Carrie moved across the small, dark room to the other window as Bass shifted from Stevie’s room to Tony’s. She was impressed by how good Bass was at questioning these guys. He’d put Stevie completely at ease and had the guy singing like a bird without even realizing he was confessing to a bunch of serious crimes.
The female cop Carrie’d seen before in the squad room ducked her head into the room, asking, “How’s it going?”
“Great. Stevie just confessed to kidnapping Gary Hubbard and to working for Lonnie Grange.”
“Wow. That was fast. Usually these types hold out for a few hours before they break.” The woman came into the room all the way, closing the door behind her.
Carrie watched as Bass sat down in front of Tony, who looked a great deal more hostile than Stevie. She listened closely as Bass said gently, “Your friend, Stevie, is a talkative guy.”
Tony swore long and hard, and Bass seemed content to let him rage. As the guy’s tirade eventually ran down, Bass said calmly, “You know the score, Tony. He who talks first, walks first. Unless you can offer me some information that Stevie hasn’t already spilled, he’s walking out of here in a few minutes, and you’re going to jail for the rest of your life.”
“Life? I didn’t kill no one!”
“What you would call first-degree kidnapping in New York, down here in Louisiana, we call aggravated kidnapping. Unlike in New York, where you can be sentenced to twenty years in prison for first-degree kidnapping, in this fair state it’s a mandatory life sentence without probation or parole. Did you know that?”
Another storm of swearing erupted from Tony. Carrie was impressed at its breadth and creativity. That must be what swearing like a sailor referred to.
“Your boss, Lonnie Grange, had to know that. It’s why he didn’t kidnap Hubbard himself. He threw you to the sharks, man.”
When the guy wound down from a third outburst of profanity, Bass leaned forward in his chair, staring hard at Tony. Carrie wasn’t even the target of that lethal stare, but still, it made her squirm. Guilt did that to a girl.
Bass growled, “Your best bet is to tell me where to find Gary Hubbard. I can get you put in a lower security prison, get you privileges. Trust me, you don’t want to go into general population in the federal penitentiary in this state. Gen pop in Angola is a very, very risky proposition.”
“Maybe I’m the guy who’ll make it risky.”
Bass looked Tony up and down. “You’re soft. Going to fat. Approaching middle age. The boys in Angola would chew you up and spit you out.” Tony bristled as Bass continued, “Lonnie G.’s got no pull down here. He and his boys can’t protect you at all. You go into the pen without a hard-core gang affiliation, you’re going to be for sale to the highest bidder. You can’t even begin to imagine the stuff they’ll do to you. Bending you over in the shower’s gonna be a walk in the park before they’re done with you. Guys die from the stuff they do to cream puffs like you.”
There was notably less swearing from Tony this time. Bass’s warnings appeared to have gotten inside the guy’s head.
Carrie silently cringed as Bass stepped on the gas pedal a little harder. Lord, he was scary when he talked like this. “You wanna die in prison, Tony? You got any family back home? Kids? Grandkids someday? You wanna ever see them? Hug them? Only way you’re seeing any of them is through Plexiglas, my friend.”
Tony was silent this time.
Bass let the silence draw out until it was so uncomfortable that even Carrie was fidgeting. “Where’s Gary Hubbard?”
“I can’t tell you,” Tony replied.
Carrie’s hands fisted in frustration. He knew. She could feel it. Through the glass, Bass asked the guy, “You can’t tell me, or you won’t tell me?”
“Same diff. I’m a dead man either way.”
“Lonnie G. tell you he’d kill you if you rolled over on him?” Bass threw out. “Guys like him always say stuff like that. They make big threats to get their guys to shut up and take the fall for them. Lonnie’s just out of prison. He knows how bad it really is in there. He’d do anything not to go back, including giving you up.”
“He would not!”
Carrie nodded. Bass was good at this interrogation stuff, all right. Tony had just confessed to knowing Lonnie Grange.
“You’re willing to go away for the rest of your life for Lonnie? Is he that good a guy? He must be some kind of special friend for you to die for him. Are you really willing to go to hell for him?”
Carrie was ready to confess everything to Bass, and she wasn’t even in the same room with him. Who knew he’d been taking it as easy on her as he had been so far? Thing was, the day would come when he would demand to know what she wasn’t telling him about her past. He would come at her like this.
And she wouldn’t be able to hold out against him. She was deluded if she thought she was going to be able to keep her secret from Bass. He would tear her open like a cheap tin can and pry every last, humiliating detail out of her.
The thought made her physically ill.
“You okay?” the female cop asked her.
“No,” she muttered. “Yes. Never mind.”
“You look like you’re about to faint.”
Carrie waved off her concern. If the woman went next door and told Bass his girlfriend was sick, he would rush in here and demand to know what was going on. He would interrogate her like he was going after Tony Sicarrio, and it would be all over. She leaned against the wall, gasping like a dying fish.
On the other side of the glass, Tony was stubbornly silent.
Bass leaned even further forward and began describing in a quiet, terrible voice the graphic, violent detail of things he’d heard of happening to inmates in federal prisons. Bile rose in Carrie’s throat at some of the abuses he described. They were nothing short of the sickest forms of torture. It appalled her to know that Bass was even aware of such things, let alone familiar with them.
Tony paled.
Carrie glanced over at the female cop, who seemed completely absorbed in the interrogation. She glanced up at Carrie. “Bass is the best, isn’t he? I love watching him work over perps.”
“If being gross constitutes being good at this stuff, then I guess Bass is pretty good at it,” Carrie managed to reply.
The other woman nodded, seemingly oblivious to Carrie’s reaction. “Being good means doing whatever it takes within the law to get the criminals to confess. Saves us a ton of time and resources if we can get them to confess instead of having to go out and gather physical evidence to prove they’re guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
Bass’s voice—unusually clipped for him—floated out of the speaker on the wall. “And then there’s the torture...”
Oh, God. It could get worse than he’d already described?
Carrie tried to tune out his words, the cruel way he battered at Tony, the way he broke down a hardened criminal’s defenses, waxing eloquent in describing the worst excesses of torture Tony could expect to experience in prison. It sounded to her like Bass had dipped into his military training for some truly gruesome forms of torture to describe.
She couldn’t unhear any of it. How did Bass live with having seen, or possibly even experienced, horrors like that?
“Jeez, you’ve got a twisted mind!” Tony finally blurted.
“No kidding,” she muttered.
The female cop shrugged. “Bass breaks everybody. They all spill their guts to him in the end.”
He breaks everybody.
The words were daggers to Carrie’s heart. She couldn’t spill her guts to him. Ever. If he knew the truth, he wouldn’t want anything to do with her. She would take her shame to the grave with her.
But she knew him too well. Bass would never stand for secrets between them. Telling him the truth would totally be a condition of their relationship. She would have to rip off the scabs she’d so carefully nurtured over her worst emotional wounds.
She couldn’t do it.
Tony blurted, “You’re sick, man.”
Through the glass, Bass smiled so coldly that Carrie felt the chill in here. “Hey, I’m not even a criminal, and I’m not bored out of my mind, sitting around in my cell all day long, thinking up ways to entertain my psychotic self. I’m nothing compared to the boys in orange. They’re gonna have a field day with you, Tony. You’re gonna take that tough guy attitude inside with you, and they’re gonna smash you like glass. You’re gonna be left in so many pieces they have to sweep you into a body bag.”
Carrie was appalled. Bass was showing a streak she was scared to death of. Surely it was all an act. But the cop beside her was staring at Bass in open appreciation, as if that was the real Bastien LeBlanc revealing himself in there.
An overwhelming urge to bolt from the room and run for her life tore through her, leaving her entire body shaking and her mind jumping from thought to thought like a manic rabbit standing on an electrified panel.
“Where’s Gary, Tony?” Bass asked forcefully.
“Why in the hell should I tell you? I want a plea deal before I’ll cough it up.”
She gaped. The man had basically just admitted to knowing where Gary Hubbard was stashed.
Bass stood up, moved around the table and loomed behind Tony. Then Bass looked up, straight at the mirror, and said clear as day, “Get her out of there.”
The woman cop reached for the door and said, “You heard him. Let’s go.”
“But I have to know where my uncle’s being held!”
“Bass needs you gone. And he’s the boss.”
Carrie might have resisted further, but the woman officer actually reached out and took her by the elbow, politely, but firmly steering her out into the hall.
Even though she wanted nothing more than to run, she owed Gary. Carrie demanded, “Why can’t I stay?”
“Think about it. Why would a cop not want a civilian witnessing an interrogation?”
“Is he going to beat up Tony?”
“Cops don’t beat up prisoners,” the woman replied scornfully. “But we sure as hell jog their memories when someone’s life is on the line.”
Bass was going to rough up Tony Sicarrio? If she’d been shocked before, she was stunned speechless, now. In an intellectual way, she understood that Bass was capable of violence. But somehow, she’d always pictured him shooting a gun at terrorists from a long way away—something bloodless and technical. But using his fists to pummel the truth out of Tony? It was so...real. So violent.
That was it. She was out of here.
Her thoughts must have shown on her face because the cop paused in the doorway of the squad room to ask her, “Do you want to know where Gary Hubbard is or not?”
“Of course!”
“Then let Bass do his job, and don’t overthink it.”
Carrie fell into the chair beside Bass’s desk and absolutely overthought it. With every passing minute, her imagination spun more wildly out of control. The more she thought about it, the more she convinced herself that Bass was probably murdering Tony. Slowly.
The hell of it was that even if he hadn’t murdered the guy, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that Bass was capable of it. Every fear she’d ever had of Lonnie Grange, of men in general, roared to the front of her mind, blinding her to anything else.
Must. Run.
Now.
She couldn’t take the waiting any more, imagining Bass pounding another human being into pulp. She jumped up from the chair, mumbling something about needing to find a restroom, and all but ran out of the building. She had to get some fresh air!
She burst out of the precinct, hyperventilating so badly she felt as if she might faint. But she didn’t stop. She headed down the street, stumbling along blindly, going nowhere in particular.
She had to get away. Away from Bass’s aggressive curiosity. Away from his willingness to resort to violence to get the answers he wanted. She spied a park and veered into it, drawn by the green grass and inviting benches. She fell onto one, and wasn’t surprised to realize tears were streaming down her cheeks.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stand and fight like Bass wanted her to. She wasn’t as strong as him and not anywhere near as tough as he was.
Yes, she was a coward. She owned that about herself, and she was okay with it. Running away had kept her alive for this long—there was no reason to believe continuing to run wouldn’t continue to work for her.
Except for Bass himself.
She’d thought she knew him. Thought she could trust him. But who was the man back in that interrogation room? Was that all an act to get a criminal to talk, or was it a glimpse into the real monster lurking beneath the nice guy?
Or was she just overreacting? He hadn’t done anything to Tony Sicarrio in her presence. He’d just talked to the guy. Sure, he’d painted some horrifying pictures with words, but it wasn’t as if he’d actually tortured the guy. But then he’d ordered her out of the observation room.
What had happened then? No way would he ever tell her.
Run or stay.
Stay or run.
If she ran, she would be abandoning Gary. She might also be saving her own life.
If she stayed, she might die. Or she might be able to have Bass for herself. Assuming she could find a way to reconcile her feelings for him with what she’d seen of him today.
All of her stuff was at Bass’s place. How was she supposed to get through the gate and past all that fancy security of his to reach her personal belongings and the van? He had her neatly trapped.
Was that his plan all along? Was he that calculating? Lord knew, she’d had no idea he had such a hard streak in him until she witnessed that interrogation.
She had to stick around. For now.
She had to play the game for a few more hours, get back inside his fortress-like compound, and wait for an opportunity to make a break for it.
Plan in place, she sat there until her breathing finally slowed and stabilized, and then she looked around. She had no idea where she was. She headed for the busiest looking street bordering the park and looked for a taxi. It took her a few minutes, but she finally spotted one and waved it down.
She asked the driver to take her back to the police precinct. Sitting in the backseat, she carefully schooled her face to calm. Bass was so perceptive that she dared not give away any hint of her plan to escape him.
The cab pulled up in front of the precinct, and sure enough, Bass was standing out front, looking up and down the street. The look on his face shocked her. He looked...ravaged. She looked more closely, not believing what she was seeing.
His entire body was taut, tense. He looked close to panic. And the expression in his eyes was one of total devastation.
Her plan to run away from him wavered in the face of his distress. Did he really care about her that much? Could she forgive him for what she’d seen earlier?
She climbed out of the taxi, and Bass spotted her instantly. He rushed forward and wrapped her in a bone-crushing hug. He mumbled into her hair, “Thank God you came back to me.”
“I had to get some air,” she wheezed from the iron grip of his arms. “Speaking of which, could I have a little now?”
His arms loosened slightly. Very slightly. “What happened?”
“I started feeling really claustrophobic in there. I went for a quick jog but I got lost, so I grabbed a taxi and had it bring me back here.”
Keeping an arm around her shoulders, he guided her into the precinct. “Let’s get out of here,” he murmured.
Completely thrown by the intensity of his reaction to seeing her return, she followed him to the parking garage and climbed into his pickup truck.
Was she wrong to run away from him? The mental whiplash of seeing him go from violent to solicitous was too much to process.
As he pulled out into traffic, she asked, “Why did you choose to drive this car today?”
“In the first place, this is a truck, not a car, and in the second place, what do you mean?” he asked, never taking his eyes off the road.
“I’ve observed that the vehicle you choose to drive on any given day reflects your mood at the time. So, why the beat-up old truck now?”
He glanced over to her, looking surprised. “Huh. I never thought about it before.”
She stared at him expectantly.
He continued, “For the record, the exterior of this truck may be fifty years old, but the engine under the hood and the chassis is state of the art. She may not look like much on the outside, but Esther is fast and powerful.”
“Esther?”
“My grandmother was named Esther. She had white hair and came to about my chin, but she was a swinging dame. Loved to dance and laugh and shop. I have a lot of good memories of her.”
This was the first time Bass had spoken of his family to her. Carrie studied him thoughtfully. “Have you got a car named after your mother?”
His face closed, and his eyes went hard. “No.”
“Wow. That’s revealing.”
“My mother wasn’t a bad person. She just couldn’t handle it when my father walked out on her. She crawled into a bottle and never made it back out.”
Holy cow. “How old were you when your dad left?”
“Eight.”
Yikes. He’d been old enough to remember it, then. If possible, his face closed even more tightly. Obviously not a subject he liked to talk about. At all. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Why? It’s not your fault my parents’ marriage sucked.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. A bad marriage, huh? She’d lived through the end of Shelly’s parents’ marriage and the disaster of Mrs. B’s second marriage. The toll on Shelly had been rough.
To Bass, she said, “I’m sorry you got caught in the middle of it and got hurt.”
“Granny Esther was great to me. I spent a lot of time with her after the divorce. I’m not totally screwed up.”
“You’re in your thirties and showing no sign of interest in long-term relationships. I’d say you were screwed up at least a little by your parents’ divorce.”
Bass’s spine went rigid at that.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she added hastily. “We’re all screwed up in one way or another by family baggage.”
“How are you screwed up—aside from, of course, having to change your name?”
“I got no support from my family. I learned early on to take care of myself and not trust anyone else.”
“And how’s that working out?” he asked dryly.
“I’m alive.”
“But not much more,” he observed.
She sat back, startled. Was he right? Had she sacrificed a normal life, normal relationships—heck, even friendships—in the name of protecting herself? Was she as messed up as him?
Truth be told, she’d never slowed down long enough to really think about it.
They arrived at his place, and she watched closely as he punched the left-hand garage-door opener and the iron security gates swung open. The right-hand garage-door opener raised the big steel door at the end of his parking garage. She memorized the numeric code that let them into his workshop, and despaired of how she was going to get past the palm print pad that let him into his house. Maybe, if she was lucky, she could get out of the house without the palm print thing.
Bass went immediately to the kitchen and started cooking. An act she now knew to be another coping mechanism of his. Cooking was how he de-stressed. In a little while, the smells of frying sausage, seafood and the pungent spices of jambalaya emanated from the stove.
She went into the bedroom and quickly organized her clothes and personal items so she could pop them into her bags and be ready to go in a matter of minutes. She returned to the main room, her heart heavy.
She set the table for dinner, and sat down with Bass to unquestionably the best jambalaya she would ever taste.
Bass let her eat in peace, but then at the end of the meal, he laid down his napkin and said seriously, “We need to talk.”
Uh-oh. “About what?”
“About today.”
She knew he was mad that she’d bolted from the police station! “What about today?” she asked cautiously.
“About my interrogation of Tony Sicarrio.”
Oh. Whew. Not something she particularly wanted to revisit, but at least she wasn’t the target of this conversation. “Umm. Okay. It was pretty graphic.”
“Yeah. It was. He was a tough nut to crack.”
She took a deep breath and forced herself to ask the question she’d been dying to ask ever since she bolted from the precinct. “Did you hurt him?”
“No.”
Did she believe him? He’d never lied to her before. But he also wasn’t elaborating. Doubt ate at her gut, and she chewed her lip, unsure of what she believed.
Silence fell between them. Bass seemed to expect her to say something, to react to his horrific descriptions of torture. But she had no idea what to say. His utter determination to get at the truth—at any cost—had appalled her. Made her distrust him. Sealed her decision to get away from here, away from him, as soon as possible.
She had to say something. The silence was getting downright uncomfortable. “Where did you learn about all those torture tactics? Is it something you were taught in the military?”
“Good Lord, no! The US uses enhanced questioning techniques, and some of them can be fairly...challenging...but we don’t torture anyone.”
“Not officially.”
He shook his head. “The stuff I talked about isn’t stuff I’ve ever done to anyone. It’s all stuff that’s been done to me or my fellow SEALs.”
Oh. My. God. “That’s horrible!”
“Yes. It is.”
“How does somebody walk away from something like that and not be a complete head case?”
“Some guys don’t. Some guys never recover physically or emotionally from what’s done to them.”
She stared at him in horror. “What was done to you?”
He shook his head, his eyes hard and cold. “It’s in the past. I survived. I walked away from it. I got some counseling, and I let it go. I don’t need or want to talk about it ever again.”
Fair enough. She wasn’t sure she could stand to hear the details anyway. If only he would offer her the same understanding. But it wasn’t in his nature to let something important go. If she had a secret, he would insist on knowing it.
Aloud, she asked, “Is it common for SEALs to get tortured?”
“Not at all. We have to get caught to get tortured, and that’s rare indeed.”
“Can you talk about how you got captured?”
“Bad intel. Politicians back home interfering with important decisions. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. It was just one of those things. The stars aligned to blow a mission to hell. At least everyone on my team lived. Most of the time when a mission goes sideways, guys die.”
“Still. That’s terrible,” she responded.
“Life is a roll of the dice. We were lucky.”
“Lucky that you were captured and tortured?”
“Lucky that we lived. SEALs are trained to put up with a lot of terrible stuff and not take it personally. The funny bit is we actually accomplished the mission. The bad guys revealed themselves by capturing us, and the team sent in to rescue us was able to take them out.”
She had a hard time wrapping her brain around that kind of thinking. “So your team was bait? You sacrificed yourselves and got tortured to lure out a bad guy?”
“More or less.”
“That’s insane!”
“That’s the job.”
“You SEALs really are crazy.”
He shrugged. “Someone’s got to do the job. Why not me? I’m stronger, tougher, and better trained than anyone else to pull off the tough missions.”
She couldn’t resist asking the question that bubbled to her lips. “Does that include being able to dish out the same kind of punishment that was done to you?”
He frowned. “That’s not a simple question. Do I know how to do bad things to people? Of course. Do I think it’s right to torture someone? No. Is there a circumstance under which I might actually torture someone? I know better than to say never.”
That rocked her to her core. He was admitting that he could do terrible things to other people? He really was the monster she’d thought he was earlier!
“Don’t look at me like that, Carrie. Everyone’s capable of doing things they thought they could or would never do, given the right motivations. I’m trying to be honest with you, here. I wouldn’t just randomly grab someone and do awful things to them.”
“When might you torture someone?” she demanded, outrage growing in her chest. “Give me an example.”
“All right.” He thought for a second. “If someone kidnapped you, and I had one of the kidnappers in custody and they wouldn’t tell me where you were—I wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever I had to in order to get them to tell me where to find you.”
She was only slightly mollified by that answer.
He must sense her reluctance to buy his explanation, for he continued, “Everyone’s got a hot button. Everyone’s got someone or something they’ll break all their personal rules and taboos for. If you were a mother and someone was harming your child, are you telling me you wouldn’t hurt them, given the chance?”
“I suppose I see your point.”
“Trust me. It’s what becoming a SEAL is all about. We will die to defend our country and protect our brothers. Period. Someone’s got to be willing to go that far, and we’re those guys. We’ll die to defend the people we love, as well.”
“That’s really intense.”
“I suspect most people will get violent to protect the people they love. Thankfully, most people aren’t ever put in that situation.”
But SEALs were put in that situation. Routinely. How did that change a man? Did it unleash something terrible inside him, or did it refine his priorities into something heroic? She studied Bass intently. Maybe it did both to a man.
She just wasn’t sure she was brave enough to love a man who could be both.
Bass stood up and picked up the dinner dishes. “SEALs are extremely carefully trained to control the violence. We’re not psychopaths waiting to tear the head off anyone who crosses us.”
This afternoon’s interrogation notwithstanding, apparently. “Then why did you go after Tony Sicarrio like that?”
“I didn’t lay a finger on him.”
Truly? Then why did Bass order her out of that observation room? She declared, “You scared the hell out of him.”
“Do you want your uncle back?” he shot back at her.
“Yes, of course!”
“At what cost? Is it worth me scaring some two-bit criminal into telling us where your uncle is and who has him? I threw some ugly words at a bad guy. Not a hair on his head was touched. He got off damned easy if you ask me.”
Carrie had no response for that. Bass was right. Her reaction wasn’t on Tony Sicarrio’s behalf. This was about her fear of violence in men. She’d been the victim of it once, and she had no intention of being a victim of it again.
Silently, she carried the rest of the dishes into the kitchen.
Bass commented, “I need to run over to the Navy base and check in with my guys. Do you want to come with me or would you rather stay here? This place is buttoned up tight, and our bad guys have been striking strictly late at night. You should be okay here for an hour or two.”
Hah! A chance to get out of Dodge! She answered, “I’d rather stay here if you don’t mind. It has been a long day.”
“Cool. Feel free to go for a swim in my bathtub. It’s fully jetted.”
“That sounds amazing.”
She waited until the rumble of Bass’s Charger faded into silence before racing to the bedroom and throwing her clothes into her duffel bag. She was just heading to the pegboard in the kitchen to get the keys to one of Bass’s cars when her cell phone rang in her pocket. She jumped about a foot in the air. Ten to one it was Bass checking up on her. Lord, that man had great internal radar. He must sense that she was about to pull a runner.
She schooled her voice to cheerful unconcern. “Hello?”
“At long last, Kathy. You’re a hard girl to find.”
She staggered and dropped onto the sofa. She hadn’t heard that voice since the night long ago that changed her life forever. That changed her forever.
“What do you want, Lonnie?” she snarled. She would be damned if she showed fear to this man, even if her legs were too weak to hold her weight right now and her entire body was shaking like a leaf.
“You know perfectly well what I want. Except this time I want you wide awake.”
She mentally swore, calling him every name she could think of in her head. The only reason she’d been able to recover and move on at all from his attack was that she’d been drugged and had no memory of the actual rape.
God. She hated to even think the word.
“You’re a pig, Lonnie.”
“You’re an uppity little bitch who needs the starch knocked out of her.”
Her breath whooshed out of her. But then a strength she didn’t know she had flowed through her. She answered scornfully, “Whatever. You need to leave me alone, Lonnie, unless you want to end up like your men.”
“What men?”
“Tony and Stevie. They’re in police custody and singing like little birdies.”
That caused a long silence at the other end of the line. She was on the verge of hanging up when Lonnie burst out, “You want your uncle back alive or not?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You come to me and I’ll let him go. You refuse to come to me, and I’ll kill him. Your choice.”
Her brief moment of bravado crumpled, leaving her bent and broken and so scared she could hardly breathe. “Where is he?” she asked hoarsely.
“With me.”
She closed her eyes in agony. Every instinct she had was screaming at her to run, run, run! But she had to keep him talking. Get him to reveal everything she could before he hung up.
“Where are you?” she asked in resignation.
“Outside New Orleans.”
“Give me an address.”
“Head southwest out of New Orleans on Highway 90 and call me when you get to Morgan City. Be there in two hours, or your uncle’s a dead man.”
The connection went dead in her ear.
She quickly did a map check and found out the drive to Morgan City would take her a solid hour and a half. She dialed Bass’s phone number, but he didn’t pick up. She left a hasty message. “Lonnie called and he’s going to kill Gary. I’m on my way to Morgan City.” She rattled off the phone number Lonnie had called her from, too.
And then she raced out of the house. Sure enough, the alarm system allowed her to open the house door from the inside without any problem. She punched in the numeric code to get into the parking garage and tossed her things in the back of the van. Unlocking Esther, she took the two garage door openers off the visor, left the keys on the seat, and headed out.
This was not how she’d expected to leave Bass’s house. But somehow, it felt inevitable. Bass had been right about one thing, at least. She hadn’t been able to run away from Lonnie forever. He’d finally caught up with her. And it was time to pay the piper.