Diamond Corporation! I’m about to ask what he knows about it, but half a breath later, I realize he’s researching my life. Is he writing a book about my predicament? Using me to get close to the story?
I’m about to accuse him, when I see a cigarette stubbed out on a small saucer at the corner of the desk. It looks like the same type of cigarette I saw in my yard, with an amber-colored butt and a white shaft. I suppose that could describe most cigarettes, but . . .
It hits me.
He’s one of them.
He’s following me.
How else would he have this much information—more than Guidry has—unless he’s part of the scheme to make my husband disappear?
That kiss was a cover; he was trying to distract me from seeing his work.
The twin nieces and surfing and paddleboarding and beach-bum wardrobe are part of the cover, too.
It’s why he doesn’t have any concrete information about the people who used to live in my house. It’s why he didn’t know the cat’s name. It’s why he couldn’t give me a straight answer about the scar on his hand. He’s in on it.
It’s why he doesn’t really write.
I trusted him. I told him things I’ve never told anyone.
“Hmm?” He traces the contour of my cheek with the pad of his finger.
My heart is banging in my chest.
He plied me with rum. He knew I’d sleep eventually after that much to drink. He admitted he’d been at my house all night long. He must have come into Bella’s room. I thought it was Micah. But I detected the scent of cigarette smoke that night, too, and there’s a cigarette butt on his desk.
Did he plan to take my daughter? I slept with her in my arms the night I’d sworn Micah had visited. No one could’ve taken her without taking me, too.
Bella’s declarations of the past—I’m gonna go be with Daddy—haunt me now. She said it after we saw the figure on the golf course.
It’s possible Christian is working with whoever was smoking on the fairway.
And then, the phone calls: Listen to your daughter.
I listened. I came to God Land. In coming here, have I fallen into some sort of trap?
“Veronica?”
Gabrielle and her sons are dead.
I can’t assume it’s a coincidence that someone’s after me, too.
He cranes back a bit, as if studying my whole face at once. “You okay? You’re shaking.”
“I had a cup of coffee this morning. Jittery.”
“You eat yet?”
“I’m starving,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Let’s grab the girls and hit Sloppy Joe’s for an early lunch.”
“Joe’s isn’t even open yet.”
“They will be, by the time we’re all ready,” I blurt. “Good fritters. Maybe the best on the island.”
He narrows his gaze, tucks a coil of my hair behind my ear. “Better than Turtle Kraals? Don’t think so.”
I force myself to speak more slowly. “Never been there.”
“Right up Margaret Street.” Now he’s raking through my hair, holding it in a bunch at the nape of my neck. The act could morph from a loving gesture to a vicious yank in a moment. “But Kraals might be more appropriate when it’s just the two of us. They have this drink . . . a mind eraser, let me tell you.”
I’m staring into his eyes. I force a smile and breathe through it. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you’re asking me out.”
His smile brightens. “Maybe I am.”
“I have to turn off my sprinkler, and I have a few errands to run in town.” I pat him on the chest. “I’ll let you get dressed and meet you at Joe’s.” And just in case I’m not convincing enough, I press my lips to his in a quick peck. “Say, half an hour? Forty-five minutes?” I back out of the room, and once the door is closed, I rush to the living room, where Bella is playing with Christian’s nieces.
“We’re going to lunch.” I catch Bella in the midst of one, two, three, fly.
“No lunch,” Bella protests.
“We have to let Emily and Andrea get dressed and ready, Bella, okay?”
“No lunch!”
“It’ll be fun, Bella,” Emily says. “Where are we going?”
“Sloppy Joe’s.”
“I love their burgers,” the twins say in unison.
“We’ll meet you there,” I say. “I have to change, and . . . my sprinkler is running, and . . . I have to stop on the way for a few things. We’re meeting you there. Right at the corner.”
The teens are wide-eyed, tracking my movements.
“Okay,” one of them says.
“Are you all right?” the other asks.
“Just in a hurry.”
Despite my daughter’s protest, I keep her on my hip all the way down the alley, past the gate, and through the yard. As soon as I have my cell phone in hand, I unlock my screen to dial Guidry.
I’m looking over my shoulder the entire time.
The detective’s voice mail picks up. I leave a message as I enter my house. Buffett emanates from the left corner of the place, but I let it play. I gather a few things—DVDs for the car, paper and crayons, clean clothes out of the dryer—and shove them into a beach bag. We might have to disappear for a while in order to stay safe. “My neighbor,” I say. “Christian Renwick. He’s been watching me. He has addresses: the house on Plum Lake, the Shadowlands, something in the Dominican. I think he’s working for Diamond Corporation. Call me back. Bella and I have to get out of here. We’re not safe.”
I grab my car keys and my stunned daughter.
“Leaving God Land?” she asks.
“Yes, baby.”
“No. You said lunch. With Emmy and Andry.”
“Later, baby.”
The next call I place, when we’re already heading toward Truman Avenue to get the hell off this island, is to the Key West Police Department.
I’m doing what they asked. I’m calling them when I’m leaving.
I keep an eye on the rearview mirror all the way past the first bridge to Cow Key.
Chapter 50
A few islands up, we settle in a hotel and wait for a call.
I pace the length of the room while my daughter colors at the table.
“Nini wants to go swimming.”
“No, baby. We have to stay here.” I peek out the drawn curtains every once in a while. The desk staff said they’d let me pay in cash and wouldn’t run the card I’d had to leave “for incidentals,” but I’m nervous. Is simply leaving a card at the desk enough to tell the world we’re here? Is it enough to draw people I don’t trust to whatever-Key-this-is and threaten our safety?
Guidry has yet to call me back, but I take that as a good sign. He’s probably following up on Christian Renwick, and I know the Key West Police Department is on it, too.
When the phone rings, naturally, I pounce on it, but the name in the caller ID gives me pause. Do I want to take a call from Claudette Winters right now?
Maybe she knows something. “Hi, Claudette.”
“Honey, are you ever coming back?”
“Well . . .”
“Micah’s parents have been across the street all day, clearing his things out of there. I mean, maybe you appreciate the help, but if it were me, I’d rather be doing it myself.”
“Wait. They’re at my house?”
“Yes. Box after box of things are coming out of there.”
I suppose it’s not shocking they’re getting it ready for sale.
But given Shell’s odd text message—You have Bella?—it’s just as likely they might even be clearing whatever evidence the cops may have missed to help their son disappear forever.
We’ll know more soon enough, once Guidry and his team comb through Christian Renwick’s shrine.
A sense of dread drops in my stomach. Why did he have to turn out to be one of the bad guys? I liked him. I liked his nieces.
Or maybe . . .
Is there any way he is writing a book about me? And if that’s all it is, could I possibly forgive him for not telling me?
I shake the nonsense from my head.
If he were an author, he wouldn’t know more than the police. And the information sprawled on his desk . . .
Is it true that Micah owes Diamond Corporation millions of dollars?
And he supposedly stole money from his father a decade ago . . .
Who did I marry?
“Micah’s father is clearing the house,” I say. That means they don’t expect us back. Or at the very least that they don’t want us back.
“There’s already a buzz about the house.”
“Really.”