A white pickup appeared behind them, coming too fast, blaring its horn. They skidded to a stop in the dirt, clouds of dust rising around the car.
A large, angry-looking man in camouflage gear swung down from the pickup.
From the other side, a young woman—Ellen Homer—ran, screaming, into the brick building. The man had a rifle balanced on his hip. He glanced at Ellen, then returned his attention, and the gun, on them. He motioned to Tania Marie. “Out.”
THIRTY-THREE
Rikki
I believe it, but I don’t. Sitting between Lucas and Roberta Matlock on her Día de Los Muertes bench is easy, especially with the floppy hollyhocks drunkenly climbing the pole beside it. We look at a yearbook, but I can only think about Lucas and what he told me.
Is Julie Larimore really dead? I won’t believe it until it’s confirmed through DNA.
I’m a journalist. What’s my instinct?
Tears burn my eyes. Damn, it’s just too close. I don’t want to know.
“Told you she’d have to be a beauty.” Roberta scoots closer to me on the bench and points at a photo in an old, yet still shiny yearbook. “Took me hours to find this, but I knew I would. Got the newspaper stories, too. She tried to kill her father. Talk was he was abusing the girls, but she never said. Both girls got placed in a foster home, anyway.”
“What happened to the father?” Lucas asked.
“I don’t know if he’s even alive. He’d been in Vietnam. His wife took off and left him with the girls, and his mother helped raise them until she died. He fought to get them back, but I can’t remember how it all worked out.” She taps the photo with her finger. “I remember her, though. A perfect student.”
“Damn.” Lucas must see what I do.
There’s no mistaking her identity, even with the darker hair, minus the streaks. I read the name under the photo. “Julie Homer.” As I speak, an image flashes into my mind: blond, perky, efficient to the point of irritating.
I clutch the yearbook. “Lucas, what’s your assistant’s last name? Ellen?”
I see the answer in his startled eyes. “Homer.”
“Ellie Homer. That was the little sister,” Roberta Mat-lock says.
But we already know that.
Lucas is on his feet. “Ellen’s gone. I haven’t been able to reach her since she contacted the women this morning.”
“What women?” I ask.
“Tania Marie, Princess Gabby and Rochelle McArthur.”
Holding the yearbook, inhaling its musty scent, I feel ill. “Why did she contact them, Lucas?”
His eyes look sick, too, and worried. “To set up a meeting with Bobby W.”
“When?”
“Right about now, I think.”
Gabriella
The man with the rifle moved so fast that it took her a moment to realize that he was reaching for the door next to her, where she huddled on the other side of Tania Marie.
“My God,” Rochelle said as the door flew open.
Hard fingers clamped Gabriella’s left arm, yanking her into the dusky air. She tried to struggle, and he slapped her across the face, searing her with a bright flash of pain.
She gasped, struggling to stay conscious, knowing he would kill her if she collapsed. This man in the horrible camouflage clothes and the eyes of stone was a killer.
