Page 42 of Look for Me

“You know who I am.”

“Your arrival in Key Largo is interfering with an ongoing operation.” Tanaka stared at him in the dim street lights above them on the cracked sidewalk.

Ongoing operation? What is Corinne knee-deep in?“I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

“What can a long-lost boyfriend from another life do?”

Martin wondered if it was a rhetorical question or an insult.

“You and that private investigator.” Tanaka frowned. “Interfering.”

“I’m sorry for both of us. It’s my fault. I was the one who wanted to find Corinne.”

Tanaka didn’t correct him. To Martin, it meant that she knew Corinne was Dinah.

A sudden realization hit Martin. “Please don’t tell me I brought evil into town, that Corinne was abducted because of me.”

“Evil?” Tanaka tilted her head. “If you must know, it was already here. You walked into a viper’s nest.”

“God, please forgive me.” Martin closed his eyes. When he opened his eyes, Tanaka was walking away. Martin went after her. “Wait! Wait!”

Tanaka stopped.

“Aren’t you going to ask me questions?” Martin asked.

“What questions might I ask you?”

“I don’t know. I took those photos this afternoon that Pilar sent to your office.”

“I already know that.”

“Maybe if you ask me questions, I might prove useful.”

“You’re desperate to help.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then go home to Savannah, Mr. MacFarland. If Dinah wants to see you, she will visit you. Don’t try to look for her again.”

In other words, stay away.

There was no way Martin could stay still. His mind churned through several ideas. He thought he might call Ming again for help. Then again, wasn’t Ming unavailable all week?

Tanaka turned and walked back to the crime scene, passing by Pastor Butler coming toward Martin.

“Let’s go home,” Butler said. “Then you go back to your hotel to get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

“Is there any more we can do right now?” Martin walked with him to the car. When the Uber driver saw them coming, he put away his phone.

“I have to tell Pete that Wanda is dead,” Butler replied. “He would want to know right away.”

Martin’s watch said it was past midnight. “Won’t he be asleep?”

“Pete was going to ask Wanda to go out with him.”

“But he never got around to it,” Martin finished for him.

He didn’t know Pete from Adam, and he might be projecting his own failures on Pete. If he had somehow not lost Corinne four years before, none of this mess would have happened today.

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