Private Affair(49)

Olivia shifted in her seat. “We have to call the police.”

“No!”

Olivia pushed out the chair, strode to where she’d left her purse on the sideboard and picked up the cell phone she’d laid beside it.

Claire’s eyes widened. Leaping up, she followed on Olivia’s heels.

“No!” she shouted again. “You can’t call. You’ll get us both killed.”

“We can’t handle this by ourselves.”

When she started to press 911, the other woman made a grab for the phone. Olivia wrenched her hand away and took a step back. Still on the attack, Claire lunged forward and smacked Olivia across the face with surprising force. Stunned, she reared back as Claire reached out again. But this time Olivia was too disoriented to hang on to the phone. Claire snatched it from Olivia’s hand and threw it on the floor, where she crushed it under the heel of her shoe with a crackling sound.

Olivia stared at the phone in horror.

***

Max pounded his hands against the steering wheel.

“Come on,” he muttered, speaking to Shane, who obviously couldn’t hear him. He had been waiting in the parking lot for ten minutes and Shane hadn’t showed. In frustration, he kept scanning the entrances, waiting for his partner, but so far he was sitting here in his car all by himself.

Unable to stay still any longer, he got out his phone again and texted. Where are you?

There was no answer for several moments, then another text message flashed onto the screen. Almost there.

OK.

To get a better view of his surroundings, he got out of the car and craned his neck scanning the highway outside the parking area. A vehicle came down the road, and he breathed out a sigh when he assumed it was Shane. But it drove on by, leaving him tenser than ever. Once again, the minutes ticked by again and still no Shane.

Max cursed under his breath. It wasn’t like either of his partners to pull this kind of stunt. He’d joined up with them partly because he knew they were both reliable. So what the hell was going on? Had Shane flipped out?

He squeezed the cell phone in his hand, then relaxed his grip. He was still holding the instrument when it rang. When he scanned the number, he didn’t recognize who it was, and he didn’t have the patience for anything extraneous now. But ignoring the call didn’t appear to be an option, because the phone kept ringing.

“All right. All right,” he shouted as he stabbed the answer button, almost putting his finger through the damn screen.

To his surprise, Shane’s voice came over the line like there was nothing out of the ordinary about the call. “Just want to give you a heads up.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I’ve been waiting in this parking lot for you for half an hour.”

“Huh?”

“You texted me. You said you had some information about Olivia.”

The man on the other end of the line swore. “That wasn’t me. I’ve been running around for the past few hours trying to find out what happened to my phone—and get a new one. It was acting wonky, and I took it to the repair shop—where it disappeared.”

Max’s heart had begun to thud. “Jesus, what are you talking about?”

“Someone went to a lot of trouble to steal my phone. They must have jammed the signal. I dropped it off at the repair shop, and when I went to pick it up, they told me it had disappeared, and they’d give me a replacement.”

“And you didn’t think that was strange?” Max asked in a hard voice.

“Yeah, I thought it was strange. I’ve been trying to figure out what was going on, but I sure as hell didn’t think it had anything to do with you.”

Max was already starting the engine as he struggled to speak coherently. “Well, whoever took your phone did it so he could send me a bunch of text messages that I’d think were from you.”

“What messages?”

“That you had confidential information about Olivia that you didn’t want to tell me over the phone—or in front of her.” Gunning the engine, he headed for the parking lot exit. “Got to go. Someone used your phone to lure me away from the house, and Olivia is there alone.”

“Oh Christ,” Shane answered. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Max agreed as he sped back the way he’d come, praying that he wasn’t going to find a disaster when he arrived at the house.

“Do you want us over there?” Shane was asking.

“I don’t know.” He hung up because he knew he was driving too fast to focus on the call and stay on the road.

Fear pounded through him like massive blows from a boxer’s fist as he raced toward the farmhouse, cursing himself for leaving. Christ, he’d wanted to protect Olivia, and he’d let some bastard sucker him into charging off to a bogus meeting without confirming who was texting him. But the messages had come from Shane’s phone, for Christ’s sake. And Max had been all too willing to believe there was something shady in Olivia’s background that would be a major factor in the case.