Private Affair(5)

Still with his arm around her, he turned his back on the open area and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, hiding his action from view with his body. Punching in a number, he waited until Shane Gallagher, one of his partners, picked up. He and Jack Brandt were nearby, stationed where they had a good view of the restaurant—from two different angles.

“See anything we should watch out for?” he asked.

“As far as we can tell the area’s clear.”

“Okay. Thanks,” he answered, hoping their reassurance was solid. Or maybe the person who had killed Angela Dawson would come sneaking up on the meeting, and Shane and Jack would grab them before anything else bad could happen to former members of the graduating class.

Max, Shane, and Jack had pooled their resources to start Rockfort Security more than two years ago. Unlikely as it sounded, they’d met in a Miami jail—which was an excellent instant evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses. When they’d found they had a lot in common—including being from the DC-Baltimore area—they’d kicked around the idea of starting the agency. Since they’d opened their doors, Rockfort’s reputation had spread through recommendations from satisfied clients. Now he was the point man on this case, and his two partners were his backup.

“Your phone’s on vibrate?” Jack asked.

“Yeah.”

“We’ll signal if we see anything you need to know about.”

Max signed off, wondering who else might be out there. In his mind, he hadn’t called the perp “him.” In some ways, being a woman would be an advantage for the killer. A woman would have an easier time hiding in small spaces or pretending to be a customer at Angela’s boutique.

When he put away the phone, Olivia gave him an anxious look. “Anything wrong?”

“No. I was just checking with Jack and Shane.”

“And?”

“Nothing suspicious.”

“Good.” The four of them had gotten together for several planning sessions, and she was more or less comfortable with his partners. Maybe more comfortable than with him, because they could keep a professional distance, like backstage crew members. With her, he didn’t have that luxury.

“Were you expecting trouble?” she asked in a voice she couldn’t quite hold steady.

“No. It would be stupid to attack this meeting. But you could say it was stupid to attack Angela so blatantly. I have to be prepared for trouble now.”

“Or—to put it another way, for the killer to be a nutcase,” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

He dragged in a breath and let it out, switching his focus to his role in this drama. He was going to mingle with a whole bunch of people from his high school days. If they remembered him, it would be by his bad boy reputation. And he might even remember some of them, although he certainly hadn’t run with their crowd back in the day. But it had been difficult not to notice the school celebs parading their status through the halls of Donley High. It was different with Olivia. She’d gone to classes and partied with them. But he’d made up for the lack of personal knowledge by studying the backgrounds of everybody who was on the reunion   committee—and a lot of the other people in the class as well. He’d also discussed most of them with Olivia, getting her take, although sometimes her answers made him wonder if she was being entirely honest.

Like had she been intimate with some of the boys back in high school? Under ordinary circumstances, he could have said that was none of his business. Now any intimate relationships would have given him more insight into the dynamics of the group. But he wasn’t going to ask her about it.

They started for the restaurant again, and when they stepped through the door into the air-conditioned atmosphere, Max took a moment to orient himself. Although the exterior was an old barn, the interior had been completely remodeled into an upscale grill, converted after he’d left Howard County with a parquet floor, dark wood booths along the walls, and tables in the middle of the room. There were diners at many of the tables in groups of two or four. Nothing that looked like any kind of meeting. But that probably wouldn’t be in the main room.

As he stood taking in the scene, a redheaded hostess wearing three-inch heels and a strappy green sundress approached them.

“Can I help you?”

“The Donley reunion   committee meeting?”

“Oh, that’s in our party room. Just down the hall.” She gave Olivia a studied look, then gestured toward a corridor on their left.

“Thank you,” he answered, wondering if the hostess recognized Olivia from some of the commercials she’d done. Or perhaps her pale skin just stood out against the darkened interior of the restaurant. He knew she didn’t want to be here, and he would have handled this part of the assignment on his own, if that had been possible. But she was his ticket into the group, his best opportunity to meet them in a casual way.