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61
Greenbrier Resort
MONDAY MORNING
Kirra sat with Griffin near the doorway of the large elegant dining room careful not to be seen when Melissa Kay and Jared Talix walked in, spoke to the maître d’, and went directly to the breakfast buffet line. They were having a good time, talking, laughing, touching each other. Kirra waited until they walked over to an empty booth and started eating their breakfasts.
She got up, her eyes meeting Griffin’s only for a second, gave the maître d’ a little wave, and walked purposefully toward the breakfast buffet line. She picked up a tray, got in line behind a family whose children were arguing over pancakes or scrambled eggs, looked over at their booth and gasped out loud. She waved and called out, “Jared! Jared Talix.” She set down her tray and hurried toward the booth.
“It is you, isn’t it, Jared?”
Jared froze in his seat, his fork midway to his mouth. He stared up at the young blond woman. He recognized her. She’d bumped into Melissa in the lobby the night before. She was grinning happily at him, looking ever so pleased. He slowly nodded.
“I knew it,” she said, straightening her glasses. “When I saw you last night in the lobby, I thought I knew you but I wasn’t sure. Then I read Susan’s post you were coming back east on business. We’ve never met, I couldn’t be at your wedding and she couldn’t come to mine.” Kirra waved a wedding ring in front of him. “Yes, I’m here on my honeymoon.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Allison Hammersmith, a mouthful, right? Isn’t it amazing I’d meet you, Susan’s husband, and here of all places? It’s been ages since Susan and I have visited in person. We were best friends at Washington State and—” Her voice fell off a cliff as she became aware of Melissa Kay staring holes through her, her face cold and set. Allison Hammersmith wasn’t blind to the fury building in her eyes. She took a quick step back. “Oh dear. I bumped into you yesterday outside the women’s room. I was clumsy. She—you—ah, excuse me, sorry for the interruption.” She nearly ran back past the breakfast line and out of the dining room, motioned with her eyes for Griffin to follow her.
Talix watched her for a moment. He shook his head, his voice disbelieving. “We’re at a resort in the wilds of Virginia and a friend of Susan’s is here? She actually recognized me?” His hand was tight around his fork. “Susan is always posting photos of us and the kids on Facebook, but this woman, I’ve never heard of her. She’s really pretty, so I can’t imagine her being a friend of Susan’s, she hates competition.”
Melissa Kay leaned toward him, covered his hand with hers. “Will she tell Susan?”
“Of course she will. You heard the bitch—talk, talk, talk. I’m a dead man.”
“She said her name is Allison Hammersmith. She’s on her honeymoon. And you’ve never seen her before?”
Talix said, “I don’t care who she is.” He cursed. “Maybe I’ve got a chance if I leave right now, get back to Seattle, and do damage control.”
An eyebrow went up. “How do you propose to do that?”
“I’ll tell Susan I happened to meet two friends at Greenbrier where I was on business. I was having breakfast with one, namely you, when a friend of hers waltzed up and introduced herself and came to the wrong conclusion. She didn’t even give me a chance to make introductions.”
“Yeah, like that’ll fly. You’ve told me Susan’s her father’s daughter. She’ll sniff out that lie in a nanosecond. This Allison is a newlywed and a nonstop talker; she’s probably telling her fresh-baked husband right now, ‘Should I tell Susan her husband’s screwing around on her, honey?’ He might even be against his bride telling your wife anything at all, but that won’t stop her for long. She’ll be all too happy to share the amazing news with her best friend, Susan. I don’t know when, but she will tell Susan, no doubt in my mind.”
Kirra pulled Griffin with her through the lobby and outside the Greenbrier, gave him a fist bump, and sat him down beside her on a double porch swing with a magnificent view of the mountains.
“I don’t believe what I saw, Kirra. What did you say to them?”
“I’ll tell you later. Turn on your cell phone. We can both hear what they’re saying.”
He opened the recorder app on his phone and hit play.
They heard the sound of a knife tapping on a table, and Talix cursing under his breath. “Then as I said, if you’re right and she talks, I’m a dead man. Susan doesn’t keep secrets from her father. He raised her himself after her mother died of cancer when she was a little kid. They still speak to each other every day. He knows more about our children’s lives than I do. Something exciting happens, she calls him first, not me. You might think he’ll hold back since I’m his grandchildren’s father, but the thing is, he already gave me an ultimatum a couple of years ago, warned me to always be discreet and never to get caught again. Or— He didn’t have to finish.”
Melissa Kay said very precisely, a smile on her mouth, “Then why don’t we kill her before she decides to contact Susan? An unfortunate accident on her honeymoon. So tragic, the poor little bitch a newlywed. Boo hoo.”
Jared Talix stared at her, not exactly surprised since he knew who and what she was. He just hadn’t gotten there yet. He hadn’t realized it before, but Melissa Kay’s and Susan’s fathers were bookends. “We are in the boondocks,” he said slowly. “There’s nothing but forests and lakes around this place. But as you said, they’re fricking newlyweds. Do you think she’s ever out of his sight? They’re probably in bed twenty-two out of twenty-four hours.”
“Like us.” She sighed. “So if we can’t get her alone, we’ll have to kill both of them. I imagine Greenbrier management have experienced their share of guests taking off and disappearing over the years. If we make them disappear for long enough, how can anyone connect us? With any luck, they’ve got a hick sheriff who’ll offer up platitudes, how sad, and that’ll be that.”
Griffin and Kirra heard coffee cups clicking, then Melissa Kay’s voice. “Do you know what? She looks familiar to me but I can’t place her. Isn’t it strange she ran into me yesterday, all apologies, and she only recognized you today?”
Talix said, “Well, she didn’t really look at me. Talk about bad luck, her spotting me here in the dining room and recognizing me at all.”
“Bad luck or a stupid coincidence, sometimes crap just happens, Jared. Now we’re going to make it her bad luck. I’m going to give Ryman a call. He wanted me to come back and help with Mandarian, but your Allison problem comes first. Better if there are three of us here for this.” There was a pause. “Trust me, we’ll fix this. Let’s get out of here, we’ve got things to do, plans to make.”
Griffin closed down the recorder app. “That’s it, they’ve left the restaurant. Getting a bug into their booth was clever, Kirra, but it was dangerous. One of them might have noticed.”
“No one did. That was the weirdest feeling, Griffin, listening to them deciding to kill me.”
“I hope they make their plans up in their suite where we can hear them and not while they’re out scouting murder spots.”
