15 Seconds. Andrew Gross

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СКАЧАТЬ to see that I’d just called him. My prints and DNA were probably everywhere.

      Even on his body.

      “Who’s doing this to me?”

      I heard a car drive by, and suddenly I knew I had to get out of there. Now! A housekeeper might show up at any second. Or Gail could come home. My name was already all over the airwaves as a person wanted in connection to a murder.

      How could I possibly explain this one now?

      I ran back to the kitchen and grabbed a cloth and started wiping down anything I could remember I had touched.

      The doors. The coffee mug. Around Mike’s office.

      Him.

      Then I didn’t know if I should have done that. It only made me look as if I was covering up. Made me look guiltier.

      I saw Mike’s cell phone on his desk. I knew it was crazy, but by now mine was probably being monitored by the police and I had to make a few calls. The first one to Liz. She had to know. Oh God, how would I possibly explain this? I felt completely nauseous.

      “Mike …” I said, swallowing, placing my hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, dude. I know you were only trying to help. I know you—”

      I clasped his lifeless hand. What else was there to say?

      I went out through the garage. Mike’s silver Jag was just sitting there. His Callaways leaning against the trunk. Crazy as it was, I had no other way to get out of there.

      And I couldn’t possibly make myself look any guiltier than I already had.

      I found the key on the front divider, and the engine started up.

      I drove out, closing the garage door behind me. Tears stung in my eyes. I wanted to call Gail and let her know what horror awaited her back at home. But how could I? Until I figured it out.

      I knew, once she heard the news, she’d automatically assume it was me.

      I drove out the driveway and backtracked along the same route I had taken earlier, toward the highway. I had no idea where I was going, or whom I could turn to now.

      In a few minutes I hit I-10 again. I knew I was safe in Mike’s car, at least for a while. But that was going to cave in fast.

      I looked in the rearview mirror, just to make sure there weren’t any cops behind me, and, for the first time, actually focused on the Jag’s rear window.

      Suddenly my eyes tripled in size.

      The window had a decal on it—an image I was sure I had seen before. What the hell is happening, Henry …?

      I pulled over to the side of the highway and spun around, frozen in shock.

      It was the identical image I’d seen on the back plate of the blue car as it pulled away.

      Not a dragon, as I had originally thought. But a kind of bird. With a sharp beak and bright red wings. A long tail.

      A gamecock.

      A mascot. From the University of South Carolina.

      I remembered, Mike’s oldest son was a sophomore there.

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      The squat, stub-necked man stepped up to the officer behind the glass, his pink face framed by a felt of orange hair around the sides of his balding head.

      “Amanda Hofer,” he said, and pushed his ID through the opening while the officer took a good look at him. “I’m her father.”

      The duty guard at the Lowndes County Jail inspected it and pushed it back to him. “You can head down to Booth Two.”

      Vance Hofer put his license back in the thick, tattered wallet and stepped through a security checkpoint, taking out his keys and loose change. Then he continued down to the visiting room. It had been a long time, he thought to himself, a very long time since he’d felt at home in a place like this. A lot of things had happened and not many of them good. He eased himself into a chair in the small booth, stared at his reflection in the glass.

      He’d lost Joycie to cancer about a year and a half ago. Lost his job at the mill a year before that. Medical insurance too. Then he’d fallen behind on the house. Not to mention how he’d been forced to come up here in the first place, thrown to the wolves down south on trumped-up charges he couldn’t defend.

      Life was bleeding him, Vance reflected, one cut at a time.

      But this last one—what had happened to Amanda. Well, that was one more cut than he could bear.

      They brought her out in an orange jumpsuit, hands cuffed in front of her. She looked a little overwhelmed and scared. Who wouldn’t be? Maybe a little afraid of seeing him too. Her hair was all straggly and unkempt. Cheeks sunken and pale. And when she saw him, who it was who had come to visit, she had this cautious look that he took as both worried and even a little shamed. Like a proud animal not used to being caged. She sat down across from him with a wary smile and shrugged her shoulders slightly.

      “How ya doin’, Daddy?”

      He nodded back, not knowing what to say. “Amanda.”

      Truth be told, Vance hadn’t known what to say to his daughter in years. He saw her as little more than a whining, pathetic child who never owned up to anything she’d done. Who’d always blamed every bit of what went wrong in her life on someone or something else. Which made Vance sick to his soul, since, if he stood on one thing, it was that each of us had to be accountable for what we had done in life.

      No matter how bad.

      Still, she was his daughter. He’d tried to raise her as best he could, knowing he had always had a paucity in the way of softness or understanding, until things started to go downhill in the past year. And he hated that—that he’d let things get away from him. That someone with as clear a ledger when it came to right from wrong had to look through the glass and see his own seed, his wife’s baby, and say, in a corner of his bruised, unforgiving heart, That’s my daughter there.

      “How’s Benji, Daddy?” Amanda asked. Her stupid cat. Not even her cat, just a mangy, scrawny stray who lived in the woods outside and only came around ’cause Amanda was stupid enough to feed it. “Are you leaving a little something out for him? He likes a little raw chop meat maybe. Or maybe some tuna fish.”

      “He’s doing just fine, Amanda, just fine,” Vance said, though he was plainly lying. He’d heard a couple of hopeful purrs a few days back, but now the critter must have wised up and was no longer coming around. “He stops by every couple of nights or so. Been asking for you, ’Manda.”

      That made her smile.

      “I talked to my lawyer,” she said, the momentary lightness in her soft eyes darkening. “They want me to plead, Daddy, to what they’re calling ‘aggravated vehicular manslaughter.’ Otherwise he says they’re going to go for second-degree murder.”

      Vance nodded.

      The СКАЧАТЬ