Page 61 of The Girl Who Knew Too Much

Not good, he decided. Daisy Jennings should have been greeting him and his hundred-dollar apology with open arms.

Time to leave.

He grabbed his cane and started back around the warehouse. His only goal now was to get Irene as far away as possible.

The moonlight glinted on a small object on the dock. He had not noticed it earlier. He told himself it wasn’t important but he paused anyway, hooked the handle of the cane over his arm, and took out the flashlight. He switched it on and pinned the object in the beam.

A woman’s shoe lay on its side.

He went a little closer and aimed the light at the water.

The body bobbed just under the surface.

Daisy Jennings.

A setup, just as he had feared from the start, but the victim was Jennings. Evidently she really had known something that could have hurt Tremayne.

He turned off the flashlight and dropped it into the pocket of his jacket. Cane in one hand, gun in the other, he made his way as swiftly as possible around the side of the warehouse.

The growl of heavy motorcycle engines approaching at speed on Miramar Road reverberated through the night.

There was no good reason for motorcycles to be prowling the empty stretch of road at that hour.

It looked like the cleanup crew was about to arrive.

Chapter 26

Irene heard the thunder of motorcycle engines on Miramar Road and knew that Oliver had been right. It was a setup.

She did the first thing she could think of—she killed the headlights. She kept the Ford’s engine running, ready for a fast getaway, and watched the shadows around the front of the warehouse, willing Oliver to appear.

He did. She could see him silhouetted against the lantern light. But he wasn’t coming toward her. He was signaling her to get out of the vehicle.

Light sparked in her car mirrors. The motorcycles had reached the entrance of the dirt road that led down to the warehouse. She realized that her Ford was directly in their path.

She turned off the engine, grabbed her handbag, jumped out of the front seat, and ran toward Oliver. She stumbled a little on the uneven road.

“Careful,” he shouted.

By the time she reached him, he had the front door of the warehouse open. She rushed inside. Oliver followed.

“Turn down the lantern,” he said.

She heard him slam the old, rusty bolt home, locking the door. Unfortunately, that left the two windows. Both had been shattered long ago, leaving only a few shards of glass in the frames.

She hurried to the lantern and put it out. At least they would no longer be silhouetted in its glare.

She whirled around to see what was happening. The headlights of two motorcycles were halfway down the warehouse road. They were forced to halt behind her Ford.

The engines roared, the riders enraged by the obstacle.

“Your car is blocking their path,” Oliver said. He spoke from somewhere near one of the empty windows. “They’ll have to get off their motorcycles if they want to come any closer. That will even the odds a little. Get down. Stay away from the windows.”

She lowered herself to her hands and knees. In the glare of the motorcycle headlights shining through the windows, she saw the silhouette of Oliver’s gun.

She fumbled with the catch of her handbag. Her fingers closed around the grip of the small pistol she kept inside.

“I’ve got one, too,” she said.

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