She swept into the interrogation room. That’s an apt verb—swept. She moved quickly to the table, walking tall like a model inviting you to look but not touch. She was wearing a fitted white blouse tucked inside a flirty salmon skirt that revealed a lot of leg. Her hair was long, heavy, and blond-red, her features golden and pretty. There was a big-city sheen to her and, also, an odd kind of harshness around her eyes as if she had seen things that had hurt her. She looked around, found the folding chairs leaning against the wall, took one, unfolded it, and set it in front of the table.
“I’m Tracie Blake,” she said.
She offered her hand even as she settled into the chair. I raised my own hand to give her a good look at the chain securing me to the table.
“Oh,” she said.
“Oh,” I repeated.
She sighed dramatically and said, “We thought you were someone else.”
“Who did you think I was?”
“Rushmore McKenzie.”
“What a coincidence. I thought I was Rushmore McKenzie, too.”
“Yes, but not the Rushmore McKenzie.”
She smiled as if she had told a joke and was waiting for her audience to get it.
“Who are you?” I said.
“I’m a member of the Libbie City Council.”
“And you’re here because…?”
She stared for a moment as if she were considering various answers and then opted for the truth. “They think I have a better chance of convincing you not to sue the town into oblivion.”
I glared at the one-way mirror, trying to see the faces of the men I knew were standing behind it. “They do, huh?”
“Yeppers.”
“Honey, you may be the prettiest girl these guys have ever seen, but you’re not the prettiest I’ve seen. If you think a come-hither smile is going to work on me, you’re mistaken.”
Tracie shrugged as if she didn’t quite believe me.
“What would work?” she asked.
I clenched my fist and yanked my arm up as if I were going to punch her. I would have been about three feet short of her face even if the chain hadn’t shortened my swing, yet she flinched and leaned backward just the same.
“You can start by unshackling me,” I said.
“People are afraid of you, of what you might do.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m afraid of what you might do.”
“Like what?”
“I’m hundreds of miles from home, no friend knows I’m here, dressed only in soiled shorts, no wallet, no ID, chained to a table—think about it.”
She did, for a full ten seconds before she smiled a most beguiling smile and said, “Oh, that’s just silly.”
“You think?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then why am I still chained to this table?”
“I’m not—”
“Do you agree that I’m not the guy you’re looking for?”
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t you apologize and let me go?”
Tracie spun in her chair and studied the interrogation room mirror as if she expected the answer to magically appear on the glass. When it didn’t, she turned back to face me.
“Can I tell you what happened?” she said. “Can we just sit here, calmly, like adults, and I’ll explain what happened?”
I made a big production of showing her the chain again. “Do I have a choice?”
“Rushmore.”
“Only one person gets to call me Rushmore, and you’re not her. My name is McKenzie. Just McKenzie, all right?”
“See, that’s one difference right there—between you and the other McKenzie, I mean. He always told people to call him Rush.”
I leaned back in the chair and made myself as comfortable as I could. I had a feeling this was going to take a while.
Tracie had a compelling voice, an actor’s voice, and as she told her story I flashed on Scheherazade telling tales for a thousand and one nights until the king, hardened by the betrayal of his first wife, learned both morality and kindness and renounced his vow of vengeance against all women. Somewhere along the line, I gave up my plans for payback, too. Well, most of them, anyway.
According to Tracie, the man who called himself Rushmore McKenzie came in the spring. He did not look like me, but Tracie said he was the same height, weight, hair color—if you went solely by physical description, people would have thought we were the same person.
“Although you are much more handsome,” Tracie said. She smiled at me, but I refused to give her anything in return.
The Imposter did not announce himself. He drove into town and settled in at the Pioneer, Libbie’s one and only hotel. He took his meals alone in the hotel restaurant. During the day, he would drive the county’s roads. Residents remembered seeing him parked on the shoulder at various intersections taking notes; they would wave to him, and he would wave back. He also spent time in the county assessor’s office, studying abstracts, deeds, and zoning maps without once explaining why. Anyone who attempted to engage him in conversation learned his opinion on the weather, and little else. Not even thrice-divorced Sharren Nuffer, who worked behind the desk and sometimes in the hotel’s restaurant, could get words from the Imposter no matter how breathlessly she asked if there was anything she could do for him.
It wasn’t until several days later that the Imposter stepped into the office of the City of Libbie’s director of economic development. A man named Ed Bizek—the department’s sole employee—was there to greet him. The Imposter told Bizek that he was the front man for a syndicate of developers from the Twin Cities. He said he’d found the perfect parcel of land at the intersection where Highway 20 met Highway 73. Unfortunately, a dryland farmer named Michael Randisi owned the parcel, and it was zoned for agriculture. The Imposter said he wanted to meet with the county commissioners and the Libbie City Council. He wanted to be assured that the county would rezone the land for commercial use if he bought it, and he wanted the negotiations kept confidential for fear that if word of his intentions leaked out, Randisi would demand more for the land than the syndicate was willing to pay. That would kill the deal, the Imposter said. It was this fear—that the deal would be killed—that would induce so many people to do so many foolish things in the coming weeks.
“What were his intentions?” I asked.
“The Imposter wanted to build an outlet mall.”
“Is that like a shopping mall?”
“A shopping mall where manufacturers sell their products directly to the public through their own stores. Mostly you see them in locations far away from major cities. That’s because the rents are cheaper, which reduces overhead, and because most of these manufacturers have contracts with conventional retailers that sell their products. The malls have to be located in places where they won’t compete with them.”
“Okay.”
“I know what you’re thinking, McKenzie—a mall in a town with a population of twelve hundred, in a county with only thirty-three hundred people? But it was a good plan. The plan would have worked. An outlet mall here would have drawn customers from Prairie City and Bison, Meadow, Faith, Isabel, Timber Lake, Dupree—where else?—Lemmon, Reva, Lodgepole. You have to remember, we’re five hundred thirty miles from Denver, six hundred miles from Minneapolis, and about the same distance from Omaha. The nearest decent shopping—we’re nearly four hours by car from both Rapid City and Aberdeen. An outlet mall here would have been huge.”
“Except he did not intend to build a mall.”
“No. All he wanted was our money.”
“How much did he take you for?”
She said, “Nothing from me,” in a way that made me think she was lying. “The city, though, and some others—he picked us clean and disappeared.”
“How long ago?”
“Tomorrow will make a week. McKenzie, can I rely on your discretion?”
“Not even a little bit.”
“McKenzie, if we let you go—”
“What do you mean, if?”
“That came out wrong.”
“I certainly hope so.”
“I meant when we let you go—McKenzie, we need your help.”
“To do what?”
“To catch Rush—to catch the Imposter.”
“Call the cops.”
“Chief Gustafson is working on it.”
“Call the real cops. Call the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation. Call the FBI.”
“We don’t want—we’re trying to avoid—our losses were severe, McKenzie. The city was forced to borrow to maintain basic services. Others were hurt, as well—the bank, some Main Street businesses, other investors. McKenzie, small towns all across America are drying up and blowing away. We were doing okay, except now—if we get the money back, a lot of people will be embarrassed, but life will go on. If we don’t, if people learn the city is bankrupt…”
“Do you expect me to care?”
Tracie’s eyes lost their harshness then. They became soft and moist, and I found myself looking away so I didn’t have to see them. You are the mushiest person I know, my inner voice told me. It also reminded me that Libbie’s problem wasn’t my problem. Your problem is getting home.
“What do you expect me to do?” I said.
“Chief Gustafson said the only way to catch Rush, to catch the Imposter, is by finding out who he really is, where he really lives. We can do that, he said, by investigating the things the Imposter said that were true that might have slipped through all the lies he told us. Rush was here a long time and spoke to a lot of people, and the chief thinks he might have divulged information that he didn’t mean to. The problem is, we have no way of knowing what was a lie he told about you and what was the truth he might have told about himself. Only you would know the difference.”
It was a realistic plan, probably the only plan. We are all creatures of habit and of our own experiences. Over time, even the best-trained actor will slip out of character to reveal something of himself. He’ll start ad-libbing, remembering when he did this, or when he went there, or when he saw that. It’s only breadcrumbs of information, and we all know what happened to Hansel and Gretel when they tried to rely on them. Still, a guy could get lucky. It would probably take an enormous amount of work, yet I had to admit, I found the prospect challenging.
On the other hand, they kidnapped me from my home and chained me to a table—my head had been aching for hours. I could sue them for everything they had. ’Course, if the Imposter looted the city’s coffers, they probably didn’t have much …
I stared into Tracie’s eyes for a good long time, and then I beat on the metal table with both hands—shave and a haircut, two bits.
“What does that mean?” she said.
“Let me go.”
“Will you help us?”
“I’ll think about it. Now let me go.”
Tracie spun in her chair and looked at the one-way mirror. A few moments later, the interrogation door opened, and Chief Gustafson walked in. He was followed by the desk officer who had chained me to the table and the old man who had slugged me. Behind them was a teenaged girl with a mature body and a child’s face.
I stood as the chief walked to the table and uncuffed my hands.
“I’m sorry about this,” he said.
I flexed my shoulders and swung my arms about the way people sometimes do when they’re cold and want to warm themselves. My wrist was chafed and sore, and I wanted to rub it, but I refused, not unlike a professional baseball player who jogs nonchalantly to first base after being plunked with a fastball—I didn’t want the chief to know I was hurt. I didn’t want any of them to know how vulnerable I felt. I had no real idea where I was, but I knew it was too far from home.
I tried to make my voice sound tough. “Where are the bounty hunters?” I said.
“The two men who brought you in?” the chief said.
“Where are they?”
“They’re gone.”
“Gone where?”
“I don’t know. They left before I arrived.”
“Who are they? Where can I find them?”
The chief shrugged a reply.
“Who hired them?”
The old man stepped deeper into the interrogation room. The desk officer sidled up next to him, ready to step between us if necessary.
“I hired them,” the old man said. There wasn’t a trace of regret in his voice.
“Well, I hope you at least stopped payment on the check.”
He snickered at that and stepped closer. “I’m Dewey Miller. I own most of what’s worth owning around here.”
I recognized the look in his eye. He believed in the privileges of power. He had the most, so he demanded the most. Something else, there’s an old movie that you can catch on TCM—She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Whenever one of his subordinates would say he was sorry for screwing up, Captain John Wayne would tell him, “Don’t apologize, mister. It’s a sign of weakness.” Miller was from that school.
“Excuse me if I appear less than conciliatory,” I said.
“I did what I had to do,” Miller said.
“I bet.”
“I thought you were the man who raped my daughter.”
I glanced at the teenager standing behind him. There was at least a fifty-year difference in their ages. Other differences, too. The old man wore a hooded expression of brooding anger, as if he became pissed off at the world one day and never changed. The girl’s face, however, was open and filled with virtues—strength, humility, humor, and goodness. It was not something you could fake. This was a girl that you could hurt without even trying, I told myself.
“Now you know different,” I said.
Miller nodded his head. He had nothing more to say. The teenager filled the void.
“How many times do I have to say it?” she said. “I wasn’t raped.”
Miller spun and slapped her across the mouth with a full-arm swing, driving her back so that she stumbled and nearly fell against the wall. In a sharp baritone, he shouted, “Have you no shame?”
I reached for the girl, the only one who did so, but she waved away my assistance. She regained her balance and gave her father an oddly neutral, unangered look while she touched the corner of her mouth where the blow had fallen. Satisfied that nothing was broken or bleeding, she let her hand fall to her side.
“No, I don’t have any shame,” she said. “At least none for myself.”
She turned slowly and left the room.
Miller called to her, “Saranne.” She didn’t stop.
Miller gradually became aware that we were all staring at him. He saw the contempt in my eyes. I called him a bastard. His head jolted upward. There was a kind of hysterical expression on his face, and he clenched his fists, but I knew nothing would come of it. I wasn’t chained to the table anymore.
“She’s my daughter,” he said.
“Why don’t you treat her like it?”
Eventually his hands went limp, and he rubbed his face with them. He took Tracie’s chair and sat looking at nothing in particular. He wasn’t going to apologize for this, either.
The desk officer patted his shoulder in a forgiving manner. “It’s tough,” the officer said. “A man could lose his head.”
So much for law enforcement in Libbie, South Dakota, I told myself.
“Mr. Miller brought Saranne here to confirm your identity,” the chief said.
“Really? I thought he did it to show us how tough he was.”
Miller gave me a look that he probably thought was threatening and clenched his fists again. All he did was remind me how much I wanted to hit someone, anyone.
“The bounty hunters,” I said. “I want their names. I want to know where I can find them.”
“You don’t talk to me that way,” Miller said.
“One way or the other I’ll have the names before I leave. Get used to the idea.” I silenced any potential argument by turning my back on him and facing the chief. “The Imposter—did he actually pretend to be me, or was it just a coincidence that he was using a name that happened to be the same as mine?”
“He had your actual address. He said he retired early from the St. Paul Police Department. He said he helped find some gold that a gangster hid in the city seventy-five years ago. He said he had numerous friends in high places. Does that sound like you?”
“Everything but the friends in high places.”
“Then he was pretending to be you.”
“What you told me, the Imposter could have learned that just by Googling my name on the Web.”
The chief could only shrug at that.
“Car? Tracie said that the Imposter drove into town.”
“Rental. Originated in Minneapolis. He used your name on a credit card to rent it.”
“The Imposter stayed at the Pioneer Hotel. Most hotels demand a credit card.”
“I checked,” the chief said. “The card was issued in your name; it was the same as the one that he used for the car.”
“I have a financial adviser who runs a credit check every month to help me avoid this sort of thing. If a guy was using a credit card in my name—you say he’s been here since spring?”
“Since early April,” Tracie said. “He didn’t stay all that time. He came and went.”
“Still, if he used my credit cards during all that time, I would have known it.”
“Not necessarily,” the chief said. “Apparently he stole your identity, not your cards. He opened accounts in your name, but he had the invoices delivered to a different address. He also used a birth date and Social Security number that were different from yours—at least they were different from the ones you gave me. There’s no way you could have known the Imposter was pretending to be you.”
“Where were the credit card invoices sent?”
“To a mail drop in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.”
“Hmm.”
“What?”
“I own some property near Grand Rapids. A lake home.”
“Hmm,” the chief said. “The Imposter rented a PO box in your name for six months. It expired last week.”
“You checked it out, huh?”
“We’re not completely helpless.”
“Did you run the Social Security number?”
“Both that and the birth date were taken from a man who died of cancer twelve years ago.”
“What was his name? Where did he live?”
“His name was Andrew Manning. He lived in Grand Rapids.”
“If you knew all this, why did you send the bounty hunters after me?”
“I didn’t.”
The chief glanced down at Miller, who was pretending to be somewhere else.
“Are you going to help us?” Tracie said.
“I’m still thinking about it.”
“What will it take to convince you?”
I spread my arms wide. “Clothes, food, a place to clean up, a telephone, aspirin.”
Miller rose slowly from the chair and reached behind him. He produced a thick, worn wallet from the sucker pocket, unfolded it, and slipped out a credit card. He handed the card to Tracie.
“Anything he wants,” he said.
I snatched the card from Tracie’s fingers.
“It’s gonna cost you, pal,” I said.
I could read the startled expression on the face of the old woman behind the cash register when I entered the store. “Sir?” she said.
There was a row of wire shopping carts near the sliding glass door, and I took one.
“Sir? Sir? You can’t be in here.” She left the cash register and circled the counter. “Sir, the sign says no shirt, no shoes, no service.”
I gave her a smile, which must have been pretty damn frightening considering my appearance—no doubt she thought I was an escapee from the nearest fun house.
“You do sell shirts,” I said. She stopped on the other side of the cart. “You do sell shoes, and I presume you do provide a modicum of service.”
“Sir?”
“So clearly the sign is inaccurate.”
The woman placed both hands on the front of the cart. I pushed forward. She steadied herself and shoved back. She was a strong woman.
“Lady, you’re making my headache worse.”
“Sir, don’t make me call the manager.”
Tracie came in through the sliding doors, collapsing the cell phone that had delayed her and dropping it into her bag.
“What’s going on?” she said.
I pushed hard against the cart, causing the cashier to slide backward about three inches.
“He can’t come in here,” she said.
“It’s all right, Linnea,” Tracie said.
“No, it’s not. I’m calling the manager.”
Linnea stepped out of the way and released the cart. I shot forward a good three feet before I regained my balance.
Linnea grabbed a red phone beneath her cash register. Her voice echoed from every corner of the store as she spoke into it.
“Manager to the front, please. Manager to the front.”
I smiled at Tracie. “Now you’re going to get it,” I said.
“Having fun, McKenzie?”
“Take this.” I rolled the cart toward her. “Follow me.”
Munoz Emporium came closer to an old-fashioned general store than any I had ever seen outside of the movies. It was square with a high ceiling and hardwood floors aged by traffic and time. The shelves were high against the walls and stacked with just about everything you might want to buy—eggs, milk, cheese, meats, bakery, canned goods, packaged goods, ice cream, beer, wine, pharmaceuticals, home furnishings, appliances, yard supplies, sporting goods, toys, cell phones, MP3 players, DVDs, CDs, TVs, and even a few lower-end PCs. The selection was small, but the categories were immense. I marched up and down the aisles, Tracie trailing along.
My first stop was for aspirin. I opened the bottle, tossed the cotton on the floor, and poured three tablets into my palm. The instructions said to take only two, but my headache screamed for more. I swallowed the aspirin and tossed the plastic bottle to Tracie.
“Think fast,” I said.
She caught the bottle with both hands.
“You’re hysterical,” she said.
I headed for the clothing racks. I grabbed shorts, socks, jeans, and shirts from the shelves and dropped them into the cart. I checked for my size, but not once did I look at the price, not even when I seized a pair of white, green, and black Adidas TS Lightswitch Garnett basketball shoes and pitched them on top of the jeans—and I haven’t been a fan of Kevin Garnett or his shoes since he left the Minnesota Timberwolves.
The manager of Munoz’s caught up to us in toiletries. He was wearing a blue smock with the name Chuck sewn above his pocket, and he didn’t like the look of me any more than his cashier did. Tracie worked to calm him while I fired containers of shaving cream, razors, toothbrushes, shampoo, and hair gel into the cart. He didn’t appreciate that, either, especially when I launched a tube of toothpaste from three-point range and it caromed off the wire rim and relocated a jar of face cream from the shelf to the floor.
“This is my store,” he said.
“You’re the owner?” I said.
“That’s right.”
“You should be pleased that I’m here, then.”
“Pleased that some half-naked clown is throwing merchandise around?”
He had me there. Still, my muscles continued to ache from the hours I’d spent curled up in the trunk of a car, and my stomach, which hadn’t seen a meal in nearly twenty-four hours, was making disconcerting grumbling sounds.
“Be nice, Chuck,” I said. “Or I just might leave this happy hovel you all call home.”
“See if I care.”
“You don’t want me to stick around and help catch the great Imposter?”
“It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other.”
“No, I don’t suppose that it would.” I made a sweeping gesture, taking in everything around us. “I can see why the mall might have given you a few sleepless nights, but now that it’s gone south…”
“I would have been all right. This store has been here for over fifty years. My customers know me. They know I treat them fair, just like my father and grandfather did before me. They would have stayed loyal.”
“Yeah. That’s why Walmart does so poorly.”
“What do you know about it?”
“I know that when it comes to money, loyalty doesn’t mean squat.”
Munoz quickly glanced at Tracie. She averted her eyes.
“I’m learning that,” he said.
“It wasn’t just me,” Tracie said. “The whole town wanted the mall. The county wanted it.”
Munoz pointed at the shopping cart. “You finished here?”
“Do you offer gift wrapping?” I said.
Munoz turned to exit the aisle, but Tracie blocked his path.
“Chuck,” she said.
He didn’t even say “excuse me” when he nudged her out of the way and moved to the front of the store.
“He’s upset,” Tracie told me.
“You think?”
“He’s convinced we betrayed him by supporting the mall. He said so in a city council meeting.”
“He was right.”
“We did it for the town.”
“‘Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel,’” I said, then added, “H. L. Mencken,” in case Tracie thought I made it up.
She studied me for a moment before pushing the cart up the aisle.
“You’re not what you seem,” she said.
I did a quick inventory of my appearance.
“I certainly hope not,” I said.
Her head swiveled left, then right, when she exited the store, as if she were uncertain which way to turn. Tracie paused for a beat and went left. Again, I noticed that she walked with gliding grace, her head high, her toes angled in slightly, her salmon skirt swishing back and forth in a most delightful manner. Men turned to look at her. She seemed to accept this as if they had always looked and always would. I followed her, enjoying the view, until she stopped so abruptly that I nearly ran into her. She brought her hand up to shield her eyes from the glaring sun.
“Must you walk behind me like that?” she said.
“It’s your town, honey. I’m just following your lead.”
“Must you call me honey?”
The question jolted me, serving notice that I had been behaving like a jerk ever since the chief removed the cuffs. Maybe I had cause. My head continued to throb; I was still naked except for my spoiled shorts and apparently a figure of some curiosity and amusement according to the expressions of the people who walked or drove by. Plus, I wasn’t altogether sure where I was or how I was going to get home. Yet I could hear the old man admonishing me when I was a kid playing ball and I had a bad day at the plate. “That’s no excuse for poor manners,” he’d say.
“I apologize,” I said. “I won’t do it again.”
Tracie blinked hard. I don’t know if it was because of the sun or because she was startled by my response.
“You mentioned a hotel,” I said.
“Just up the street.”
“Here, let me carry those.”
I took the two shopping bags filled with my purchases from her hands. Tracie blinked again.
“Something else?” I said.
“I keep comparing you to Rush. He was very polite, very considerate—he seemed like a nice man. Looking back, I realize now that it was all for show. You, on the other hand—you don’t seem like a nice man at all, and yet you were angry when Mr. Miller hit his daughter, and what you said about Chuck … Who are you, McKenzie?”
“Well, I’ll tell you. I don’t know if I let a week go by when I don’t ask myself that same question.”
Sharren Nuffer grinned when we went through the front doors of the Pioneer Hotel, and she kept grinning as Tracie and I approached the registration desk. Her tumbled-down, chemically enhanced hair resembled raw blue-black silk, and her rich tan reached all the way to the valley between her breasts, which she displayed beneath a black sleeveless shirt. Apparently she didn’t like buttons, because she used only a couple of them and they were straining to keep her shirt closed.
“How many times do I have to tell you, Tracie,” she said. “We don’t rent by the hour.”
“You’re hysterical, Sharren,” Tracie said.
Sharren must have agreed, because she laughed long and hard. When she finished, she waved a slender hand at me and said, “Seriously, what is this all about?”
“I need a room for McKenzie here,” Tracie said.
“McKenzie? Rushmore McKenzie? You’re not Rushmore McKenzie.”
“Actually, I am,” I said. Sharren looked like she didn’t believe me. “It’s a long story.”
“Tell me,” she said.
I didn’t, but Tracie did. Only the way she told it, what had happened to me since four forty-five that morning didn’t seem like anything to get excited about.
“I knew Rush,” Sharren said.
“Did you know him well?” I said.
Sharren hesitated before she answered. “As well as I could.”
She’s the first person you should talk to, my inner voice told me. I literally shook the thought from my head. Who said I’m staying? I asked myself.
It took some wrangling, yet Tracie managed to book a room using Miller’s credit card—eighty-nine dollars a night. Sharren procured my key from a row of boxes behind the desk, a real key, not a plastic card. While they went at it, I looked around. From the outside, the Pioneer seemed almost quaint, a dignified redbrick Victorian with three floors and no elevator. Yet the inside had an air of quiet dissipation. The reception area was crammed with faded couches, armchairs, and marble-top tables with ceramic figurines, ashtrays, fake Roman busts, and lamps with shades fringed with tassels. It didn’t seem old-fashioned as much as it seemed merely old.
After checking in, I carried the key and my shopping bags to the worn-carpeted staircase. Tracie tried to follow. I stopped her at the base of the stairs.
“This is where I draw the line,” I said.
“But—” Tracie said.
“No buts.”
“Ahh,” said Sharren. “Too bad, so sad.”
She said it with a smile, yet it was obvious that the two women did not like each other. It was equally obvious that they were very much alike.
Tracie frowned. “Dinner? Say in an hour?”
“Make it an hour and a half. I have calls to make.”
Tracie was looking at Sharren when she said, “There’s a diner down the street.”
“We serve a very nice filet if you want real food,” Sharren said. “Perhaps you’d care for room service.”
Sharren batted her long, fake eyelashes at me, but I assumed that was for Tracie’s benefit. The way I looked—seriously, not even an aging divorcée in Libbie, South Dakota, could be that hard up.
“Where is the diner?” I asked.
“Café Rossini,” Tracie said. “Out the door and to the left.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
“Ninety minutes.” Tracie turned and left the hotel, but not before throwing Sharren a triumphant smirk.
Sharren smirked back.
“You won’t be getting much from her,” she said. “Very cold, that one. Very dry.”
I was startled by the remark, and if I had been standing closer to Sharren I might have said something or done something about it. I don’t know why I had become defensive of Tracie, yet I had. Or maybe it’s just that my nerves were still keyed up by what had happened to me earlier; I wanted payback and didn’t particularly care who suffered for it.
I said nothing, did nothing, except turn and climb the stairs.