Page 25 of Amethyst Flame
Again, he paused long before sighing. “I already have a complete file on you, Ms. Taylor, and that information is in it. When you get off work—”
But I was already moving. “Rique!”
Shirleen would so give me a pass for skipping out forthis. But I texted Amanda anyway to come in to finish my shift. The afternoon rush could be brutal once temps started to climb. I offered to fill in for her any time of her choosing.
This was a lie. But a motivating one.
I pushed out of the Freeze. Threw my apron in my open car window. Dane had driven around, sans smoothie.
Rique looked over at me. “You’ve been here maybe twenty minutes, and you didn’t do a damn thing.”
“Yeah, well. Something came up.” I tossed my car keys to Jacob. “Go easy on the gas or she shudders something awful.”
Jacob’s mouth had opened in question, argument in his eyes.
And Rique looked damn bewildered.
Too bad, so sad.It wasmyturn now.
I jogged around the hood of the Kidnapper, opened the front passenger door, and climbed up into the seat. “So you’ve been holding out on me.”
Dane pulled out of the shopping center’s parking lot. “I wasn’t aware that I was.”
We drove to the stoplight at Fifth Ave.
I drummed my sparking fingertips on my knees. “Then why are you keeping me in suspense now?”
He glanced over as if surprised. “I had the impression your father wasn’t directly relevant to your life.”
“Understatement,” I muttered.
“But yes. He’s married and has a child. I didn’t memorize that mobile number, if it is associated with her.” Dane turned onto a boulevard heading through a residential development. “But that information shouldn’t be difficult to discover.”
So I just had to sit tight. Dane had a file. I was finally going to learn what I had on my sperm donor’s side of my DNA.
“Are we headed to your shitty hideaway?” Last time he’d had a crumbling old farmhouse halfway between Queen Creek and Santan Valley. Weedy orchard all around. If so, he was going in the wrong direction.
“Plumbing went out in that other place. Anyway, I needed…a new perspective.”
He turned onto twisty Cholla Ave and then on Horseshoe Bend into one of the older but well-maintained neighborhoods where the houses were more widely spaced than the new neighborhoods. Each of these obviously all had different builders—ranch houses mixed with adobe southwestern-style places mostly, bronze metal with blue patina cut-outs of kachina dolls and suns decorating the outside walls. Tall cacti in the yard. Mesquite trees around the side. Old Arbolito.
I preferred this kind of neighborhood to the Arizona cookie-cutter master-planned communities a million times over. “Yeah, this iswaynicer.”
“It’s private and fairly close to your place.” He slowed at a patch of flowering cholla, flipped a three-point turn, and backed into a long driveway that terminated in a carport.
“But, Agent Dane”—I filled my voice with aghast disapproval—“what if your victim manages to escape? They might—you know—get away and find help!”
I had sure tried running away back at that dusty farmhouse. No luck.
He shrugged. “Point is, here I can grab a shower in the morning after chasing down my victims.”
I choked. “Was that…a joke?” I shook my head as if dazed. “Oh god! Who do I call for help?!”
He didn’t dignify that with an answer as he got out of the Kidnapper and started for the house.
I leaped out, following at his heels, a little nervous considering the last time I’d followed him into a house. He tapped a code to enter and held the door for me. His outstretched arm revealed just a little of the gun holster under his suit jacket, reminding me that he was a very serious man on very serious business.
But he needed me now, so I wasn’t scared.
