promise me two things-”
“Let me guess. I won’t rob anyone in the restroom,” she said impatiently. “And I won’t start any fires.”
“Thanks. Hurry, all right?”
She frowned, said, “Why should I? Your girlfriend’s not in any hurry.”
She then strolled off at a leisurely pace. He knew he had doomed himself-she’d take as long as possible now.
In the next moment, his thoughts were completely distracted from Spooky. Meghan Taggert walked into the restaurant.
He had wondered if she would look different. She did. She wasn’t the teenaged Meghan whose image he held in his mind, or the girl in half a dozen cherished photos taken during visits to her family’s home when he was in high school with her brother. She had matured from the pretty girl every boy in Malibu had wanted to date to a woman who, dressed in blue jeans, a loose sweater, and hiking boots, radiated elegance and an indefinable something, a quality of which Kit could already see the usual effects: women studying her with slight frowns on their faces, men with drinks half-lifted to their mouths-halted mid-action as they stared.
If she was aware of these effects, she didn’t reveal it in any way. She scanned the room as if its population didn’t exist, then saw him and smiled.
He was glad he didn’t have a drink in his hand.
He stood and began walking toward her, and her smile widened, and he found himself smiling back. As he came nearer, he saw that she was opening her arms, and he realized she was going to hug him, so he quickly forced his mind to put up one of the mental partitions that he built whenever he needed to cope with what at times seemed to him an embrace-crazed society. But although no one else ever had noticed this slight withdrawal, she seemed to sense it immediately and changed the motion a little, so that she merely lightly touched his shoulders before dropping her arms. Her smile seemed to waver, and he felt something in the region of his chest waver with it. Then she said in her husky voice, “Kit Logan, it’s been far too long since I’ve seen you.”
He felt a sudden urge to do something that-from the age of ten-he had never done of his own volition with an adult woman. He wanted to open his arms to her.
But then the memories came pushing and shoving their way into his awareness, and the desire passed.
“Yes,” he said, “I’ve missed you.”
She smiled up at him, and he let out a breath he had not realized he was holding.
“This must be Malibu week in Albuquerque,” she said. “You’ll never guess who I saw making out with his girlfriend in the tram.”
“Who?” he asked sharply.
“What’s wrong?”
He tried to keep his voice calm. He was thinking of the ones who killed Molly, though, and the incident at the hotel, and wondered if the FBI had ever been watching Meghan, or if his suspicions were right. “If you saw someone from Malibu, I don’t think it was a coincidence.”
“It was just Freddy,” she said. “You know, Freddy the Fourth.” She said it lightly, but he could tell that she had started to worry, too.
“Where is he now?”
She looked around. “I don’t see him. Probably with the group of hikers he was with. By the way, where’s Spooky?”
“In the women’s room. Listen, I’m going to take a look around, to see if I can find him, just to make sure he’s actually going on the hike. Would you mind going into the women’s room and waiting there with Spooky until I figure out where he is?”
She was studying him in the way she used to study him when he was a teenager. Assessing something he had told her, sorting out for herself whether or not it was part of his craziness. “Okay,” she said. “But what if-what if something happens to you?”
“Nothing will happen to me,” he said. “I’m not going to confront him unless he tries to hurt you or Spooky. In fact, I don’t want him to know I’m here, if I can help it. I just want to try to figure out what he’s up to.” He described Spooky and what she was wearing. He then asked Meghan to describe what Freddy was wearing.
“And the girlfriend? What did she look like?”
She told him, then said, “Now that I think about it, she was dressed for hiking. He wasn’t really, was he?”
“I’ll find out.”
She came with him as he hurried to the table and collected his jacket and Spooky’s, and paid for the drinks. He gave Spooky’s jacket to Meghan.
He also wrote a quick note to Spooky on a cocktail napkin and gave it to Meghan.
“Don’t let her intimidate you,” he warned.
She laughed. “I won’t.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Be careful,” she said, and walked off. He watched until he was sure she had safely entered the women’s room. He waited another minute, just in case Spooky came bounding out in rebellion. He didn’t even hear raised voices, though, so he made his way to the restaurant entrance.
There, he approached the woman who was seating newly arrived customers. “Mr. Logan,” she said, smiling at him. “I saw your friend arrive. So did all the men in the place. Is your party ready to be seated now?”
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “But I’m afraid we’re going to have to leave without dining.” He took two one- hundred-dollar bills from his wallet and gave one to her. “Someone may come in and ask for Ms. Taggert-his name is Fred. He’s an old boyfriend who has followed her up here. Rather than make a scene in the restaurant, I’d like to treat him to dinner. That’s what the hundred’s for.”
“Generous of you,” she said. “I don’t get it, though.”
“He might try to tell you that he’s her brother. He may even claim that he’s with the FBI.”
“The FBI!”
“Ridiculous, isn’t it? He may even have some realistic-looking ID. If he says that he’s with the FBI, offer to verify that with the local FBI field office, and I think he’ll take the next tram downhill. But if he says he’s her brother or gives his own name, please seat him at my table-without letting him know I’m here, please. Perhaps you could pretend she’s been waiting for a gentleman to join her, and tell him the table’s hers and that she’ll be right back?”
The hostess laughed and erased “Logan-3” in her reservations book, then replaced it with “Taggert-2.”
He smiled and gave her the other hundred. “That one is for your trouble.”
“Mr. Logan-that’s not necessary.”
“No, I know it’s not. So you don’t need to feel bad about taking it. One other thing-could I use the service road?”
“No problem.”
He told her to watch for a young man with light, short hair, blue eyes, and wearing an aviator jacket. “He might be wearing sunglasses,” he added.
“Indoors?”
“Oh yes.”
He hurried outside.
Kit stood still and listened. Meghan said Freddy was with a group of hikers, and now he heard the voices of a group of people gathering to the left of where he stood. He walked around the building until he saw them. He casually approached one of the men who seemed to be a group leader and began asking questions.
A moonlight hike. Yes, it was a big group, but they had another fifteen who had started a little later and would probably be coming up on the next tram. Yes, a hiking club based in Albuquerque. Freddy? No, he didn’t think there was a Freddy in the group.
After waiting to make sure his little boyakina wasn’t going to come back toward the tram platform, Frederick entered the restaurant, looking self-assured. He achieved this by asking himself, “What would James Dean do in this situation?”
The answer came to him immediately. James Dean would be cool. You would look at James Dean and say,
