Into the Fire - Anne Stuart [14]
“I’m not responsible for Nate’s death,” he said in a detached voice.
“I didn’t say you were. But you’re the one who should have protected him. If he’d gotten in with a bad crowd you should have done something, anything, to help him….” Her voice trailed off in the face of his ironic expression.
“Maybe you better make those phone calls,” he said, rising and pouring himself a mug of steaming sludge. “You want any of this?”
“I’d rather die.”
“Sooner or later, angel face, you’re going to have to learn to lower your patrician standards.”
“You aren’t going to be around to see it.”
“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong. I’m looking forward to it.”
The smell of the coffee was tantalizing. She knew it would be awful—too strong, too bitter. It would wreak havoc on her stomach and her nerves, and even milk and sugar wouldn’t make it palatable. And she wanted it, anyway.
She rose, shoving a hand through her wet hair. He was watching her, and she didn’t like it. The sooner she was out of there the better. “So my car’s still in the ditch on…what road did you say it was?”
“Route 31.”
“Fine. I’ll call AAA, I’ll call my mother, and I’ll make arrangements to give you back your privacy as soon as possible. That’s what you’d like, right? Have me get the hell out of here?”
“Do you have any doubts about that?” He stubbed out his cigarette, looking up at her above the thread of smoke.
In fact, she did. It didn’t make sense, but he didn’t seem in any hurry to have her leave. “I’ll just go get my purse. Maybe my cell phone will work here.”
“Maybe,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee and not even grimacing. “But I wouldn’t count on it. I wouldn’t count on anything if I were you.”
She didn’t bother arguing with him. She didn’t bother wasting another word on him—she simply headed up the dark, narrow stairs, stepping over the stained spot where the rat’s corpse had rested, going straight to her room.
In the gray light of a November morning it looked even less welcoming than it had before. The room was Spartan—just the mattress on the floor, the sleeping bag and her suitcase.
And no sign of her purse anywhere.
It was cold up here. Nate never thought he would be so cold, looking down on them. It was an odd sort of feeling—floating, dreamy, and then everything coming into focus. He should have known she was coming—he just couldn’t understand what had taken her so long to get here. His death would have shattered her, and there was no way she could move on with her life without getting answers. She’d come here to face his old buddy Dillon. The man who had let him die.
He wasn’t sure what he was going to do about it yet, even though he’d had a long time to think about it. Time had stopped making any sense, one day blending into another. He was trapped in this old building, unable to leave, but he’d heard her moving around, and known it was her.
The dead rat had been a nice touch. He left one every few days, not on a regular schedule. He didn’t want to be too predictable. He hadn’t expected Jamie to be the one to find it, but he didn’t mind. It meant Dillon had to come up with explanations, fast. And if he knew Dillon, he wasn’t about to tell her that the old factory was haunted by the ghost of her murdered cousin.
No, infested by rats was a preferable explanation. And it was. The rat of a man who’d betrayed his best friend and sent him to his death. And the King Rat himself, Nate Kincaid.
You can’t keep a good man down.
4
Jamie searched, of course. It had been there when she woke up, hadn’t it? Dillon couldn’t have taken it—he’d been with her the entire time. And there was no way up to the second floor except that dark, rat-infested stairway, and no one had passed them while they sat arguing at the kitchen table.
Or maybe whoever had dumped her suitcase in the room had taken the purse. She wasn’t carrying a lot of cash, though her small supply of sleeping pills might appeal to some teenage druggie. And hell, what was Dillon but an overgrown