remembered. “There you are,” he said.
My mind spun. Walker? He was due to meet me out here, but that was his car? The car Lisa had ridden in for the drive to Bonds’ house?
I forced my words out. “Right this way. It’s not much, but at least we’ll have good light and some camp chairs to sit in, in the great room.” Oh my Lord, out of sheer force of habit I had invited this horrible man into the parlor like I was some damn Southern belle. I might as well offer him some sweet tea, too, while I was at it. Too late to change course now, though.
He followed me in. “Oh, it’s you,” he said, surprised to see Ava.
Ava was sitting in one of the two red-and-blue-striped folding chairs. She lifted a hand in a tepid wave. Rally, Ava, I thought. You can do it.
Walker picked his way across the remains of the scaffolding to sit on the stone hearth. I followed him to the other camp chair. When Ava and I turned our chairs to face him, our eyes met. Her pupils were the size of dimes.
“So, you have the final report for me?” I asked.
He waved a green file folder in the air. He opened it and pulled out a stapled sheath of papers.
“The report,” he said.
He added a single sheet to the hand that held the report. “Your invoice.”
He lifted the green folder again. “A copy of the file. My notes, documents, photographs, etcetera.”
“Great.” I stood up and held out my hand.
He didn’t pass the documents to me. “If you could pay me for the balance first.” He put the report back in the folder, then held up the invoice, forcing me to walk all the way over to him to see it. Every cell in me shrank away from him.
I took the sheet and read the number: $1,274.32. In addition to the five hundred I’d already paid him. The man was a thief as well as a . . . whatever else he was. A person who knew the clothes that Guy was wearing when he died. Who drove Lisa Nesbitt to Gregory Bonds’ house. My scalp tingled. Tiny Lisa Nesbitt. Big blond Gregory Bonds.
Wait.
I’d seen his picture in the newspaper, an article about one of his company’s acquisitions, hadn’t I? The face flashed into my mind, replaced by another face, the same face. A bear of a man with a blond afro sitting at Toes in the Water with Walker. A man who stared daggers at me, a woman he didn’t even know. Now my forearms tingled like they were falling asleep. I heard a ringing in my ears. My brain was in serious overdrive. What reason did Bonds have to know who I was, much less to dislike me?
“Ms. Connell, are you going to pay me?” Walker asked.
“Oh! I’m sorry. We’ve had a tiring last few days. I’m the walking dead.”
A crocodile smiled back at me. I had to get him out of here. I propped my purse against my hip and reached in for my checkbook. I dug. And dug. Surely I had it in there?
And that’s when it happened.
My purse fell to the floor with a thud, spilling all of its contents out in a tumbling river to Walker’s feet. Well, there was my checkbook—along with all the pictures we’d taken at the Pelican’s Nest and Bond’s house. I buckled to my knees and started gathering them up as fast as I could, blathering, “Sorry, so sorry, what a klutz I am.”
Ava bounded across the floor in one step and crouched down to help.
Walker’s big hand reached down and picked up a picture that had landed on his shoe. He looked at it, but I leaned toward him and grabbed the other edge of it. I tugged. “Thanks, but I’ve got it.”
He let me win, and I fell backward onto my tush.
Walker stood up. The ringing in my ears reached a crescendo. Above us, there was a loud pop, then a wrenching of metal. Walker peered up into the scaffolding as metal poles rained down on him. Behind him stood the young woman I’d know anywhere, standing tall in her long skirt. Her arms looked ghostly in her loose white blouse as she pointed toward the garage. I could take a hint.
I stuck my arm through my purse handles and scooched backward as fast as I could. “Run, Ava,” I screamed, as metal and boards continued to fall. Walker crouched with his hands over his head. Ava sprang into motion, and the two of us scrambled to our feet and ran to my truck.
“Hurry, hurry,” I urged her.
I dumped my purse into the seat and grabbed for my keys. I jammed the key into the ignition and turned it so hard I almost snapped it. The Silverado roared to life. I threw it in reverse and mashed the pedal as I put my arm on the back edge of the seat and turned to see my path.
The crunch of my bumper into Walker’s rear driver’s side door was sickening. We’d only gone five feet, but the impact threw both of us forward into the dash. We were stuck.
“Come on, we’ll run,” I said.
I grabbed my door handle and wrenched it upwards as I shoved outward. My door slammed into the frame of the garage where someday a door would be, but I didn’t care. I leaped out and spun away from the truck—and into Walker’s chest. He grabbed me by my neck in his left hand and threw me up against the inside of my truck door. In his right hand, he held a gun. He pressed the cold tip of its barrel against my forehead.
“Stop, Ava,” he commanded. “Stop, or I’ll pull the trigger and Katie’s brains will end up on the inside of her new truck.”
“I stop,” Ava said. “Don’t shoot.”
~~~
Saving Grace (What Doesn’t Kill You, #1): A Katie Romantic Mystery Page 48