“Where?”
“Down by the river. I want to see how good you can shoot a gun.”
“You’re so romantic.”
He nodded.
“The first rule of being romantic is to not be dead.”
Walking with his arm around January’s waist, River told her about an old friend named Charley-Anna who got dropped from a roof last weekend. That’s where River was this afternoon, checking the woman’s house and subsequently feeling out a hotshot lawyer named Crockett Bluetone.
“Do you think he did it?” January asked.
“I’m not sure. He admitted having an affair with her four months ago but says they split up amicably shortly after that.”
“You don’t believe him.”
No.
He didn’t.
“Why would he kill her?”
“It could be any number of reasons,” he said. “The obvious one is that she might have been blackmailing him. She might have threatened to tell the wife about the affair unless he paid her off. She might have even set that up from the beginning. Maybe that’s why she was keeping the airplane tickets-they were the proof. Or she might have found out some dirt on him during pillow talk time and was blackmailing him about that. There’s also the possibility that he was in trouble with some third party and they sent him a message by killing her. For all I know he was still seeing her. He says he wasn’t but who knows? She might have been precious to him and someone else knew it.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I need to chew on it.”
“You want me to seduce him? I can get him to talk.”
River laughed.
“No, no seducing.”
“Why not?”
River picked her up, flung her over his shoulder and slapped her ass.
“Because.”
64
Tuesday evening Wilde headed outside under a darkening sky for a jog. The air was moist, just short of rain. To the west, charcoal clouds churned over the mountains and worked their wicked way towards Denver. A storm was coming, a mean storm. Blondie’s top was up but it wouldn’t hurt to make sure the window curtains were tight.
Alabama had left the office shortly after four and hadn’t come home yet.
As usual, Wilde ran too fast starting out and used up all his wind, which forced him into a more sustainable beat. His best distance was the quarter-mile. He’d never been fast enough out of the blocks to be competitive in the hundred or two-twenty. Nor could he keep up a full sprint for a half-mile.
The quarter-mile, however, was his.
He was fast enough out of the blocks and had the stamina to sprint the whole thing. His best time so far was 55.3, which wasn’t world-class by any means but respectable enough.
The streetlights kicked on.
Right now, the dark beauty London Marshall was holed up in Wilde’s office with the lights out and the door locked. After the jog, Wilde would go over to her house to check and make sure no little surprise visitors were waiting for her in the closet. Then he’d call and tell her the coast was clear.
She’d come home.
Wilde would spend the night on the couch.
With any luck, whoever was after the woman would make his move.
London.
London.
London.
She was a striking woman, every bit as striking as Secret.
Secret was the one for Wilde though.
She got there first.
Wilde needed to focus on her and not get distracted.
That was his problem, he always allowed himself to get distracted. “That’s why you’re still single,” Alabama told him at one point. “Women come too easy to you.”
“That’s not true.”
Those were the words that came out of his mouth,
Down deep, though, it was true.
Even now, focused on Secret, there was an uncontrollable corner of his brain that wondered what it would be like to unwrap London.
When he got home, Alabama still wasn’t there. Wilde took a long hot shower, dried his hair just enough to get the drip gone, and stepped out with the towel wrapped around his waist.
Alabama was upside down on the couch, with her back on the cushions and her legs up. Her hair hung over the edge and hung down towards the floor. She looked at Wilde with upside down eyes and said, “I found out some stuff.”
Wilde headed over.
“Like what?”
With a lightning reach, Alabama grabbed the towel, yanked it off and tossed it over the edge of the couch.
She laughed.
“Seven.”
“You need to stop doing that.”
“And counting.”
Wilde fetched the towel, rewrapped it and sat down next to her.
“So what did you find out?”
Alabama spread her knees ever so slightly. Wilde detected the movement in his peripheral vision but didn’t react.
“First,” Alabama said, “I went to Gina Sophia’s law firm and had a little talk with a bun-haired receptionist. I told her I was trying to track down a friend of mine who looked like Robert Mitchum. I told her he uses a lot of lawyers and asked her if he was using anyone there at Jackson amp; Reacher. She told me that no one like that had ever been there-she would have remembered, Robert Mitchum was her favorite actor. She would have seen him, too, because she was the only receptionist.”
Wilde grunted.
“All that shows is that Mitchum and the lawyer didn’t meet at work,” he said. “It doesn’t prove they didn’t know each other.”
