Playing Dead_ A Novel of Suspense - Allison Brennan [101]
When the men came to her house, Daddy wasn’t home. He was working. He had an important job, just like she did. He was a policeman. The chief policeman in Isleton. At first she was scared, but then the pretty man smiled at her and she felt all fluttery inside.
She had a job. And it was as important as her daddy’s job. She was undercover for the Department of Homeland Security. She reported back to Agents Smith and Jones everything that happened at the Rabbit Hole. Everything. She took very good notes.
She liked Tip, but he was a terrorist. As Agent Smith said, not all terrorists look like terrorists.
She was protecting her friends and neighbors from being killed like those poor people in New York. Lora was important.
When the two nice men left her tackle shop, she called the special number she was given for emergencies. Only to be used if someone was asking questions about Tip’s Blarney.
“Harper.”
She frowned. “Agent Smith or Agent Jones, please.”
There was silence, then several minutes later there was a click. “This is Agent Jones.”
“Two men came to my shop today. They were asking questions about Tip and another man.”
“Who?”
“That man you told me about. Mr. Maddox. The terrorist who was going to poison the river and kill all the fish.”
“Do you remember their names?”
“Of course. I got their business cards, too. They said they were from the FBI. Agent Mitch Bianchi and Agent Steven Donovan.”
Agent Smith had told her that a lot of people lie. She knew that. Her mama lied about a lot of things to her daddy. Mama didn’t think Lora knew, because she thought Lora was stupid, but Lora was smarter than that. She knew that her mama wasn’t at Book Club on Thursday nights.
“What did they say?”
“They asked if I remembered Mr. Maddox. I told them yes. He was in the bar. I told them the entire truth, except about the poison.”
“You did very good.”
“I did?”
“Yes. Lora, this is very important. If a woman comes to the bar who you don’t know, and starts asking about Mr. Maddox or a man named Frank Lowe, I want you to do the same thing to her that you did to Mr. Maddox. Can you do that for me?”
“Is she a terrorist too?”
“Yes. Her name is Claire O’Brien and she is very dangerous.”
“I promise. I can do that.”
“Thank you, Lora. There’s no one else we can trust with this very important assignment.”
She hung up and smiled, went upstairs, and closed her bedroom door. She locked it, even though she knew her daddy wouldn’t be home for a long time. She went to her closet, into the far back, behind all her shoeboxes. She pulled out the secret box where she kept things she didn’t want her daddy to find. She used to keep candy and the weekly magazines her daddy hated in the locked box. Now, the only thing inside was a large vial of poison.
Terrorists needed to die. And Lora knew how to do it.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Greg Abrahamson was much harder to get an audience with than Claire thought. He was now a detective, and she left several messages trying to track him down.
She didn’t want to talk to him on the phone. She needed ten minutes in person. People were more forthright in person.
Claire took the opportunity while waiting for Abrahamson to return her call to stop by Rogan-Caruso and do more research, this time on Don Collier. He’d canceled his classes and seemed to have disappeared, according to Agent Donovan.
She typed in search parameters and pulled up far more detailed records of Collier than she could from home.
He’d earned tenure last year at Davis. Now eleven years as a professor, took pro bono cases, yada yada. Big do-gooder on the surface. His affiliation with the Western Innocence Project was noteworthy. He’d been written up in the paper many times. Philanthropist this, noble that. Blah, blah. But the more she read about his good work, the more