Lecia climbed under the covers.
“Look, I don’t mean to bring you down—”
“Are we heading back to L.A. in the morning?”
The mattress sank as Anthony sat on the bed beside her. “I’ve done what I can to find Ginger. So yeah, we may as well head home. I can fly to El Paso and drive back, but I figure you’ll just catch a flight back to Los Angeles. To make it easier on you.”
“Trying to get rid of me,” Lecia mumbled.
“What?” Anthony asked.
She closed her eyes tightly as her insides twisted painfully. What did it matter what she said to him now? It wouldn’t change the reality that she meant nothing to him.
“Nothing,” she lied. “It was nothing.”
With wide-eyed lust, Pavel stared at the apple, peach, and orange—all of which rested on the car seat beside him. His fingers actually jittered, he wanted to reach out and grab the orange so badly.
He squeezed his eyes shut as he pressed the book in his hand against his chest. “South Beach Diet says no fruit for two weeks. No fruit for two weeks,” he repeated, gaining strength with the words. Still holding
The South Beach Diet
in one hand, he grabbed the apple and the peach and tossed them onto the backseat.
He was fingering the orange when his cell phone rang. Dropping the fruit, he quickly dug his phone out of his jacket pocket and read the number on the screen.
A smile spread across his face.
Ginger.
Finally, she was calling. So his little plan had worked, and now she was ready to talk.
He answered the phone, saying, “This is Pavel.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“Ah, Ginger. How nice to hear your voice.”
“Why’d you do it? I told you I’d get you your damn money.”
“You have been saying this for very long time. I warned you, but you would not listen.”
“You can forget about getting a dime of that money,” Ginger told him. “You’ve ruined my reputation. My husband will never settle with me now.”
Pavel did not like this. “Ginger, I think you do not understand. How you get money is not my problem. But I not let you play games with me no more. This is why I gave tape to media. Make no mistake—next time, I won’t be so nice.”
“Fuck you, Pavel.”
“The price is now one point seven million.”
“Oh, God. Pavel—you can’t.”
“I can and I did. One point seven million. Next week, two point five million. Now, when can we meet?”
Pavel waited for an answer, until he realized the line was dead. Oh well, he thought, stuffing the phone back in his pocket.
He didn’t want to hurt her, but it seemed he would have to. He would kill her, and kill Bo, then dump both of their bodies in the Pacific.
Ginger paced the carpet in the small, moldy motel room. She didn’t dare take her shoes off. God only knew what kind of lowlifes had been in this place before her.
“He’s not gonna kill you,” Bo said.
“He’s a loan shark, Bo. One who’s fed up with me. So yeah, I think he’s gonna kill me.”
“You’ve got how much cash—twenty-five grand? I say we hightail it to Mexico.”
“That’s not enough to live on indefinitely. Besides, Pavel will find me. I guarantee it.”
If only she had access to Anthony’s stocks. She needed to
get her hands on enough money to pay Pavel. In their joint account there’d been a measly forty-two thousand, and she hadn’t wanted to take it all. Now, since she was supposed to be dead, she couldn’t very well access any of that.
She rued the day she had met Freddie Monahue and was taken in by his dot-com scam. He should be the one taking a bullet, not her.
Ginger stopped wearing a hole in the carpet to plant herself on Bo’s lap. The thoughts running through her mind scared her, but life wasn’t always a bed of roses. Sometimes, one had to do awful things in order to protect oneself.
“Boo.” She stroked his chin. “Remember when you said you’d do anything for me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did you mean that?”
He met her eyes. “You still wanna remarry me?”
Ginger frowned as she stared at him. “Why are you asking that? Of course I do. And we will. Just as soon as this is all over.”
“I just figured…We haven’t talked about us getting married again. And I kind of wanted to tell you—”
“I know. You don’t want to stay in L.A. You want to start a new life somewhere else.”
“Actually—”
Ginger framed Bo’s face with both hands. “Boo, you gotta listen to me. We can talk about all that other stuff later. Right now I have to talk to you about something very important. I need to know that we’re on the same page here. That you really meant it when you said you’d do anything for me.”
Bo nodded. “You’re my girl. Always will be. You know I’d do anything for you.”
“That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.” She smiled as she
lowered her head and nibbled on his ear, one of his very sensitive spots. Then she whispered, “I need you to be a man of your word.” She licked the spot beneath the lobe. “I need you to kill Pavel.”
Lecia was overwhelmed by a sense of panic. She opened her eyes, Anthony’s name on her lips.
He wasn’t beside her. She held her breath and listened, but didn’t hear sounds of him running the sink or flushing the toilet.
He wasn’t in the room.
Had he left her? Oh God, he must have. She’d sensed his despair last night. He had withdrawn, and they hadn’t even cuddled, much less made love.
And now here she was, alone.
Biting back the sting of rejection, Lecia scrambled from the bed. Their talk last night about traveling home separately must have prompted him to leave her here, she decided. And yes, there was a lot to be said for her taking a flight directly back to L.A. She had work to catch up on, Moaner to take care of. And she wasn’t exactly stranded, since she could catch the shuttle to the airport. But still, for him to leave without saying good-bye…
She was shimmying into her panties when the hotel door opened. She stopped short as a wave of relief washed over her.
Anthony’s eyes widened in appreciation. “Now that’s the kind of welcome a guy can get used to.”
Lecia reached for her bra. “Where were you?”
“I went in search of some food. I thought you might be hungry.”
“Oh.” She suddenly felt foolish.
Anthony moved toward her. “What’s the matter?”
She paused, then lied. “Nothing.”
“Don’t tell me nothing. I saw the look of fear on your face. Did you think I’d taken off? C’mon, Doc. You’ve gotta know I wouldn’t leave you here.”
“It’s just…” Lecia sank onto the bed. “Allen used to do that. Disappear on me. Even after we’d made love. I’d drift asleep, and he’d get up and leave me the moment I was konked out. It got to the point where I panicked when I woke up, fearing he wouldn’t be there.”
“Where was he?”
“Sometimes he was gone. Out of the house. He’d tell me that the hospital called him in, and I always believed him.”
“But he was lying?”
“He had to be lying at least part of the time. I think I knew that. That’s why I felt such panic. Other times, he was home but in a different room. Like in the den, reading a book. Or sleeping. It always made me feel so…I don’t know. Cheap? The one thing I wanted was to lie with my husband until the morning after we made love. Such a small thing, but it would have meant so much. Oh, God. Why am I even going on about that? It hardly matters now.” She blew out a flustered breath. “What’d you pick up?”
“Some muffins from the continental breakfast downstairs. But we can get a real breakfast on the road, or at the airport.”
“I don’t think I can eat much. I feel a bit anxious.”
“Worried about heading back to L.A.?”
“Kind of. Worried about how all this will play out.”
“I’ve checked on flights. You have a couple choices, starting around noon—”
“I want to travel back with you.”
Anthony’s eyebrows rose as he looked at her. “We talked about this last night.”
“No—you suggested I fly directly back to L.A. I didn’t agree or disagree.”
“You want to be stuck on the road with me?”
A week ago she would have thought the idea insane. But now she couldn’t imagine it any other way. “Yes. I’ve come this far with you, I may as well.”
“As long as you’re okay with that.”
“Hey, we have Agatha to listen to on the drive back.”
“True,” Anthony said, smiling softly.
“But really, this is about seeing this thing through. I promised I’d be there for you, and I meant it.”
What she didn’t say was the truth that was in her heart—that she didn’t want to leave Anthony’s side because she wasn’t quite ready to get back to her life without him.
When they reached El Paso, Anthony decided to turn his cell phone on. If his lawyer, or his agent, or even the police were trying to reach him, he could explain that he was en route back to L.A. and would speak to the police as soon as he got there. He still held out hope that Ginger would surface before he returned home, if she hadn’t already, but he wasn’t going to bet money on it. He was preparing for the worst case scenario—that his wife had disappeared and would never be found, and that he would have to endure a long and ugly trial to prove he didn’t kill her.
Now that he had realized there was nothing he could do about it, and that he couldn’t simply disappear, he’d resigned himself to his fate. A fate that didn’t seem quite so bad, not with Lecia by his side.
“What are you thinking?” Lecia asked. It was dark. They had crossed the border into Arizona and were driving west along I 10.
“Something my mama always used to say. Don’t spend energy worrying about something you can’t control. I can’t control what’s gonna happen when I get back to L.A., so as much as I could spend the next several hours sweating over my fate, what’s the point? I have nothing to hide, so I’ve just got to have faith that everything will work out.”
“It will work out, Tony. Remember, I’m a witness.”
“One who can now be linked romantically to me. No one will believe you’re impartial.”
“You…you regret me coming with you.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Like I said, I’m not gonna sweat it. What happens, happens.”
“That’s easy to say.”
“I have learned so many disturbing things about the woman I married that I just can’t get upset about what might happen next. I’m not even sure I want Ginger to turn up at this point. Lord knows, I have no clue what I’ll say to her.”
Lecia didn’t say anything, and Anthony was glad for that. He wanted to put this whole situation out of his mind before it ate him alive.
“I know it’s getting late, but I wasn’t planning to stop,” he told Lecia minutes later. “Not unless I get tired. We’re this close to home, and I’m kind of anxious to get there.”
Get there and close one chapter of his life. He wanted to say good riddance to Ginger forever.
Quiet settled over the vehicle, and Anthony slipped a cassette from the audio book into the tape deck. He listened to the story without fail, but as time passed, Lecia drifted to sleep.
It was his ringing cell phone that woke her up in the wee hours of the morning.
“The phone,” she said, quickly sitting upright.
“Sorry—I should have turned it back off.”
“Are you going to answer it?” Lecia asked, then yawned.
“I should. It could be Kahari, wondering what’s going on.” He checked his display, but no number registered. He clicked the phone on and pressed it to his ear. “Hello?” There was no answer. “Hello?” he repeated.
“Tony.”
Anthony’s stomach fluttered at the sound of the soft, female voice. He waited a beat, then said, “Ginger?”
“Yeah. It’s me.”
He swallowed—hard. Clearly, his wife wasn’t dead. But while he was happy about that, he was still angry with her.
Beside him, Lecia’s eyes were now wide open, and she seemed fully awake.
“Tony, you there?”
“Ginger, where are you?”
“I’m…I’m out of town. Heading back to L.A.”
“Really? Where have you been?”
“I…needed some time away. Some time to think. About everything. I’ve been so mixed up.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone you were leaving?”
“I don’t know. I just…didn’t think.”
At least she was okay. He still wanted to throttle her, but at least she was okay. “Everyone thinks something bad happened to you. And they think I did it.”
“I…I know. When I spoke with a friend of mine, she told me that it was on the news. Who would have thought, people worrying about little ol’ me?”
“When you’re the wife of a high profile athlete who disappears without a word, everyone’s gonna speculate. Especially when you tell people that you were supposed to be meeting
with me on Tuesday morning, then mysteriously disappear after that.”
There was a pause, then Ginger said, “Whoever said that was mistaken.”
Was she lying? Did it matter? No, not anymore. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just glad this can all be straightened out.”
“Yes. That’s why I…why I wanted to talk to you.”
Anthony glanced at Lecia. She was still looking at him. She mouthed the words
What’s happening?
“She’s okay,” he said.
“Who are you talking to?” Ginger asked.
“A friend,” he replied. “Look, I’m out of town as well. I was actually hoping to find you.”
“Let me get this straight. You think I’m missing, but you’re already off with some bitch?”
“You’re one to talk. I saw that video of you on the news, the one where you’re screwing some guy’s brains out.”
“That was an old, old video.”
At least she wasn’t denying it. “You sure about that?”
“Of course I am. Unlike the picture of you and Dr. Love. That was taken what, a day ago?”
“Look, we need to talk. I should be back in L.A. soon.”
“Yes, we do need to talk. Clearly, you can’t give up your cheating ways. I hope you’re finally ready to settle.”
God, no. This couldn’t be why she was calling. “Settle? Are you out of your mind?”
“Trust me, this hasn’t gotten near as ugly as it can.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Listen to me, Tony, and listen good. When you get back to L.A., do the right thing.”
And then Ginger hung up.
“Son of a—” Anthony tossed the cell phone into the backseat.
“What?” Lecia asked, almost frantic.
“Well,” he began, sarcasm dripping from his voice, “she’s not dead.”
“Where has she been?”
“I thought she was actually calling so we could talk. But you know what that bitch said to me? That she wants
me
to do the right thing and give her the money. I drive around half the country trying to make sure she’s okay, and
this
is what she calls about? I swear, if she was here right now—”
“That’s all she said?”
“Pretty much. Oh, and she saw that picture of us together. Geez, could this get any worse?”