“Rasheda, you heard me?” her now impatient father said. “Let’s go!”
“She’s staying with me,” Vince said.
“With you? After what just happened? Over my dead body!”
“That can be arranged,” Vince shot back.
Hershel and Davey and even the police chief looked at him as if he was crazy. Nobody spoke to Hershel Richardson that way. But Vince meant every word. “I should not have left her here in the first place,” he said. “I won’t make that mistake twice.”
“Are you trying to insinuate that I can’t protect my own daughter?”
“I’m not insinuating a damn thing. I’m telling you that you didn’t protect your own daughter,” he said. Then he added, with clenched teeth. “She’s staying with me!”
Hershel and Davey were ready to lash back at Vince, but Mamie interceded. “She’s a grown woman,” she said. “Let her be.”
Vince could tell Hershel nor Davey were accustomed to Mamie speaking up, but they didn’t fight it. Ricki wasn’t worth it in their eyes anyway. They got in his Cadillac and left her there.
But not for long. Vince asked if the police chief had any suspects. He reminded him that this just happened and they hadn’t even finished processing the scene to determine anything.
“Do you think it’s related to what happened to Erica Richardson?” Milo asked him.
“No,” the chief said too quickly. “Not at all.”
That was all Milo and company needed to hear. The cops, they decided, could not be trusted.
And with that, Vince placed his arm around Ricki’s waist, and she leaned into him as they walked to his Bentley. George and Milo, and the security team, followed them. Vince was determined to get her out of this town and get her out now.
He looked at the men on his payroll as they walked. “Now do you believe her?” he asked them. “Her sister wasn’t some love sick girl who killed her lover in a fit of rage and then hung herself out of guilt. Somebody killed Proctor and wanted Erica dead and Rasheda dead too because they knew she wasn’t about to let it go. But we need evidence. Get on the case and find it,” he ordered.
“Yes sir,” said Milo.
“Yes sir,” said the security chief.
“I was already on the case,” said George.
But he and Milo stayed back, to avoid the wrath of Vince, as they decided to catch a ride with the security team.
Vince put Ricki in his car, got in himself, and sped away.
She was his only concern.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
After stopping on the side of the road, Ricki grabbed out of his trunk some of the clothes she had purchased from Walmart and put them on over her pjs. When she got back into the Bentley, Vince took off. And they left Milton altogether.
He could feel that a burden had been lifted from Ricki as soon as he drove them out of those city limits, but he knew she was going to still bear the scars. He drove fast. He wanted as much real estate between them and that town as he could manage.
It was nearly two a.m. when they arrived at Vince’s Connecticut estate on the outer edges of New Haven’s city limits. As the tall electronic gate parted, Ricki didn’t know why she expected to find a mansion to end all mansions behind that fence. She’d never been to a millionaire’s house before. A billionaire’s house either, but that went without saying.
Although it was a white, two-story colonial with smaller houses peppered throughout the property as they drove up the long, winding driveway, it wasn’t exactly breathtaking the way she would have thought a billionaire would have lived. She was expecting a palace. She got a house instead. She wasn’t even sure if it could be classified as a mansion.
She looked at Vince as he drove toward the main house. What manner of man did she have on her hands, she asked herself again. He was so down to earth. Even his house, though grand, was down to earth. That was why she was so shocked when her father said he wasn’t just rich, but was abillionaire. And Google confirmed it.
But her TV knowledge of that class of people made her believe that billionaires drove around in chauffeured limousines all the time and spent most of their day at their country club, or at a charity function, or at a shooting party at the ranch in Montana, or in the service of some other arcane, strictly-for-the-super-rich activity.
But Vince was a lobbyist, and his company, Fontaine-Bachman, was in public relations. She viewed that as a regular profession. But according to Google, it was regular if she thought Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway was regular. It was not. Vince’s company was a multinational, multibillion dollar firm. It wasn’t regular either.
But Vince was.
