Chapter 12 – Whitney
WHITNEY
“Morning,” Stevie rasped when she stumbled into the kitchen. She looked like hell.
“Did you get any sleep last night?”
“A few hours. Shit finally settled down around four,” she said as she made herself a cup of coffee.
“Are you sure your stomach can handle coffee?” I asked.
“If there’s anything left after last night, I want it out.” Picking up her mug, she joined us at the table. “Let me see your wedding ring.”
“For crying out loud, it is not a wedding ring.”
“Hadley said it was. I’ll be the tiebreaker. Let me see it.”
“It’s upstairs.”
“How are you going to barter for your safety if you don’t have it on you?” she asked.
“I have it, and I can produce it. That’s what’s important.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Then you can believe it later because I am not going upstairs to get it right now.”
“You seem snippy. Maybe you should have more coffee.”
I wasn’t snippy; I was fucking tired because I had gotten little sleep, but more coffee was always a welcome suggestion.
“When you two are finished bickering, there’s something on the news you should see,” Hadley called from the living room.
“Local attorney Glenn Warner has been missing since Friday. If you see him or have any information on his whereabouts, please contact Detective Yates with the Palmetto Harbor Police Department or Glenn’s girlfriend, Tori Mustard, at the phone numbers listed on your screen.”
“Fucking great. What if the police want to talk to me?”
“You tell them the truth until the part about chasing him out of the parking lot. Tell them he was gone by the time you got to your car. You drove around some but went home when you couldn’t find him.”
“But I have my wallet.”
“Glenn stole the wrong one.”
“I have two?”
“Yes, you have two. One for cards and cash and one for coins. You realized he took the one with the coins after you got home, which is why you didn’t report it. We really need to work on your lying skills.”
“It’d be easier to say I didn’t have lunch with him.”
“How is becoming a person of interest in a missing person case easier?” she asked, but didn’t wait for me to answer. “If they haven’t already, they’ll check his phone records and see that he’d recently been in contact with you.”
Great. In addition to loan sharks and an outlaw motorcycle club, I might have landed on the police’s radar too.
Fucking Glenn and his fucking bullshit.
“I broke up with him over a year ago, and now he’s dead. How is he still causing problems for me?”
“It’s not a problem. We don’t know if they’ll contact you. I was just saying they might. If they do, now you know what to say.”
“That was a less sucky pep talk.”
“I’m not here to coddle you.”
I looked down at my coffee and smiled to myself. Stevie would do anything for Hadley or me, but she didn’t like feelings. She had them, but she often described emotions as nausea, especially the warm, fuzzy ones.
“So, what’s the plan?” I asked.
“I guess we need to come up with a new one since a lot has changed,” Stevie said.
“I don’t think we should go back to the lake house,” Hadley said. “Not until we figure out how he found it and how he got past my fence.”
“Is there a reason we can’t stay here?” I asked.
“No, we can stay here if you want, or the apartment downtown,” Hadley said. “Or we can go to one of the other properties, but they’re farther away.”
“I have to work tomorrow, so I vote here or the apartment,” Stevie said.
“You can’t go to work tomorrow! It’s not safe.”
“They’re not after me.”
“Stevie!”
“Whitney!” she returned. “I work at the courthouse. Neither the bikers nor the pawn shop boys would be stupid enough to try anything there.”
“You still have to get there and back.”
“So, we’ll hang out here today and move to the apartment tonight. It’s much closer to work.”
“Then what?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. How long do you think it will take your husband and his friends to do their thing?”
I didn’t bother correcting her. She deemed him my husband in her mind, and that’s what she was going to call him. I just hoped she didn’t do it in front of other people.
“When I asked him how I would know it was safe to go back home, he told me to wait at least forty-eight hours before turning my phone back on. But I don’t know if leaving everything up to them is the right move.”
“Why do you say that?”
“What if they don’t do anything? We could potentially waste two days sitting around waiting for them.”
“I don’t think that’ll be the case,” she said. “But would coming up with some alternative plans make you feel better?”
“Yes!” I didn’t care for the unknown. I liked to have a plan, a backup plan, an extra backup plan, and an inclement weather plan.
“I’ll get the laptops,” Hadley said.
“I’ll get the snacks.”
“I’m not getting shit,” Stevie said.
We spent the rest of the morning coming up with a variety of situations and plans. It was what I needed to feel more anchored, and I appreciated my friends for indulging me. I felt better. Not great, but I felt like I could breathe a little easier for the first time since Friday.
Until Hadley’s estate manager called to let her know three men in a truck stopped by the lake house to speak with her and her guest.
“Wow. Your husband works fast,” Stevie said.
“He’s not … never mind. We don’t know if that’s why he wanted to speak with us. Anthony said there were three of them. Maybe they came back to kill us.”
“Killers don’t usually use the call box.”
“They do if they know how to delete the surveillance footage,” Stevie said.
Hadley clapped her hands. “Focus, ladies. If they want to speak with you, they are going to strategically search for you by checking places you might be, like here. So, are we staying or making a run for it?”
“Staying,” I said. Fuck it. I wasn’t going to spend the foreseeable future running from Glenn’s enemies. If they were going to catch up with me and try to kill me, I’d rather get it over with.
“That’s my girl!” Stevie cheered and jumped up from the couch. “I’ll get the weapons.”
“You’re entirely too happy about that.”
“Says the person who already got to hold a biker at gunpoint and make him dance.”
“I’m gonna pretend like you didn’t say that.”
“It’s not healthy to lie to yourself,” she said over her shoulder before she headed downstairs.
“When do we think they’ll get here?” I asked Hadley.
“I don’t know. Anthony called right after they left, so the earliest they could be here is roughly an hour. But that’s assuming they know the address and think we’re here. I think it’ll be a couple of hours at least.”
“Not again,” I groaned. “It seems like all I do lately is spend hours anxiously waiting for someone to arrive.”
“Hopefully, this will be the last time.”
“Knock on wood or something after you say some shit like that,” I told her as I knocked my hand on the table three times.
Hadley laughed but did the same. “Knock on wood.”
“Thank you! Feel free to jinx yourself all you want, but please leave me out of it. I have enough bad luck as it is.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, “you kinda do.”
Stevie returned to the main level with two duffel bags full of guns—little guns, big guns, bigger guns. “What in the hell is all that?”
“It’s better to have too many than not enough,” she said seriously.
She wasn’t wrong, but I really didn’t think it was necessary.
If Stone wanted to hurt me, he would’ve done it at the lake house.
I may have had a shotgun pointed at him, but he could’ve taken that away from me any moment he wanted to.
Instead, he complied with my ridiculous demands to give me a false sense of safety and left as soon as I gave him the video.
He was probably coming to get his shit back and tell me it was okay to go home. At least, I hoped that’s what it was.
It wasn’t.