Besides, Patricia felt Seleena had treated her with some respect when she’d done that anniversary interview. She even liked the way she’d looked and sounded; though, of course, she’d put on that poor, shy, sad-me face.
This would be different. This would be real. And when this hit cable and the Internet, people would finally know who had the damn brains, who had some damn grievances.
Patricia even wrote up a kind of script and practiced. In so doing, she was so impressed by her own skills she decided that when she settled down to the good life in Florida, she’d write a screenplay on her life and times.
When she had it set, when she had everything in place, when she believed everything was perfect, she made contact.
“This is Seleena.”
“Don’t hang up,” Patricia whispered in a shaky voice. “Don’t call the police.”
“Who is this?”
“Please, I have to talk to somebody. I’m so scared!”
“If you want to talk to me, I need a name.”
“It’s—it’s Patricia. Patricia Hobart. Please, don’t call the police!”
“‘Patricia Hobart’?” Doubt dripped. “Prove it.”
“You came into the—you called it the green room—before they took me out for the anniversary report last July. You sat with me and you said if I ever remembered anything about my brother, any little thing I hadn’t told the police, I should call this number. I could tell you.”
“I’m here for you, Patricia.” Now excitement rang clear. “I’m glad you called me.”
Patricia heard the rustling, imagined McMullen grabbing a recorder, a notebook. And smiled. “I don’t know what to do!”
“Tell me where you are. The FBI’s looking for you. And a lot of cops.”
“It’s not like they say, none of it, none of it. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t understand. I’ve been running, but I’m scared all the time. I’m going to turn myself in, but I need to talk to somebody first. I need to talk to somebody who’ll listen and tell the truth.”
She added broken sobs. “You don’t know, you don’t know what they did to me.”
“Who?”
“My grandparents. Oh God, I need to tell someone. I can’t keep running, but nobody will believe me.”
“You can tell me. I believe you. What did they do to you?”
“No, no, not like this. In person. I need you to record everything so it’s, like, on the record. You can’t tell anyone or they’ll kill me. I know it. Maybe I should just kill myself and end it.”
“You don’t want to do that, Patricia. You need to tell your story. I’ll help you.”
Patricia smiled, let her voice quaver with hope. “You—you’ll help me?”
“I will. Why don’t you tell me where you are?”
“I— You’ll call the police!”
“No, no, I won’t. You said you’re turning yourself in. But you want to tell your story first. You want me to make sure people hear your story. I won’t call the police.”
A weak voice, Patricia thought, with just a touch of desperate hope. “You swear?”
“Patricia, I’m a journalist. I only want the truth. I only want your story. I’d never betray you. In fact, when you’re ready, I know a lawyer who’ll help you. We’ll arrange for you to turn yourself in so no one hurts you.”
Patricia studied the flask of scotch she’d sipped while McMullen spoke. “You’d do that?”
“Tell me where you are, and I’ll come meet you. We’ll talk.”
“If you tell the police, and they come, I’ll kill myself. I—I have pills.”
“Don’t take any pills. I won’t do that. Where are you? I’ll come now.”
“Right now?”
“Yes, right now.”
“I’m at the Traveler’s Best Motel, off Route 98, right before the Portland exit. Please help me, Ms. McMullen. There’s no one else.”
“You sit tight, Patricia. I can be there in forty minutes.”
“Someone has to listen.” Patricia sobbed again. “You’re the only one.”
She hung up, toasted herself in the mirror with the scotch she’d developed a taste for.
Seleena raced to change into an on-camera suit. If things went well, she’d have the crazy woman in her studio inside two hours. The biggest exclusive anywhere, and it fell in her lap.
Once she had that in the pipe, she’d call the FBI. First the mother of all exclusives, then she’d rake it in as the intrepid reporter who brought down Patricia Jane Hobart.
She checked the time as she grabbed her laptop—she’d start with digital remote. Nearly midnight. She’d beat that forty minutes if she pushed it.
She packed up her recorder in case Patricia was initially shy, a still camera, her phone, tossed in a makeup bag, checked her Glock with its hot pink frame, and was in her garage in five minutes flat.
Emily Devlon could have warned her about Patricia’s skill with garage doors, but dead women don’t talk.
Seleena slid behind the wheel.
Her eyes widened in the rearview mirror when Patricia sat up in the back seat. Even as she grabbed for her purse and the gun, the syringe jabbed into her neck.
“Night-night,” Patricia said.
When Seleena slumped, Patricia got out, popped the trunk. She hauled Seleena out, fixed plastic restraints on her wrists and ankles, added a gag just in case Seleena came out of the sedative and made a fuss.
With some effort, she dragged her to the trunk, hoisted her up, and rolled her inside. “You just take a nice nap,” Patricia told her. “We’ve got a long drive ahead of us.”
She closed the trunk.
*
Simone didn’t tell him; she wasn’t ready. And in any case, the moment didn’t seem right for declarations of love.
She knew he’d keep the dog. If he wasn’t already in love, he was—as she’d been—slipping and sliding in that direction.
Because he’d done a very good deed for the day, she did one of her own and fixed a simple pasta dinner. She didn’t mention she’d learned how to make it from a certain Italian cellist.
As Reed explained how easily the dog spooked around people, and why, Simone strategically ignored him.
Reed fed the dog, who ate as if he’d been starved for weeks. Her heart ached as she wondered if he had.
By the time she had their meal together, the dog had stopped hiding behind Reed and was curled up under the table asleep beside his empty food bowl.
“He needs a name.”
Reed shook his head as they sat down to eat—at a drop-leaf barnwood table he’d bought from a friend of CiCi’s. “If he goes somewhere else, they’ll name him something else, and it’ll just add more confusion. Man, this is great,” he said after a bite of pasta. “You’ve been holding out on me. You can cook?”
She shook her head. “I can make a couple of things well, a few other things reasonably edible. That’s surviving rather than cooking.”
“It’s cooking on my scale. Thanks. How’d things go for you today?”
“They went well, but I realize I need a break from my … mission. A change of pace. I need those sketches of you.”
“How about a loincloth? I could wear a loincloth.”
“Do you have one?”
“No, but maybe I can rig one up. The naked thing…”
“I’ve seen you naked.”
“It’s different seeing me naked and studying me naked, drawing me naked. You’re on the other side of that.”
“I’ve been on both sides.”
“What?” He stopped eating.
“I subsidized my income in New York by modeling.”
“Naked?”
“Figure studies.” Amused, if unsurprised, by his reaction, she stabbed a noodle. “It’s art, Reed, not voyeurism.”
“I can guarantee some of the guys—and probably some of the girls—were voyeuring.”
She laughed. “I got paid either way. So, tonight’s perfect. I brought my sketchbook. You can consider it a trade for the meal—and what I’ll give you after the session.”
“Bribing me with sexual favors? That will … completely work.”
“I thought it might. You haven’t mentioned the FBI paying you a visit today.”
“Grapevine,” he said.
“It drips with juice. Did you not mention it because you thought it would upset me?”
“It didn’t amount to all that much.”
She’d heard differently, but wanted his side of it. “So tell me what it did amount to, and trust me to handle it.”