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Payback. Jasmine Cresswell
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“If Dad had found the two of you, trust me, it would be one of your more vivid teenage memories.”
She chuckled in wry acknowledgment. “Love is weird, isn’t it? For two whole months I was convinced my life would be over if Rob didn’t ask me to the senior prom. And I haven’t given him a single thought since the day I left for college.”
“He would be devastated to hear that,” Luke said dryly. “Rob definitely fancied himself.”
She gave a nostalgic grin and her gaze became wistful. “Damn, I miss you, Luke. Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider buying Bruno out?”
Luke quelled a moment of temptation. “I wish, Annie, but I’m already stretched way too thin, time-wise. I’m sorry.”
She gave a resigned shrug that didn’t quite conceal her disappointment. “Oh, well. It was worth a try.”
He leaned across the table and briefly rested his hand on his sister’s. The movement shifted his perspective and his gaze happened to land on a couple seated at the table closest to the entrance. The man’s back was turned toward their table, but as Luke watched, the man laughed and reached out to put his arm around the woman’s shoulder so that Luke glimpsed him in profile. The man listened to his companion for a moment, and then laughed again at whatever she had said. A sudden lull in the noise allowed Luke to hear the sound. It was teasing and low, a throaty chuckle. It was also eerily familiar.
Shock momentarily froze Luke in his seat. Then he jumped to his feet, grabbing his chair just in time to prevent it toppling over. “Be right back,” he told his sister, moving swiftly toward the couple.
“Luke, what’s wrong? Where are you going?”
He didn’t answer, partly because he was having a hard time catching his breath, partly because he was focused with hypnotic intensity on the couple by the door. The man must have sensed that he was being observed. He glanced up and his head jerked in visible shock. He immediately rose to his feet, putting his hand in the small of his companion’s back and hustling her toward the exit. She followed without a word of protest, oddly compliant.
A waiter carrying a heavy tray crossed Luke’s path, obscuring his view. He wished he could push the waiter violently aside, the way they did in the movies, and to hell with the food arrayed on the tray. But the habit of deferring to a server carrying dishes was ingrained and Luke skirted the waiter, losing another crucial few seconds in his journey toward the exit. He had to excuse himself twice to an oblivious woman whose chair stuck far out from the table, forming an impromptu barricade. When he’d negotiated that obstacle, he squeezed past the two final tables separating him from the hostess station and reached empty floor space. The man and his companion were nowhere in sight.
Luke ran outside, cursing himself for having wasted too much time being polite. Why hadn’t he just elbowed and shoved his way across the dining room, and to hell with flying dishes? Unfortunately, the parking lot was crowded and he couldn’t immediately spot the couple. Dammit, surely there hadn’t been time for them to drive off?
The lot served several specialty stores in addition to Bruno’s restaurant, and there were at least a dozen people strolling around, as well as a van pulled up to the curb, collecting trash. Although the lot was rimmed by lights, the humidity was high and there was a slight mist hanging in the night air, making it frustratingly hard to see. Luke finally picked out his quarry simply because the man was running, his companion jogging awkwardly in his wake, hampered by her high heels.
“Stop!” Luke yelled, ignoring the interested stares of passersby. “Stop, for God’s sake! Ron Raven, is that you? Ron, stop!”
The man didn’t answer. If anything his pace got faster. The woman, indifferent to the damp pavement, tugged off her shoes and ran barefoot across the lot.
Luke tore down the aisle of parked cars, catching up as the man clicked the car locks with his remote and slid behind the wheel of a silver-gray Mercedes. Ron, or his look-alike, didn’t even wait for his female companion to get into the car before turning on the ignition. He was already backing out of his parking space before she closed her door, and long before she could have latched her seat belt.
Luke gave a final burst of speed and caught up with the couple. He stood behind the car, waving his arms. It was impossible for the driver not to have seen him, but the car continued to back up.
Jesus! The guy was going to run him over if he didn’t move, Luke realized with a flash of total incredulity. At the last minute, he had no choice other than to jump to one side. Without a backward glance, the driver swung around on squealing tires and dashed for the exit.
“That man sure was in a hurry.” A middle-aged woman stared at the disappearing Mercedes, her frown disapproving. “Crazy drivers. He could’ve killed you. If he keeps driving like that he’s going to cause an accident for sure. You okay?”
“Yes, thanks.” Luke realized just in time that if he could get the license plate number, the police would have a way to track down the owner. “Excuse me. Really, I’m fine.”
He squeezed between two parked cars and dashed into the next aisle where he had a better view of the Mercedes racing toward the exit. It was a Virginia plate, he saw, with the license number AB7 4K3. Or maybe it was 4K8. He squinted, trying to confirm one number or the other, but the plate was dirty, the night dark, and the car was rapidly receding. The Mercedes sped down the block and made a sharp left turn at the first corner. Luke was a fast runner, but he knew he didn’t have a chance in hell of catching up with it. He reached into his jacket and pulled out his Palm Pilot, jotting down the license plate numbers before he could forget them.
When he realized he’d been staring at the empty road for a full minute, he walked back into the restaurant and wove his way around servers and crowded tables, returning to his sister. His legs felt surprisingly shaky and he slumped into his seat, breathing hard. Anna started to lecture him, but changed her mind when she got a good look at him.
“What is it?” she asked. “For heaven’s sake, what happened just now? Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure.” He reached for his wineglass and then pushed it aside and took a gulp of water instead. He put the incredible truth into words. “I think I just saw Ron Raven.”
Two
“Who is Ron Raven?” Anna’s forehead wrinkled in puzzlement and then she gave a jolt of surprise. “You mean the Ron Raven? The guy from Raven Enterprises who bankrolled your first restaurant and then turned out to be a bigamist?”
“Yes, that’s who I mean.” Luke tried not to sound impatient. “I just saw him. He was over there, eating dinner with some woman.”
Anna’s eyes widened in shock. “But you can’t have seen him—he’s dead! He died in Miami this past spring.”
“Supposedly.”
“What does that mean, supposedly? Ron Raven was murdered, and so was the woman who was with him in his hotel room the night he disappeared. We talked about the murder a half dozen times already. Good grief, Luke, you can’t have forgotten! There was a ton of stuff about Ron Raven on TV. It turned out he had one wife in Chicago and another in Idaho—”
“Wyoming,” Luke corrected.
“Right, Wyoming. He also had three kids. Two with the Wyoming wife, and another with his wife in Chicago. They’re all grown-up, of course.”
“Anna, I know all this stuff—”
“We talked about seeing his children on TV.” Anna shoved a swathe of shiny, dark brown hair off her forehead, oblivious to Luke’s answers. “They were all disgustingly attractive, although they didn’t look much like one another. And one of his children was in the news recently. Ron’s son. I don’t recall his name, but he’s a celebrity lawyer in Denver.”
“Liam Raven. I wouldn’t exactly call him a celebrity, although he’s