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With a click, he unlocked her car door then handed her the keys. In silence, he strode into the dark. Maryanne collapsed against the fender and just stood there, drenched in rain and sweat. For long moments she just breathed and shook, thankful she could still do both.
“Lord God, thank you for…for…whatever. Just help me.”
When she could move again, she opened the door and sat. Long minutes later, she turned on the ignition. The drive home was a numb haze—another mindless drive under her belt. If she kept this up, she’d soon qualify as a homing pigeon, functioning on some instinctual plane.
That, and she’d have a couple of centuries of thanks and praise to offer her Lord.
In the garage, Maryanne sat back and tried to relax her shoulder muscles. She failed. Miserably.
The memory of J.Z. Prophet returned with the vengeance of hurricane-spurred ocean waves. What did the man want with her?
Because, without a shadow of a doubt, Maryanne knew J.Z. had come to Peaceful Meadows to keep tabs on her. What she didn’t know was why?
And she’d better figure it out soon…before it was too late.
For her.
At ten the next morning, Maryanne called the cell phone rep Trudy had recommended. In a few minutes’ time, she’d agreed to stop by the kiosk at the mall and sign a contract for a year’s worth of service. Next time J.Z. Prophet showed his face, she’d be ready. Her new phone came with preprogrammable automatic dialing.
The first number she’d record would be 911.
The day went by in the same kind of blur as when she drove home last night. By five, she didn’t remember much of what she’d done. Well, she turned in the report, but other than that…mush.
Determined to regain some semblance of sanity if not control, she concentrated on the drive to the mall. She even sang along with Rebecca St. James’s latest on the radio. She parked, locked the car, ran through the ongoing rain to the food-court entrance and made a beeline for the cell phone and safety.
The young man had the papers ready for her. All Maryanne had to do was sign her name and give him a check. After a handful of directions, she felt confident enough to head home with the gadget and its instruction manual. On her way back to the car, she detoured by the frozen yogurt counter. She didn’t often indulge, but today she ordered a swirl cone. She didn’t want to choose between chocolate and vanilla.
Because of the rain, she opted to finish her treat at one of the food court’s small tables. Then, on her way to the great outdoors and the deluge, she tossed away her napkin and saw the man watching her from the sandwich shop line. She came to a halt.
J.Z. Prophet wasn’t besting her again.
Maryanne marched up to him. “I told you I’d call the cops the next time I saw you.” She pulled out her phone. “Watch me.”
He covered the gadget and her hand with his much larger one, his clasp gentler than she would have imagined. “It won’t do you any good. I know what you are—”
“What are you doing, J.Z.?” asked the other Uni-Comp clown, a bag redolent of corned beef in his hand. “You’re worse than a kid. You can’t leave well enough alone, can you? Do you want Eliza to charge out here and tear a strip off your hide—”
He stopped just when things were about to get interesting, when Maryanne might have learned something about the probably psychotic J.Z. But the two men glared at each other, and if it weren’t for the minor matter of her captured hand, she would have taken her leave. Instead, she looked from one to the other, only too aware of J.Z.’s warm clasp.
“Ahem,” she said.
The men turned.
“Would one of you please tell me which episode of the Twilight Zone you’re rerunning here?”
“Let her go,” J.Z.’s partner said.
J.Z. captured her gaze just as firmly as he held her hand.
“Who are you guys?” Maryanne’s fear fired up again. “What do you want with me? And don’t even mention computers. I know you’ve been following me.”
“Come on, J.Z. Let’s go.”
Maryanne smiled her gratitude at the blond man who didn’t work for Uni-Comp—she wasn’t dumb.
“Yes, J.Z. Let me go. I’ll go my way and you can go yours, and never the twain shall meet. Okay?”
“Let her go,” her pal—Don? Dan? Yeah, Dan Something—repeated.
J.Z. acceded, but a strange look she couldn’t read, not the anger she’d seen, maybe frustration, filled his eyes. “Watch yourself,” he said. “One mistake, and I’ll make my move.”
“Who are you?” she asked yet again.
“Tell her, J.Z. You’ve blown this out of the water, so you may as well tell her now.”
Maryanne’s eyes ping-ponged from one man to the other.
Dan muttered something else, this time nothing Maryanne could make out. He thrust his sandwich bag at J.Z. and rummaged in his back pocket. But instead of the wallet she’d expected, he extended a small leather card case toward her.
“What…?”
“Open it,” he said gently.
She did. Four words jumped out at her: Federal Bureau of Investigations.
Her head spun. Ice replaced her blood. The world tipped under her feet. “Why?”
“You’re under investigation,” J.Z. said in clipped tones. “You’re good, but I’m better. I’m going to get you and your mob pals, so say goodbye to freedom, your frozen yogurt and your little phone.”
Everything went black.
FOUR
“Are you satisfied now?” Dan glared up at J.Z.
J.Z. frowned down at the woman sprawled flat on the mall’s food-court floor. “Come on, lady. We aren’t playing games here—”
“Take her pulse, will ya?”
Dan’s expression gave him no alternative, so J.Z. went down on one knee, took the librarian’s wrist in his hand, and pressed to check for her heartbeat. To his surprise, it was weak and unsteady—just what one expected in a person who’d fainted.
He shook his head. “I told you she was good. I’ve never known someone who could faint on demand. I guess there’s always a first time for everything.”
Dan’s look of disgust hit him like a slap.
“Your compassion underwhelms me,” his partner said. “If you won’t help her, then at least give me a hand and keep this mob from crushing us.”
Only then did J.Z. notice the crowd that had gathered around them. Two sandwich-shop employees flapped their aprons in an obvious attempt to circulate air around Maryanne. A quartet of mall-walkers, senior citizens who exercised in the shelter of the covered mall, whispered among themselves, curiosity and pity in their lined faces. A maintenance guy stood to their right, both hands clasped around the mop’s wooden handle, the bucket-on-wheels contraption where it sat in danger of rolling and leaving him without support.
Heat rushed up J.Z.’s cheeks. “Okay, folks. We have it under control. Please move on so that we can take care of her.”
The onlookers dispersed, their backward glances full of reluctance, his sudden relief at their departure surprisingly strong. Did Dan have a point? Was he overreacting to everything about this woman?
“Think those weird guys there are some of them white slavers in the news?” asked a white-haired lady in lime-green sweats, her voice scissors-sharp as she resumed her laps around the shopping center.
J.Z. groaned. “That’s all we need.”
“What? For someone to report you for manhandling a helpless female? That’s probably what it looked like you were doing.”
“Look. I’m not going to drop the pressure on her. Sooner or later she’ll crack—”
“Either that, or she’ll crack up from your intimidation. Chill, man. You don’t even know she’s involved.”
He snorted. “Did you bother to read the profile we got last month? I’m telling you, the description fits her perfectly.”
“It also fits about fifty percent of the female population. That doesn’t mean they’re all mobsters, does it?”
“Don’t give me that. That fifty percent doesn’t have her kind of access to an old folks’ home where a bunch of seniors died after one of that fifty percent ordered their termination. And don’t forget the Laundromat’s demise.”
Maryanne’s eyelids gave a twitch. Good. She was coming to. But before he could say anything, Dan spoke.
“I’ll admit those e-mails look pretty bad, but any hacker can get into her account to cast suspicion on her.”
“Fine. Let’s assume that’s what happened.” J.Z. ran a hand through his hair. “Where’s the hacker who fits the profile? Who else has access? Who else is the typical ‘neighbor-next-door’ type who won’t raise suspicion? Who else does the dowdy, harmless librarian routine as well as Maryanne Wellborn?”
Dan’s ministrations were having results on Maryanne. Color seeped into her cheeks. With a split-second glance at J.Z., he asked, “Have you bothered to stake out the place?”
“Why would I need to?” J.Z. let his breath out in a gust. “We have the e-mails, the wealthy, dead seniors, the very dead—this time—Laundromat, and finally, her fingerprints on the IV stand. And she’s there, all the time, in and out to see her dad—or so she says. Doesn’t that stink rotten to you?”
“I’m going to tell you one more time,” Dan said through gritted teeth. “Appearances can be deceiving. There’s a reason why clichés become clichés. They have a bunch of truth to them, and her appearance, because it reminds you of your past, may be deceiving you.”
“So you want me to believe even the fingerprints are a coincidence.”
Dan shrugged, his attention on the librarian. “She could have moved the stand for a nurse…for Mat, himself. You can’t be sure what happened. You weren’t there.”
J.Z. belabored his point. “Give me a break. What are the chances all these deaths—especially a mobster’s—are unrelated and unconnected to the librarian who sends killer e-mails?”
Maryanne blinked.
J.Z. crossed his arms. “Well?”
Dan muttered, “Not now.”
“It’s as good a time as any,” J.Z countered. “There’s no such thing as coincidence. If something stinks like a skunk, looks like a skunk and skulks like a skunk, then more than likely it’s a skunk.”
When Dan ignored him, J.Z. bulldozed ahead. “That phony librarian look doesn’t fool me. I’ve spent my entire adult life smoking out mob scum. I’m going to bust her.”
Almost more for him than for his partner, he added, “Just because my father chose a life of crime doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore what’s staring me in the face. I’ve chosen to sop up crime, and that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to bring her in.”
Maryanne blinked. Male voices caught her attention.
“…skunk…mob…crime…”
What was going on? And why was she lying down?
“…I’m going to bring her in….”
Her head swam. Her stomach lurched. She had no idea where she was—Wait! She’d gone to the mall to pick up her phone, and there she’d found—
“You!” she cried when her eyes focused on the maniac who stood, Mr. Clean-style, over her. “What did you do to me?”
The boy-next-door blond one who hung around with the nutcase wrapped an arm around her shoulders and helped her sit.
“He didn’t do anything to you,” Dan said with a lethal glare for J.Z. Prophet. “That is, he didn’t do anything to hurt you. He has been pretty busy acting like an idiot, though, so I can see where you’d think he had.”
Maryanne shook off his arm. “Thank you, but I can get up on my own.”
She stood, and again the height difference between her five foot five and J.Z.’s six foot something threatened to intimidate her. As did the memory of Dan’s FBI badge.
Everything rushed back. “Okay. Let’s say you guys really are Feds and not some loony fakes.”
J.Z.’s scowl deepened. Maryanne ignored the urge to step back. She tried again. “Let’s just say you’re what you say you are. Why are you wasting your time on me? What real, live G-man would try to make a case out of a librarian, so-called mob pals, frozen yogurt and a new cell phone?”
“Great,” J.Z. said. “She’s even got the diversionary tactics down pat.” He met her gaze. “Playing dumb and going for the funny bone won’t get you anywhere.”
Maryanne gave him a pointed up-and-down look. “I see you speak from experience. You wouldn’t know funny if it ran up and bit you, plus you do a great dumb.”
“Look lady. We have evidence. And we have the corpses to go with it.”
Maryanne squinched her eyes shut. She shook her head to try and clear it, to try to make sense of what he’d said. She blinked a couple of times, looked from J.Z. to the mortified Dan and back at J.Z. again. She shook her head one more time.
It still made no sense. “Could you explain the corpses part a little better?”
He ran a hand through his dark hair, a gesture she’d seen him do on a couple of occasions, like when he’d stared at the box of computer stuff in total frustration.
“Fine,” he said after long minutes. “I guess you’re pretty good at dumb, too. Do the names Helmut Rheinemann, Toby Matthias, Muriel Harper, Audrey White, Carlo Papparelli and others ring a bell?”
With each name, Maryanne’s queasiness grew. A momentary sadness swept over her, but she couldn’t afford to let emotions cloud her thoughts. She had to keep a clear head.
“Yes, of course, the names ring a bell. They were all patients at the same nursing and retirement community where my father lives, and you know it, too. They…they all passed away recently. But why would you come after me?”
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