“Yeah.” Tommy was thinking he’d ask Marv to make a quick stop in an alley when his cell phone rang. He looked at the number, then pressed the answer button.
Marv looked at him questioningly.
“Reynard,” Tommy mouthed.
“Report,” came the crisp command from the other end of the line.
It was the man who paid him a good salary to do a wide variety of jobs—from messenger duty to surveillance to murder. Murder got his adrenaline going. Sitting around in a car keeping track of Stephanie Swift was another matter. But he always carried out his assignments to the best of his ability. He’d known all along that he was working for a dangerous man. Then Arthur Polaski, had washed out of the ground in the bayou country.
It was well known that he’d been an employee of John Reynard when he disappeared twenty years ago.
Reynard had been upset about the man’s reappearance as a fleshless skeleton. He’d tried to keep the information quiet among the guys currently working for him, but the word had gotten around—eliciting quite a bit of speculation.
Was it the boss who’d buried Polaski? Or was it someone else? Nobody knew. Nobody was happy about the discovery. And everyone was wondering—why now?
Tommy cleared his throat. “Ms. Swift left the house and went over to her father’s place.”
“And?”
“She stayed for about a half hour. Then she came back home, and she’s been there ever since.”
“And you had no problem following her?”
“No problem.”
“Okay. Good. Stay on it. If anything unusual happens, I want to know about it immediately.” He hesitated for a moment. “And I want to know immediately if that guy shows up. Brady. The one she claimed rescued her at the dress shop.”
“Will do.”
Reynard clicked off, and Tommy looked at his partner. “You hear that?”
“Yeah.”
“He didn’t like Brady sniffing around his honey the other night. Now he’s upset about the guy showing up again at the dress shop.”
“Want to bet that Brady ends up dead?” Marv asked.
Tommy shook his head. “I’m sure as Shinola not going to bet against it.”
Stephanie sat in her car for a few moments, trying to calm down after her meeting with her father. It was hard to believe they were related to each other. Sometimes she had fantasies about being someone else’s child—and that was the reason why she could never connect with him on any meaningful level.
She switched her thoughts back to Craig Branson and felt a rush of emotions—only some of them pleasant.
With a sigh she climbed out of her car and headed for her back door. When she stepped inside, she gasped as she took in the shadowy figure sitting in the easy chair across from the door.
CHAPTER SIX
Craig Branson had watched Stephanie’s security detail take off. When the car was out of sight, he crossed to the alley in back of her house and found her car missing.
They were tailing her, and either they had X-ray vision, or they had some other way to know which way she was going.
He clenched his teeth. There was no way to find out aboutthatfor sure until she came back.
Instead he let himself inside and had a look around. He liked the mixture of antiques, comfortable chairs and sofas and whimsical decorations.
She must like animals, because she had a lot of little ceramic, glass, wood and metal figures on the shelves among her books. He picked up a cat that looked like it came from Mexico, stroking his fingers over the smooth, painted surface, half hoping that he’d pick up some impression of the woman herself. But he got no mental connection to her by touching any of her things.
He walked upstairs to her bedroom and stepped inside the room, loving the cool blue and white color scheme that reminded him of a beach cottage. His eyes zeroed in on the neatly made bed. Had John Reynard slept there with Stephanie?The thought of them naked in bed together made his throat close, and he fought to banish the image from his mind.
