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“Okay.”
He took a deep breath, raising up on his elbows to stare down at my face. “What am I going to look forward to when you’re gone?”
“Coming to visit me?”
He sighed, resting his forehead against mine.
“Your mama had a gun last night, when I came in the house. I put it in the knife drawer.”
He sat up, his eyes big. “I don’t bring guns into this house.”
“Yeah, it has flower etchings on the handle.”
He groaned and swung out of bed. “I’ll be back soon with some food.”
I snuck over to the guest bathroom in the hall and took a lightning-fast shower. As I was sliding back into his bedroom, I heard the front door open and a cheery, “Good morning.” After dressing, I paced and waited.
Hank spent an hour crawling around the greenbelt behind our parents’ houses searching for surveillance equipment. He came back with a pile of electronics. “These little cameras use cellular service to transmit and tiny solar panels for power. It isn’t top of the line spy equipment, but they had a few thousand to throw away. It’s all bagged. I’ll take it in for finger printing.”
“Do you think you found all of it?”
“No. We’re going to assume they’re still watching us.”
“What did they throw in the house last night, a grenade?” I put a hand on my roiling stomach.
“A small pipe bomb. Otherwise, there would have been a lot more damage. They shot into the house, threw in a brick with their message written in sharpie, the bomb, then sped off.”
“Did anyone see them?”
“Some footage from door cams and security cameras. Three guys. All wore black hoods over their faces.”
“Not caught yet.” I paced stiffly around the room.
“We’ll get them.” He hugged me.
I called my parents and left them a long voice mail telling them I hoped they wouldn’t cut their cruise short. A contractor they worked with was able to board up the broken windows that afternoon. I also transferred money into their bank account.
With Hank urging me on, I said goodbye to my phone. He destroyed the SIM card that the shitheads might be using to trace me. Gritting my teeth, my foot tapped while I waited to leave. He had to pack for me. I didn’t want to believe I had to be paranoid, but then I’d glance out the window and see my parents’ shattered house.
We finally left right before lunch. Hank loaded me into his Suburban inside the garage and I ducked down between the seats out of sight. As he drove out of the neighborhood, just as I was about to relax and sit up in the seat, Hank barked, “Stay down. We have a tail.”
CHAPTER SIX
Hank called the stalker following us in to the police department. My heart hammered in my ribcage hard enough that I thought it would burst out and land on the floor.
He drove at a fast clip toward the airport. “I can see him a little,” said Hank. “White, fair, red hair I think but it’s hard to tell under the ball cap. A red Arizona Cardinal’s ball cap. Driving an older Ford F-150. Fucking prick. I’d like to pull over and drag him out of that truck. Introduce his face to the freeway asphalt.”
I swallowed, a hand over my mouth, and stayed on the floor. Chills crawled all over me and my belly clenched.
“He veered off onto an exit. Bet he has a radio frequency scanner on. Damnit.” Hank made another call to the police.
“This is a nightmare,” I croaked. “Don’t they want to do other things with their time? Like go get laid? Take up kayaking or learn how to carve wooden eagles with chainsaws?” I was ranting. Besides the last year with Joshua, life had been pretty good to me. I didn’t understand where theywere coming from, not even a little. “Why are they doing this?”
“Don’t know. We’ll get ’em. In the meantime, you have to be more careful than you’ve ever been in your life, Sally.”
He was right, of course. I rolled over onto my back on the floor of his big car and stared at the ceiling, feeling sorry for myself. I hadn’t wanted to hurt Josh, let alone kill him. I’d told myself for three miserable days that he would come to his senses and wouldn’t actually hurt me. Then I’d been wrong.
We changed cars at the Austin-Bergstrom Airport. After that, Hank decided we’d head up to Dallas instead of straight over to Albuquerque, to change cars again at a bigger, busier hub. I found a ball cap and a hoodie in the airport and then was finally allowed to ride in a proper seat.
