“It was stolen,” Hampton said.
“Oh give me a break!” Maude said.
Hampton leaned forward. “I’m telling you I had nothing to do with anybody trying to kill you and I’m not trying to frame Tasha. And I don’t know where she is and I don’t care. I’m telling y’all the truth!”
“Why are we here?” Edmund asked him again.
Hampton pulled a sheet of paper out of his coat pocket and threw it at Maude. Maude grabbed it. “What’s this?”
“A cease and desist letter. You’re defaming me. Next time you’ll be slapped with a lawsuit. And now that you’re dating a man of means, I just might actually be able to collect handsomely.”
Maude tore that letter up as she stood up, and threw it back in his face. “You know what you can do with your letter. You told me you had information.”
“I gave it to you. The Police has her DNA at the crime scene. That’s information.”
“Which I’m sure you and your goons put there,” Maude said.
Edmund gave Hampton a hard look. “If my sister is harmed in any way, I’m holding you personally responsible.”
But Hampton only leaned back and folded his arms. “You got the wrong man. But don’t you worry. The truth will come out.” Then he looked Edmund squarely in the eyes. “You’d better hope it doesn’t blow back on you.”
Maude stared at Hampton. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Ask your boyfriend. He knows.”
“This is a waste of time,” Edmund said more dismissively than Maude felt, but she didn’t resist him when he decided it was time for them to leave. They left.
When Maude glanced back, Hamp was laughing. “What is wrong with him?” she said out loud.
But Edmund had a bad feeling about that guy. He took Maude by the hand. He just wanted to get away from there.
But as they were walking across the parking lot to their SUV, with Don walking behind them, Maude looked at Edmund. “What did he mean by that?”
Edmund looked at her. “By what?”
“He said you’d better hope it doesn’t blow back on you. Why would he say that?”
“How should I know, Maude? He’s an idiot.”
“But he’s not a fool,” Maude said. “He knows what he’s doing. I just don’t understand why he would try to implicate you.”
“The same reason he’s pretending he doesn’t know the whereabouts of my sister. It’s all in the game he’s playing. Whatever that game might be,” Edmund added as Don moved ahead of them to open the back passenger door for them. “I’m inclined now to just let the Police handle this. They know she’s missing. Let them get to the bottom of it.”
Although that wouldn’t help Maude’s career, she was inclined to agree with him. This was getting in danger zone to her.
And just as she was thinking it, that was when they heard what sounded like a man screaming inside that diner, and then a sound so loud that they thought a bomb was going off. And the force of that blast knocked Edmund, Maude, and Don off their feet and threw them several yards across that parking lot. It even rocked the Tahoe.
By the time they all realized what had happened, they were staring at a diner in flames. Wyatt jumped out of the Tahoe and ran to make sure they were all okay.
Although they all were fine, they got up, not only dazed, but more confused than when they first got there.
Especially Maude. “Who would want to kill Hamp?” she asked with a fixed frown on her face, but even she knew it was a rhetorical question. Because their number one suspect, their only suspect really, had just gone up in smoke.
And after the police cars and fire trucks arrived, they were ushered further back, away from the blaze, but ordered not to leave the scene. Then when fire-and-rescue pulled Hamp outof that diner, with one fireman commenting that he was burned almost beyond recognition, it felt like a ton of bricks on top of Edmund. Because they had just walked out of that building themselves. A few seconds sooner, it could have been them, and more specificallyMaude, being carried out on a gurney.
He allowed her to meet with Ross Hampton. He allowed her to meet with a man whose background screamed dangerous. But he allowed her to come to that meeting anyway. The guilt he felt was almost unbearable.
And as if that wasn’t enough to deal with, his phone suddenly began ringing.
