Page 67 of One Last Promise

She leaned her head back.

“Don’t sleep,” Moose said.

“I have an elephant stomping on my head. I am not going to fall asleep.”

“Then we need to talk about something,” London said softly.

Tillie looked over at the woman. Pretty, her blonde hair back in a ponytail, tall, some curves, she wore a red Air One jumpsuit, zipped halfway down to reveal a black shirt underneath.

“Themoney wasn’t there.”

Tillie just blinked at her for a long moment. Then she sat up.

Bad idea because the room took a fast curve. She reached out, and Moose’s hand caught hers.

“Do you need a bucket?”

“Not yet.” But maybe. “What do you mean it wasn’t there?”

“Shep and I lifted the patio pavers under the fire pit just like you said and?—”

“Did you look in the wrong place?”

London pulled out a molded white vinyl chair and sat down, then leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “No, we looked in the right place. The waterproof box was there. The suitcase was gone.”

And now Tillie couldn’t breathe. “It was gone.”

“Did Rigger find it?”

She glanced at Moose. Nodded, then winced.

“So maybe it’s over?” Moose said softly. “If he has the money, he could have left Alaska.”

Tillie cocked her head. They didn’t know Rigger like she did. And could be that Moose read her mind, because he gave her a look of frustration.

Then he spoke the words she dreaded. “Tillie, what aren’t you telling us?”

She swallowed.

Suddenly his attention left her, and he glanced past her, his gaze on the television. He frowned, and she turned to look at the flatscreen.

Her entire body hollowed.

Rigger, exceptnotRigger but in his true persona as Julian Richer, dressed in a neat blue suit, standing outside the grounds of the Alaska State Fair, smiling and talking with a local reporter. The closed captions on the screen caught the tail end of their interview.

. . . just on vacation. The family loves Alaska and we wantedto see the last great wilderness before my political campaign really heats up this fall.

What?

And then the camera panned to a woman who waved. She held the hands of two boys—looked like twins, about seven years old.

The same age as Hazel.

And now she got it. She shook her head.

“Tillie. Is that?—”

“Yeah. That’s Rigger. Or rather, Julian Richer. Rigger was his MMA name.” The reporter was winding up her segment with a few facts about Julian—his two championships in the light heavyweight division, his success as the entrepreneur of a line of MMA gyms across the country, and his current run for mayor in a suburb north of Miami.

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