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“I’ll be missed when I don’t show up for work.”
“Hold on, you two,” Gif said. “Please. This plan has pitfalls I can see from here.”
After a few more minutes of back-and-forthing, Drex called an end to it, saying, “Either you’re in or out, guys. If you want out, no hard feelings. But tell me now or shut up.”
Neither said anything.
After a moment, Drex resumed. “Mike, I don’t know for sure how long they’re staying. You’ll have to find that out somehow. I’ll need to know when they’re on their way back. “
Gif looked around his motel room. “In the meantime, what’s my job?”
“Hang around until, or if, I need you for backup, and then come running.”
“What’ll you be doing?” Gif asked.
“Tearing their fucking house apart.”
Mike and Gif put up another argument that lasted for half an hour. But Drex was resolute. While the Fords were whiling away a few days in the luxury hotel, he would have access to their house, ergo to their lives.
He was going to search exhaustively until he found something that linked them to Marian Harris. The photo taken on her yacht wasn’t indicting. The authorities in Florida had used it to identify Jasper, aka Daniel Knolls, when Marian first went missing. He’d been interviewed by police and subsequently released.
Drex now wondered if Talia had also been questioned. He made a mental note to follow up with Deputy Gray.
He relegated that to the back burner of his mind and concentrated on what today might hold in store. His cohorts begged him to reconsider going inside the Fords’ home. They cited that it was a crime. They enumerated the obstacles he’d likely confront. Security alarm. Nanny cams.
“Hell, this freako might’ve booby-trapped the place,” Mike said.
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Drex said. “I’ll be careful.”
“Say you get in without any trouble, and it turns out to be a gold mine of evidence,” Gif said. “What good is it going to do us? Anything you find will be inadmissible.”
“Anything I find will justify my killing him.”
That had shut them up.
After signing off with Mike, Gif packed his things in preparation of moving to another motel. “With a credit card no one knows I have,” he assured Drex.
The two of them left together in Gif’s car. Dawn was just about to break, but the difference between it and the night was negligible. The overcast was solid. Precipitation alternated between an all-out rain and a mist now heavy enough to make windshield wipers necessary.
Drex directed Gif to the convenience store. “Let me out there. I’ll go the rest of the way on foot.”
“You sure?”
“I don’t want my nosy neighbors to see you dropping me off.” Gif pulled over. Drex said, “Call me with your new location.”
“As soon as I’m checked in.”
Drex reached for the door handle, but Gif said suddenly, “Listen, Drex. I gave you some grief about her, but I had started hoping, for your sake, that we were wrong.”
Drex didn’t react except to say a brusque “I’ll be in touch.” He got out, shut the door, and tapped the roof of the car twice. Only as Gif was driving away did he murmur, “Thanks, buddy.”
He went into the twenty-four-hour store. A different cashier was on duty. He made his purchase, then set out for the apartment. He was skirting the green belt, looking for a place to cut through that wasn’t too overgrown, when he spotted a lone runner on the street, coming from the opposing direction, taking form in the mist.
She must have seen him at about the same time as he saw her because she slowed her pace to a walk. She looked toward the other side of the street, as though considering crossing it to avoid him. But then she squared her shoulders and continued toward him.
He stopped where he was, forcing her to close the distance between them. But he took small satisfaction in that, because, even though he was cold with rage over how thoroughly he’d been duped, the sight of her up close made him hot and hard. Her tights and top were wet from sweat as well as from the elements. They conformed to her like a coat of paint, revealing the shapeliness of her legs, the perfection of her breasts, the small points of her nipples.
