Page 3 of Our Little Secret
The burner jangled again.
What the hell?
The same unknown number showed on the screen.
Oh. God.
She answered sharply. “I don’t know who you are, but you’ve got the wrong number!”
A pause, and then the whispered voice: “I don’t think so, Brooke.”
The caller knew her name?
“Who is this?” she demanded, frantic. Oh no, no, no . . .
“He’s not who you think he is.” The voice—male? Female? Old? Young? She couldn’t tell. “You’d better be careful—”
Bam!
The front end of her Explorer slammed into the back of the sports car with a horrendous crunch of metal and plastic.
Her body jerked.
The seat belt snapped hard.
“Shit!” She hit the brakes, dropped the phone, her pulse shooting to the stratosphere.
The Porsche screeched to a stop.
The car behind her—a white boat of a thing with an elderly man at the wheel, his wife beside him—stopped within an inch of plowing into her. The driver looked up, startled. In front of her, the guy in the damaged Porsche jumped out of his car and strode to her window.
“What the fuck?” he yelled, his face all kinds of red, his jeans and black T-shirt faded and worn over a large, burly frame.
As she rolled down her window a little further, he yanked the hat from his head and threw the Mariners cap onto the pavement. “You fuckin’ hit my car!”
Her mind was racing, her breathing shallow. “You started to go, then stopped.”
“So what? You’re supposed to have control of your vehicle. You hit me, lady!” He jerked a hand toward the curb. “And if you’d been paying attention, you would have noticed, a kid—that kid—was playing with a ball near the curb!” He stabbed a finger at the boy—four or five years old from the looks of him—staring at them with wide, frightened eyes. “The ball rolled into the street,” the driver explained and she peeked past his angry body to see a basketball still rolling slowly on the pavement in front of a stopped van in the opposite lane. “I thought the kid might run after it. Jesus, what are you? A fuckin’ moron?”
There was no way to deny it. When she looked to the near side of the street, she saw an older woman dragging the kid into an apartment house.
“You’re just damned lucky he didn’t chase the fuckin’ thing!” The driver was still ranting. “Cuz if he did? And I didn’t hit him? You sure the hell would have.”
Her heart knocked painfully. He was right. She’d been so distracted by the phone call, by Gideon, by all of her messed-up life that she hadn’t been paying attention. At least not enough attention.
But it would be fine—just some twisted metal. Nothing more. Nothing life-threatening. Thank God.
She peered up at him. “Are you okay?”
“Do I look okay?” he demanded, his bald head glistening in the sunlight, wraparound sunglasses hiding his eyes. Beneath a two- or three-days’ growth of beard, a muscle in his jaw was working overtime.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I’m not. Thanks to you. And my car! Shit, I just got the temporary plates removed! Brand-new and now—Now? Fuck!” He stripped off his sunglasses and looked about to throw them as he had the cap, then thought better of it and pushed the mirrored shades back onto the bridge of his nose. “Do you know what this is?” he said, jabbing a finger at his car. “Do you?” Before she could answer, he filled her in. “It’s a fuckin’ Nine-eleven! Did you hear me? A fuckin’ Nine-eleven.”
“Got it!” she shot back, her temper spiking. She gritted her teeth and tried to remain calm, even though this jerkwad was punching all of her buttons and her nerves were frayed to the breaking point.
The man in the white behemoth of a sedan had stepped onto the street. “We saw the whole thing,” he shouted from behind the open car door. “If anyone needs a witness. Aggie and I saw it all.” He motioned toward his wife, sitting stiffly on the passenger side of his Buick.
