Chapters (46)
- COVER PAGE
- PRAISE
- DEDICATION
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- SNEAK PEEK: EXIT .45
She’d sent a message to Tony in Chicago, but so far his only correspondence had been a text confirmation that they had checked into a hotel.
She typed a second message: Tony, please ask Alex to call me.
She hit send, and a minute later the reply came through: I haven’t told him the news yet. I’m reflecting on how best to explain it to him. I’ll get him to call in the next couple of days, once he’s had a chance to process what’s happened.
She almost crushed the phone in her hand.
Maybe she should just keep it simple, appeal to any extant decency.
She typed: My father’s dead, and I’m desperate to talk to my son.
That was the truth. Probably the most honest phrase she’d composed for him in a long time. She watched the cursor flash at the end of the line. Then she hit backspace, and erased it. Her vision blurred, and she blinked it carefully back to clarity, relaxed her jaw as she felt her teeth creak.
It was after rush hour, but there had been a crash on the 10, and eastbound traffic was heavy. She searched the numbers from Freeman’s phone again. The most recent call had been from that law firm, Page Swanson. The only other entry that returned an online hit was an accountancy firm in Westwood. She would have to use a reverse directory to trace the other numbers. She wondered how much Vincent knew. He’d been in the car alone for forty minutes while she was in the water. He could have Googled the numbers, just as she had. Maybe now he was sitting there quietly with the knowledge, unsure what to do with it, what to say to her. Therein lay her own predicament: she didn’t know how much she could ask of him. He’d saved her life, but protecting her hadn’t entailed anything illegal, so far. He could talk about it now and seem relaxed, but she couldn’t guarantee his reticence if he was facing prison. Maybe he shared that same problem, didn’t know how far he could go before colluding in something crazy. Mutual dilemma, mutual silence.
He needn’t have worried about the security, though. No one at the hotel seemed to recognise her. It probably helped that this was Beverly Hills. She was just small-time fame. They were accustomed to discretion in the face of stardom.