Page 60 of A Little Too Late
“Okay. Sorry. I must have the wrong night. Thank you.” Ava hangs up and bows her head. “That bastard lied to my face,” she whispers.
“Unless the reservation was under another name,” I suggest gently.
She lifts her chin and pins me with sad eyes. “It won’t be. You were right, damn it. Something is off with them.”
I feel no satisfaction at being right. But I doubt she knows that. For a half second, I actually think it would have been better if I hadn’t bothered to show up here in Colorado.
But that’s not right, either. She’d end up working for these pricks.
Looking away from her defeated gaze, I take my phone and dial my father.
He answers on the first ring. “Yeah? Reed?”
“Dad, can I borrow your car?”
He cackles. “Now there’s a question I never get anymore.”
“Listen, I dropped a tracker into my rental before the Sharpes drove away, and now they’re parked outside Tucker Block’s house.”
There’s a silence on the line, and I wait for him to curse me out for interfering. But the explosion never comes. When he speaks, it’s only to say, “You’re shitting me.”
“I’m not.”
He groans. “That no-good, piece-of-shit…”
I’m not sure if he means the Sharpes or Block. But it doesn’t matter. “Dad, can I take your car? I want to do a little drive-by in town.”
“We can take mine,” Ava says. She’s already on her feet. “It’s right behind the building.”
“Actually, we’ll take Ava’s,” I say to my dad. “Gotta run.”
“Keep me posted,” he barks. “I’ll be here eating my feelings.”
I disconnect with a snort. It’s been a long time since I laughed at anything my father said.
“I’m wearing the wrong shoes again,” Ava grumbles, looking down at her pumps.
“Take mine!” Sheila’s already unlacing a pair of fashionable suede hiking boots in a girly shade of pale blue. “I’ll be right here finishing the appetizers and raiding Reed’s mini fridge.”
“You really do deserve that raise,” Ava says as she hurries to lace them up.
I grab my wool overcoat and also a packable down jacket I’d brought in case I actually found a moment to ski. “Here.” I thrust it at Ava. “Put this on. Let’s roll.”
For once, she doesn’t argue.
Five minutes later, we’re headed into town in Ava’s Subaru. I’d insisted on driving, on the pretense that I knew exactly where we were headed. “My caper, so I’ll captain it.”
“Fine,” she’d grumbled. But then she’d fallen silent for a couple of miles.
“You okay?”
“I guess.” She sighs. “Your father pays me pretty well. I like my job, Reed. I wanted that promotion. And I really wanted a vacation.”
Ouch. “I’m sorry. But if the Sharpes are in some kind of arrangement with Tucker Block, my dad might not sell.”
“Who is Block? Someone needs to explain what the hell is happening.”
“Block and my dad don’t like each other. Never have. When Dad met my mother, she was dating him.”
