“Did she?”
“Someone thinks so.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“And you didn’t answer mine.”
Silence indicated we were both going to be stubborn about this.
“I’m going to make time to see you,” Chase finally said, like it was totally putting him out. “I’ll be there at eight, as I said. But I won’t have time for dinner. I’ll just meet you at your shop.”
“Don’t go changing plans just for me.”
“I think we have some things to clear up. We need to do this in person. I’ll see you at eight.” And now he really did end the call.
I stared at the BlackBerry, then tossed it on the passenger seat. What exactly had just happened here? The only thing he said for sure was that he wasn’t driving that Dakota. It was the only thing he hadn’t skirted around.
Speaking of skirts, I touched the outline of the diamond in my pocket. I couldn’t drive around with this; I needed to do something with it. Put it in a safe place. But where? My safe was gone, lifted-literally-by Matthew. The safest place for the ring, ironically, had been in that orchid pot. I probably should’ve just left it there.
The sign for the In-N-Out beckoned just ahead. When in doubt, go for a Double-Double.
I took my burger and lemonade to an empty table and sat down, peeling back the paper on the burger and taking a big bite. I was still chewing when my phone rang. My phone, this time, not Simon Chase’s.
“Hello?” I asked after swallowing, wiping my mouth with a napkin.
“Brett?” It was Tim. “What’s going on? What do you want?”
“I found something,” I said. “I found what they were looking for.”
But before I could elaborate, a hand clasped itself over mine, yanking the phone away from my ear. I heard Tim distantly asking, “What?” as another hand twisted my other shoulder.
I wrenched my head back as far as I could to see the eagle wings on his neck.
Matthew.
Chapter 55
His breath was hot against my ear.
“You’re coming with me.” His voice was deeper than I’d imagined, gravelly, like he smoked three packs a day. But I didn’t smell cigarettes on him, just a musky odor mixed with sweat.
His hand shifted underneath my armpit and lifted me up. I still held the burger as he almost carried me out the door. My phone was on the table.
I expected to see the Dodge Dakota, but it wasn’t in the parking lot. Instead, Matthew led me to a motorcycle, a Harley.
“We’re going for a ride,” he said, handing me my bag and taking the burger, throwing it in a trash can.
I slung my bag over my shoulder and shook my head. “Not on that thing.”
He nodded. “Yes, on that thing.”
I shook my head more violently. “I don’t ride bikes. I can’t.” The tremble in my voice caused him to hesitate, peer into my face. “I really can’t,” I whispered, memories flashing through my brain like a slide show: motorcycle, asphalt, blood, exposed bone.
My fear must have registered with him, and his face changed slightly.
“Tell me why,” he said.
I swallowed hard, but the fear still stuck in my throat.
Finally, he nodded, the veins in his neck pulsating, causing the wings to move. “We’ll take your car. But I’m driving.”
I looked around to see if anyone was nearby, but the line for the drive-up window was on the other side of the building, and it wasn’t exactly lunchtime, so there was a distinct lack of customers. As I pondered screaming-not even sure I could because my mouth was so dry-he shoved me into my car after grabbing my bag and finding my keys.
He’d started the car, and we were peeling out of the lot when I realized he hadn’t shown a gun or knife or anything. He was just there. Big and imposing. I found my voice.
“Where are you taking me?”
He glanced at me, then looked back at the road. “Where is it?” he asked.
I forced myself not to touch my pocket. “What?”
“You were saying you found it.”
“My keys. I found my keys. I’d lost them.”
“You said you’d found what ‘they’ were looking for. That doesn’t sound like your keys.”
Give the guy a gold star. He wasn’t stupid. Even though he might look it.
“I misspoke.” I sounded like one of those politicians making excuses for saying something truly stupid.
“No, no, I don’t think you did.”
“Where’s Elise? What have you done with her?”
“Don’t worry about her.”
“Why not?”
“What did you do with it?”
Back to the diamond again. This guy was getting a little tiring. I studied the eagle on his neck for a second.
“Coleman does a nice tat,” I muttered. “Even if he likes flash.”
“It’s not flash.”
“What?”
“My sister designed it.”
“Kelly?”
“She was good.”
“I saw she worked at that shop in Malibu.”
He gave me a quick glance before looking back at the road again. He didn’t speak for a long time as we headed west on 215, and abruptly he got off the highway, turned onto Charleston toward Red Rock Canyon, through Summerlin. The housing developments on our right clashed with the brown desert on the left. Everything was brown here; it was the hardest thing to get used to after the greenness of the East Coast. But after a while, I saw past the brown to the touches of green in the banana yuccas, the Joshua trees, the bright blooms of the desert in the winter, the red rocks that crashed into a bright blue, cloudless sky.
“She loved him at first,” Matthew finally spoke, and I took “him” to mean Jeff Coleman. “She was grateful for what he did. I was grateful for what he did. But she got restless. And she was pretty once she got cleaned up, really pretty. Coleman kept her in that shop; she needed to go.”
I knew how she felt.
“Who killed her?” I asked.
He slammed on the brakes, the car skidding across the road and over into the breakdown lane. When we stopped, he twisted around in the seat, his left arm draped across the steering wheel, his right looping over the top of my seat. His fingers grabbed my hair and yanked me back.
“Don’t worry about that.”
There were a lot of things to worry about now, and he was right: Kelly Masters’s murder wasn’t exactly at the top of the list for me at the moment.
“I was just making conversation,” I tried.
He let go of my hair and turned back to the wheel. My fingers found the armrest and crawled over to the door release latch. I had to get out of here. The guy had beat up Ace, trashed my shop, and who knew what else?
I yanked at the release just as the car started to move. My door swung open, and before he could register it, I threw myself out of the car, rolling along the dirt by the side of the road. When I came to a stop, I saw the car was
