J. Black - The Shop

“Surveillance? What are they looking for?” the sheriff said.

“Anything out of the ordinary. If she goes anywhere, I want them to follow her. They’ll need two cars. I want to know right away if Amy goes by to see her.”

She was thinking about the five thousand dollars Amy had coming. Jolie thought it was from Maddy for services rendered. “I’m asking for a warrant, for her financial dealings and also her house.”

“You think you have probable cause?”

“Don’t know unless I try. I’m thinking Doug Sharpe.” Doug Sharpe was a judge who was known to be supportive of law enforcement.

“His wife is in a bridge club with Mrs. Akers.”

“I’ll have to take my chances.”

The ringing phone woke Jolie. The clock said eight fifteen. Jolie’d had about six hours of sleep after being up thirty-eight hours. Typical, when a homicide was going. She lay in bed, let the answering machine pick it up.

A woman’s voice drifted in from the other room—agitated.

Jolie ran for the phone.

“Amy?”

“Oh. You’re there.” She paused. “My lawyer said I shouldn’t talk to you. I shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Then why are you?”

“Because…I think they’re after me.” She blurted it out.

“Who’s after you?”

“It’s…there was this car outside my place.”

“A car?”

“Maybe I’m just…I don’t know.” She stopped.

“What can I do for you?”

“Do you have a safe house?”

Jolie was pretty sure they didn’t have a safe house; the subject had never come up before. The FBI might. “I could probably arrange that,” Jolie said. “But you’re going to have to give me more information. We could meet—”

“I didn’t hire that lawyer.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know. But I didn’t hire him. I think they wanted to make sure I didn’t end up in jail. I think.” She paused. Jolie could hear her swallow. “I think they want to get to me.”

“Who wants to get to you?”

There was silence. Then: “You know what? This isn’t a good idea.”

“If you could just give me some idea who they are—”

“You think I’m crazy.” Jolie could hear her breathing, ragged and fast.

“Amy—”

“I’ve got another call.”

“Amy—”

“Okay. Why don’t you check this out? See if I’m telling the truth, okay? And I can call you back. You have missing persons, right? You’re police, you do missing persons. Was there anything like that? On Memorial Day weekend?”

Jolie was completely at sea. “A missing person?”

“I’ve got another call. This is not a good idea. Forget I said anything.”

Then she disconnected.

Jolie sat in the kitchen, looking past the screened porch to the trees beyond. She could just make out the pond between the trees. Her stomach tightened.

She’d put it off long enough. She went into the bathroom and looked at the shower. Sunlight arrowed off the chrome nozzle. She took a deep breath and turned on the faucet. To her surprise, she was okay. She pulled the lever that started the shower. The spray hit the bottom of the tub. She undressed. Pretend it was just like any one of the thousands of times she’d taken a shower in her life. Nervous, yes. Terrified? No. Like her trip to the ponds with Maddy yesterday, nothing bad materialized. No big thunderclap. No crushing darkness.

She was fine.

16

Nick arrived in Aspen late in the afternoon. He got settled into his condo on Durant and went out to grab dinner. Saturday night, he couldn’t get into Cache Cache. There was a line on the sidewalk outside Locust, so he left his name with the maître d’ and took a short walk, watching the people on the street and window-shopping.

As he passed the newspaper vending machines, the front page of the Aspen News caught his eye. He fumbled with his change, dropping it on the sidewalk, all the while staring at the headline. Pulled out the paper and dropped that , too. Stared at it hard, his heart going hammer and tongs, heat suffusing his face.

“ASPEN MAN FOUND DEAD IN STARWOOD HOME.”

It wasn’t the headline so much, but the photo on the right.

Mars.

In the photo Mars wore a heavy cable-knit sweater, his arm wrapped around a ski bunny at a local bar. His flared nostrils gave him a spoiled rich-boy look. He was spoiled—a congressman’s son. Nick knew for a fact he was rich. When he’d seen Mars last, the guy was offering him a ride in his yellow Lamborghini. In hindsight, Nick knew Mars was trying to get him out of there before the killing started.

He swallowed, but his mouth stayed dry.

Please let the cause of death be cancer.

Someone on the sidewalk brushed by him, and he jumped a foot.

“Excuse me,” the man said, and Nick muttered, “’S okay.”

Please let it be something he’s had for a while.

But Mars had looked pretty healthy that night.

Heart drumming, Nick read the story fast, then read it again, slower this time. His appetite gone.

Mars’s real name was a mouthful: Frederick Cable Hollister III. Reading between the lines, Nick got the impression Mars was a rich ski bum who liked prescription drugs. In fact, he liked prescription drugs so much he died from an overdose of them in his fancy wood-and-stone house in Starwood.

Kid was a druggie. He probably came close a dozen times.

Maybe.

Or maybe there was a connection to the Aspen murders.

Maybe Brienne’s killers found Mars and killed him to keep him quiet.

Maybe whoever killed Mars would come for him, too.

17 ZOE AND RILEY

Riley Haddox sat up. “Oh. My. God.”

Zoe McPeek knew that tone. She heard her mom’s voice: Uh-oh. Riley’s gone into crisis mode .

They’d been sunning on the dock since noon. Zoe wasn’t nuts about getting a tan; she knew all about melanoma and how sunning damaged your skin, but Riley was a tanning freak , so if Zoe wanted to hang with her, it was kind of required. She thought it was boring, though, and uncomfortably hot and sweaty. She could almost feel her skin turning into leather like Riley’s mom, who rode horses and looked like them, too.

Riley was busy scrolling through her midnight-blue Sidekick LX. “How could I forget that ?”

“What?”

“The video !” Riley cast her an impatient look, as if Zoe should know what she was talking about.

Zoe came this close to asking, “What video?” but she didn’t dare. She rummaged through her memory bank, trying to figure out what Riley was talking about.

Mr. Clean, far enough away to give them some privacy, looked over at them. He wore swim trunks, but that didn’t fool anybody; he still looked like a bodyguard. Scary looking, with his shaved head, dark glasses, and huge muscles—the reason Riley had nicknamed him Mr. Clean. Riley was no stranger to bodyguards—when her dad was attorney general, they’d had a security detail that went everywhere with all members of the immediate family. Riley’s dad told them two weeks ago he’d decided they should have more security, citing an incident where a high school girl in Panama City was kidnapped by a sexual predator. Mr. Haddox said it was better to be safe than sorry.

Riley took it all in stride, but Zoe saw it as an invasion of her privacy. Riley, who never saw a man she didn’t like, flirted with all three of the guys, even Mr. Clean.

Zoe just couldn’t see why they needed security when all they were doing was sunbathing on a private island.