look for me at his place. I’d just been sitting out by the beach until I heard from Tamara. Then finally I decided I needed to come in here. To ask you to help me.”
In spite of himself, Mickey’s chest heaved as a bitter laugh began, then stopped with the clutch of his broken ribs. Wincing, he moved his right hand over to cover them.
“Mickey?”
“I’m okay, I’m okay.” He puffed out a quick breath, then another. “Just enjoying the humor in you thinking I could help you. Especially how I am right now.”
“But I know you can.”
He closed his eyes and took a beat to think. She wanted him to help her, was begging him to help her. She was not who they thought she was, and he might be her only hope left. Opening his eyes, he met her gaze. “Look, Alicia,” he said. “This is a little town. How long do you think you can hide from them if they really want to find you? A couple of days? A week? A month? And do you really think that doing that will make it better for you when they do find you? Even if you could avoid them for a little while, you’d just be making it worse.”
“I don’t care if it’s days or a week, Mickey. I need some time. And they need some time to look at other suspects.”
“So you were parked all day out at the beach?”
“Right.”
“You don’t think they’ve got the plates on your car?”
“I don’t know.” Then, realizing the obvious, “They would, wouldn’t they?”
“You can bet on it. You might as well have gone in to work. You’re in that car, they got you.”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“Have you used your cell phone?”
“Sure. To call work and say I was sick. Then your house, and then when Tamara called me back. And then Ian, just to let him know where I was.”
Slowly, now, slowly, against the pain, Mickey shook his head. “You can’t use your cell phone, Alicia. They can locate you by that.”
“They can?”
A small smile. “It’s a rough environment for fugitives out there.”
“But I’m not a fugitive. I’m not under arrest. Not yet, anyway.” She brought her hands up to her forehead, rubbed it, brought her hands back down. “They’re just not looking in the right places, Mickey. They can’t be. They’ve got to be missing something. This was what we talked about when we first got together, you remember? You were going to investigate the murder, now murders, and not let them land, finally, on me. You remember that, don’t you? That’s what this was all about, right? Was I making all that up?”
The details still fresh in his mind, Mickey experienced again the rush of those moments when he’d determined that his plan could resuscitate the dying Hunt Club while at the same time give him an opportunity to get to know this woman. This remarkable woman. This woman with whom he could see himself.
Well, he’d done the Hunt Club part. It had its new clients and its reward billings. His efforts had, at least for the time being, even brought his sister back from the edge of anorexia, returned to her some of her sense of self- worth. All that was left was in some respects, the personal respects, the most important part.
And now the person at the center of that was asking him if she was making all that up? Everything he’d promised her, had she just imagined that? Was it all merely a game for Mickey to toy with and then drop when it became inconvenient, difficult, even perilous? Was she, take away the self-serving rationalizations, just another pretty girl to him?
“Was I, Mickey?” she repeated. “Was I making all that up?”
He took his right hand off his ribs and laid it gently on her shoulder. “No,” he told her. “That’s still what this is about.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you.” She put her hand over his, then leaned over and kissed it. “So what are we going to do?”
Mickey, with some difficulty, pushed himself up on the bed. “First,” he said, “we’d better find where they hid my clothes.”
The clothes and valuables were hung in a plastic bag in the closet. Mickey’s bed was one in a three-bed room, but the one closest to the door. The other patients in the room had screens pulled around those beds, and the one in the middle had three visitors, chatting away. After she brought over the bag of Mickey’s clothes, Alicia went to the hallway door and stood in it, just inside the room.
Even moving slowly and with great care, it didn’t take Mickey more than two minutes to get on his underwear and pants. He couldn’t get his shirt over the cast, but thank God it had been a cold day and he had his jacket, which served. He called Alicia back to him and she helped him with his shoes, left untied. His socks were just too much trouble to even bother with. They went into his jacket pocket along with the shirt.
She took his good right arm and together they strolled out into the hallway.
The walk out of the hospital was challenging. Dizziness made him come to a dead stop three times. Beyond that, even though it was his left arm that was broken, his left leg had evidently gotten banged up badly as well. Both his hip and his knee throbbed with every step and his ribs were worse-constant pinching pain that kept him from standing straight. Once they cleared the building itself, just walking unimpeded out the front entrance, they hit the drizzle and the biting wind. Alicia was wearing her jeans and hiking boots and a water-resistant ski jacket over a pullover sweater, and she pulled her left arm out of the sleeve and wrapped the jacket over Mickey’s shoulders, holding his right arm, pressing up tight against him.
Nevertheless, by the time they made it out to Alicia’s car at the very far end of the darkened parking lot, Mickey was shivering, his teeth actually chattering, a general pain now diffused by the shaking throughout his body. Alicia opened the front passenger side door and got him into the seat, then spun out of her heavy jacket and draped it over him, tucking it in around him. She ran around the car, got in, turned on the ignition, and set the heater to max.
“It’ll warm up in a minute,” she said. “Then we’ll jam the fan.”
Still shivering, his teeth audible in the close space, huddled down inside the blanket, Mickey could barely get out one word. “Good.”
Alicia revved the engine to speed the heating process, but kept her lights and the windshield wipers off. They were cocooned, the drizzle on the car’s windows preventing them from seeing much outside. In less than a minute, she reached down and turned the fan onto high, and feeling the vent, she nodded. “Better than outside already.”
Mickey, rocking almost imperceptibly back and forth, just shook his head.
Five minutes later, the car was warm enough that he didn’t need her jacket and she gently helped him get it unwrapped from around him. His shivering had stopped and with the surcease of movement, the pain had noticeably lessened everywhere but in his arm and ribs. “No phones,” he said. “In fact, turn it off completely.”
“But what if we have to call somebody?”
“We’ll borrow somebody’s, or find a pay phone. We really don’t want to use your cell. Starting now.”
“Okay.” She held down the button that turned her phone off. “I’m trusting you.”
“That’s a good idea.”
She looked over at him. “So what are we going to do now?”
“Good question,” he said. “Dancing’s definitely out, though.”
“Darn.”
“I know. It’s a disappointment. I’m a great dancer, actually. You ever go to the swing clubs?”
“Not enough. Drawback of working nights.”
“Well, when we get out of this, maybe some Monday or Tuesday.. .” He lapsed into a thoughtful silence.
And eventually Alicia broke it. “Mickey?”
“I’m thinking. You got any close girlfriends you can trust who live alone?”
She considered for a moment, then shook her head. “Not who live alone, no. I’m about the only one my age I know who does. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking you’re going to have to lie low somewhere where the cops won’t think to look for you, if it gets
