Page 23 of His Sweet Torment
What was wrong with this picture? She read the numbers again then realized - the Lotto didn’t go up to seventy-eight and there were definitely no zeros. It wasn’t a real ticket. Someone was trying to tell her something.
Enver?
“What is it?” She hissed softly to herself, wracking her brain, but try as she might, she could not make a connection.
It was just after four a.m. when the hospital was silent, only the soft beep of machinery was making any noise when Padme awoke, gasping, not from pain, but from realization.
Eddie Long. E. Latimer. The strange and huge sum of money in her checking account, almost but not quite seven hundred and fifty million. The weirdly ordered numbers on the lotto ticket.
They were longitude and latitude.
Enver was telling her where to find him.
Dale was waiting at her apartment when Padme got home. Severin kissed her daughter goodbye and hugged Dale. “Look after her,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. She had always liked Dale. If Padme and Dale had suddenly decided they were in love, Severin would have thrown a party.
Padme smiled at Dale as he studied her. “You okay, sweets?”
She nodded. “I really, really am. I got my fight back.”
He squinted at her. “You got drugged…and it’s a good thing?”
“I think I was meant to go to the hospital. I got some flowers there.” She stopped and looked around. “Is it safe to talk here?”
Dale nodded and grinned. “Oh yes.”
“No bugs?”
“No, there were, or rather there’sonecamera but somehow, I don’t think you’ll be mad about it.”
“About someone spying on me? I think I might be,” Padme said grimly, ready to yell, but Dale, chuckling, held his hands up.
“Slow your roll and listen to me. Here’s one camera, in this room only. Look up at the top shelf. Notice anything?”
Padme looked up at her shelf. “No.” She blinked in confusion.
Dale sighed, amused. “I forget that you’re about as domesticated as Angelina Jolie. Look again. See the dust on the books? Okay. See the book which has no dust on it?”
Padme squinted at it and started laughing. “The Story of O?Are you kidding me?”
Dale smiled. “The person who’s watching you probably hopes you’ve read that cover-to-cover.”
Padme’s hand was at her mouth. “Enver?” She whispered it, and Dale nodded.
“When I found it, I was about to disable it, and I got a phone call.”
“From him?”
Dale shook his head. “From a woman. She asked me not to remove the camera, that it was, how did she put it – a link that her employer wanted. I asked her why the hell I shouldn’t rip the damn thing out, that her employer could go fuck himself. I was sure she worked for Ingles. I was about to hang up when she said something to me. She said “Lemon. Left Inner Thigh.”
“Oh my god,” Padme’s legs wobbled, and she sat down. “My tattoo. There are only four people in the world who know I have that. Me, the tattooist, you and Enver. Well, maybe the people at the emergency room by now. But how would this woman know? Ithasto be Enver.”
Dale nodded and sat opposite her. “I think so, too. So, I left the camera where it was and thought I’d tell you.”
Padme put her face in her hand and gave a sob, just one, but then looked up smiling. She went to the bookcase and stared up at the camera. “Has it got a microphone? Can he hear me?”
“I think so. I think he heard me cussing out when I found it and he called whoever that woman was to stop me.”
Padme chuckled and looked back at the camera. “I love you,” she said and smiled. “And…Iknow.”
