Page 25 of Threat of Danger
“I don’t want to keep you from work. Why don’t you come over tonight?”
The coffee shop was pretty full, more than one set of curious eyes on them. Jess didn’t want to share her life with the public ever again.
“Yes!” Pam jumped up, then bounced for good measure. She never did anything as mundane as simply standing. “Should I sneak in booze and some smokes?”
“Don’t smoke.” God, she’d missed Pam. How had she forgotten how great Pam was, what good friends they’d been?
“Seriously. Me neither. Wrinkles and yellow teeth. Bleh. What were we thinking?”
“We weren’t. We were teenagers.”
They’d sneaked only a couple of cigarettes. Nicotine made Jess dizzy, and made Pam nauseous. She’d once thrown up when they’d climbed out of Jess’s window in the middle of the night to smoke on the kitchen’s low roof. Jess’s mother and Zelda wondered for weeks afterward where the bad smell was coming from.
“See you tonight.” Pam squeezed the air out of Jess before bounding toward the door.
Jess walked after her. She could finish her coffee in the car. Burlington was an hour drive, and she wanted to get to the hospital. “Sounds like a plan.”
“I’ll bring the wine coolers, and you bring a detailed account of what you’ve done in the past ten years,” Pam said as they reached their cars. They were parked next to each other. “Special emphasis and extra detail on all sexual encounters. And the mystery boyfriend who’s too complicated for a simple yay or nay. And your delicious encounter with Derek.”
“Nothing delicious about it,” Jess called back over the roof of her rental.
Pam blew a raspberry. “Everything about Derek Daley is delicious. He makes taking out the garbage look delicious. I’m not even kidding. I saw him do it.” She fanned herself. “His muscles bunched. It was very erotic. Practically porn.”
Jess refused to think about Derek doing porny things, involving waste management or otherwise. She waved goodbye.
“I’ll tell you all about it tonight,” Pam promised before she drove away.
Jess bit back a groan. Did she want to know more about Derek?
Yes.She wouldn’t mind knowing how he’d been, if he’d married and was living over at the Daley farm with a wife and four kids. Things Jess hadn’t dared to ask Zelda because Zelda would make too much of questions like that. Pam wouldn’t.
Meeting Pam was an incredibly nice surprise. But the next person Jess came face-to-face with, pulling into Pam’s spot after she’d pulled away, was just the opposite. Jess had to bite back a groan.
Curse his eyes, the man recognized her as soon as he got out.
“Jess Taylor!” In a blink, he was scurrying around his blue SUV toward her. “You’re back. How about an interview?” Mark Maxwell beamed the fakest smile in New England, more teeth than a shark, his smile so wide it was a miracle those freakish teeth all didn’t fall out of his mouth. “We could just have coffee right now and make it something informal. Taylorville’s Hollywood Daughter Returns.”
“Not a chance.” She opened her car door, but he was already next to her, with a hand on the frame.
He was a couple of inches taller than Jess, in good shape, probably from chasing people. He wore a wrinkled black suit with a wrinkled white shirt. His expression was over-the-top cheerful, but his body language gave a weird, looming, vaguely threatening vibe.
The last time he’d ambushed her, she’d felt plenty threatened. But she was a different Jess now.
She could have thrown him over her car with an action-movie flip, but going to jail for assault wasn’t among her weekend plans. So instead she said, “I never understood people who screwed you over, and then when you next met, pretended that you were the best of friends.”
“Come on, Jess. I never screwed you over. I’m a reporter. I report. I want to do my job well, like you want to do yours.”
“My job doesn’t involve dragging people through the mud just to humiliate them.”
His freakish smile never wavered. “I only asked the questions the public wanted answered.”
“You insinuated that Derek and I made up the kidnapping for attention. So we could sell the story for money.”
“You have to admit, the evidence was scant.”
“Screw you, Mark.”
His smile finally slipped as his gaze turned speculative. “Are you here because of the Hannah Wilson disappearance? They found her. Accident. Drove off the bridge.”
