Which shocked Ricki because she knew hecoulddo it. “Why wouldn’t you help her? I’ll get on a payment plan and pay you back. It’ll take a long time, and I know that’s not good, but you’ll get every dime back. Why won’t you help her? You’re willing to help me.”
“I’ve taken leave of my senses and gone against everything I normally am to help you. But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to take leave of my senses to help anybody else.”
Ricki found that to be a backhanded compliment. But she held her peace. This man was all she had.
“What I’m doing for you hasn’t anything to do with that sister of yours,” Vince continued. “That prosecutor said she was an addict and a prostitute. Is that true?”
Ricki didn’t want to admit it. “Sometimes.”
“Didn’t I tell you about fantasy living? Now was that prosecutor telling the truth?”
Ricki exhaled. “I told you she has issues. Yes.”
“Then she’s better off locked up right now than in the streets. She’ll only give the prosecution more ammunition to bury her with if she was in those streets doing everything she’s big enough to get into. So getting her out is not an option. Forget that.”
He could tell Ricki was distraught, but that was too bad. She was a helper, but there was just so much help you could give a druggie and a whore. “Put that money away,” he said to Ricki as he stopped at the stop sign, and then turned left on a long road to the edge of town.
The silence from Ricki as she put the money in her purse was strained. He glanced over at her and could see her distress. Why it bothered him so much was concerning. He was known the world over as a very tough guy who couldn’t care less about anybody but himself. That was his reputation everywhere. It was how he viewed himself as well. But that didn’t explain why this particular person was upending all of what he knew himself to be. “If she didn’t do it,” he said to her in encouragement, “she’ll be okay.”
“With a public defender who’s already acting like she’s guilty?”
“Maybe because she is,” said Vince as he looked over at her again. “Ever thought about that, Rasheda?”
Ricki’s eyes grew so large that it concerned Vince. Then he realized she was looking, not at him, but beyond him. “Watch out!” she cried out as a pickup truck had crossed the medium and was heading straight for Vince’s Bentley.
Before Vince even saw it, Ricki grabbed the steering wheel and flung it toward the side of the road and Vince, now seeing what Ricki was seeing, floored the gas petal and took control of the steering wheel as the truck continued to speed across that medium toward them. But Ricki’s fast thinking by grabbing the steering wheel, and Vince’s subsequent moves, caused the truck to miss hitting them by inches. The Bentley sped through the gravel on the side of the road, coughing it up, and then rammed into bushes before Vince slammed on brakes.
He looked at Ricki. “Are you okay?”
Ricki nodded.“I’m fine.You?”
“I’m okay,” Vince said as he looked through his rearview at that pickup truck.
Ricki turned around and looked through the back window. “Stupid-ass drunk driver!” she yelled out as that truck seemed to swerve wildly across the road trying to get away, and then it course-corrected and kept on going. “They oughta start putting those drunk-ass drivers under the jail!”
But Vince wasn’t so certain it was a drunk driver at all. His public relations firm dealt with a lot of unsavory characters attempting to get their reputations back on track, and they would do whatever it took to make it happen. That pickup truck speeding toward them as if they were in his crosshairs gave him those kind of vibes.
Especially by the way that truck headed straight for his Bentley. It felt targeted to him. As if somebody in that town knew Ricki was back in town and was the kind of person thatwould scream from the raptors that her sister was innocent, and would do whatever it took to clear her sister’s name. And they didn’t like it. It could be a family member of that dead doctor who wanted Ricki’s sister to fry. Or it could be the real person that caused that doctor to be dead and didn’t want Ricki to expose them.
But either way, Vince thought, it didn’t look good for Ricki.
He backed out of the bushes, concerned not at all that his very expensive automobile probably incurred some significant scratches, as he got back on the road and headed for the hotel.
During the drive, not a word was spoken between them.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The best hotel in town was a three-star hotel just off the interstate. A far cry from the Four Seasons and Ritz-Carltons and Waldorf-Astoria hotels he was accustomed to frequenting. But this would have to do.
He parked and unbuckled his seat belt. Then he looked at Ricki. “I’m going to stay here in town tonight,” he said.
“But I thought you were going home.”
“I was.”
“What changed?”
He had a new problem: He was suddenly concerned about her safety. That was what changed.
