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“How?”
“Just by being me, Ellie. Just by being me.” He turned and rested his hips against the counter, crossed his ankles, folded his arms over his chest, and studied the toes of his boots. They needed another shine. “I’m destructive. It seems to be the curse of my life.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
His head came up, and he looked across at her.
“Stop crying in your beer and tell me what’s going on. Who’s been hurt?”
“An acquaintance. She was hurt bad on account of me. No other reason, just because of her association with me.”
“I’m sorry for that, but it doesn’t sound like it was your fault.”
“Feels like it was. It goes back to…” He gestured as though saying, back then. “There’s this guy. Ever since my release, he’s been right here,” he said, holding his palm inches from his nose. “He’s got it in for me, and he’s not going to go away until I’m dust under his heel.”
Griff had kept one eye on his rearview mirror the whole time he’d been driving here. He’d taken a circuitous route, too, doubling back several times, to make certain he wasn’t being tailed by either Rodarte or somebody Rodarte had hired to follow him.
Of course Rodarte would know where the Millers lived. If he’d wanted to get to Griff by harming them, he would have done so. Griff supposed Rodarte didn’t consider Coach as vulnerable as Marcia. The idea of coming up against Coach might even scare him. And it should.
“Are you in trouble, Griff?”
He knew she was asking if he was involved in something illegal again. “No. I swear it.”
“I believe you. So go to the authorities and tell them about this person who’s hounding you and—”
“I can’t, Ellie.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s not acting strictly on his own.”
“You mean—”
“Vista. The same men Coach called slippery, and he didn’t know the half of it.”
“Then you certainly need to talk to the authorities.”
He shook his head, thinking back to what he’d resolved yesterday as he left Marcia’s penthouse. “I’ve been up to my eyebrows in the ‘authorities’ for the past five years. I don’t want anything to do with the authorities.”
He couldn’t report Rodarte’s crime without bringing a lot of shit down on himself and Marcia. The hell of it was, their silence gave Rodarte protection and room to maneuver. Rodarte could make a real menace of himself, and Griff was hamstrung.
“But the police or the FBI need to know if—”
“I no longer trust the system, Ellie. I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. I’ve formed a good relationship with my probation officer. I think he’s on my side. I want to stay under the radar, do nothing that would call attention to me.”
“And to that murder.”
“And to that murder,” he admitted.
“They never caught the person who killed that Bandy character, did they?”
“No, they never did.”
The silence became dense, stretched out. She didn’t come right out and ask. She didn’t want to insult him by asking. Or maybe she didn’t want to hear the answer. She took a sip of tea, returning the glass to the table with more care than necessary.
“You can’t live your life dodging the bad guys, Griff. You’ll just have to ignore them.”
“I’ve tried. It’s not that easy. In fact, it’s impossible. Ignoring them only makes them more determined to get my attention. And they’ll use other people to do it, to bend me to their way of thinking. I won’t play with them, Ellie. I won’t break the law again. But I don’t want other people getting hurt.”
