The Trapped Girl (Tracy Crosswhite #4)(63)

Devin told her date she’d find him and he too went back to his table. She looked at me and smiled. “You’ll be okay getting home?” I could tell from her slurred speech that she was pretty wasted.

“Of course,” I said. “You sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine. The buzz will make the sex better.”

“Be careful.”

“Careful? I’m getting laid. But, first I have to pee.” She grabbed her purse, which she’d hung by the strap over the back of her chair, and set it on the table along with her cell phone. “Watch my stuff?”

“Sure.”

“Right back.” She slid from her chair, stumbled when she hit the floor, but managed to remain upright. “Whoa. Maybe I shouldn’t have had that third Lemon Drop.”

Four, I thought, but didn’t say. “You sure you’re okay?” I asked again.

She winked and weaved her way through the tables and the crowd, leaving me alone. I almost pulled out the paperback I carried in my purse, but knew how lame that would look. I surveyed the crowd, my gaze passing over the tables of couples to the group of men standing at the upright table drinking their beers and laughing. Mr. Two-Day Growth watched Devin cross the bar, looking anxious or excited. I couldn’t tell. My eyes paused on Brad Pitt. In my fantasy, he looked over at me and I didn’t look away. In my fantasy, I stuck my finger in my glass, swirling the drink, then brought my finger seductively to my lips and nibbled on the tip.

Devin’s cell phone buzzed.

When I looked down, the phone on the table was neither lit up nor vibrating. It took a second before I realized the noise was coming from inside her purse, which was unzipped. Confused, I looked inside and saw a second phone, the face lit up a pale blue-green. Caller ID did not provide a name, but I didn’t need a name.

I recognized the number.

A rush of anxiety hit me so violently the legs of my chair rattled. Nauseated, like I’d been punched in the gut, I fought the urge to throw up.

I looked again.

Graham.

What the hell?

What possible reason could there be for Graham to be calling Devin? To my knowledge, they hardly knew each another. And why would she have a second phone? I fought to control my breathing, to regain some semblance of composure, and to think through what I was witnessing, the gravity and believability of it all. I thought of the credit card charges to the hotels and restaurants in Seattle when Graham said he’d been away on business. Could that have been Devin? Was she the woman he was having an affair with? The credit card bills included the dates Graham had been gone. His cell phone bill would show his calls and the dates he made them, but I didn’t know the number of the phone in Devin’s purse.

Still, it wouldn’t be too difficult to figure it out.

I looked over my shoulder, saw no sign of Devin, reached inside her purse, and grabbed the phone. The screen indicated she’d received multiple text messages from the same number. Graham’s cell phone. Only partial messages appeared on the screen.

Hey, hoping to get . . .

Just got to . . .

Did you talk to . . .

I couldn’t unlock Devin’s phone without the password to read the full messages. I also couldn’t determine the phone number, but I didn’t need to.

I looked over my shoulder to the hallway on the other side of the bar and watched Devin emerge, walking toward the table. I dropped the phone back inside the purse, slid from my bar stool, and put on my jacket.

“You all set?” Devin asked, grabbing her purse and her jacket.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m tired.”

She paused when she went to zip closed her purse, no doubt seeing the last registered call on the phone. Maintaining a poker face, she calmly dropped her regular phone inside her purse and zipped it closed. She reached out and gave me a warm hug. My entire body tensed. “So, let me guess, you’re heading home to stick your nose in a book.”

“You know me,” I said.

“Like a book,” Devin said, laughing. Then she turned and walked toward the table where the guy awaited her.

“Except you’re reading the wrong book,” I said to her back. I was no longer going home. I was going to the office, to stick my nose in Devin Chambers’s computer.





CHAPTER 21


At first, Vic Fazio thought he was having one of those anxiety dreams in which everything feels stilted and magnified. An annoying insect circled his head, buzzing loudly. He couldn’t swat it or otherwise make it stop. Then his subconscious gave way to instincts he had honed over decades, a cop conditioned to being awakened at odd hours. He realized the insect was his cell phone. He turned the ringer off at night so as not to disturb Vera, who was a light sleeper, but that didn’t keep the phone from buzzing and shaking on his bedside nightstand.

Faz didn’t need to open his eyes to know it was still the middle of the night. His inner clock, honed as a parent of two boys, told him. He felt Vera roll away from him, onto her side, well acclimated to life as the spouse of a homicide detective. Except, just then, something else became clear. Faz and Del were not the homicide team on call. They had been working the Andrea Strickland murder, but that case got pulled last Thursday.

Faz reached blindly, missing the phone the first time before finding it. He brought it up in front of his face, the numbers blurry without his glasses, but he could make out only the local 206 Seattle area code. He hit the green button.