“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. I ruined our date.”
She swallowed. “It’s my fault for asking.”
His phone buzzed.
She pinned on a smile. “You should check that. Maybe it’s good news.”
He checked his phone—and his pulse spiked. “It’s Bruno! Someone is breaking into the room where he left that fake burner phone.”
“The police station is only a couple blocks away!” She pulled back her hand and ran. Hez raced after her, shooting an apologetic glance at their startled server on the way out the door.
Chapter 42
Savannah’s breath labored in her chest, and she wished she wasn’t wearing heels, but she’d wanted to look nice for date night with Hez. He was several strides ahead of her, and it was impossible to keep up. The salty breeze from Bon Secour Bay tugged strands of hair from her updo and blew them across her face. She swiped them away impatiently.
Michael and Jimbo were in custody, so who could be breaking in? It made no sense when the evidence to convict them was ironclad without the phone. Her mind whirled with possibilities, but she found nothing logical to explain them.
The streetlights cast enough of a glow to keep Hez in sight until he reached the corner of the police building and dashed toward the back. Since running was impossible anyway, she slowed her pace before she broke an ankle in these stupid shoes. The police might already be on-scene too.
The door to the front of the police building opened, and a masked man dressed in black darted through. His shoulder plowed into her before she could step out of the way, and she instinctively clutched him to try to stop their trajectory to the ground. They crashed down together, and the pavementscraped her left elbow and leg. His heavy weight was on top of her, but she rolled and managed to get on top of him.
He struggled to toss her off, but she held on. “Hez!” she screamed, holding on with all her might. She couldn’t let him get away.
The man succeeded in rolling her over so his heavy weight pinned her down. She wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his. She smelled pipe tobacco on his clothing, the same cherry scent her father used. And the man’s breath smelled of lemon drops. “Hez, help me!”
Seconds later Hez arrived and got the man in a headlock. “Let go, I’ve got him.”
Savannah released her grip as Hez hauled the guy off her. She got up and reached out to yank off the black ski mask—but she couldn’t do it. Familiar brown eyes pleaded with her from the holes in the mask. Her hand shook. Pipe tobacco and lemon drops? It couldn’t be.
Hez pulled off the mask and her father’s pale face stared back at her. He struggled to escape Hez’s grip. “Let go of me. This is a misunderstanding.”
A dawning realization widened Hez’s blue eyes, and his lips flattened. He gave Dad a shake. “What’s the misunderstanding, Pierre? What were you doing in there?”
Dad licked his lips. “I—I thought I saw a burglar, so I was checking it out.”
“And you just happened to have a ski mask in your pocket?”
“I, uh... It must have been there from a ski trip.”
Hez’s voice was tight with fury. “And you didn’t call 911?”
“I didn’t have a phone.”
Hez roughly patted Dad down with his free hand. He yankedout a phone and tossed it on the ground. It was the dirty old burner phone from Bruno’s trap.
Dad’s lips worked, but no sound came out.
“You had to get that phone, didn’t you?” Hez’s grip tightened, and Dad struggled for breath. “You were behind Ella’s death.”
Her dad thrashed in Hez’s grip. “No!”
Hez went on, building the damning case against her father. “Her file was the one thing that made no sense for Michael to have in his possession. Why would he want it if he was involved? He would have known everything that went down. He had just as much dirty evidence on you as you had on him, didn’t he?”
Something in her father seemed to break. He slumped and twisted his hands together. “No, no, you don’t understand. Ella would have been perfectly safe if Deke hadn’t screwed up. And I made sure the ransom money wouldn’t have come from you—I had a softhearted, rich widow ready to pony up the price. It would have been a few hours, and Ella would have been back home safe and sound. It was Deke’s fault, not mine.”
He cared so little for his own granddaughter that he would be willing to traumatize them all? Dozens of memories slammed into her brain: Ella running to climb into her grandfather’s arms, the way she called him “Pops,” her dimpled smile when he stopped over. His apparent love had been nothing but a sham.
Bile burned the back of Savannah’s throat, and she rushed to the grass to vomit up the oysters and bread she’d eaten a few minutes ago.
