I glanced in the rearview mirror as the car behind me passed under a streetlight. It was dark in color. Black or maybe dark blue. Not white.
So not the Toyota. It could still be the Town Car, though.
Then again, it could be someone else. It could be Tim. It wasn’t his baby blue Jag behind me either, but maybe he had borrowed Heidi’s Honda. Maybe he really had killed Brian, in spite of pretty much convincing me that he hadn’t, at least not while he was conscious, and now he wanted to silence me before I could tell anyone about it.
But if he’d wanted to kill me, why not just kill me before I left Walker’s house? No one knew I was there. No one would ever find my body. It didn’t make sense for him to let me leave, and then follow me here.
So maybe it was someone else entirely. Maybe it was Brian’s real killer, assuming Tim had told me the truth.
The headlights followed me around another corner. I was in the middle of a quiet, residential neighborhood full of parked cars and cats, with a stop sign on every corner. I couldn’t punch the gas and get out of there no matter how much I wanted to.
I was also a little leery of driving home. If whoever was behind me didn’t know where I lived, I didn’t want to take him—or her—there.
At the same time, I couldn’t keep driving around forever. I’d run out of gas sooner or later, for one thing, and for another, I was tired and I wanted to go home and sleep.
I headed for the office. It was nearby, and there’d be people there. Five Points is alive into the wee hours, with bars and restaurants, a gas station, and lots of funny little stores.
The parking lot behind the office was half full. I didn’t kid myself that anybody was inside, though. No, it was just people using our lot during off-hours, while they shot the breeze at Beckett’s or at the FinBar down the street.
I pulled into a slot and cut the engine and the lights. Behind me, the car that had been following slid up to the curb and idled.
I didn’t recognize it. It was dark, a sedan of some sort, bigger than Heidi’s Honda, and with a vaguely ghetto-look to it. Lots of shiny chrome on the wheels and tinted windows.
Nobody came out. I wondered if he—or she—was waiting for me to make the first move. I wondered what would happen if I did.
If I ran, could I make it into the office before he—she—could catch up?
Not likely, I figured. Not with having to unlock the regular lock and the deadbolt on the back door. And while I was doing that, he—or she—would corner me in the out-of-the-way niche where the door was.
Conversely, what would happen if I just stayed where I was. Would he—she—get tired of waiting and drive away eventually?
There were a few people out and about, but the area wasn’t as populated as I had hoped it would be. I could hear music from the FinBar down the street, and loud voices from the gas station on the next corner, but there was nobody right here. When the door to the sedan opened and a man got out, there was nothing I could do to avoid the confrontation.
He was big and black and muscular, dressed in saggy jeans and an oversized sweatshirt with the hood up so I couldn’t get a good look at his face. When he rapped on my window, it was with a metallic sound, from the gun in his hand.
I rolled the window down two inches, with my heart thudding against my ribs. “Can I help you?”
He bent down and peered in. “I’m looking for Tanya.”
Tanya? “I’m sorry,” I managed. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“Open the door.”
I turned on the interior light instead. No way was I giving this guy the opportunity to grab me. If he wanted me, he’d have to try to haul me out through the window, and I doubted my posterior would fit. “There’s no one else in the car. Check the trunk if you want.”
I popped it, before I remembered that I’d have to close it again before I could drive away.
He peered inside. With the light on, I could see his face. Broad, dark, with a square jaw and flat, hard eyes.
Vaguely familiar, but not someone I’d ever met before, to my knowledge.
“Why were you following me?” I inquired, while I ran mental mugshots past my eyes. There was no match, just that vague feeling of familiarity.
He turned back to me. I wished he hadn’t, because the flat snakelike hardness of those eyes was disturbing. “Looking for Tanya.”
“I don’t know Tanya. Or where she is.”
“The house you were at...”
“Belongs to Aislynn and Kylie,” I said firmly, or as firmly as I could, with my heart in the back of my throat. “Not Tanya.”
He hesitated. “You don’t know Tanya.”
I shook my head. “I really don’t.”
There was a moment of silence before he stepped back. I kept my eyes on the gun, in case he thought to do something with it. Like shoot me.
But he walked away. Away from the Volvo, across the parking lot, across the sidewalk, and into the street. Just got into his car and drove off.
I sat there for quite a few minutes before I dared to open the door and drag myself around to the back of the car to slam the trunk shut. And I scurried back inside and closed and locked the door in record time. And then I sat for another minute to get my breathing under control again before I managed to turn the key in the ignition and pull the car out of the lot and onto the street.
Nothing happened on the way home. Nobody followed me, at least not that I could see. I debated on whether or not to risk the underground parking garage—someone hit me over the head there once—and decided to check the front of the building for any available spaces instead. When I found one right in front, I slid the car into that, with hands that shook.
There were no lights on in my apartment. I hadn’t expected there to be, but I wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or not. On the one hand, I didn’t really want to see Rafe. On the other, knowing that he was spending the night with her and not me had to be worse than anything else.
I opened the door to the apartment carefully. There was no sound of movement from inside.
I slipped across the threshold and closed and locked the door behind me before unbuttoning my coat and hanging it on the hook in the hallway by feel. I unzipped my boots the same way, and padded down the hallway toward the living room/dining room combo on stocking feet.
I was halfway to the bedroom when the light flicked on, almost blinding me.
I threw a hand up to cover my eyes, and it took a few seconds before I could see anything but spots.
“Where the hell have you been?” Rafe asked, his voice tightly controlled.
I turned to him, where he was sitting in the sofa, and put my hands on my hips. “That’s rather rich, coming from you.”
His voice stayed even. “It’s past midnight.”
“So? I’m a grown woman. If I want to stay out late, I can.”
There was a pause, during which he looked me up and down. I wasn’t wearing anything special. Just the same type of skirt and blouse combo I usually wear to work. Gray skirt, pink blouse, in this case.
“Dinner with Satterfield?” he inquired.
I hesitated. Part of me wanted to throw it in his face that I had other options, as well. That I hadn’t been sitting at home pining for him. But he already knew that, so there was no point in lying.
“No.”
I thought I saw an infinitesimal softening in his lips, but I couldn’t be sure. “New boyfriend?”
“I thought I’d try the gay lifestyle,” I told him. “I spent the evening with Kylie and Aislynn.”
This time he almost smiled. “How was it?”
“Not the same,” I said.
There was a few seconds of silence.
“About what happened earlier...”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.
“That’s too bad,” Rafe answered, but not in a way like he was agreeing to let it go. This was more the, ‘I’m gonna talk about it whether you want me to or not,�
� kind of ‘too bad.’
“You said it yourself. You have more important things to do than explain anything to me.”
“Savannah...”
“Just get your things and go.” I turned away, toward the bedroom, so he wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes.
“Not until you agree to listen.” He didn’t move. And since I knew very well how stubborn he could be—he really wasn’t going to go until he’d had his say—I did the only thing I could.
“Fine.” I folded my arms across my chest. “Talk. Get it off your chest. But I don’t care. It’s none of my business.”
“No, it isn’t. But since it’s my fault she’s in the position she’s in...”
Of course it was. Every other woman in creation seemed able to have his children, just not me.
I tried to blink away the tears, but it didn’t work.
“I love you, Savannah.”
“Don’t tell me that!” I dashed at my eyes with the back of my hand. “Just go. Be with her.”
“I don’t wanna be with her,” Rafe said. “I wanna be with you.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before...”
But what could I say, after all? The kid was a couple years old. Back then, I hadn’t given him a thought for at least a decade.
He didn’t say anything, just looked at me. I couldn’t bear to look at him, so I looked around.
“How d’you find me?” he asked eventually. “This afternoon?”
“I followed you.”
“From?”
“Mrs. J’s house. I was on my way to tell you something.” At this point I couldn’t even remember what, it seemed so long ago. “You came tearing out of the driveway like a bat out of hell. So I followed.”
“I didn’t see you.” There was something almost like approval in his voice, and in the look in his eyes.
“Sure you did,” I said.
“Not until we got to the daycare.”
I shrugged. “How did you hook up with a stripper, anyway?”
“She didn’t used to be a stripper. When I met her, she was a waitress in Clarksville.”
Clarksville.
It’s a town roughly forty five minutes from Nashville. Northwest, on the border to Kentucky. And other than the song, it’s mainly known for being the home of the 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles. There’s a big military base up there, called Fort Campbell.
Something about Rafe and the military base in Clarksville rang a faint bell. Something about Todd Satterfield, sitting across the table from me at some restaurant or another, telling me...
“She was involved with this guy I was after.” His voice was faint and far away.
Ah, yes. Now I remembered. Once upon a time—five months ago, maybe—Todd had hired a private detective to look into Rafe’s past, in an effort to prove to me that he wasn’t someone I should be interested in. (As if I didn’t already know that.) One of the things the PI dug up, was Rafe’s involvement in a gang which was ripping off weapons from the military base. At the time Todd—and I too—thought Rafe was a criminal. Now, of course, I knew better.
“She got me what I needed to turn him in. Him and everyone else.”
Yes, Todd’s PI had made mention of that. Everyone but Rafe had been arrested and sent to prison. Rafe had skated through and surfaced a few months later in... Knoxville, was it? Somewhere else in Tennessee, anyway, where someone else was doing something nefarious. Todd had found that fact extremely sinister. I had found it sort of funny. If the police hadn’t even bothered to arrest him, how bad could he be?
By now I knew that he always slipped through the police’s fingers not because he was a particularly good criminal, or a particularly bad one, but because the TBI needed him on the loose to reel in the next thread in the South American Theft Gang they were after.
“When did she come to Nashville?” I asked, trying to keep up with the conversation.
“After the baby was born,” Rafe said.
“Why is she working as a stripper?”
“Easy money?” He shrugged.
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
“Why would it? It’s legal.”
Yes, but... he wouldn’t let me go to a gay bar by myself, yet he let her take her clothes off in front of a bunch of drooling deviants? And she was a mother, too!
“How old is the baby?”
“Two,” Rafe said.
“What’s its name?”
“It’s a boy. His name is Justin.”
I nodded. Part of me wanted to be snide and congratulate him, but the other part couldn’t quite manage. And because I wanted to shake him up a little, I said, “A man with a gun followed me earlier.”
The reaction was all I could have hoped for. Something moved in his eyes, something flat and deadly, and his whole body tightened. “When?”
“Just now. When I left Aislynn and Kylie’s house.”
“Are you all right?”
He was on his feet, and moving toward me. I took a step back. “I’m fine. It was just a misunderstanding.”
“What kind of misunderstanding?” He stopped two feet away, and I could see his hands clench at his sides, but I wasn’t sure whether it was because he wanted to reach for me and knew I didn’t want him to, or because he wanted to punch someone.
“He was looking for someone I don’t know. Someone named Tanya.”
For a second he just stared at me. “Tanya?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Shit,” Rafe said. He swung on his heel and grabbed his phone from the coffee table. While he dialed, he asked me, “What did he look like?”
“Big guy. Black. Saggy pants. Hoodie. It was dark.”
“Car?”
“Some kind of sedan. Not a compact. Dark. Do you know him?”
He held up a finger and spoke to the phone. “Everything OK?”
The phone quacked.
“You sure?”
The phone quacked again.
“I’m on my way. Don’t open the door till I get there.”
The quacking took on a shrill note.
“Dunno,” Rafe said. “But someone’s seen him. And if he’s this close...”
The phone quacked, alarmingly. Rafe rolled his eyes, but kept his voice even. “I’m on my way. Just hang tight until I get there.”
He disconnected the call and turned to me. “I have to go.”
“Back to her?”
Much as I tried, I couldn’t keep that little hiccup out of my voice.
He looked at me for a second. Just looked. Then he seemed to make a decision. “Get your shoes back on.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re coming with me.”
“I am?” I trotted after him into the hallway, where he grabbed his leather jacket from the hook and shrugged it on.
“Unless you don’t want to.”
“No.” I wanted to. I wasn’t sure why, when he’d spent the day—and yesterday, and the day before—with another woman, but I’d rather be with him than without him.
“C’mon, then.” He opened the door while I stuffed my feet back into the boots and snagged my coat and bag from the hooks. By the time I moved through the door, he was halfway down the hallway. “Where’s your car?” he asked me over his shoulder.
“On the street.” I hurried to catch up as the door to the apartment slammed shut behind me. “I was too nervous to park in the garage.”
“Good thing. Makes it easier to leave.” He held the door on the first floor for me and then, when we were on our way across the courtyard, held out his hand. “Keys.”
I dug them out of my purse and handed them over. He peeled away from the curb before I had my seatbelt fastened. And then he dropped something in my lap. “Hold onto that.”
I stared at it and up at him. “Your gun?”
“You never know when you might need to shoot someone.”
It was the same thing he’d said yesterday. It hadn’t struck me as funny then e
ither. I don’t think it was supposed to be.
“Who are you planning to shoot tonight?”
“Nobody,” Rafe said, “I hope. The guy you saw—” He stuck a hand inside his jacket and pulled out a piece of paper, “this him?”
I unfolded it and looked at the picture. “Yes.”
And now that I saw it again, I knew why the guy had seemed familiar, too. I’d never met him before, but I had seen his picture—this very picture—just this afternoon. Rafe must have snagged it off Lantana DuBois’s Facebook page and blown it up a few times before printing it.
“Who is he?” I asked.
Rafe shot me a sidelong look as he took the left onto Interstate Drive on two wheels. “Name’s Desmond Johnson. One of the guys I put away three years ago.”
“Lantana’s boyfriend?”
“Tanya.” He nodded. “Yeah.”
“And... he’s the baby’s father?”
Rafe nodded. I didn’t say anything, but he must have been able to read my mind—not for the first time—because after a moment he turned to me. “What, you thought it was mine?”
“I... yes.”
He shook his head. “Christ, Savannah. I’ve told you, I don’t have any kids. Not that I know of. Other than David.”
“I’m sorry. I just... I saw you together, and I thought...”
He didn’t answer. I’m not sure whether it was because he was busy merging with the cars on the interstate—at a higher speed than he should have been—or whether he didn’t want to talk, or just didn’t know what to say.
I looked down at the picture in my hand. “This guy wrote some pretty creepy stuff on her Facebook page.”
Rafe nodded, and then realized what I’d said. “How d’you know about that?”
“I looked her up,” I said. “If my boyfriend’s seeing someone on the side, I want to know who she is.”
“Your boyfriend ain’t seeing anyone on the side.” When I didn’t answer immediately, he shot me a look. “I don’t spend the day with another woman and then come home and make love to you, Savannah.”
I was beginning to realize that. “How about you just tell me what’s been going on?” The way he should have done from the beginning.
Change of Heart Page 20
