Page 46 of Haven't Killed in Years
She strolled over to the bar and I went back to the menu, lifting the massive industrial plastic textbook in front of my face and shielding myself from Dominic.
“Hey,” Dominic said, and I lowered my menu to see his blue eyes peeking over his own.
“Yeah.”
“Can I ask you a serious question?”
I placed my menu back on the table, unsure where this was going, unsure if I should be nervous. “What?”
“Did you really think they might be putting Tootsie Rolls on the drinks?” He laughed out loud at my expense. “Like a bunch of Tootsie Rolls squished around the rim?” He mimicked affixing the chewy turd candies around a glass.
“I don’t know,” I said, laughing too.
“I would bet my life savings that no restaurant has ever done that. Ever.”
“Well,” I said, “the Bahamas also aren’t in the Pacific, and yet, here we are.” I held my menu up off the table as Heather came back with our two Bahama Breezes, neon blue with sugar crystals lining the rim.
Dominic laughed again. Heather did not.
- - - - -
The drinks were good.Sugar for days. I had too many and I was going to feel like garbage the next day. Three hours in a car with a splitting headache for sure. Dominic led me back to our room. He hadn’t had as many Blue Bahama Breezes as me, but he did have quite a few Jack and Cokes. The buzz from the first Breeze had given him the courage to ask Heather for what he actually wanted.
I flopped down onto one of the beds and he did the same on the other. We both stared at the ceiling and I started drunk thinking—amplified anxiety. My stalker was really getting the better of me. I was no closer to figuring out who he or she was. I had no clue what was going to happen next. I had kissed two of my suspects. For now, it was just par for the course.
The only round I could technically count as a win was getting Reanne killed instead of Porter, but once I saw Reanne’s body, Iended up bummed, left second-guessing everything I ever felt toward her. Kind of hard to really consider that a win and not another victory for my adversary. Sure, Porter was still alive, but he was way more involved than I wanted. And missing. Maybe I was someone who could be messed with after all.
“You okay?” Dominic asked, rolling over to face me.
“I’m worried about Porter,” I admitted. I had been tight-lipped on the drive out there, not wanting to say too much given Porter’s situation.
“Why?”
I turned my head toward him, ready to shake the tree. “He went to visit Abel Haggerty.”
“What?” Dominic swung up into a sitting position with more grace than I would have expected given the drinks.
“He visited Abel in prison and I think he got into his head.”
“No way,” he protested. “Abel doesn’t let anyone else visit.”
“Well, he did. Porter said Abel wanted to know about Elyse since you never talk about her.”
“Yeah,” he scoffed. “I don’t think it’s right to tell the guy who murdered her entire family about her. She’s my friend. What if he did something to her because of something I said?”
“What’s he going to do? He’s in prison.”
“I don’t know, get some young impressionable guy to come visit, brainwash him, and get him to do his bidding.”
“Like you?” I spat back.
“You think I’m doing his bidding?”
“Isn’t that why you’re really looking for Marin Haggerty? You’re trying to find her for him?”
“I’m trying to find her because she’s killing people!”
“And Abel told you about Oswald Shields,” I pointed out. “Hecould have just said he didn’t know the name. He told you Oswald and James hid her. Don’t you think he did that so you would look into it?”
