What Are You Afraid Of? (The Agency #2)(73)

“Nothing more than the fact that he’d talked to a fellow porter who’d been approached by the same man earlier in the day,” Griff told her. “That porter refused.”

Her brows drew together. She sensed there was a reason he mentioned the first porter, but she didn’t understand how it could help.

“Did he recognize the man?”

Griff shook his head. “No, but he spoke with the first porter at ten in the morning.”

“So . . .” Her impatient words died on her lips. Her eyes widened as she realized just what he was saying. “Oh.”

He nodded, his lips pulled into a humorless smile. “Exactly. He couldn’t have been the person who tried to run us off the road. Not unless he’s capable of being in two places at one time.”

Carmen muttered a curse as she pressed her fingers to her aching temples.

“I feel like I’m on a hamster wheel, running as fast as I can but never moving forward.”

He stepped toward her, wrapping her tightly in his arms. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” She felt his lips brush the top of her head. “I swear.”

She leaned against him, trying to absorb his strength. A chill was crawling over her skin, like an icy breath from the grave.

Or perhaps a warning that she was running out of time.

“We have to go to California,” she said softly.

“I couldn’t agree more,” he shocked her by saying.

She tilted back her head, studying him with suspicion. What was going on? She’d expected him to fight her tooth and nail.

“You agree?” she demanded, assuming this was some sort of trick.

His hands framed her face, his expression hard with resolve.

“We’re going to my house and you’re staying there until Rylan can join us,” he said, the tone offering no room for compromise. “By then Nikki will hopefully be on the case and we can track down the bastards and put an end to this nightmare.”

She held his gaze. They were going to California. That’s all that mattered for now.

Once they got there, she would decide how she was going to lure the killers out of hiding.

“Whatever you say,” she meekly agreed.





Chapter Nineteen


December 27, California



It was just after midnight when Anita King trudged through the dark streets of Oxnard.

She’d worked a double shift at the local diner. This time of year the regular customers were out of town, or staying home with family to eat leftovers. Which meant she had to work twice as hard for the tips she needed to pay the rent this month.

A few years ago, the endless hours on her feet wouldn’t have bothered her. But she wasn’t thirty anymore. Hell, she wasn’t even fifty. Now each step jarred her knees that ached from arthritis, and her shoes cut into her swollen ankles.

Which was why she’d decided to take the shortcut instead of remaining on the main thoroughfare.

Most nights she was happy to take the longer path. The price of aching feet was worth paying to delay the moment she had to walk through the door of her apartment.

She grimaced, hitching her purse strap higher on her shoulder.

It hadn’t always been that way, she thought with a nostalgic pang of regret. She’d come to California forty-five years ago. She’d been young, barely seventeen, with big blue eyes and a girl-next-door beauty. But she hadn’t just been another pretty face.

She could sing, and dance. She’d worked every summer to take tap lessons. And she could act. But after a few small roles, and one local stage production of Annie Get Your Gun, she’d made the classic mistake. The one thing certain to bring an end to her dreams. She’d fallen in love.

She’d played at being a sophisticated woman of the world, but the truth was, she’d remained that na?ve girl from Nebraska. So when she’d gotten pregnant, she’d never considered the idea of getting rid of the baby. Instead, she’d demanded the handsome young actor who’d knocked her up put a ring on her finger.

No big surprise that the marriage had barely lasted long enough for her to give birth. By the time she’d returned to their cramped apartment with the baby her husband had already flown the coop.

Anita had been a single woman raising a baby without any training to earn a decent living. She should have returned home. Her parents wouldn’t have been happy, but they would have taken her in. Instead, she’d panicked and seduced the young man who worked at the local deli counter. He’d been blinded by her beauty and it’d been easy to lure him into a quickie marriage before he could consider whether he was ready to take on a wife and child.

She grimaced. Unlike her first husband, Earl had done the honorable thing and stayed married to her even after the passion had faded, but Anita knew that somewhere deep inside him, he’d nurtured a small resentment. And that resentment had destroyed any hope that they could build a decent marriage.

Instead of marital bliss, they’d spent forty years bickering and sniping at each other. They fought about the kids. The finances. The shattered dreams.

Her blue eyes had dimmed, her long red hair had faded to a weary peach fuzz. And instead of gracing the silver screen, she was delivering hash to the late-shift workers.

And then the stroke had left Earl in a wheelchair.

And she was stuck.