AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I couldn’t,” she said. “Then you would have known I had the diamonds.”
“So all the way up to Ash Fork and back, we had them in the trunk.”
“Yes.”
“In Ash Fork, the old cowboy told me he got into a car with some men. What about that?”
She sighed. “He told me there was a man up there who would let him borrow a car and lie convincingly to the FBI about him getting in a car. He used to run a hunting lodge near Hell Canyon where Mike would go, back before I made him stop killing innocent animals. They remained friends.”
Orville Grainer. A patient of my grandfather, Doc Mapstone, my ass.
I slapped the wall in frustration, but my voice was resigned. “Oh, Sharon…”
“The landline was a lie, too. There is no landline. I made up the Paco stuff because he was adamant about you knowing there was real danger, after he was nearly ambushed in the garage.”
Who could lie better than a shrink?
“What about Saturday night, when somebody called you to the hospital” Was that Mike?”
“No,” she said. “I swear, David. That was a voice I didn’t recognize.”
She kept apologizing, tried to put her hand on my shoulder, but I brushed it away. I made no attempt to comfort her.
“So why the hell did you beg me to find him? What was that about?”
She shrugged. “I lost my nerve. He didn’t say anything about going to the High Country. I panicked.”
“But not enough to tell me the whole truth.”
She shook her head.
I said, “What happens if you text him the key word first, before you hear from him?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know. He was afraid the whole plan is compromised. He made me promise to wait for his signal before I did anything, including involving you.”
I thought about that. This would be a good time for a sensible person to walk back over to Johnnie’s and knock on the back door. Peralta must be overreacting. Or contact Kate Vare, bring in the entire cavalry. There was Ed Cartwright, too.
But for various reasons none of those options felt right. Cartwright had said he needed to lay low. The local law would muscle me out of the way and wreck the mission, which was to bring down the person who stole the diamonds. Pham…He was trustworthy, right? After the past six days, I trusted fewer and fewer people. I recalled the agents inside the former hotdog place watching me. Pham might be penetrated and not even know it. Then there was Strawberry Death. She belonged to me.
So I told Sharon to text “DM is bringing the dry cleaning per the dictaphone.” That should make it clear enough.
I watched as she typed the words and pressed send.
In only a few seconds the text appeared. “Yes.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Bring the rough.”
“But I don’t even know where he is.”
“I have a good idea,” I said. “Give me your car keys.” After I pocketed them, I added, “Watch over Lindsey.”
“But what if someone follows you?”
“That’s the idea.”
