Софи Райан - The Fast Аnd Тhe Furriest

“What do you mean, a ‘situation’?” I asked. “Where are you?”

“I’m at the end of Bayview Street, you know, at the far end of the harbor.”

I knew where she meant. What the heck was she doing out there? There was no boardwalk, no businesses catering to tourists, no slips for boats. There were several office buildings and a pretty great view of the ocean but that was it. “Avery, what are you doing out there?” I said. I had a bad feeling I knew the answer.

“Well, see, Nonna and Rose are stalking that guy.”

I sat bolt upright in my chair. Mac was looking at me, frowning. He’d already figured out that something was wrong just from my side of the conversation. “What guy?”

“You know,” Avery said, a touch of annoyance in her voice, even though I clearly didn’t know. “The one who told Rose to go you-know herself when he was parked in front of our driveway.”

Her explanation may not have made sense to anyone else but it did to me. “Davis Abbott?”

“Yeah, that guy.”

By now Mr. P. was also watching me intently, concern etched into the lines around his mouth and eyes.

“Tell me exactly what happened. From the beginning.”

“Okay. Nonna and I picked up Rose because she had butter tarts for some awards thing at the library and she said if she brought them to the shop you and Nonna would eat them all.”

I took a breath and let it out slowly. “The library is not on Bayview Street. It’s not even close.”

“I know, but the butter tarts are in a cooler so they’re okay,” Avery said. “No one’s going to get food poisoning or anything.” She could go off on a tangent even easier than Rose could.

I took one of those deep, calming breaths Jess was always after me to try. “What happened after you picked up Rose?” I asked. The breath didn’t seem to help.

“She asked if she could try my smoothie and I said yes and then Rose said Nonna was wrong, that it didn’t taste like feet, it was pretty good and then she saw that guy go by in his truck and she whacked Nonna on the arm and said, ‘Turn around, turn around and follow that truck,’ and Nonna said, ‘What in heck are you talking about?’ and Rose said, ‘You’re letting a killer get away,’ and so Nonna did a U-ey right there in the street and we ended up here.”

She’d managed to spill out the whole story without taking a breath.

“So where exactly are you now? Are you at the very end of the street?”

“Right at the start of the trail that goes along the water. It’s kind of hard to miss because those TV people are here.”

I got to my feet. “Stay where you are,” I said. “I’m on my way.”

Avery promised she wouldn’t go anywhere and we ended the call. I took a large drink of my coffee. Both Mac and Mr. P. had stood up as well.

“What’s going on?” Mac asked.

Mr. P. put a hand on my arm. “Is everything all right?”

“Rose and Liz are following Davis Abbott,” I said. “I have to go see what’s going on.”

“I’m coming with you,” Mac immediately said, moving behind me to close and lock the garage door.

“Good,” I said, putting my phone back in my pocket. “Because it will probably take both of us to wrestle down Rose.” I glanced at Mr. P. “No disrespect to Rose.”

He took my mug and set it over by the old garage door. “None taken, my dear,” he said. “I know how Rosie can be when she gets set on something.”

We climbed into my SUV and headed across town. Neither Mac nor Mr. P. said a word about how fast I may or may not have been going. When we got close to the trailhead we discovered cars were parked on both sides of the road. There was only one lane clear. I saw a space that looked big enough for the SUV and managed to shoehorn it in.

We all got out. Mac looked around and then grabbed my arm. “Up there,” he said, pointing to a place about seven or eight cars ahead. “Isn’t that Liz’s car?”

“It is,” Mr. P. said beside me.

We hurried up the road. Avery was with the car, leaning against the front passenger door, phone in her hand, one earbud hanging down on her shoulder. She smiled when she caught sight of us. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I told them it was a bad idea to follow that Davis guy but they didn’t listen because I’m just a kid.”

I knew they wouldn’t have listened to me if I’d been there, but I didn’t say that. “Which way did they go?”

Avery pointed up the road.

“Please stay here in case they come back,” I said. “If they do, I have my cell.”

Mr. P. gestured with one hand. “Go ahead. I don’t want to hold you up. I’ll be right behind you.”

Mac and I headed down the road at a slow run. I could see what looked like a small crowd of people just ahead where the road rose slightly.

“I swear to God I’m going to put both of them on a leash when I get my hands on them. Or maybe I’ll weld a bell on a chain around their ankles or stick a GPS chip in their arms,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” Mac said.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I said, brushing my hair back off my face. “I know who the real culprit is.”

We finally spotted Rose on the edge of a small cluster of people. Liz was standing in front of her.

Mac pointed. “Sarah, that’s Davis,” he said about a man at the front of the small crowd watching the reality TV crew.

“That’s definitely the man who was blocking our parking lot,” I said. Davis Abbott didn’t seem to be going anywhere. “I can handle Rose and Liz. Can you . . . ?” I gestured in Abbott’s direction.

“It’s time Davis and I caught up,” Mac said. He veered off to the right and I came up behind Rose from her left.

“What took you so long?” she said without turning around. As a former teacher, she claimed to have eyes in the back of her head and there were times I could almost believe it. “We’ve been watching that young man for at least fifteen minutes.”

“Are you out of your mind?” I whispered.

Rose turned to look at me then. “I most certainly am not,” she snapped. “When I got hit over the head a few weeks ago the doctor did tests. He said I was very sharp. And not just for an old lady.” She pulled herself up to her full barely five feet, a look of righteous indignation on her face.

I closed my eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, counted silently to five and let it out slowly, another technique Jess claimed would help calm and center me.

It didn’t.

I looked at Liz, cool and summery in a yellow flowered blouse while my back was wet with perspiration. I poked her with my elbow and she turned to look at me. “What’s your excuse?” I asked.

“I couldn’t let Rose follow that hooligan all by herself, could I?” she said.

I swiped a hand over my sweaty neck. “You know, it’s deeply disturbing that of the three people in your car this morning Avery was the most mature.” From the corner of my eye I could see Mac, his arm around Davis Abbott’s shoulders, moving the man away from the front of the crowd, toward us.

“Let’s go,” I said to Rose and Liz. We made our way around the clump of people and joined Mac.

Davis Abbott was about average height, dark, curly hair cropped close to his head and even features. A pair of sunglasses hung from the neck of his navy blue T-shirt. His mouth had a dissatisfied sulk. It occurred to me that Jess would have called him handsome in a pretty boy way, which would not have been a compliment. His eyes darted from me to Rose. It seemed pretty clear that he recognized us.

“What do you want?” he said.

Mr. P. had joined us by then. “We want to know what you’re doing here,” he said.

Davis gave an offhand shrug. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business where the hell I am or what I’m doing.”