“The way you describe him, he was defiant. Uncaring about the potential damage he could have caused. He’s more audacious than that skimmer, Adler. In this operation, being too audacious is as dangerous as being too stupid. I want to watch the comeuppance of El Paso.”
“I get that, but—”
“Don’t worry. I’ll stay out of sight and just observe.” He chuckled. “Besides, it’s not like he’s going to live to tell about it.”
Roland snorted. “No. So, day after tomorrow. Late. After I close the restaurant.”
“How will you get him there?”
“That’s the easy part. But I’ll have to dump him somewhere other than Bayou Coeur. I heard from Auclair today. As of now, the sheriff’s office is still investigating.”
“I thought they would have given up by now.”
“Just as well if they had. I was told that Darcy’s got nothing. I was also told that Haskell was champing at the bit to get in on it, but Bowie is keeping him at his desk.”
“Why would Haskell be so eager to get in on it?”
“He’s an adrenaline junkie.”
“Hmm.” Allen set down his soda. “Night after next.” He clicked off without further discussion.
He stretched out on the bed but didn’t put his mask back on. His mind was churning too fast to go to sleep. Several aspects of the account he’d been given were troubling. Roland seemed to think there wouldn’t be any repercussions from tonight’s incident. But Oz wasn’t comfortable discounting the possibility of blowback of some kind, no matter how minor.
Of course El Paso could be lying or exaggerating as Roland suspected.
But Allen couldn’t help but wonder about a homeless man who had sprung up fighting, had possibly sustained a knife wound, yet had possessed the speed, agility, and derring-do to play chicken with a delivery truck, and then have enough wiliness to vanish.
What were the chances?
Slim to none.
Chapter 20
Mitch lowered his badge from directly in front of Dylan’s face but held her stare of patent disbelief as she asked, “What did you say?”
“Roland Malone is your patient. I want to know what he’s confessed to you.”
Her breathing was rapid, shallow, and seemingly insufficient. She wet her lips. “That’s what I thought you said, but I hoped I was wrong. You know I can’t divulge—”
“Don’t give me that privilege crap, Dylan. You can divulge it.”
She made several attempts to speak but seemed incapable of forming words. He should feel good about that. He’d gotten her right where he’d wanted her—distressed and dismayed.
But it didn’t feel good. Not at all. Not like he had imagined it would. When they had come face-to-face for the first time in her office waiting room and she had extended her hand to him, he’dwanted to bust through that barrier of cool composure. He’d wanted to see her rattled and rendered speechless.
But he knew now that her aloofness was an affectation, one she armed herself with in the name of professionalism. When they’d kissed last night, her safeguards hadn’t stood a chance against the fire they’d stoked. And they hadn’t even turned on the furnace full blast.
No, he didn’t want to take a victory lap over the bewilderment with which she was looking at him now. But he steeled himself against letting the softer emotions he’d developed for Dylan, the woman, become a deterrent to cracking Dr. Reede, Roland Malone’s counselor.
“What has Malone confided to you, Dylan?”
“All of this, your undercover work tonight, everything, has been about Roland?”
“Yes.”
“Is he the reason you came to me as a patient?”
“John mandated it.”
