Page 31 of A Friend in the Glass

“She, uh. She says she’s finishing up a meeting. She’ll be here, um, soon.” Anson blinked rapidly. “You know.”

“Great,” Sam said. “In the meantime, you can tell us what you know about her and—”

The scream cut through the convention center’s din. A woman’s scream. Sam spun and sprinted toward the bar’s exit.

He was too late. He wished he’d been later.

She hit twice: the up-escalator’s rubber handrail, with the distinct crunch of breaking bones, and then the polished concrete floor on ground level. That sound was wetter, like a melon splitting. Sam stared into Evangeline’s face. Her features were blank in death and distorted by the impact of her landing.

Then he looked up and saw Lew turning away from the third-floor railing.

Chapter Sixteen

Rufus had been stuck between a rock and a hard place.

After having been caught red-handed at Shareed’s crime scene by Erik—his ass still hurting from the chewing out that’d followed (metaphorically, of course)—Rufus wasn’t in a rush to call the detective about a second dead body, hardly more than twenty-four hours later. But if he didn’t, and word got out that a local CI was last spotted a few dozen feet from the dead and mangled body of a woman like Evangeline Ridgeway, who’d had an important job and impressive title and undoubtedly lots of connections and money…. Well, Rufus had seen far better people than himself get thrown under the bus in these kinds of situations. Calling Erik was, unfortunately, the safest option.

And after a bit of chest-thumping and rather inventive cussing, Erik had said he was on his way.

“We heard a scream,” Rufus explained. He stood slouched against the glass wall of the concourse, arms crossed, staring at Erik’s handsome face and thinking that he really could have been Ryan Gosling’s younger brother. “Sam saw her fall from the escalator, hit the railing, then hit the floor.” He added with a grimace, “The crunch echoed.”

“And you saw somebody push her?” Erik asked Sam.

Sam shook his head.

“But you don’t think this was suicide?”

Sam glanced at Rufus.

Rufus said, “According to my therapist, I have suicide ideation. But I can tell you this, I surely wouldn’t chuck myself off an escalator if I were looking to get the job done.”

“Right,” Erik muttered.

“She’s the one you asked about,” Sam said. “What was the connection to Shareed Baker?”

“Baker called her from that hotel.” Erik drew a deep breath. “What the fuck kind of trouble are you kicking up for me this time?”

Rufus held his hands up in defense. “Why do you always assume the worst of me? I’ve been taking in the sights with my beau and we came across this interesting convention. Give me a break.”

“Bullshit.”

“Bullshit, he says.” Rufus dropped his hands. “Don’t you think it’s pretty suspish that Evangeline is dead a day after Shareed? And after you asked about her just last night?”

“All right.” Erik stretched his back. “You know something about this. What the fuck is going on? All of it.”

“If I knew what was going on, I surely fucking wouldn’t be hanging out here for my health,” Rufus said. “Shareed called Sam yesterday morning out of the blue. We had no idea who she was or how she got his number. She wanted to meet up and exchange some information, but instead she wound up dead. Now someone else is dead. I don’t want Sam to be next.”

“And you didn’t think this was important to tell me when you called me out to see her dead body? A crime scene, by the way, that you two fucked to hell by trampling all over it.”

“When you yell at me, Erik, I don’t always want to phone a friend.”

“You want to say something?” Erik asked Sam.

“I don’t know what she had,” Sam said. “But it’s worth something to somebody. They killed her for it. And now they killed Evangeline.”

“Why? Why her? What was her part in all of this?”

Rufus glanced at Sam before unbuttoning his jean jacket in order to produce the folded paper from Evangeline’s hotel room. “We think Shareed was blackmailing Evangeline. I found this in her hotel room this morning. It’s an old press release for something that never happened.” He flipped it over. “And that’s someone’s banking info.”

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