“He was scared of you today,” she said.

“I wasn’t that scary.”

“He saw the pistol and went pale.”

“Yeah, but it was more than me and the pistol that had him about to pee his pants.”

“He was afraid of what Jay had told me.”

“Or would have told you if he had lived long enough.”

“Why would Jay’s deathbed confession be a threat to Pat Junior?”

“Maybe we’ll have an opportunity to ask him. There he is.”

Raley spotted him as he exited through a rear door. They watched him enter the parking area and weave his way through the rows of cars. To Raley his movements seemed furtive, but he admitted that could be his imagination. The man was nervous by nature.

He didn’t look in their direction as he unlocked his car, tossed his jacket inside, and climbed in. “So far, so good,” Britt said.

Their plan was to follow Pat Jr. and see where he went after hours. Probably he would go straight home, and this would be another dead end. But Raley felt that the man was hiding something; Britt sensed it, too. Following him might provide them with a clue.

Besides, staying cooped up with Britt in the small cabin for hours on end was becoming an uncomfortable test of his endurance. The intimacy of sharing small spaces with her was getting to him. He was constantly aware of her nearness. Each time she moved, he knew it. He woke up every time she stirred in her sleep, even though she was in another bed.

For five years he’d had only fleeting contact with women, never being with one for more than an hour or two, certainly not long enough to start recognizing her habits and anticipating her reactions.

Now he was surrounded by Britt’s femininity. Inundated by it. He was conscious of those little things that were purely female-her vexation over a chipped fingernail, the daintiness with which she sipped from her can of Diet Coke, the meticulous way she tied her shoestrings by making the ends perfectly even. He was captivated by these and a hundred other manifestations of femininity. Furthermore, he was enjoying them.

He found himself watching her when she didn’t know it, in a kind of fascinated trance, his thoughts more often than not veering toward the prurient. He should never have put his hands on her. Because, try as he might, he couldn’t forget how she’d felt, how she’d moved, how she’d wanted him. He couldn’t look at her mouth without remembering kissing it, or her legs without remembering how tightly her thighs had hugged him.

He excused that night on the basis of him being lonely and horny. But he’d been lonely and horny before, and as soon as he said thanks and left a woman’s bed, it was forgotten.

Not this time.

His resolve not to touch her again was as strong as ever, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to enforce. A car was more public than a motel room. So part of this mission was to escape the confines of their compact room before he lost his mind, his temper, or his control. The main goal, however, was to try to discover the source of Pat Jr.’s jitters.

Raley waited until the policeman had driven out of the parking lot before starting the sedan and following. He kept well back and let several cars get between them. But not too many. There was a lot of traffic. There had been a break in the weather; the humidity wasn’t as high as it had been. The pleasant evening had brought people out. Luckily Pat Jr. stayed in one lane and drove the speed limit.

After ten minutes, Britt said, “Not too exciting so far.”

“No, but he’s not going in the direction of home.”

Pat Jr. kept driving, eventually making a large loop around the city before heading into downtown and the historic district, where the streets became narrower and even more congested with motor traffic and death-defying pedestrians, who crossed against lights and often took their chances on the street rather than the crowded sidewalks.

Pat Jr. turned onto a side street off the main drag of King, then in midblock he entered a driveway that ran along the side of a nightspot. Raley and Britt looked at each other but said nothing. They didn’t have to. The club was well known in the city.

Raley drove past the drive, but when he looked down it, he could see the policeman wedging his car between two others. Farther along the street, Raley spotted a car leaving a coveted parallel parking slot. He wheeled into it and cut their lights, hoping they wouldn’t be noticed by Pat Jr.

They weren’t. He had walked along the side of the building toward the entrance of the nightclub but had stopped short of the corner and remained in the sliver of shadow against the exterior wall. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and made a quick call.

Seconds after he clipped his phone back onto his belt, a young man emerged from the door of the club. He walked straight to the corner of the building and turned. Pat Jr. greeted him with a smile. They had a brief exchange, then together walked quickly back to the parking lot. They got into a car-not Pat Jr.’s-and left, pulling out onto the street in front of the club and driving away, unaware that they were being closely observed.

The silence between Raley and Britt was thick with all the implications of what they’d seen. Eventually he said, “I think I knew. In the back of my mind. From the time I knew who he was. That’s why I was surprised when George told me he was married. And then today, he didn’t look at you.”

Sensing her misapprehension, he turned toward her. “He didn’t look at you.” He looked down at her chest before meeting her gaze to make sure she’d got his point. She had. She lowered her head with apparent embarrassment.

Raley said, “Lewis Jones looked. Delno looked.” I’ve looked plenty. “Pat Junior didn’t. That should have tipped me off.”

“He’s leading a secret life.”

“The wife and kids are for show.”

“It must be misery.” She pulled off the baseball cap and shook her hair loose. “I feel just awful, spying. Let’s go.”

“We can’t.”

“Sure we can.”

“No. We can’t. Dammit!” He rubbed his eye sockets, feeling as awful as Britt about what they were doing, feeling even worse about what he knew they had to do. “We can’t go, Britt. Because I just figured out that the whole thing started with this poor bastard.”

CHAPTER 24

PAT JR. DIDN’T SEE RALEY UNTIL HE GOT BEHIND THE STEERING wheel of his car and Raley splayed his wide hand upon the younger man’s chest. He cried out in fright.

“I’m not going to hurt you. But we’re going to talk, and every word out of your mouth had better be the truth. Understand?” Raley’s voice, while soft and calm, was also steely. Britt imagined the other man sensed his resolve. She could practically smell Pat Jr.’s fear as he wobbled his head in agreement.

“H-how did you know I was here?”

“Do you have your service weapon?” Raley asked.

He shook his head no, then nodded yes. “In…in the glove box. Were you following me?”

Raley opened the glove box to verify that the pistol was there, then closed the door of the compartment without touching it. “That’s not too smart of you, Pat, leaving your police-issue gun where anybody could break into your car and get it.”

“Why are you following me? What do you want?” By now, having realized that Britt was in the backseat, he addressed the question to her reflection in the rearview mirror.

“As Raley says, we want to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“About your face,” Raley said.

“My face?”

“What happened to it?”

“It…I…I used to do a lot of cycling. I ran into a tree on my bike. Injured myself so bad, I gave up the sport.”

Raley didn’t move, not even his eyes. He continued to hold Pat Jr. with his resolute stare. The man turned his head and looked hopefully toward Britt. She slowly shook her head. “That’s the story you told, but that’s not what happened, is it, Pat?”