AllFreeNovel
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He joined a crowd watching a blacksmith work, and then wandered into a shop selling homemade candy and came out with a quarter pound of chocolate fudge and a bag of peanut brittle.
The scents of hot sugar and melting chocolate made him hungry. He’d skipped breakfast and the day was getting hot. It was time to settle on a restaurant and go inside to eat where it was cool.
The menu at The Back Porch was varied enough to suit him, and in he went. As he was waiting to be seated, he made sure to scan the room first. It wouldn’t do to run into Dani Owens until he was ready to be seen. But everyone in the dining area was a stranger, so he felt safe.
When the hostess seated him at a small table, he chose to sit with his back to the wall so he could see who was coming and going. After ordering fried catfish, coleslaw, and jalapeño hush puppies, he settled in to wait. The sweet tea he ordered was icy cold and slid down the back of his throat like silk.
As soon as he ate, he was going to swing past Dani’s house on his way back to the cabin, get a good look at it in daylight, and see if there was any access in the alley between the rows of houses.
She thought she’d gotten away. She thought she was safe. But the bitch was wrong, and seeing the fear on her face would be the first step in the revenge he’d come for. Watching her die would be the ultimate high.
He was staring out the window when the waitress arrived with his order. He dug into the food without hesitation, dipping the crunchy catfish strips in homemade tartar sauce and chasing the bite with the jalapeño hush puppies.
He ate until his food was gone and then leaned back in satisfaction, waiting for the waitress to come back with the tab so he could pay and leave.
As he was waiting, he saw a police car drive up, and then two officers got out and walked into the restaurant in single file. They paused in the doorway, staring across the crowded dining area.
Alex’s heartbeat kicked. His body tensed.
One of them saw him staring.
Shit. Now they’re going to wonder why I was staring,Alex thought, and ever so slowly looked away, as if they were of no importance.
Moments later, a waitress came hurrying up from the kitchen carrying a to-go bag. The officers’ focus immediately shifted to getting their food, then paying and leaving. Alex knew the officer was staring at him again, but he was purposefully focused on paying the waitress for his meal, and as soon as they were gone, he bolted out of the café and headed for the housing addition where Dani lived.
He frowned when he saw a car in the driveway. Hisfrown deepened when he saw the Arkansas tag. That wasn’t her car. He circled a block to check the alley access, only to realize there were no access points into backyards from there. He passed her house again as he was leaving the housing addition, and as he did, saw a tall, dark-haired man come out of the house, and slowed down long enough to get a look at his face.
He was tall, good-looking, and the right age for a new boyfriend.
“Son of a bitch,” Alex muttered. “She didn’t waste any time.”
He was still watching the man from his rearview mirror as he drove away and saw Dani come out of the house, take the box he handed her, and then watched him get a box from his car before they both went back inside. If he was moving in, this was going to mess up everything.
Both curious and furious, Alex hung around Jubilee. He needed to know if she had a roommate, because if she did, then his whole plan of attack had to change. And that was fine. She couldn’t stay in that house forever. All he had to do was wait and watch for a different opportunity.
A couple of hours later, he swung back through her neighborhood just as Dani and the same man were both exiting the house. They were both carrying boxes out. He pulled over and parked at the curb down the street to watch, thinking to himself that if they left, he’d have a chance to get in and scope the layout of the house. They put the boxes back into the trunk, then shook hands. Dani went back inside, and the man got in and drove away.
Alex breathed a sigh of relief.
“Okay, Tony…I jumped the gun, didn’t I? What is it you always say about assuming?” And then he laughed as if his brother was right there beside him, following the conversation he’d just had with himself.
Satisfied he’d just witnessed a man making some kind of service call, he turned at the next block and went back to the cabin.
Cameron, Rusty, and Ghost were at the police station, situated in an interview room with Brendan Pope’s journal. Cameron was reading it aloud and Rusty was recording it. When he’d get stuck on a word, she would come to the rescue.
It was coming up on 2:00 p.m. when a 911 call came into the PD about a lost child. A six-year-old boy had become separated from his parents at an outdoor event, and after a few minutes of looking for him on their own without success, they called the police.
Aaron and another officer named Bob Yancy were on patrol together and responded to the call. As they rolled up on the scene at the town square, the parents came running, both talking at once and in an obvious panic.
“Help us! Please, help us! Mickey just disappeared!”
“Yes, sir. I’m Officer Pope. This is my partner, Officer Yancy. Could I have your names, please?”
The man blurted it all out in one breath. “Randyand Tina Cotton. Our son’s name is Mickey. He’s only six. One minute he was holding my hand. I turned him loose to pay for the snow cone he wanted, and when I looked back, he was gone,” Randy said.
“Is this where you lost sight of him?” Yancy asked.
“No, we were in the craft area at the snow cone stand. There was a big crowd beginning to disperse when we lost him,” Randy said. “We looked and looked but couldn’t see him anywhere.”
