Mean Streak(118)

She stood up shakily. “I’m not feeling well. I need the bathroom.”

He sighed. “Top of the stairs through the bedroom. Hurry, please.”

“Go,” she said tearfully. “I’ll be sure the door is locked when I leave.”





Chapter 40



She hadn’t actually promised Hayes a ten-minute head start before she called the sheriff’s office. He had just assumed she would comply with his request. As soon as he was gone, she plugged her dead cell phone into the charger.

She checked her contacts for Sam Knight’s number, but before she could send it through, her phone rang in her hand, startling her. Even more startling, her LED read: Alice.

With a resurgence of anger, she answered. “I know, Alice.”

Alice made a hiccupping sound. “Jeff told you?”

“No. But it doesn’t matter how I found out. The point is, I did.”

“Emory—”

“Save it. I can’t talk to you now. In fact, I want nothing more to do with you. Ever.”

“What about the clinic?”

“Did you take its future into account when you started sleeping with my husband?”

“I deserve that. I deserve your scorn. More. But you must listen to me now.”

“Nothing you say will change—”

“I lied to the detective.”

Emory stopped herself from disconnecting. “What?”

“I told Sergeant Grange that Jeff was with me from the Friday evening you left for North Carolina until Sunday afternoon.”

“He wasn’t?”

“He was, except…except that I woke up early Saturday morning to go to the bathroom, and he wasn’t there. I thought he’d just decided to slip out, go home, and sleep in his own bed for the rest of the night. I didn’t like it. I had hoped we’d have one night to spend—”

Caring about none of that, Emory interrupted. “Where did he go?”

“I don’t know. I went back to bed, and to sleep, and when I woke up, he was at the bedside, bearing a tray, serving me brunch in bed. He never mentioned leaving. He didn’t know I’d missed him. I never brought it up.”

“And you didn’t tell Grange.”

“No. When he showed up at my house unexpectedly, it rattled me. I owned up to the affair, but the idea of Jeff being implicated in a crime against you was so preposterous, I covered for him. You reappeared that same morning, so my lie was vindicated. Or so I thought. But now I think your suspicions have merit.”

Emory’s heart rate spiked. “What makes you think so?”

“Things he’s said, evasive answers—but I’ll save all that for later. There’s something more urgent you need to know.” In stops and starts, her speech so rapid that words stumbled over themselves, she said, “Jeff has cooked up some scheme with these Floyd brothers, using their sister to lure you and Hayes Bannock out. It’s crazy.”

“Oh my God. Hayes got a frantic call from Lisa. He’s on his way up to their place now.”

“And Jeff tore out of here no more than—”

“Where is here?”

“The suite hotel.” She told Emory about Jeff’s call to her the night before. “I got a sense that he was maneuvering me into thinking you’d gone insane. I drove up this morning to confront him about all this and caught him just as he was leaving. I faked being sick, and as soon as he was gone, I called you.”

While Alice had been talking, Emory realized that Hayes hadn’t given her the number to his cell phone, an oversight which might have been intentional in order to protect her, but it left her with no way to alert him to the trap being laid for him.

Then she noticed the set of ignition keys on the dresser.

She stopped Alice in midsentence. “Do you still have Detective Grange’s number?”

“Uh…I think…yes. He gave me his card. It’s here in my bag.”

“Call him. Tell him what you’ve told me. Everything. Tell him to dispatch people up to the Floyds’ place. Now. Immediately. Impress on him that Hayes is in danger. In the meantime, I’m going up there to try and head him off.”

She unplugged her phone from the charger, swept the keys into her hand, and left the motel room. Outside, she depressed the rubberized button on the remote key. The headlights blinked on a nondescript sedan parked in one of the nearby spaces. She ran toward it.

Her phone rang. Alice again. She answered by saying, “Call Grange! Do it, Alice. You owe me this.”

“You’re serious about going up there?”

“I’m on my way now.”

“Then there’s something you need to know. Jeff has a pistol.”

That almost slowed Emory down. Almost.

Instead, she clicked off, jerked open the driver’s door, and slid behind the wheel of Jack’s rental car, the one in which he’d gotten lost in the fog. Which was easily done when it was this thick.

*





Jeff made it as far as the door to the suite and was reaching for the knob when he thought about Knight and Grange’s visit to him this morning.

Just stopped by to check and see if you’d heard from Emory overnight.