Bad To The Bone (24 page)

"Of course." I promised. "I’ll let you know
what I find."

"I’ve got to jump," she apologized. "I have
guests waiting on me. Where can I reach you if I find out anything
of interest?"

I started to give her my phone number but
paranoia took hold. "I'm out of town right now." I explained, "I’ll
call you back in a couple of days.''

"Sure. I get it. Don't forget your sun
block," she warned before she hung up.

I lay back down on the bed. What would it
mean if Boomer did have a Florida connection? I didn't really know.
There were so many unanswered questions, such little proof. I was
operating on my own conviction and self-confidence with very little
else to back me up.

My mind wandered to how different I had felt
with Jeff's mother earlier in the day, how much stronger and in
charge. Soon, I found myself thinking about the rest of my old life
in Florida. Especially my grandfather. I had not been this close to
him in thirteen years. He lived a couple hours outside of Tampa, in
the middle of Panhandle wasteland, surrounded by stingy soil and
relentless sun.

Shame was nibbling at the darker edges of my
soul. I could not ignore its message. I hated Tawny Bledsoe for
turning her back on her family, yet I had done the very same thing.
Maybe I should go see my grandfather while I was here, I thought,
put to rest the scandal about me being in prison. After all, I'd
been the one to decide he was ashamed of me. I'd never heard it
from him.

Thinking of my grandfather triggered a rush
of childhood memories, flashes of sticky summer days, the brush of
Spanish moss against my face, the fertile smell of swamp mud and
rotting vegetation. Before I knew it, I was deep in murky dreams
again, dreams of my dead parents, my grandfather, long-forgotten
songs, tiny details of a past life: the top of a dresser, a broken
ballerina on a music box, even dinners I had once eaten. It was as
real as being there.

I woke four hours later to a darkened room.
It was after eight o'clock. I had lost an opportunity to go see my
grandfather for that day and I was starving.

I struggled into the shower, groggy from too
much sleep. I stood for a long time beneath the hot water, letting
it ease the stiffness from my shoulders while it washed away the
memories of too many dreams from my overstuffed mind. I had to
concentrate on the present, I had to leave the past behind.

Would Clarissa come through with Tawny's
whereabouts or was she tougher than I thought? What would I do if
she refused?

I was so preoccupied that I paid little
attention to traffic as I drove down the highway, searching for a
place to eat. I couldn't find a decent restaurant. My hotel was on
the outskirts of town where several highways converged, and the
area was a franchise mecca. Unfortunately, my stomach was not in
the mood for gut putty drenched in MSG.

Without thinking much about it, I finally
took a left turn that led me away from the plastic and toward the
rural outskirts of town. The flatness of the landscape reassured
me. I knew a roadside tavern would present itself soon. I'd feel at
home in one of those, sitting against the rough-hewn back of a
corner booth, chowing down on a steak with a cold beer at my elbow,
while the Allman Brothers played on the jukebox and some fat guy in
denim overalls gave me the eye from his too-small bar stool. Ah,
home.

That was when I realized I was heading
toward my grandfather's house.

I thought about it, and kept going.

Forty miles out, orange groves began to line
the narrow two-lane road, their neat rows interspersed with flat,
furrowed fields awaiting a new planting of soy. The flickering
lights of the grove torches—lit against the threat of the
far-reaching cold snap—stretched back into the thick rows of the
orange bushes, looking like miniature runways beckoning a plane to
land.

Ahead of me, a creature darted into the
road. I swerved and avoided the critter by inches. Another Florida
opossum would live to cross the road anew. But the incident made me
glance into the rearview mirror and I realized for the first time
that there was a car behind me, approaching at rapid speed. Bad
news.

I sped up, but the car continued to close
ground. Ahead, I saw a crossroads and took a right. If the other
car continued on straight, I'd be able to relax.

No such luck. Not only was the new road
little more than a glorified asphalt lane, I was barely a quarter
mile down it when the other car careened around the turn, taking
the corner too quickly. It fishtailed, slid onto the shoulder, then
regained the road and began to come at me fast. Shit. I'd left my
gun behind in Raleigh, unwilling to unnecessarily risk my fake
permit to the scrutiny of RDU's pit-bull security clerks.

I slammed the accelerator to the floor.
After a few seconds' hesitation, the rental car leaped forward. My
lead wouldn't last. I doubted that my pursuers were driving
anything as anemic as a Ford Taurus. It would only be a matter of
moments before I'd have to stop and fight. I had nothing to defend
myself with.

Then I noticed a new pair of headlights
bearing down on the car that was following me. They were elliptical
and low. It was a car built for speed.

The two sets of headlights bounced in my
rearview mirror as both cars sped along the bumpy highway behind
me. What the hell was going on? I was trying to keep the Taurus on
the road, but the lure of the scene unfolding in the mirror proved
impossible to resist. I kept running onto the shoulder or crossing
the center line as I tried to follow the action behind me.

The car on my tail had obviously noticed the
car behind it; it slowed and began to swerve from side to side. I
heard a rapid series of pops, like a car backfiring. Gunshots. The
red of brake lights glowed behind my first pursuer, but the second
car kept coming up on it fast.

I wanted to get the hell out of there and
let the two cars duke it out, but I also wanted to watch what
happened next. Then a thought occurred to me: suppose both cars
were after me?

I negotiated a sharp curve in the two-lane
road and, as I came out of the turn, my headlights illuminated a
deserted gas station about a quarter mile ahead. The building was
abandoned and sagged beneath a rotting roof. I turned off my
headlights, made a sharp turn into its gravel lot, then pulled up
between two rusting cars and cut the engine. Hidden, I waited in
the darkness and watched as both cars almost slid out of the curve,
then regained the highway with a screech of tires. The second car
was the first to recover. It accelerated quickly, reaching the
first car on the straightaway. It bumped it from behind, and sent
it into a slow tailspin. The first car was a sedan and its blocky
body recovered slowly. The other car bumped it once more and it
swerved off onto the shoulder just a few hundred feet away from
where I was hiding. It stopped with its front bumper nosed into a
shallow ditch.

The crack of rapid gunfire followed. I
couldn't tell who was shooting where, but it was plain that both
drivers were armed. It was a good time to get the fuck out of view.
I ducked as low as I could, my eyes barely clearing the dashboard.
The gunfire stopped and I risked a better look. The second car had
passed the disabled sedan. Mission accomplished, it accelerated
down the narrow highway. Soon, a white Corvette zoomed by the old
gas station without slowing. I let out a deep breath as the
taillights pulled away into the darkness. The car rounded a curve
and disappeared behind a grove of cypress oaks. I was safe for now,
or at least I would be as soon as the first car pulled away.

The night grew still
again, my pulse returned to normal, and I became aware of frogs
peeping in the drainage ditch. Their high-pitched whines harmonized
perfectly with the hum of the sedan's engine as it idled by the
side of the road. What the hell had I just witnessed? The sedan
struggled to break free of the ditch and finally gained a few feet,
stopping with its headlights pointed across a field, the beams
illuminating an old shed that had been built in a small stand of
pine trees. Just as I was wondering if the occupant was too badly
injured to drive, the car backed slowly onto the road, pulled a
U-turn and headed toward Tampa. The single red glare of a taillight
told me that the
car itself had taken at
least a couple of bullets, if not the driver.

I decided to wait it out. Five long minutes
later, I'd heard and seen nothing more alarming than the rhythmic
chunk-chunk of faraway farm machinery pumping water to the fields.
But the sedan could easily be waiting for me on the road. I'd have
to find another route back. On the other hand, car number two might
be waiting for me in the other direction. What's a girl to do?

Car number two decided it for me. I'd no
sooner restarted my engine and cut my headlights on, when the white
Corvette pulled out from behind the cypress grove. Its headlights
dimmed to low, it sped down the highway and slid to a stop just a
few yards from my front bumper. The driver's side door opened.

I fumbled around on the front seat floor,
frantic for anything I could use as a weapon. All I could find was
the free map the rental car attendant had given me, and somehow I
didn't think that slapping the driver across the face with it would
slow him down for long.

A tall figure dressed in black unfolded
itself from the Corvette and headed for me, moving like a dark
angel through the night. I turned my headlights to bright, hoping
to blind him, and the tall figure put a hand up to shield his
eyes.

"Jesus, Casey, you trying to blind me?" a
familiar voice complained.

What the hell was he doing here? I cut off
the lights and waited, refusing to say a word. This ought to be
good.

Bill Butler sauntered up to my car, his gait
even cockier than usual. He was grinning, no doubt from a
gun-induced testosterone rush. "Those guys have been parked outside
your motel for at least the past three hours," he said calmly. "You
ought to be more careful. Who are they?"

"Hell if I know." I stared at him. "What are
you doing here?"

"Saving your ass." He patted his shoulder
holster. "That was an unlawful discharge of a firearm, in case
you're interested."

"I'm not interested in any of your
discharges, thank you." That wasn't what I meant to say, god knows,
but the sight of Bill had scrambled my brains.

Why was Bill Butler, a Raleigh Police
Department detective, standing in the middle of a deserted slice of
godforsaken no man's land in central Florida?

"Nice night," he said, his smug smile
hovering. "It's starting to warm up again." We looked up at the
thousands of tiny stars visible in the dark countryside. The man
had a point. It was a gorgeous evening, with the kind of pristine
night sky that made it seem as if man had never arrived to ruin the
Earth.

I refused to be distracted. "I'm out of here
if you don't tell me why the hell you're following me," I
warned.

"Your boss sent me to babysit," he said
cheerfully.

His flippant attitude was starting to piss
me off. I've fired a gun plenty of times, and I don't go around
acting like Wyatt Earp on Viagra afterward. Then he really annoyed
me by parking his right leg against the side of my car and leaning
in my window. There we were, surrounded by twenty miles of empty
earth, and this guy had to crowd my personal space.

"I don't have a boss," I reminded him.

"Okay, that fat slob who works with you sent
me," he conceded.

"Watch your mouth. He may be a fat slob, but
he's my fat slob."

"I'll say." His teeth glowed in the
moonlight as he grinned. "He's mighty protective of you. Called me
up yelling about drug dealers and cops and god knows what else.
What the hell have you gotten yourself into? Is this about
Tawny?"

"Bobby really sent you to babysit me?" I
asked, annoyed.

Bill nodded. "Afraid so."

"I can take care of myself."

"I wasn't worried about you. I was worried
about the drug dealers and cops."

"Why are you really here?" I demanded. “Tell
me or I'll ram the side of that Corvette you've rented. You're
probably already going to have to pay through the nose for bullet
holes."

"Nope. I checked. Looks like I was the
better shot. Though that dented bumper's going to cost me." He
crouched down on his haunches so that his face was level with me.
His eyes searched my face as if he was trying to decide on
something, then he looked out into the darkness behind the
abandoned gas station without saying anything.

"I'm waiting," I said.

"You said we might have to cross that thin
blue line together to stop Tawny," he answered. "She needs
stopping. I'm here to do my part."

"I want the truth," I warned him, knowing he
was holding back. "The whole truth and nothing but the truth."

"The sorry truth is this," he admitted. "My
ex is getting married again tomorrow. To someone I used to
know."

"That sucks."

"I didn't think it was any big deal, but
when I think about her up there in some church on Long Island
marrying some sell-out in an expensive suit while I sit in my
apartment, drinking beer and watching twenty-year old blonds that
I'll never get near parade around in bikinis on the boob tube while
college guys clap like trained seals... What can I say? With
thoughts like that, who needs reality? I needed to get the hell out
of Dodge for a couple of days. Thought a change of scenery might
help."

"So you came running to me," I said,
pleased. My smile showed it.

He looked embarrassed. "Don't tell me your
ex-husband doesn't matter to you. Look where we're at right now.
Because of him."

"Oh, he matters. They always matter." I put
my hand on Bill's and he didn't pull it away. "Thanks for saving my
butt back there."