“I don’t actually know. Something like…Old Pines Inn? It’s a good thirty-minute drive from here.”
“Uh-huh. And does Sage have a last name?”
The shock and horror finally faded, and it dawned on Vaughn that he was talking to a cop, the absolute last person Sage would want him speaking with about her. “I was mistaken. I’m rattled.”
“You don’t look like the type to get rattled,” the cop said.
He scowled. “I’ve had a hell of a night, Officer…” He glanced at the guy’s nameplate. “Kelly. And I just watched a woman I thought was my girlfriend die in front of me. I’m allowed to be rattled.”
Kelly was unfazed by the dryness in his tone. “Yes, I suppose so. How about your name?”
“Vaughn Wilde.” He didn’t see the harm in giving his real name. In fact, it might even help him since the cop was most definitely now eyeing him and Sage for this murder. He certainly had nothing to do with it, and he had an alibi. Sage…well, she may have done a lot of illegal things, but she didn’t have cold-blooded murder in her. He reached for his wallet, found his PI license. “I’m a private investigator from DC.”
“Uh-huh,” Kelly said again and studied the license without much interest. “What are you doing down here?”
“Just a vacation. We’re driving back to DC from New Orleans.”
“How’d you end up in the ER waiting room? You look like you’ve been in a fight.”
“We were in a car accident yesterday. I swerved to miss a deer, and our car went into a ditch. I came in this morning to get checked out because I think I cracked a rib.” He directed that toward the doctor, who nodded.
“We’ll get you in for an x-ray,” the doctor said.
Kelly handed his PI license back. “How did you get here from the motel if your car’s in a ditch?”
“The night manager drove me. His name is Jeff. Didn’t catch a last name.”
“So you left your girlfriend behind at this Old Pines Inn?”
Shit. This wasn’t going well. He needed to get out of here and fast. “I need to go check on her. Seeing that woman, thinking it was her…I need to go.”
Kelly didn’t try to stop him, but he felt the guy’s eyes burning into his back as he walked away.
Outside, he stopped and drew a breath of the cool winter air, ignoring the pain in his ribs. Damn. Could this situation get any worse? No, on second thought, he didn’t want to know the answer to that question. He fumbled for his phone to call Reece.
“Hey,” Reece said after a handful of rings. “What’s going on? Cam said you were in some kind of accident, and he’s on his way to Atlanta—”
“I need your help,” Vaughn interrupted.
“Uh, sure. Anything.”
“I need to find Sage.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? She got away from you again?”
“Yeah, and you were right. She’s running from something. She’s in danger, and she’s scared. Hell, I’m scared for her. I just watched a woman who looked like her die of two GSWs to the chest. And this woman? She was wearing Sage’s clothes. I think Sage gave them away to create a decoy.”
Reece muttered a curse. “But now the decoy is dead, and it’s only a matter of time until whoever’s after her finds out they didn’t get the right woman.”
“Exactly. I need to know where this woman was shot, because I bet Sage is holed up nearby. The police are not going to cooperate with me on this. Pretty sure the first cop on the scene is eyeing me for the murder.”
Reece groaned. “You don’t just step in a pile of shit, do you? Oh, no. You jump in with both fucking feet.” He heaved a sigh. “Tell me where you are, and I’ll see if I can hack into the local PD’s computer system. And, Vaughn, I’m breaking all kinds of laws here, so she better be worth it.”
“She is.” No hesitation. Those two words were the most natural response ever because she was his match in every way—she was his Shelby, his Eva, his Libby. “Yeah,” he added more softly. “She’s worth it to me.”
“All right,” Reece said. “Give me a half hour.”
As Vaughn ended the call, he realized he was shaking with the after-burn of adrenaline and fear. He didn’t usually let himself react to fear. He’d conditioned it out of himself, but in the moments he’d thought Sage was dying on that stretcher…
Yeah. He’d never been more afraid of anything in his life.
He had to find her again.
…
Something had happened across the street.
Sage parted the blinds over the motel’s window and peeked out at the gas station parking lot where only hours ago, she’d given her clothes to a blonde homeless woman who was close to her size and build. Now the lot was cordoned off with police tape, and the street was clogged with patrol cars.