I spent that first night in the Lexus in the empty lot of a large office park.
I also did what that bastard told me to do. I stopped in an Office Max and picked up a couple of disposable phones. I texted the number to Hallie’s phone.
Then I waited. I waited until I couldn’t hold my eyes open anymore.
No reply.
Earlier, I’d found a tool set in the car’s emergency kit and drove around a movie complex until I came across a Honda with Tennessee plates and switched the front plate onto mine. With luck, the owners might not even know it was missing for a while, and even if they did, a stolen, out-of-state plate wasn’t exactly the biggest story of the day with everything else going on. And Lexus SUVs were a dime a dozen on the roads.
I hoped this would buy me some time.
I had my first meal of the day from a Wendy’s take-out window, chomping down the double burger in maybe three large bites along with a box of chicken tenders and a Coke. I normally watched what I ate and would rather die than stuff down a meal like that, but the day’s events had left me empty and ravenous, and, showing up at Ruth’s Chris going, “Table for one, please!” wasn’t exactly an option tonight.
The only plan I had was to assert my innocence and focus on that blue car.
My thoughts drifted back to Hallie and Mike. I tried to think of every possible way he and Martinez might somehow have been connected. Mike was a prominent real estate attorney in town. He would have known police. Then there was the gamecock thing. South Carolina.
But the only real connection between them was me.
I turned on the news, basically just to keep me company, until my eyes finally got heavy and I started drifting off to sleep.
What I heard almost sent my heart through my chest.
“The Jacksonville Murder Spree suspect,” the commentator said. “This is not the first time. He’s done it before.”