LITMIR.BIZ

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than the pickup her father used to drive. She wasn’t running away from anything, she was running to what promised to be a new life; one that didn’t include her husband Tim and the Valley Star.

      What a two-bit rag. It kinda matched with her two-bit husband and her two-bit life. Well, it wasn’t good enough. None of it. Not now, not when she knew the brass ring was finally within her reach.

      She’d always been looking for a story, no, make that the story that would propel her to the big time, and thanks to Jessie Brentwood, Renee was about to make that leap. No one was going to stop her. Not a whining husband who had lost most of her inheritance in the stock market, nor an editor who couldn’t see her talents.

      And she wasn’t going to let strange mumbo-jumbo predictions and a feeling of persecution stop her, either. And what had she been thinking when, outside Blue Note, she asked Becca if they could get together sometime and talk things over? What had she expected from Hudson’s ex-girlfriend? Just because she kind of reminded Renee of Jessie—probably because of Hudson—didn’t mean she had any answers. Worse, Becca seemed to have her own problems dealing with Jessie’s disappearance.

      She slowed to sixty because of the drizzle and the fact that she really couldn’t afford another speeding ticket. That was the trouble, Renee thought, the rest of the world was cruising along at fifty-five and she was revved up to ninety. Sometimes it seemed that she was dragging everyone through life with her and they were all limp, dead weight.

      The rain poured down in earnest and she cranked up the speed of her squeaking wipers. They slapped away the drops and Renee wondered again about Becca. Hudson, it seemed, was taken with her all over again. Oh, yeah. Renee had witnessed it the other night at Blue Note. No big surprise that they were hooking up again, though Renee didn’t understand it.

      Becca was pretty enough. Streaked hair, light brown with pale highlights, large hazel eyes that hovered between green and gray, and a smile that showed off teeth that weren’t quite straight, probably even a little sexy. Her cheekbones were prominent, her eyebrows arched, and she had one of those long Audrey Hepburn necks. She was definitely his type. He always went for the blondish, mysterious-looking chicks.

      A flaw, in Renee’s opinion. But then her twin had many.

      The needle of her speedometer hit seventy-five, her tires hydroplaning on the slick asphalt before she noticed and slowed again. It was as if she couldn’t get to the damned beach fast enough. She checked her rearview mirror, afraid she might have blown past a cop and sure enough, another car was bearing down on her, one with bright headlights.

      Great.

      She slowed, not by braking, but by taking her foot off the gas until she was going a lawful fifty-three miles an hour and the car behind her slowed. Probably to run her plates.

      This was just getting better and better, as the Camry belonged to Tim. She steeled herself, practiced her smile and “Oh, dear me, Officer” routine, had her excuses all in a row, but no red and blue lights began to streak the night, no siren screamed at her to pull over. If anything, the vehicle behind her just hung back. Maybe he hadn’t clocked her and was waiting for her to speed up.

      Screw that!

      She pulled into the right-hand lane and sure enough, the guy following her did, too, tucking in behind a compact.

      Not a cop, then.

      Or at least not a cop interested in her.

      No lights. No siren.

      Maybe just her imagination, her sense of persecution. She plugged an old Springsteen CD in and watched as the compact swung off the highway at Hillsboro. Another few miles, past North Plains and Laurelton, and the car behind her just kept coming. She sped up, he sped up, she slowed, he slowed.

      Goose bumps raised along the back of her arms and she told herself she was being paranoid. No one was following her. No one knew what she was up to. No one could. She hadn’t told a soul.

      And yet, she was almost certain she was being followed. She glanced to her purse. Pulled her cell phone out of the zipper pocket. If she was going to call someone, it had to be now, before her service cut out as it did in several spots along this stretch of road.

      Call who? Say what? That you suspect someone is following you? Why? Because you’re digging into the Jezebel Brentwood mystery?

      She snorted in disgust and tossed her cell into her purse.

      The headache was getting to her. The impending divorce was getting to her. All the talk about Jessie was getting to her. And that strange prediction from the old lady at Deception Bay—that was really getting to her. The thought that someone was out to do her harm was her constant and worrisome companion.

      “It’s bunk,” she told herself as the CD played and the wipers slapped away the rain. “Bullshit. Nothing more.”

      But she knew better.

      Her teeth sank into her lip and she swallowed hard.

      Payback?

      Justice?

      For what?

      What have I done?

      “Mother Mary, help me.” Renee sketched the sign of the cross over her chest, a movement she hadn’t practiced since her senior year at St. Elizabeth’s, but the comfort she once had found in murmuring a quick prayer now eluded her, reminding her only of the bones that had been found at the base of the statue of the Madonna.

      She glanced in her mirror again and the trailing vehicle’s headlights seemed brighter than before, more intense.

      “It’s no one,” she muttered under her breath as another obscure Springsteen song drifted through the speakers. Renee barely noticed. Her gaze was split between the rain-spattered windshield and the rearview mirror that burned bright headlights back into her eyes. “Bastard,” she muttered.

      She’d lose whoever it was in the mountains. Didn’t want anyone knowing where she was going, that she had screwed up her courage and planned to visit the old hag of a fortune teller again. That she intended to learn more about her fate and what the woman knew, if anything, about Jessie.

      For the love of God, she was starting to think like Tamara, and that was scary. Damned scary.

      She glanced at the headlights in the mirror again and set her jaw. She wasn’t going to spend the next two hours worrying about him. Or her. If they were following her, they were in for a race.

      Renee stepped on it.

      Her Camry shot forward to the foothills of the Coast Range, where anyone, even a reporter for a half-rate newspaper, could disappear in the twisting canyons, inky tunnels, and rising mist.

      Chapter Eight

      Motive, Mac thought with dark satisfaction. Motive.

      It was late. There was no one in this part of the building but the janitor, who was down the hall singing a medley of Elvis hits off-key and with replacement words when he forgot the lyrics, which was every third line. Mac listened to a butchered version of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” while he sifted through the evidence found buried near the Madonna statue.

      He knew it all by memory, practically by Braille, he’d passed the pieces between his fingers so often, but he kept feeling he’d learn something new if he just kept at it.

      …Wise men say, only fools rush in…but I keep keeping myself away from you…

      “But I can’t help falling in love with you,” Mac muttered, his satisfaction still in place. Jessie Brentwood had been pregnant. Okay, correction: the remains in the grave revealed the victim had been pregnant, and Mac fervently believed those remains belonged to Jessie Brentwood. If all that was true, then Mac finally had a motive for Jessie’s disappearance and murder: one of the Preppy Pricks didn’t want to be a daddy.

      That’s what had been hard to come up with at the time of the girl’s disappearance. Motive. Mac had sensed so

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