Confessions Of An Old Lady (17 page)

We finished our coffee and tea and I looked down at my black iPhone, which read seven forty-five a.m. It would only be a matter of minutes before they started boarding our flight out of there and away to a beautiful country where we could hide in plain sight until we got things figured out. Just a matter of minutes…

Chapter 31

After tossing our drink containers into the big green waste bin outside the Starbucks, we walked toward the gate, trying to act like we had not a care in the world. In reality, my stomach was doing those looptie loos again and my palms were starting to sweat in Sonny’s firm grasp. I had to force myself to put one foot in front of the other and my heart was pounding so loudly I was sure everyone around me could hear it too.

We approached our gate, Gate 13B, and double-checked our tickets against the marquee displaying the flight number, departure time, and destination. Everything seemed to match and we were definitely at the right gate. We sat down in the seats closest to the desk at the gate, where a United Airlines employee was making an announcement that boarding would start “momentarily.”

I looked over toward where the mystery man had been sitting and noticed he was now gone and breathed a sigh of relief. Sonny and I began discussing our plans for what we were going to do as soon as we landed in Spain.

Then, without warning, the mystery man was standing right in front of us.

I froze. I didn’t know what to say or do, so I looked to Sonny, half-hoping he’d break the guy’s neck before he could arrest us, or kill us, or whatever he had planned. He stood up to face the man. If he was nervous, he didn’t show it one bit. He stood less than a foot away from the guy and was the first of the two to speak.

“Who the hell are you?” Sonny asked through gritted teeth, but low enough not to attract any unwanted attention. “Why are you following us?”

The man reached into his pocket and Sonny instinctively reached back behind him to his waistline, which would normally hold his 9 mm pistol, if we weren’t in an airport.

“I wouldn’t bother, if I were you,” the man said with a Cheshire Cat-like smile on his face. “You don’t have a gun and even if you did, I doubt you’d want to shoot an on-duty detective.” He revealed what he’d been reaching for in his pocket—a gold detective’s shield in a thin, black wallet. “Name’s Detective Ryan Amburgey. Nicholasville PD.”

Sonny looked down at me with a “we’re screwed” look on his face. I stood up next to Sonny and slipped my arm through the space between his left arm and chest, and stood as close to him as I could.

“What do you want with us?” I said, trying to play it a lot more confident than I really was. “We haven’t done anything wrong. In fact, I’m an agent with the DEA. Detective Olivia Rockford.” I held out my hand for his. There’s no way he’d know I just quit the Agency less than two hours ago.

He continued speaking without offering his hand in return. “Where are you two headed? Chicago, I see.” Luckily, the marquee only displayed the first leg of the trip. It wouldn’t show our final destination of Spain.

“Yes. My office is in Chicago. I’m headed home after an assignment in Nicholasville, actually…your neck of the woods,” I said, hoping my bubbly tone would put him off his game a little and soften him up.

Not a chance in hell.

“Yes, I’m aware,” he said sternly. “In fact, that’s why I’m here.”

“Why have you been following us?” Sonny asked confidently. “As she said, we’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Is that so?” he asked with a shit-eating grin. “That’s
all
you’re doing? You’re not running away, by any chance are you?”

“What on earth would we be running
from
?” I asked, putting on my best aw-shucks act. “No, we’re just heading back to my hometown. I’m going to take my boyfriend here to Chicago, where I live. He’s going to stay with me for a while. That’s all.”

He rocked forward on the balls of his feet. I noticed he was wearing a nice pair of shiny, brown Oxford shoes. He did look just like a detective—pleated-front khakis, a blue button-down shirt, and his sandy blond hair cropped close above his ears. He was probably former military, or something like that. He appeared to be in his mid-to-late forties, but very good-looking and in great shape for his age.

“So you wouldn’t know anything about a house fire in Nicholasville early this morning, then would you? On…” He looked down at a small notepad, which he produced from his shirt pocket. “…West Chestnut Street?”

Sonny and I both looked at each other. If we were playing poker, we both would have lost our hands, because I was positive the shock and fear played plainly on both our faces.

“Look, we can explain…” Sonny began.

“Oh, I can’t wait to hear this.” Detective Amburgey rocked on his feet again. “Please, enlighten me.”

“You see, Detective,” I interrupted Sonny, afraid he might be too abrasive with the man, leaving him less likely to believe our already implausible story. “I was staying in that house, as part of an assignment for the past eight months or so. Well, it’s a long story, but you see, my assignment was to help stop illegal operations of certain motorcycle gangs in Central Kentucky…”

I noticed his attention went from me to Sonny when I said
motorcycle gangs
. Although Sonny was a very clean-cut and attractive man, there was no mistaking the fact that he was, shall we say, a
motorcycle enthusiast
.

“…anyway, in the course of this investigation, I managed to make some…
enemies
and let’s just say they weren’t too happy with my work here in Kentucky so they sent me a little message to show me what they thought of me.”

“A message?” he asked. “Is that what you consider a message? Firebombing a house?”

“I mean, that’s the only thing it could have been. I think they were trying to kill us. They must have known we were leaving town and killing us before we left must have been the goal.” I decided there was no point trying to explain how Sonny and I had become an “us” to begin with. He probably didn’t care anyway.

“So you’re telling me some motorcycle gang is responsible for the fire at that house?”

I nodded my head.

“Well, you’ve got one thing right. It is most likely arson. Nicholasville Fire Department investigators have been out there since we got the call a couple of hours ago. It looks like someone used a highly flammable accelerant throughout the house and then probably dropped a lit match on a trail of whatever flammable substance they used. What we don’t know is
who
caused the fire.”

“Well, like I told you, Detective, it’s probably the leader of a very dangerous group called the Monsters of Mayhem and—”

He interrupted me by putting his hand up in front of my face, apparently uninterested in anything I had to say on the matter. “Neighbors saw the two of you speed off from the scene of the fire moments after the house became engulfed in flames. Got the description of your car and the license plate number. ‘Course it came back to Hertz Rental Cars, but one click of a mouse and the manager was able to tell us exactly who rented the 2013 Chevy Malibu. We put out a BOLO and what do you know? We found you two, here at the airport, about to flee the jurisdiction. Does that sound like a coincidence to you? Because I don’t believe in coincidences.”

Just then, we heard the United Airlines employee barking over the loudspeaker, telling us that boarding had just begun for flight 8611 to O’Hare Airport.

Sonny had had enough of the detective’s insinuations, so he took a step closer to him, held up his hand and said, “Look, Detective…the lady has already told you what happened. Think about it. Why on earth would either of us set fire to the very house we were sleeping in? It makes no sense. You need to point that bloodhound nose of yours at the Monsters of Mayhem, as my girlfriend told you. I bet you find your arsonist before the day’s out. Now, if you don’t mind, we have a plane to catch, and unless you’re going to arrest us right here and now, I suggest you step out of the way.”

The detective pursed his lips, nodded his head and said, “Yeah, all right.” He took two steps out of Sonny’s path and held his hand up as if to gesture that we were free to go.

“Thank you,” Sonny said with a confident grin. He reached out for my hand and began leading me toward the attendant, who was now double-checking everyone’s tickets.

We had gotten no more than four or five steps away when Detective Amburgey cleared his throat and spoke again.

“I know you’re not going to Chicago. I didn’t get where I am by believing everything people tell me, you know. We’ll find out where you are. And if even one shred of evidence links the two of you to this arson, by God, you should know that I will not rest until the two of you are back at this airport. Only next time, you’ll be in handcuffs. I never give up, fella.”

“Yeah?” Sonny turned only halfway in the detective’s direction. “Neither do I.” He turned and we both handed the clerk our tickets. She nodded politely at us both and motioned for us to enter into the corridor which would take us to the waiting airplane.

EPILOGUE

I sat down on the little chair on the balcony of the Catalonia Excelsior in Valencia, Spain and propped my right foot up on to the bannister. Reaching deep into the pocket of my plush white bathrobe, I pulled out a bottle of OPI “Last Friday Night” and shook the tiny bottle to mix up its sparkly blue contents. As I carefully painted my toes to match my fingernails, I paused to look out over the railing at the crystal blue waters of the Balearic Sea. The color reminded me of a ring my father had given my mother on their twentieth anniversary. It was sterling silver with a round sapphire in the center, surrounded by little blue points of topaz. That is just what this water looked like.

The thought of that ring made me homesick for the first time in the three weeks since we’d arrived in Valencia. I closed my eyes and took in the sounds and smells of the beautiful beach—salty air, coconut-scented sunscreen, tropical fruity drinks. I could hear children laughing and speaking hurried Spanish and their parents joining them in the laughter, probably tossing around a beach ball or splashing one another in the calm waters of the ocean. There was barely a surf, the waters were so still, but I could still hear the gentle waves washing in on the shore. This was heaven, if it ever existed on earth.

Just when the sights, sounds, and smells of Spain were about to lull me to sleep, the balcony door opened and I felt two strong hands smooth over my shoulders and grasp them firmly but gently. I turned to see Sonny…in all his half-naked glory.

“Whatcha doing?” he asked as he leaned in for a sweet little kiss.

“Absolutely nothing,” I answered with a smile.

He looked out over my head at the calm, yet magnificent oceans of Spain. “You know we can’t stay here forever,” he lamented.

I breathed a sigh of resignation. “I know.”

He continued. “We’ll have to get back to America soon. We can’t run forever.”

“Who says we can’t?” Although I knew in my heart and soul that he was right.

“That detective has probably figured out we had nothing to do with the house fire by now, but you know that Eddy Walters will never let us rest. We’ll have to get back there and take care of him…one way or another.”

Again, I knew he was right, but I just wanted to be in that moment for as long as I could make it last. Sonny and I, arms wrapped around one another, standing on the balcony of beauty and hope. Sure, we’d have to return to reality, probably sooner rather than later. But for the time being, I rested my head on his strong chest and said, “Later. We’ll deal with all of that later. For now, just hold me.”

And he did.

THE END

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