Fair Warning (Jack McEvoy #3)(81)

I knew she hated to drive because she grew up driving on the other side of the road and feared making the transition. But I was confused and must have looked like it. Greyhound was for long-distance travel.

“It’s a pub over on Fig,” Emily said. “My local. What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think I was being followed today and when—”

“By the Shrike?”

I suddenly didn’t feel as sure about things.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. There was a guy in a Tesla I saw at the coroner’s office and I—”

“How would he know to follow you?” Emily asked. “Or me, for that matter.”

“Probably Hammond,” I said. “He either told him or there was something in the computer or the documents taken from Hammond’s lab.”

I saw fear enter Emily’s eyes.

“What do we do?” she said meekly.

“Look, I think we should calm down a little bit here,” Rachel said. “Let’s not get paranoid. We still don’t know for sure that either Jack or you was being followed. And if Jack was followed, why would he jump from Jack to you?”

“Maybe because I’m a woman?” Emily said.

I was about to respond. Rachel might be right. All of this was because I thought I had matched a composite drawing to a face I had seen behind the wheel of a car in a parking lot from at least eighty feet away. It was a stretch.

“Okay,” I said. “Why don’t we—”

I stopped short when a man appeared in the doorway. He had a full beard and a ring of keys in his hand.

“Mr. Williams?” Rachel asked.

The man stared down at the piece of door framing on the floor, then checked the strike plate hanging by a single loose screw on the jamb.

“I thought you were going to wait for me,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Rachel said. “We thought there was an emergency. Will you be able to secure the door tonight?”

Williams turned and saw that when the door had been kicked open it had swung against the side wall of Emily’s entryway. The knob had put a fist-sized dent in the wall.

“I can try,” he said.

“I’m not staying here if I can’t lock the door,” Emily said. “No way. Not if he knows where I live.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” I said. “We saw a car driving away but—”

“Look, why don’t we let Mr. Williams try to fix it and we go somewhere else to talk about this?” Rachel said. “I got more from the FBI today. I think you’ll want to know it.”

I looked at Rachel.

“Well, when were you going to tell me?” I asked.

“We got sidetracked when we were leaving Gwyneth Rice,” Rachel said.

She pointed to the door that Williams was still examining as though that explained her delay.

“By the way, how was Gwyneth Rice?” Emily asked.

“Good stuff … but so fucking sad,” I said. “He’s messed her up for life.”

Halfway through my answer I was afflicted with reporter’s guilt. I knew that Gwyneth Rice would become the face of the story. A victim who would likely never recover, whose life path had been violently and permanently altered by the Shrike. We would use her to draw readers in, never mind that her heartbreaking injuries would last well beyond the life of the story.

“You have to ship me notes,” Emily said.

“As soon as I can,” I said.

“So what are we doing?” Rachel asked.

“We could go back to the Greyhound,” Emily said. “It was pretty quiet in there when I left.”

“Let’s go,” Rachel said.

We moved toward the door and Williams turned sideways so we could fit by. He looked at me.

“You kicked in the door?” he asked.

“Uh, that would be me,” Rachel said.

Williams did a quick up-and-down appraisal of Rachel as she went by him.

“Strong lady,” he said.

“When I need to be,” she said.





38

The Greyhound was less than two minutes away and Rachel drove all three of us. I sat in the back seat, looking out the rear window for a possible tail the whole way. If the Shrike was following I saw no sign of him and my thoughts returned to the question of whether I was being vigilant or paranoid. I kept thinking about the man in the Tesla. Had I simply wanted him to look like the face on the composite or did he really look like the face on the composite?

I had never been to England but the inside of the Greyhound looked like an English pub to me, and I saw why Emily had adopted it as her local. It was all dark woods and cozy booths. A bar ran the entire length of the establishment, front to back, and there was no table service. Rachel and I ordered Ketel martinis and Emily asked them to pull the tap on a Deschutes IPA. I waited at the bar for the drinks while the women grabbed a booth in the back corner.

I took two trips to deliver the drinks so as not to spill the martinis and then settled into the U-shaped booth with Emily across from me and Rachel to my right. I took a full sip of my martini before saying a word. I needed it after the ebb and flow of adrenaline the evening had so far produced.

“So,” I said, looking at Rachel. “What have you got?”