Untraceable (14 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I’ve been
trying
to tell you, you have a client waiting.” Alex dragged her gaze away from her desk and looked down at Sophie, who was crouched on the floor now, scooping up papers. She stood up, brushed the hair out of her eyes, and thrust the folder at Alex.

“Here,” she said.

“When did she get here?”

“An hour ago. She insisted on waiting in there with the door shut. I think she was worried about somebody walking in.”

Alex took the file and gazed down at it dumbly. Melanie was alive.

“I couldn’t leave until you got here,” Sophie said. “But I’m late for a gig now. So if you don’t mind…”

“Go. Please. Sorry to make you late.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Alex repeated, staring at Melanie.
Melanie
. Right there in her office.

She heard the door open and whirled around. “Sophie, wait!”

Her assistant paused in the doorway.

“Don’t tell anyone about her, not a soul.”

Sophie looked insulted. “Give me some credit,” she said, and walked out.

Alex turned back to Melanie. Her spiky black hair stuck up from her head. Her cheek rested on her folded arms, and she looked completely and totally
out
. If it hadn’t been for the snoring, Alex would have thought she was dead.

She
had
thought that. For weeks now.

She pulled her office door shut behind her and locked it.

Melanie was alive.

A lump lodged in Alex’s throat as she adjusted to this new reality. She stepped over to her desk and stared down at Melanie.

As if sensing her presence, Melanie stirred. The snoring stopped. Her eyes fluttered open. She sat up abruptly and shot back in Alex’s rolling desk chair.

“Long time no see,” Alex said.

Her hands gripped the chair arms. “Oh my God, you
scared
me!” she gasped. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“I work here.” Alex tossed the file onto the desk and sank into a plastic chair. She gazed at her client. Melanie’s complexion was sallow, and she had dark circles beneath her bloodshot eyes.

“Not looking so good, Melanie.”

This observation seemed to shock her. She stared across the desk, incredulous. Then she let out a bark of laughter.

“I’m serious,” Alex said. “You look like crap.”

She sat motionless for a moment. And then she crumpled. She buried her face in her hands and let out a muffled sob.

Alex crossed her arms and watched the floodgates open. Behind her hands, Melanie cried and sniffled. The scene was much like the one back in October, only then it had been Melanie in the plastic chair and Alex behind the desk.

“I’ve been so terrified, Alex.” She glanced up tearfully. “You wouldn’t believe everything that’s happened!”

“Try me.”

“My whole life’s been crazy, every minute.” She tugged at the sleeve of her baggy gray sweatshirt and dabbed her nose with it. “I’ve been so
scared
.”

“Guess you forgot my advice about black,” Alex said.

“Huh?”

“You blondes. You always want to go black. Or red. I told you, it’s too noticeable. You want to blend in, stick with brown.”

Melanie’s brow furrowed.

Not only did her hair look awful, she’d put on weight. And her skin hadn’t seen the sun in months, from the looks of it. Alex wondered how long ago she’d ditched her identity in sunny Florida. The utilities had been disconnected for weeks, but she could have left long before that.

Alex stood up and walked around the desk to her computer. She felt Melanie’s baffled gaze on her as she booted it up.

“Don’t you… don’t you want to hear what’s going on?”

Alex clicked open her accounting software. “Sure, fill me in.”

“Well… I came back to town a couple months back. I guess you knew that.”

“Figured that out, yeah.”

“I was staying at this place on the lake.”

“Got that part, too.” Alex clicked into the screen she wanted. “You owe me twenty-eight hundred dollars. Just FYI.”

“What?”

Alex propped a hip on her desk. “That would be eight hundred dollars’ worth of my time. At the bargain-basement rate I gave you. Plus deposits on your utilities in Orlando. Plus the security deposit on your apartment. Any chance I can expect to see that money sometime soon?”

Melanie sat back in the swivel chair. “No.”

“Didn’t think so.”

Alex clicked out of her accounting program and turned to face Melanie, arms folded. “Why didn’t you return my calls?”

“I didn’t—”

“We had a system, remember? I send an urgent message, you answer. You send an urgent message, I answer. That was nonnegotiable.”

“I lost my phone.”

“You could have found a pay phone. An Internet café. Something. Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been? Do you have any idea how much time I’ve spent looking for you?”

Melanie stared up at her, wide-eyed.

Alex clamped her mouth shut and swallowed all the bitchy things she wanted to say. Melanie really looked bad. Whatever she’d been doing lately, it hadn’t been good for her health.

Alex eyed her suspiciously. “Are you on drugs?”

“Me?”
Melanie splayed a hand against her chest, and her nails were bitten down to the quick. “I don’t touch drugs. I don’t even
drink
.”

“You look terrible.”

Melanie’s gaze fell to her lap. “I know.” She squeezed her hands together until her knuckles whitened. A tear dripped onto her thigh, making a dark gray dot on her sweatpants.

Alex closed her eyes and tipped her head back. She would
not
be pulled in again. She had to turn off the sympathy for this girl. She took a deep breath.

“You lied to me back in October.”

“I know.” Melanie’s voice was small, almost a whisper.

“Why did you do that? I was trying to help you.”

“I didn’t think you would. Not if you knew what was really going on.”

“What’s really going on, Melanie?”

Her shoulders tensed. She hunched over. She sniffled.

“I can’t help you if I don’t know the truth, Mel. We tried that already. It didn’t work.”

She nodded, her head bowed.

“You need to tell me everything. Starting at the beginning.”

Melanie looked up, her eyes brimming with tears. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Who’s dead?”

“Craig killed him. I know it.”

“Who?”

“Joe.” She choked out a sob. “He killed Joe.”

Alex watched Melanie gaze at her lap as she struggled with her emotions. When she looked up again, she had a question in her watery eyes.

“Joe Turner?” Alex asked.

Melanie nodded.

“Joe Turner is dead. I don’t know who killed him.”

Alex expected another flood of tears, but instead, Melanie closed her eyes and nodded. She took a deep breath and met Alex’s gaze. Maybe she’d known it all along. Maybe the confirmation came as a relief.

“What’s going on, Melanie?”

“I’ll tell you,” she said somberly. “And then I need your help.”

Help. As in money.

“What happened to your Honda?” Alex asked.

“What Honda?”

“The one your neighbors saw at the lake house while you were living there.”

She glanced down. “That was Joe’s. I don’t know what happened to it.”

“And the Blazer?”

Melanie looked up and wiped her nose again with her shirt sleeve. “That’s mine.
Was.
I don’t know where it is now. I guess Craig did something with it.”

“How’d you afford the car?” she asked.

“Joe got it for me. He wanted me to have freedom to come and go. He didn’t want me to feel trapped all the time, like I did with Craig.”

Alex shook her head with frustration. She leaned forward across the desk. “Did you listen to
anything
I told you? Coming back here was the last thing you should have done. What were you thinking?”

Melanie looked down and shook her head slightly. Alex wondered if she’d caught the underlying meaning:
By coming here, you probably got your boyfriend killed.

Melanie glanced up suddenly. “Have you ever been in love?”

Alex sat back. “No.”

“I didn’t think so.” She gave her an apologetic look. “No offense, but you can’t understand.”

“What can’t I understand?”

“What it’s like. What I’m feeling. I needed to be with him.” She sighed. “You’ll understand someday.”

Alex rolled her eyes. What a bunch of bullshit. She wanted to toss Joe’s death in Melanie’s face and ask her if their little honeymoon by the lake had been worth it.

“Joe and I… we had plans. We were going to start a new life together. He’d been saving money for us.”

“How?”

Melanie glanced up. “He’s a real estate agent. Was. He’d been putting money away so we could start over somewhere. As far away from Craig as we could get.”

Alex watched her, trying to gauge whether she was telling the truth. She’d expected to learn that Joe Turner was mixed up in Coghan’s operation somehow. She hadn’t expected him to be a real estate agent. But maybe that was a front.

“Tell me about Craig,” Alex said. “What’s he doing to attract the attention of so many investigators?”

Melanie snorted. “What’s he
not
doing? He’s into drugs. Prostitutes. You name it. Everything he’s supposed to be policing.” She shook her head. “I shouldn’t say any more than that, though. It’s dangerous for you to know too much.”

Alex let her drop the subject temporarily. She wanted to keep her talking.

“And how did your Blazer end up in a ditch?”

Melanie took a deep breath, and Alex got the impression she was finally going to learn what happened at the cabin.

“I went for carryout,” she said quietly. “Joe said he’d be watching the basketball game when I came home. But the TV wasn’t on.” She looked over Alex’s shoulder, as if envisioning the events. “I guess that’s what tipped me off. Everything was too dark. I knew something was wrong.” Her gaze fastened on Alex’s. “I remembered what you said. About trusting my instincts. So I just took off. But the roads were wet. I lost control of the car and crashed and next thing I knew, I was racing through the woods, and Craig was behind me.”

“Behind you?”

“He tackled me. I kicked him, threw gravel in his face. I got free and ran out into the road.” She laughed without humor. “Almost got hit by a car, too. That’s what saved my life. This woman stopped to help.”

Alex looked at Melanie, imagining her in the dark and the rain, running for her life from the man who’d just murdered her boyfriend.

“You’re lucky,” Alex told her.

She snorted.

“I’m serious. You could easily be dead right now.”

“I know.” Melanie sighed tiredly and looked away.

“My grandma always said I was like a cat with nine lives. I figure marrying Craig used up about eight.”

Nathan stared into the fire and thought of Alex. Where was she? She’d sounded strange on the phone earlier. He’d called twice since then, but she hadn’t picked up, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad had happened. Something was wrong.

He poked the pile of coals with his barbecue tongs. Then he lifted the metal grate from the deck and dropped it back in place over the fire.

Then again, maybe nothing was wrong. Maybe Stockton was in town again, and he’d called her, just like he’d said he would. Maybe they were out tonight in his Ferrari. Or back at her place, and she was too busy to pick up the phone.

Nathan’s temper smoldered as he watched the flames. He cast an annoyed glance over his fence, debating whether to go next door and raise some hell about the noise. He hated country music. And he didn’t much appreciate the endless loop of Rascal Flatts on a Thursday night.

He pulled the phone from the pocket of his jeans and checked the screen again. Nothing. He tipped back his beer. Empty. He dropped the bottle into the carton sitting on the deck beside the bag of coals. Three down, three to go. He picked up a cool one and twisted off the top, just as the gate creaked open. He turned around.

“Hi.”

His heart gave a kick.

“I rang the bell, but no one answered, so…” Alex’s voice faded as she walked toward him across the dark patch of grass. “What’s cooking?”

“Nothing yet.”

She sounded chipper, which was unusual. She had on jeans and a T-shirt. He couldn’t see the details in the dimness, but the outfit didn’t look to him like something she’d wear on a date.

She climbed the three wooden stairs to his deck. “Sorry to just show up, but it sounded important.”

“Important?”

“Your messages.” She glanced around at his yard, and he was glad it was too dark for her to see how overgrown it was. She sank into a patio chair and leaned back, sighing. “God, I’m so beat.”

“Long day?”

“Very long.” She stretched out her legs and tipped her head back to gaze up at the sky. “Pretty night.”

He walked over to stand in front of her, and she snagged the beer from his hand. She took a sip and grimaced at the taste. “You have anything besides beer?”

“I’ve got some wine inside, if you want.”