Nancy Bush's Nowhere Bundle: Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide & Nowhere Safe. Nancy Bush

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СКАЧАТЬ fingered the cell phone. He fell in step beside her and when she looked at him askance, he asked, “The men’s room?”

      “Take that hallway and where it turns to the left you’ll see the restrooms.”

      It was in the opposite direction she was going, so he stopped as if he were heading the other way, waiting until she got far enough ahead of him. She’d already forgotten him, however, and was aiming toward a room farther south. Auggie yanked out his cell and quickly placed the call to D’Annibal’s office.

      “D’Annibal,” the lieutenant answered.

      “It’s Rafferty,” Auggie said. “Anything new on Zuma or the Martin killing?”

      D’Annibal didn’t waste time with preliminaries. “Nine and Sandler interviewed Camille Dirkus, mother to Aaron Dirkus, Upjohn’s son. Apparently the son and a couple of the whizbang Zuma techs who worked the computers had this little marijuana-growing operation. Upjohn found out about it and threatened to fire Dirkus’s ass. Camille was fighting with both of them, but it’s possible some other player with a bigger operation took offense.”

      Auggie stared into the middle distance, stunned. He hadn’t expected there to be an answer. Could that be? He immediately wanted to refute the lieutenant’s words. Could he have been so wrong about Liv? Had he blinded himself to the fact that her personal dramas were just that, personal dramas? Was he so completely wrong?

      D’Annibal was still talking, telling him how the department was following leads, plucking threads, finding this big one smack in the middle of Zuma’s fabric. He finished with, “So, bring in the Dugan woman and let’s get on with it.”

      “Okay,” Auggie said, but the reluctance in his tone reached D’Annibal’s ears.

      “Whatever the problem is, fix it.”

      “I will. Hey, put out the word to look for a 2005 GMC truck. Gray. Trask Martin mentioned it to Liv. Said a guy was looking for her at her apartment and that’s what he drove.”

      “Liv?”

      “It’s what she goes by,” Auggie answered evenly.

      “Got a license number?”

      “I woulda given it to you.”

      “Not much to go on,” D’Annibal reminded him tautly. “While you’ve been playing house with one of our suspects, we got all kinds of stuff breaking around here.”

      “She’s a suspect?” Auggie challenged him, but the lieutenant just ran right over him, “I sent Nine and Sandler out on another call this morning. A dead body found in a field . . . a woman . . .” Quickly, he brought Auggie up-to-date on the homicide that had taken over the station this morning.

      A field. A woman. “You think it has anything to do with Zuma?” Auggie asked, his mind racing.

      “That’d be a stretch. But it’s a copycat of the Dempsey homicide about a month ago.”

      Auggie knew about as much as the public on the Dempsey murder; he’d been wrapped up in his Alan Reagan persona and hadn’t been following it too closely. But the particulars were ringing other, distant bells. “Did you put someone on that cold case, the serial strangler around Rock Springs twenty years ago?”

      “I said I would. Got a lot of stuff coming down here, Rafferty. I’ll check on the truck, but I—”

      “Who’re you talking to?” Liv demanded in his ear. Auggie whipped around. She’d pulled on her baseball cap and was staring at him from beneath the brim with wide, wounded eyes.

      He clicked off his phone and dropped his arm. “The lady I was talking to, Sofia . . . her sister used to work for Grandview. She gave me her number. I was trying to reach her and follow up.” The phone rang in his hand and they both looked at it. Auggie felt his pulse escalate. D’ Annibal. The ass.

      Liv’s gaze was like a laser on the phone. “Are you going to answer it?”

      Hell. No. Shit. He glanced at the number and realized it wasn’t D’Annibal. It wasn’t even in this area code.

      She was waiting for him to answer and he did so like a man facing the gallows, in slow motion, his mind screaming through excuses and explanations when she learned he was with the police.

      “Hello,” he said into the phone.

      “Oh . . . uh . . . I got a call from someone named Dugan? About Everett LeBlanc?”

      Auggie snapped to attention. “Uh, yes. Ms. Dugan is right here.” He held out the cell to her and mouthed, “LeBlanc.”

      “What?” Liv whispered, but she took the phone.

      He looked around. There were no cameras here but he wished they were outside of Grandview, in the privacy of the Jeep.

      “This is Liv Dugan. Is this Mr. LeBlanc?”

      Auggie put a hand on the small of her back and guided her back outside as she spoke on the phone. He lifted a hand in a silent good-bye to the rangy receptionist as they stepped back through the sliding glass doors. He could tell Liv was not talking to Everett LeBlanc himself. Sounded like the man might be renting LeBlanc’s home and was using his phone.

      They were at the Jeep when she hung up.

      “What?” he asked.

      “He’s staying at the LeBlanc home. Everett was married to Patsy—must be the nickname for Patricia—but they’re divorced.” She shook her head and looked around the grounds. Dappled sunlight lay on the grass, filtered through three large oak trees. “He gave me Everett’s Portland number.”

      “What is it? I’ll plug it into the phone.” Liv recited the number and Auggie added it to his call list under LeBlanc. “You want to call him now?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “C’mon.” He put his arm through hers and led her to the Jeep. When she was safely inside, he went around to the driver’s door.

      Liv watched him slide into the driver’s seat and start the engine. She was fighting the conflicting desires to run far, far away or throw herself into his arms. The last few days had been jagged peaks and low troughs, and she felt that same out-of-control sensation that had swallowed her up as a teenager and sent her to Hathaway House.

      She’d never had sex like that. Never. But then she’d barely been sexual at all. It had all been so embarrassing and messy and uncomfortable, and now she knew it had been partly because of her; she couldn’t give of herself. Couldn’t let herself be transported away.

      Until yesterday. When he’d said, “I’m going to kiss you.”

      For a heartbeat she’d thought it was sort of a joke. Ha, ha, ha. Just kidding. Except when he’d looked down at her through blue, blue eyes as he captured her mouth and her knees had buckled. Buckled.

      She was still having trouble putting the memory of his body moving inside hers to some other part of her mind. Every time her brain touched on it she got a sexual thrill just from remembering СКАЧАТЬ