she was going to drive around the main part of Blessings and see if a silver Escalade popped up in her rearview mirror.
The first place she went was by the bed-and-breakfast to make sure he hadn’t gone back there. She didn’t even have to pull in to see he was gone, so she swung by All Saints Cemetery just to make sure that story wasn’t true. The only vehicles there were the groundskeepers’ and one little blue sedan, so she headed back toward Main.
Even though she came out on the far end of Main Street, she was surprised by the amount of traffic, and then guessed it was because of people shopping for Thanksgiving. The majority of traffic on Main was either coming from the Crown or going to it, so she decided to check out the parking lot next. It would be the perfect place to watch most everyone in town coming and going today, so she drove in behind an old red truck and a shiny black Lexus and then began cruising the parking lot on the pretense of looking for an empty parking place.
Everything was taken toward the front half of the lot, and the empty places were farther back. So she turned at the end of an aisle of cars and was headed toward the back of the lot when sunlight suddenly flashed on the windshield of a car, which caught her attention.
The strangest thing about it was that the driver was parked against the chain-link fence and had backed into a parking spot so that the car was facing the store.
On the face of it, that wasn’t an unusual thing to do, but backing into that particular space put the trunk of the car up against the fence, making it impossible to load groceries into it. And as she got closer, she realized it was, in fact, a silver Escalade…and the driver was wearing a dark leather jacket.
She accelerated toward the back of the lot, then pulled up directly in front of the car, blocking him in. The look on the man’s face went from shock to confusion…and then she got out, carrying the pepper spray.
She saw the recognition on his face as she started toward him, then watched him roll his eyes and slap the steering wheel with both hands. He knew he’d been made.
“Get out of the car,” Cathy said.
Gage hesitated. “Look, lady, I—”
“So…now I’m a stranger? I thought I was your friend Cathy from Las Vegas who’s going to help you with family research, and now you’re acting as if you don’t know who the hell I am? Get out of the car!”
Gage hadn’t expected confrontation. He opened the door and got out to try to minimize the noise she was making, because people were beginning to stare, and to his horror, a man had pulled out his cell phone and was recording them…sound and all.
“I’m out. So now what?” he said.
“Why are you here?” she snapped.
“I’m just doing a job. Nothing more,” he said.
“And the job was to find me? Then what? Are you the hitman Blaine Wagner sent to kill me?”
Gage gasped. “What? Hitman? Oh, hell no! I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just a PI working a case.”
“And I’m your case. My ex-husband, Blaine Wagner, is stalking me. I ran to get away from him after he threatened my life, and he obviously hired you to find me…so now when I turn up dead you’re going to be an accessory to murder.”
Gage felt sick. So this was why Rand Lawrence quit.
“Oh, Jesus, lady. I didn’t know. All he wanted from me was to find out where you were living.”
Cathy glared. “Why would he need to know that? We’ve been divorced for close to a year. I’m calling the police. I’m filing charges against you for whatever they can pin on you. You can work out the details of your job versus my safety with the local police. You are a low-life, scum-sucking…”
Gage forgot about the boy with the cell phone as he lunged toward her, intent on stopping her from following through on her threat.
Cathy screamed and staggered backward, getting in one good shot of pepper spray just before a big black truck came flying out of nowhere. She heard a screech of brakes, got a brief glimpse of Duke coming out of the truck, and the next thing she knew, he’d body-slammed Brewer against the Escalade.