LITMIR.BIZ

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Kind of odd, don’t you think?”

      “It might have been a gas leak or something like that.”

      “You didn’t have anything to do with it?” Officer Talbot gave him a look that said, Yeah, right.

      “I had nothing to do with this.” His voice came out a bit harsher than he intended.

      “And Miss Dima...Dia...” Officer Talbot squinted at his notebook. “What’s your relationship with her?”

      Clay gritted his teeth. “I just met Joslyn when we both arrived at the house at the same time. To see Fiona. Why is it that the police didn’t contact me, her brother, when her neighbor filed a missing persons report?”

      Officer Talbot’s face turned pink and he glanced at his partner. “It’s under investigation,” he snapped.

      Calm down. Clay had to calm down. His temper had gotten him in enough trouble in the past. He couldn’t afford to get in trouble now, when Fiona might be in danger. He wanted to walk away from these two men and the insulting ring to their questions, but he forced himself to stand in a relaxed stance.

      Officer Campbell gave him a hard look, but then he said, “We have your hotel information and phone number. We’ll be in touch.” It was almost like a threat. However, the two men turned and left him. They began addressing the other people gathered on the sidewalk.

      Joslyn came up to him, but paused when she saw his face.

      “They were giving you a hard time?”

      “Nothing unexpected.” Considering his prison time. But it still bothered him.

      Her eyes sparked amber. “But you were visiting your sister.”

      “Look, I don’t know how much Fiona told you—”

      “She knew about your time in prison,” Joslyn said quietly.

      “Well, it’s not something officers of the law can forget about.”

      “I suppose you’re right, but you didn’t have anything to do with this.”

      “They don’t know that.”

      She sighed and looked away. He could almost hear her thoughts. She knew he was right. “Mary was able to give me the exact date she went to collect Poochie. Fiona’s been gone for three weeks, about the time of the stamp on the postcard she sent me.”

      Clay frowned. “I just can’t imagine where she would go. Why did she need to leave? Is she really in trouble?” He wondered if it was even Fiona who’d reached out to him and Joslyn.

      “I was going to drop by her workplace. Since it looks like Fiona doesn’t want to be found, I want to gather as much information as I can about her life here in Phoenix to try to predict where she’d go.” Joslyn eyed the officers. Talbot was flirting with a young woman, while Campbell was speaking to two men in business-casual clothing. “They say, out of sight out of mind, so did you want to come with me?”

      Maybe the less the cops saw of him, the less likely they would be to blame him for the explosion. “Sure.” Right now, it was the only lead they had on where Fiona might be. After that explosion, he had a feeling this wasn’t a case of his sister going on a spontaneous vacation. He’d been worried before, but now his fear for her was like a boiling pot in his gut.

      If there was something dangerous going on, he wanted to make sure he was there to face it head-on.

TWO

      “We’re being followed,” Clay said, looking in the rearview mirror.

      “Are you sure?” Joslyn angled herself so she could get a better look behind them through the passenger-side mirror, but all she saw were several white cars, a couple minivans, an SUV.

      “The white Taurus, about four cars behind us.”

      Joslyn tried to get a look at it, but could only see half of the blurry face of the man in the passenger seat of the Taurus. Still, the brief glimpse made her heart race.

      “Do you recognize him?” Clay asked.

      “No.”

      “Me, neither.”

      “How long have they been following us?”

      “I didn’t see them on the way to Fiona’s workplace, but they appeared behind us when we started for the museum.”

      They’d gone to the air-conditioning parts manufacturer Fiona worked for, only to hear that three weeks ago, a man had called, claiming to be her brother, asking for extended leave for her, citing a family emergency. However, the manager hadn’t been able to get in touch with her after that and she’d been fired.

      Who had called? It obviously wasn’t Clay. That may be why the police hadn’t followed up on the missing person’s report—if they checked with Fiona’s company, the manager had heard from her and so there wasn’t a problem, at least at the time Mary notified them of her disappearance.

      Perhaps that had been the point of calling in to Fiona’s workplace—to forestall the filing of the report. Joslyn and Clay had exchanged tense looks. Did someone have Fiona?

      They’d spoken to a couple of her coworkers who had been outside for a smoke break, but they hadn’t learned much—Fiona apparently wasn’t close with anyone at work, even though she’d been working there about fifteen months. It had seemed like a dead end.

      But Joslyn remembered that Fiona often visited art museums in Los Angeles. She’d been friends with the guards at the museum and had formed friendships with other people who visited the museum regularly, mostly artists and critics. Clay had agreed that she’d done the same in Chicago, when she had lived with him in the years during college and after she’d graduated. So they’d left Joslyn’s car in the business parking lot and headed to the largest art museum in Phoenix, the Kevin Tran Museum of Art and Art History.

      But they apparently weren’t alone.

      Were their pursuers aiming to finish the job, since the explosion at Fiona’s house hadn’t gotten rid of them, or did they simply want to question Joslyn and Clay? “I wonder if they want to stop us from finding Fiona, or if they think we know where she is,” Joslyn said.

      “It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to stop and ask them.” Clay signaled and switched lanes.

      Joslyn had been in this exact situation barely a year ago, running from her ex-boyfriend, nervously looking behind her to make sure she wasn’t followed. Feeling as if her life wasn’t her own anymore. She had thought she’d put those days behind her, yet here she was again. “Phoenix is a grid. How are you going to lose them?”

      “I have to get onto a freeway.”

      He got onto the 101 almost casually, as if he’d always meant to head in that direction, and moved into the leftmost lane. He then slowed down, and soon the white Taurus was directly behind them. Clay was driving so slowly in the fast lane that cars were passing them on the right, and the Taurus couldn’t stay hidden. There were two men in the sedan, both with sunglasses on. The shorter one had curly, dark hair, while the other had close-cropped, dark hair. They also both had identical frowns.

      “They know you’re on to them,” she said.

      “It won’t matter in a moment. Hang on.” He cranked the wheel hard to the right and cut off an SUV. Its driver honked at them as Clay swerved right again and cut off a Toyota. He then zoomed right in front of a Mustang in the freeway exit lane only a few feet before it split from the highway, separated by a concrete divider. Joslyn knew the circumstances were extreme, but the sight of the cars looming so close in front of them made her heart shoot up to her throat.

      His aggressive driving had carried them too quickly across the lanes for the Taurus to keep up. The driver couldn’t make it to the

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