Page 70 of Her Rival

"Hi," I said.

"Hi."

"What time is it."

"Ten twenty."

"I slept that late."

"You slept that late, Hartley. You earned it. Coffee."

I picked up the second cup. It was already light and sweet the way I took it. He'd paid attention on Saturday morning. I sat down across from him.

He waited until I'd taken a sip.

"Hollis update came in at eight," he said. "I let you sleep through it because it wasn't urgent and you needed the sleep. I'm telling you now."

"Okay."

"Your father drove west from the motel at five forty-seven, which I already told you. He drove to a Denny's on the west side. Had breakfast alone. Sat at the counter and read a paper for two hours. Hollis's man stayed in the lot. Your father left at eight oh two. He didn't get back in his car. He walked to a bus stop. Got on a city bus going east. Hollis's man followed in the car. The bus stopped at Charleston and Maryland and your father got off and went into the public library."

"The library," I said.

"What."

"He's been in the library two hours and seventeen minutes, as of the timestamp on this email." He turned the printed sheet toward me. "Hollis has a guy inside now. Your father's at one of the computer terminals on the second floor. He's been on it the entire time."

"What is he doing on the computer."

"Hollis's guy can't get close enough to see the screen without making himself, so we don't know yet. But your father hasn't approached you. Hasn't gone to Brynn's building. Hasn't driven by any of the obvious places I'd expect a man like him to drive by. He is, as of right now, in a library in West Las Vegas using a computer for unknown purposes."

I sat with that.

I hadn't expected library. I'd braced, for two days, for a confrontation at Brynn's building. On the sidewalk outside the arena. On the gravel turnaround in front of Jett's house, because the man wasn't above driving up into the hills if he'd figured out how. I had not braced for a public library.

"What does it mean," I said.

"I don't know yet."

"You have a guess."

"I have a guess."

"Tell me."

He set his coffee down.

"My guess," Jett said, "is he came to Vegas with a plan, and the plan was to scare you into one of the three options from the phone call. Drop the article. Come home. Or let him up to Brynn's for a family conversation, whatever that would've meant. He gave you forty-eight hours because he thinks forty-eight hours is the maximum a person can sit with a deadline without folding. You didn't fold. You didn't call. You didn't get on a plane. You didn't move out of Brynn's. He's in a library because the plan didn't work and he's trying to figure out a new one, and the new one probably involves the internet, which is a tool he's not good at, which is why he's taking two hours and seventeen minutes on a library terminal to do whatever he's doing."

I closed my eyes.

"Okay."

"Hartley."

"Yes."

"This is good."