When All The Girls Have Gone(27)

He leaned in very close. She did not retreat. For a moment it seemed as if the world around them had stopped.

He kissed her. It was just a quick kiss. He told himself it was an experiment. But she did not pull back. Instead she put one hand on his bare shoulder. Her fingers were incredibly warm and soft on his skin. Her mouth softened under his.

When he raised his head, she did not speak. She just watched him as though fascinated.

"For the record, you are a very, very good bad influence," he said.

She took a deep breath. "Thanks."

He turned away, grabbed his dried trousers and headed for the bedroom to get dressed before he did something really dumb-like tell her that he had been wanting to kiss her since he had met her. Like tell her that he wanted to go on kissing her now.

Priorities, he thought. You've got a few. One foot in front of the other.





CHAPTER 30




Roxanne Briggs stirred the simmering pot of oatmeal with a wooden spoon and reflected on the past. It occurred to her that that was all she ever thought about these days-the past.

It was early-not yet five thirty. It would be a while before the first light of dawn, but the storm had passed. She had not slept at all during the night. Egan had said very little when he had returned from going after Max Cutler and Charlotte Sawyer. He had been in an adrenaline-fueled rage. He'd headed straight for the whiskey bottle.

When she'd asked him what he'd done, he'd said only that Cutler and Sawyer wouldn't be a problem now. She had demanded an explanation. He'd told her that there had been an accident. Cutler's vehicle had gone into the river. He and the Sawyer woman could not possibly have survived.

She had known then that he had attempted to murder Cutler and Sawyer. But she was not so certain that he had been successful. There had been something very competent-looking about Cutler. Her intuition told her that he would not panic in a crisis. Charlotte Sawyer had also seemed very formidable in her own right.

Still, they were just a couple of city people who had wound up in a flooding river. Odds were, they hadn't made it out. But even if they were both gone, it was clear now that the world was falling apart. The secrets that she and Egan had kept for so long were coming back to haunt them.

Karma was a bitch goddess.

Eventually Egan had passed out in his big leather chair. She had undressed and gone to bed, but she had not slept at all. How could a woman sleep when she knew she was coming to the end of a very dark road?

Until now she had been able to endure the misery of her marriage because of Nolan. She had sacrificed everything for him. She was a mother, after all. But on this bleak morning she was no longer sure she could keep going, not even for the sake of her son.

Egan loomed in the doorway. "Pack your things. We're leaving."

She turned toward him. "What?"

"Did some thinking last night. Cutler and Sawyer are probably dead, but there's a chance they made it out of the river. Doesn't much matter. Alive or dead, they're a problem. They've been poking around in the past, and sooner or later the shit is gonna hit the fan. We need to get the hell off this mountain. Find a new place. Idaho, maybe. Or Wyoming."

Roxanne looked down at the simmering oatmeal and made her decision. "No," she said.

"Don't be a fool. We can't risk hanging around here. If Cutler and Sawyer survived, they'll go straight to the cops. If they're dead, the cops are gonna come around asking questions. Forget the oatmeal and start packing."   





 

"No," she said again, her voice very steady now.

"Suit yourself. I'm getting out. Up to you if you want to come with me or not."

She tightened her grip on the spoon. Only one thing was clear-she had never hated Egan more than she did in that moment.

"I told you years ago it would blow up in our faces," she said.

"Bullshit. You were as happy to take the money as I was."

She did not answer that. There was nothing to say. She had agreed to keep the secret and take the money. For Nolan's sake.

"When are you leaving?" she asked, trying to sound matter-of-fact.

"Today. I'll take the SUV. Got to make a phone call first. Get one last payment out of the bastard."

"Under the circumstances, that might not be smart," she said. "You told me yourself that Trey Greenslade has become a lot more dangerous in the last few months."

"The death of his old man set him off, no question about it. At least two women are dead. Cutler was right about one thing-the murders aren't going to stop. Trey is escalating. But he's smart. He knows he's got a hell of a lot to protect-he's first in line to take control of Loring-Greenslade. Trust me, he'll make one more payoff, especially if he knows he's going to get what he wants."

The oatmeal was starting to scorch. Automatically Roxanne moved it off the heat.

Egan was right. Trey had inherited everything-the Greenslade name, the Greenslade pharmaceutical company, the Greenslade position in Loring. The only thing that stood in his way was Egan.

"Well?" Egan asked. "You sure you want to stay here?"

She had made her decision. She and Egan were bonded by the secrets they kept, but that was the only thing that connected them.

"I told you," she said. "I'm not going with you."

For a moment she thought he might try to talk her into leaving with him-not because he loved her but because she knew his secrets and had kept them faithfully for so long. She was the only person on the face of the earth that he could trust and they both knew it.

And then she wondered if he would kill her to make sure she didn't tell anyone the truth about the past.

Surreptitiously she moved her hand to the kitchen towel crumpled on the counter.

But in the end, Egan merely shrugged and walked away into the other room.

"Suit yourself," he said.

She stood quietly in the kitchen, her hand resting on the counter near the towel.

She could hear Egan in the bedroom, tossing clothes into a suitcase. After a time she heard him go down into the basement. When he returned, he had the old cardboard file box in his arms. She held her breath.

"I'm taking this with me," he said, daring her to argue.

"You're welcome to it," she said. She looked at the picture of her son on the mantel.

"What should I tell Nolan?" she asked.

"Tell him whatever the hell you want to tell him." Egan headed for the door with the file box. "He won't give a damn. All he cares about is his next fix. He's a junkie, Roxanne. Junkies don't change. One of these days he'll OD and that will be the end of it. The only one who's going to shed any tears will be you."

She stayed in the kitchen while Egan finished packing up the SUV. Only when he finally climbed behind the wheel and drove off down the graveled road did she finally take a deep breath.

Heart pounding, she picked up the towel and looked at the gun on the counter. The previous night she'd toyed with thoughts of using it on herself. But that morning her maternal instincts had kicked in. She had been prepared to kill Egan if he had made a move to get rid of her.

She had to survive to take care of Nolan.





CHAPTER 31




"What the hell made you go up that damn mountain to meet with Egan Briggs? Everyone knows he and his wife are both batshit crazy. They're a couple of world-class preppers. You're lucky all you lost was your vehicle. You could just as easily have gotten your heads blown off."

"Trust me, that thought has occurred to us," Max said. "And the reason we went to see Briggs is because I'm investigating the death of Louise Flint."

The detective's name was Tucker Walsh. He was in his midthirties. He had explained that he had joined the Loring department two years earlier because he and his wife had wanted a nice, safe, small-town environment in which to raise their kids.

Walsh came across as both intelligent and professional, but, like Charlotte, Max was withholding judgment on anyone who was even remotely connected to the Loring Police Department. Maybe we're both a little paranoid, he thought. Nearly getting murdered sometimes has that effect on a person. So sue us.   





 

The trek out of the mountains had gone smoothly, all things considered. There were a lot of repair crews out, as he had predicted. In the end he and Charlotte had been chauffeured into Loring by the friendly owner of a tree removal service.

By prior agreement, they had been careful not to mention Egan and Roxanne Briggs to the driver. Instead they had explained the loss of their vehicle as an accident. Just a couple of tourists who'd had no business trying to navigate the treacherous mountain roads in bad weather.

The first stop in Loring had been a rental car agency, not the police station. Charlotte had lost her handbag and with it her credit cards, cell phone and identification. But his wallet and the plastic in it had survived in his hip pocket. He'd had no trouble renting a vehicle.

Satisfied that he now had a way to get Charlotte and himself back to Seattle, he had made the Loring PD their next stop.

The department's headquarters was housed in a gleaming new building in the center of town. There was a shiny new library across the street. The nearby shops and stores appeared prosperous. The coffeehouses and eateries were filled with students and various academic types.

The campus dominated the north end of town. It consisted of a collection of handsome, brick-fronted buildings scattered across a serene, heavily wooded landscape.

From what Max had seen, the college was one of the community's two major economic engines. The second was a large, prosperous-looking pharmaceutical company named Loring-Greenslade Biotech.