Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
After the fourth…or maybe it was the fifth time around, Roma was pretty sure she had kept it straight.
A line of six perfectly squared apple cores was arranged, spaced an inch apart, along the edge of the table next to where Harper had chosen to sit.
Roma found herself wondering how many apples a person could eat in a day before getting sick.
She wasn’t quite sure how long she had been there, but she knew it had to have been all day because the sun was starting to sink below the horizon.
She could tell because the light in the shack had turned a golden orange, and the fuzzy shadows were creeping longer across the floor.
Over however long she had been there, Harper had periods of silence, staring into the distance, often suddenly asking questions before falling silent again.
If Roma had seen this in a movie, she would’ve thought Harper was some kind of robot or cyborg going into research mode, and she probably would’ve thought it felt cliché.
But it wasn’t a movie, so it mostly felt terrifying.
Breaking out of one of her staring loops, Harper slipped down from the table and fussed with what looked like a small camp stove with a built-in pot.
Long, blue tongues of flame climbed its sides as it roared to life, and Roma flinched.
The shack seemed to be as dry as kindling even though it was right on the shoreline, and images of the building burning down around her made her stomach twist.
“Not a very good detective, are you?” Harper asked, though Roma didn’t imagine she wanted an answer. “If that’s all you’ve found out about me.”
Unexpected annoyance flared. “It’s not all. I know you killed those witnesses, or at least played a part in it.”
“Oh, sweetheart, if you had that kind of evidence, you’d be talking to the police—not your little gold-digging friend.”
Who, Asha? She wasn’t even dating anybody…
Harper popped a slice of apple into her mouth and chewed loudly, not waiting to swallow before speaking. “You really don’t know jack, huh? You were just blundering in, asking that stupid cow at the hotel about me, no thought as to the consequences.”
“Lynn didn’t tell me anything!” Roma hurried to say. “Leave her out of it; leave everyone out of it. It’s just me and my crazy theories, which are all they are—theories.”
With a snort, Harper sliced off some more apple and pretended to offer it to Roma from the end of her knife before biting into it.
“Yes, it really is,” she said. “Which is all very useful for me, I must say.”
“How?”
“Because when you make a fool of yourself like you have, running around and kicking up a stink, it looks like you’re trying too hard to cover your tracks and play your ‘oh no, I’m being framed ’ game.
This makes it very easy for the cops to think it was you, which then makes it much easier for me to get on with what I came here to do without the cops sniffing around. ”
Roma’s racing mind hitched at Harper’s words. What did she mean?
“What are you here to do?”
The grin Harper gave her was unsettling, and suddenly, she no longer wanted an answer to that question. In fact, she was pretty sure she didn’t want to know a single thing about this woman.
“Nothing you wouldn’t approve of,” Harper said, a strange amusement in her voice. “Now, I need to know something very important.”
It took all her self-control not to leap to her feet as Harper moved across the small room and settled on the arm of the chair she was sitting in. Harper leaned into the chair, extending an arm over the top of the seat back, then leaned down, pressing the flat end of the blade against Roma’s lips.
Her mind screamed at her that if she moved even a little, the incredibly sharp knife would slice through her skin like butter. The cold metal was sticky with apple juice, and the sickly-sweet smell made her nauseous as the taste invaded her mouth.
“You think you know a lot, but you don’t, which is good for you.
If you knew too much…well, dangerous animals have to be put down.
But I want you to know, you did really well today.
A lot of people who consider themselves big, tough guys wouldn’t have held up so well, and I didn’t even have to cut you to get you to talk.
I love it when I can just phone it in and still get the job done.
But I want you to get this question right, because honestly, I don’t want to have to hurt you, so think real carefully about your answer, okay? ”
Roma noticed she actually seemed to be waiting for an answer this time, and while praying that the movement didn’t draw blood, she gave the smallest nod of her life.
“Good,” Harper said. “Now, you keep referring to someone you call my boss. Just who, exactly, do you think my boss is?”
Was she joking? Roma’s eyes widened as she tried to read the expression on Harper’s face and found nothing in return. What did this woman want? Her exhausted brain replayed her words, because knowing too much would be bad for her…
Swallowing hard, she did her best not to move her lips as she said, “Elvis… Presley.”
Not for the first time that day, Harper’s eyes lit up. She removed the knife from Roma’s lips and grinned. “Clever girl! Keep this up, and I might not have to kill you!”
A sob rose in Roma’s chest, but before it could escape, a loud crash sounded behind them, and she screamed as she threw herself to the floor.
Pain shot through her knees and elbows where she hit the wooden boards.
There was shouting everywhere, and her ears were ringing.
Forcing herself to open her eyes, Roma saw Harper staring at her.
For a moment, she was overwhelmed by the terrifying thought that she might be dead.
But then Harper began convulsing, and Roma realized the woman was being tased.
Then, hands were clamped around her upper arms, and she felt herself being heaved to her feet and hauled out the door as even louder shouting grew around her.
As she tried to look around, she wondered how everything had become so very, very blurry.
No, not blurry. Bright floodlights pierced through the night, but it was still definitely nighttime.
She looked up at the man holding her and recognized him as one of the police officers from Detective Isaac’s team. There were…stars in the sky.
What the heck?
“Roma! Oh my God, Roma, are you all right?”
Nate sounded horrified, his voice taut like a guitar string wound too tight, but despite that, Roma thought it was the nicest-sounding voice she’d ever heard.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” she said, moving to hug him but finding that she had been wrapped in a silver blanket. “Oh, wow. I’ve only seen these on TV.”
He was looking at her as if she were speaking gibberish. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine, but…how did you find me?”
“I went to pick you up for dinner, and you weren’t there. And your phone went to voicemail a hundred times. I thought maybe you were mad at me for earlier, but I just had this feeling. I called Daisy, and she hadn’t been able to get through to you either and?—”
“Thank you for finding me,” she said. “What time is it?”
“It’s about four thirty. We’ve been looking for you for hours.”
What? How could it be the next day?
He said something else, but she couldn’t quite understand him.
Someone called out from behind her, but it all blurred together with a sudden series of loud pings from her pocket.
Her stomach dropped as she realized what the man behind her had said and why her phone was acting up.
Cell jammer. Remembering the text she had sent to Nate after running into him at the docks, she hurried to see if she could cancel it.
But it was too late. Nate pulled out his phone and read it, then looked back up at her with hurt in his eyes.
“Nate, I—” She didn’t even know what she was going to say, but she was interrupted when someone pulled her into a hug so tight it actually lifted her off the ground for a moment.
“Roma, I’m so glad you’re all right,” the man said, squeezing her.
It was a voice she recognized, but it couldn’t be…
“David?” she exclaimed, pushing out of the hug. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in Houston?”
He looked at her for a moment before his face fell.
“Asha,” they said in unison.
“Right,” Nate said awkwardly. “Now that your…whoever, is here, I guess I’ll head off.”
“My lawyer!” she exclaimed, but he was already making his way past the police cars and out of sight.
The flashing lights, the noise, the sleep deprivation, Nate, and now David, along with everything that had happened over the last day, finally caught up with her and made her head spin.
Roma looked around frantically before rushing over to the low fence that separated the road from the beach, bracing herself against it, and giving in to the nausea that had been threatening her all day.