Page 63 of To Die For

“Hey, can me and Kor be her guardians?” asked Shore. “We know her. She likes us. We was real good friends with her parents. That counts, right? I mean to the judge? And we got this nice place for all of us to live in.”

“You also have some problems in your past and being in and out of drug rehab will not be looked on favorably by the court,” said Devine. “And you don’t have regular jobs so how would you support her or yourselves?”

“Yeah,” said a resigned Shore, who glanced at Rose. “Ain’t the first time we hear that, right, Kor?”

Rose scratched his head and looked out the window. “Hey, whatthe hell happened to your truck? Your windshield’s all busted up. You hit somethin’?”

“Oh, I forgot to mention that somebody tried to kill me back in Ricketts.”

Shore and Rose exchanged surprised glances. Rose said, “No shit?”

“You gonna report it to the cops?” asked Shore.

“It might have been the cops who did it,” replied Devine.

“Fuck me,” said a stunned Rose.

Devine looked at him. “You ever think of getting back into the cooking business?”

Rose shook his head. “No way, too damn stressful. What made me do drugs in the first place. Just to keep up. But I like cookin’ for friends.”

“What did Betsy like to eat?”

“Burgers and fries and pizza mostly, just like all kids,” said Rose with a crooked grin. “But I got her to expand her culinary horizons a little. She even tried my chicken cordon bleu. Said it didn’t suck, right, Dozer?”

“Right. So what you gonna do about this court hearin’ and Danny Glass?” asked Shore.

“I’m going there with her, but I don’t have much leverage to make a difference.”

“But if you find shit on Glass?” said Shore.

“You got any in your back pocket?”

“I wish.”

After he finished his dinner, Devine went to his room and looked out the window in what had been Betsy’s bedroom. All he saw was darkness, and Devine had no way to know that someone was right now watching him through a pair of superb night optics.

CHAPTER

28

PRU JACKSON LOWERED HER MONOCULARand studied the modest home in the middle of the woods. Three men were inside. She had observed all of them through various windows. She didn’t know who the other two were, but, really, only Travis Devine interested her.

She walked back to her electric and virtually silent e-motorcycle. This was the stealth piece of equipment she’d had delivered to her rental home along with the SUV. Because of its limited range, she had followed Devine to Ricketts in her SUV with the motorcycle in the back. She had deployed the vehicle when she had seen the two men take him. Later, she had tracked him to here.

She had saved his life tonight, primarily because Jackson didn’t want anyone else killing him.

Yet there was another reason. The attempt on his life had felt familiar to her in a way that might turn out to be personally beneficial.

Jackson was not really speculating on this.

After shooting out the tire of the SUV in pursuit of Devine, she had fled, but once she had reached the main road, she had reentered the woods and watched as Devine’s 4Runner flashed past her. Then Jackson had made her way back to where the encounter had occurred and subsequently filmed everything she had seen with a long-range camera.

The two men who had abducted Devine were placed into body bags by a group of other men and loaded onto the SUV, while the damaged tire was repaired.

Travis Devine is one helluva killing machine, she had thought.

The area was processed to remove as much evidence as possible. She had continued to watch as two men conferred on things. One of the men then made a call and talked for about a minute. Jackson wished she’d had a listening device capable of picking up the conversation at this distance. Then the vehicle had sped off and she had followed, eventually leading her to a property of cleared land about three miles away.

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