Thieves Get Rich, Saints Get Shot - By Jodi Compton Page 0,30

fingered the card as if hesitant. “Can I go?”

“Yeah, you can go. Use that card if you need it.”

Walking away, I decided not to go straight to the car. Should he look back, I didn’t want him to see the vehicle I was traveling in, nor Serena when she approached. If the puzzle pieces fell into place for him, sometime later, I didn’t want him to have any new information to pass along about Hailey Cain, other than about my new brown hair and fake bruise, which couldn’t be helped.

I angled across the lot, heading for the delicatessen where Serena had gone, disciplining myself not to look back in the direction of Pratt and his partner. When I pushed my way through the door, Serena was at a self-serve condiment stand, getting napkins and straws. There were two white bags on the counter in front of her.

“Hey, I was just coming,” she said.

“There’s cops out there.”

Her gaze shifted to the windows. “Where?”

“Up near the store. They saw me but didn’t recognize me.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“You get the car and come around. The less they see of me again, or us together, the better.”

She nodded, put the napkins and straws into the bag, and left.

I stood inside the door, not too close, watching her retreating form. I couldn’t see Pratt and the other guy, but their car was still visible. A group of high-school-age kids came in, laughing together and briefly blocking my view. Then, when they were past, I saw a second police car crawling slowly up the far aisle of the parking lot, in the direction of the first.

This was probably a popular shopping center for coffee and lunch breaks. That was probably all there was to it.

Or Pratt could have called them.

Had he recognized me and just been playing me with the wallet card of abuse hotlines? Was he engaging me in conversation to get a further look at my face? It didn’t make sense, unless he was a careful guy, too careful to confront a known cop killer in a public place, with an inexperienced young partner.

But I’d been looking at his face the whole time he’d been seeing mine, since I dropped the phone book. I hadn’t seen anything change in his expression. Either he had the best poker face in the world or he’d been ignorant of who I was.

The Caprice reached the curb outside the deli at about the same time that the second squad car pulled in next to the first. Lifting my chin, I pushed the door open and ambled quickly but casually to Serena’s car. Then I pulled the passenger-door handle, which snapped back against the door. It was locked.

“Serena!” I bumped the glass hard with the side of my fist, then lowered my head against the edge of the roof, face tipped down, out of view. Serena reached over and opened the door, the latch clicking free as she did so. I slid hastily inside.

“Sorry,” Serena said. “That other five-oh car distracted me.”

I slid down, out of view again. “It might be nothing. Don’t panic.”

It took a good fifteen minutes on the freeway before we were both satisfied it had been nothing. Serena had glided out into the center lane of 101 North and kept the speedometer needle at the posted sixty-five miles per hour, while I stayed in my uncomfortable position below the dashboard. Meanwhile she grilled me on my encounter with the police.

“How close did they see you?”

“Close. Like, normal range for conversation.”

“You talked to them? Are you crazy?”

“I didn’t have a choice,” I said, and explained about Pratt seeing my bruise and his suspicions of abuse.

“Okay, so he didn’t suspect anything.”

“Probably not.”

I straightened up, then reached down between my feet, to where I’d left the deli bags on the floorboard. I got busy unwrapping sandwiches and handed Serena’s to her.

“Listen,” I said, poking a straw through the lid of my Coke, “while we’re on the subject of the five-oh, there’s something I should tell you. I don’t want you to find out by accident and think I was hiding it from you.”

“That sounds heavy,” she said. “What is it?”

“I’ve been talking over the phone to a cop about the Eastman case, a cop that thinks I didn’t do the murders.” I sipped from my Coke. “It’s Magnus Ford.”

Serena’s eyebrows jumped sharply, though she didn’t take her eyes off the road. “Ford, the freaking Shadow Man himself? You just called up and got through to