Page 12 of To Die For

She shrugged. “It’s not like I could do anything. Adults just tell you what to do. Or they think they can,” she added a little bitterly.

“So, if it wasn’t drugs, I wonder what could have happened to your parents.” Devine couldn’t give the girl the third degree, but he had to try to get some information from her.

“I don’t want to talk about it, okay? What the hell does it matter now?”

“But it’s puzzling to me why the FBI is involved.”

She shot him a look. “Aren’t you one of them?”

“No, different agency. I’m Homeland Security.”

“They just said I had to come with them.”

“You nervous about meeting your uncle for the first time?” Devine asked.

“Should I be?” she countered, gazing fixedly at him.

“I don’t know, Betsy, I really don’t.”

“You don’t know much,” she shot back.

You hit that nail right on the head.

Saxby came back in smelling of tobacco smoke. “I thought you were in bed, Betsy?”

Without a word Odom scooted into her room and hastily shut the bedroom door.

“So anything else you can tell me that might be helpful?”

“Need to know, Devine.”

“Always hated that phrase.”

“I don’t make the rules,” she said.

He left the woman there as Saxby gazed dejectedly down at her couch bed.

CHAPTER

6

DEVINE HAD WALKED ABOUT HALFWAYto his hotel when he sensed someone following him, and it wasn’t the pair of gents from before. This pursuer was traveling solo.

Devine turned right at an intersection, picked up his pace slightly, and then turned right again at the next street.

When the man who was tailing him mimicked these movements, Devine stepped out of a niche cut into a building façade and said, “You look lost, friend.”

The man gazed up at him, a smirk on his face. He was around five-five and a flabby buck fifty wearing a cheap suit and scuffed loafers. His hair was rapidly thinning, revealing patches of pale, flaky scalp. He smelled of booze and was smoking a cigarette. He looked totally unfazed by the sudden confrontation. In fact, he looked rather pleased as he flicked ash onto the pavement.

“I’m actually right where I need to be,friend. And maybe you are, too,” he added.

“I’m listening.”

“You just left Betsy Odom and her handler.”

“Did I?”

A frown creased the man’s face. “I’m not getting any younger so don’t waste my time playing stupid or this is going nowhere.”

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