In a daze, I started to fast-forward through the days since we met. How we agreed to see each other again; how the Ocean House job had been set up.
Everything was separate. It was just a coincidence. A horrible one. I felt myself fighting back tears.
Then, unable to hold it back any longer, the dam burst.
I hung my head and just stayed there, my face smeared with tears. At some point I realized I had to leave. Someone could have recognized me from that afternoon. That blond desk clerk! I couldn’t exactly go to the police and clear myself, not with what had happened tonight. I pulled out from the curb. I didn’t know where the hell I was going. Just away.
Chapter 15
I MADE A LEFT, then another, found myself back on Royal Palm. My mind was a mess. My clothes were soaked in sweat. I drove the whole way down to Lake Worth in a daze. Everything had just changed. Everything in my life. It had happened once before – in Boston. But this time I wasn’t going to be able to put it back together.
I turned off 95 onto Sixth Avenue, the awful image of Tess’s dangling wrist and the sound of Dee’s freaked-out warning alternating in my head.
Mickey’s place wasn’t far from the highway. No Breakers on this street. No Bices or Mar-a-Lagos. Just shabby streets of boxy homes and trailers where people drank beer on lawn chairs, with flatbeds and Harleys in their open garages.
A cop car streaked past me, and again I tensed. Then another cruiser. I wondered if somebody knew my car. Maybe I’d been spotted in Palm Beach?
I wound the Bonneville down onto West Road, a couple of blocks from the yellow house Mickey and Bobby had rented.
My stomach almost came up into my throat.
Flashing cop lights everywhere. Just like before. I couldn’t believe my eyes. People were crowded all over the front lawns – in tank tops and muscle shirts, looking down the street. What the hell was going on?