“Will she hide you?”
“If I ask her to.”
“She wouldn’t betray your trust?”
Without an instant’s hesitation, she gave an emphatic shake of her head.
“That means she can’t call in the cavalry either,” he said.
“That would be the last thing Tori would do.”
It went against his nature, as well as his training and experience, to trust anyone. But he had no choice except to give Honor the benefit of the doubt. As soon as he was out of sight, she might very well sic Doral Hawkins on him, but that was a risk he had to take.
The alternative was to keep her and Emily with him. If he did, they could very well get hurt or killed. He didn’t think even he, who’d seen unimaginable atrocities, and had inflicted a few himself, could handle watching the two of them die. It was his fault they were in this. He should have left Honor blissfully ignorant.
But second-guessing was a waste of energy, and he didn’t have time for regret.
“Okay. You’re about to put that implicit trust in your friend to the test. What’s her number?”
“It won’t work if you call. I’ll have to.”
He shook his head. “If you do, you could be implicated.”
“Implicated? In what?”
He glanced at Emily, who was singing along with Elmo. The ditty had annoyed him at first, but he was used to it by now and, most of the time, able to tune it out. Coming back to Honor, he spoke softly. “Implicated in any shit that may come down when my deadline expires.” Her green eyes stayed fixed on his; he read the question in them. “If I do nothing else, I’m going to take care of Doral Hawkins.”
“Take care of?”
“You know what I mean.”
“You can’t just kill him,” she whispered.
“Yeah, I can. I will. I am.”
She turned her head away and stared through the bug-spattered windshield at the glowering sky. Visibly distressed, she said, “I’m so far out of my element here.”
“I realize that. But this is my element, so you’ve got to trust my judgment.”
“I know you’re doubtful about Stan. But he would-”
“Not an option.”
“He’s my father-in-law, Coburn. He loves us.”
He lowered his voice even more, so that Emily wouldn’t be distracted from her singing. “Do you want Emily around to witness the confrontation between him and me? Because you know it will eventually come down to that. Do you think he’s going to let me just walk into his house and start going through Eddie’s things? No. Whether he’s guilty of partnering with The Bookkeeper or Marset, or an honest citizen safeguarding his dead son’s good name, he’s going to resist my intrusion. With force. Not only that, he’ll be good and pissed with me for dragging you and his granddaughter into this.”
Her expression was a giveaway. She knew he was right. Even so, she continued to look miserably indecisive. He gave her only a few seconds before prodding her again. “What’s Tori’s number?”
She raised her chin stubbornly. “Sorry, Coburn. I can’t.”
“You don’t trust her enough?”
“This is my mess. How can I drag Tori into it? I’ll be placing her in danger, too.”
“Tough choice, I know. But it’s the only one you’ve got. Unless…” He tipped his head toward Emily. “You trust Doral Hawkins to spare her life.
She gave him a baleful look. “You always use that.”
“Because it always works. What’s Tori’s number?”
Chapter 28
Even before Tori checked the light beyond her shutters, she knew by instinct that it was an ungodly hour for her phone to be ringing.
She groaned and buried her head deep into her pillow to escape the noise. Then, remembering the events of yesterday, she rolled toward her nightstand and grabbed her phone. “Hello?”
“Tori, did I wake you up?”
Not Honor and not Bonnell, who were the only people on earth whom she might forgive for calling her at dawn. “Who’s this?”
“Amber.”
Tori scowled and flopped back down onto her pillow. “What? And it had better be good.”
“Well, just like you instructed me, the first thing I do each morning after turning off the alarm is to turn on the sauna and whirlpool in both locker rooms so they can be getting hot. Then when all the lights in the studio have been turned on, I unlock the front door, because sometimes there are people waiting-”
“For godsake, Amber, get to it.”
“That’s when I check the main number’s voice mail. This morning, somebody left a weird message at 5:58, just a few minutes before I opened up.”
“Well, what was it?”
“ ‘What does Barbie see in Ken?’ ”
Tori sat bolt upright in bed. “That’s all she said?”
“Actually it was a man.”
Tori thought on that for several moments, then said, “Well, isn’t it obvious to you that it was a crank call? Don’t bother me with crap like this again.”
“Are you coming in today?”
“Don’t count on it. Cover for me.”
Tori ended the call and bounded out of bed. She skipped doing her hair and makeup, which she
But halfway to her car in the driveway, she noticed a beat-up panel truck parked at the curb across the street, about a third of the distance to the corner. Anyone inside it would have an unobstructed view of her house. She couldn’t tell whether or not anyone was behind the wheel, but Doral’s words came back to her.
Maybe she’d been watching too many crime shows on TV, maybe she was being super-paranoid, but she’d never seen the truck on her street before, her best friend had been kidnapped yesterday, and she’d been threatened and manhandled by a local hoodlum.
She’d rather be paranoid than stupid.
Rather than continuing on to her car, she bent down and picked up the morning issue of the newspaper that was lying in the wet grass. Pretending to read the front page, assuming a casual saunter, she retraced her steps back into the house and soundly closed the door behind her.
Then she quickly went through her house, slipped out her back door, and, cutting a path that couldn’t be seen from the street, walked across her lawn, which melded into that belonging to the house directly behind hers. There was a light on in the kitchen. She knocked on the door.
It was answered by a handsome, buff young man. He was cradling a smug-looking cat in his arms. Tori despised the cat, and the feeling was mutual. But she adored the man, because he’d once told her that in his next life he wanted to be an unapologetic diva bitch just like her.
He was a client who never missed a workout. Well-defined biceps bulged when he pushed open the screen door and motioned her in. “This is a surprise! Hon, look who’s come to call. Tori.”
