Don't Ever Tell Read online

  Coco wandered into the kitchen. He pulled away a chair and sat, and the dog hopped into his lap, tail wagging.

  “Let’s see what your mommy was hiding on here,” he said.

  He turned on the computer.

  He pulled up various file folders on the computer’s hard drive. There was a folder labeled “My Documents,” and several subfolders within it such as “Salon Business,” “Finances,” “House Docs,” and “Miscellaneous.”

  He scanned through the folders, but nothing jumped out at him.

  He launched the Web browser. Her laptop, like his, was equipped with a wireless router connected to their home’s DSL network. The browser loaded the Google home page.

  He went to the browser’s address bar and pulled down a list of the last few sites that she’d visited. Among the news sites and hair care-related pages, one link stood out.

  The Illinois Department of Corrections Web site.

  The page she had attempted to print the other day had come from there.

  He surfed to the site. It had a menu for various options— ”Inmate Search,” “Facilities,” “Visitation Rules,” and many more.

  He drummed his fingers on the table, thinking for a moment, and went to the Web browser’s History folder.

  It listed all of the links Rachel had accessed in the past several weeks, including the pages she had visited on the Illinois Department of Corrections Web site.

  She had gone to a page entitled, “Most Wanted Fugitives.”

  Heart knocking, he selected it.

  “Whoa,” he said.

  A man named Dexter Bates glowered at him.

  Belle Coiffure was located in Camp Creek Marketplace, an outdoor shopping and dining complex off Camp Creek Parkway, a busy road that led to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. National chain stores and restaurants were represented there: Target, Lowe’s, Circuit City, Barnes & Noble, Red Lobster, Longhorn. Dozens of local businesses were represented, too: wing restaurants, barber shops, delis, dentists’ offices.

  Belle Coiffure had a prime location between a Hollywood Video and a Publix grocery store. The name “Belle Coiffure Hair Salon,” was spelled in elegant lettering in a big, luminous red sign. A red awning, emblazoned with the salon’s name, offered protection from the elements that could ruin a fresh ’do. Large front windows gave a prime view of the action inside: women busy doing hair.

  Dexter crawled past in the Chevy, clenching the steering wheel.

  My goddamn money paid for this. The bitch took my money and opened a fucking beauty shop!

  He saw several stylists at work, but none that he recognized as his wife.

  He swung toward the far corner of the large parking lot. He had to be careful about being seen. His wife might have alerted her employees to the situation, circulated a photo of him, and instructed them to call the police if they spotted him in the area.

  He parked in a location that gave him a clear line of sight to the salon. It was a quarter past eight, and according to the hours listed on the back of the business card, the shop closed at nine.

  He dug a pair of binoculars out of his duffel. He had purchased them at the store yesterday, for basic surveillance needs.

  He would watch, and wait. He was good at both. Stakeouts were mostly waiting and watching, and he’d done many, many of those in his day.

  He passed the time thinking about how his wife was squandering his fortune, and how he could most savagely vent his displeasure when he faced her at last.

  Joshua read the one-page profile of Dexter Bates.

  The record included two mug shots: one from the front, another from the side. Wearing a dark beard, Bates was a handsome man, but with his I-wish-you-would expression, he looked like a guy you didn’t want to screw around with.

  His eyes were his most striking feature. They were dark, intelligent, cunning. The eyes of a predator.

  Bates had been incarcerated at a medium-security prison. The vitals section stated that he was thirty-eight, stood six feet tall, and weighed two hundred pounds. He had no tattoos.

  He’d been convicted for attempted murder, and taken into custody a little over four years ago. His sentence was for ten years.

  But the red headline at the top of the profile announced the disturbing news:

  FUGITIVE!!! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO APPREHEND.

  CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS. CALL IDOC IMMEDIATELY.

  The fugitive alert had been posted on Friday, December 15.

  On Tuesday the 18th, Rachel had gone on the run.

  Bates was unquestionably the one from whom she was fleeing. The mystery man from her nightmare.

  When he considered Bates’s attempted murder conviction, he felt a chill all the way down to his bone marrow.

  Rachel had several faded scars on her body. She’d claimed, when he had asked about them, that they had come from an “old accident,” and declined to elaborate further. He’d never broached the subject again.

  Without a doubt, her “accident” was Bates.

  Oh, Rachel. I’m so sorry.

  Rachel would not have left their home without reason to believe that Bates could track her from Illinois. He remembered her sad tears shortly before her departure—Bates must’ve done something to compel her to run. Hadn’t Tanisha said that Rachel had rushed into the back office to take what appeared to be an emergency call, and not long after had abruptly left the shop?

  He pushed up his glasses on the bridge of his nose and continued to gaze at Bates’s photos.

  What had been Rachel’s relationship to this guy? Exboyfriend?

  Or maybe she had dated him only once, and he’d gone nuts and stalked her. Or maybe she hadn’t known him at all, but he’d spotted her and gotten obsessed.

  He could not imagine that she’d been in a serious relationship with a man like this, a man with such cold, unsettling eyes. The Rachel he knew was a shrewd judge of character.

  He skimmed the remaining documents in the Recycle

  DON’T EVER TELL 205

  Bin, looking for a file that might give him a clue as to where Rachel had gone into hiding. But he found nothing of interest.

  All he had was the inmate profile of Bates. Rachel’s enemy. Their enemy.

  If Bates was a threat to Rachel, he was a threat to him,

  too.

  In fact, Bates might regard him as the bigger target, a more satisfying outlet for his violence. An undoubtedly jealous man like Bates would be enraged by his marriage to Rachel, would consider it a betrayal of the worst kind, and as a means of punishing her, would be eager to scrub him off the face of the planet.

  He got up and took a cold can of Red Bull from the refrigerator. He took a long sip, glanced uneasily at the gun case on the counter.

  After only a moment’s hesitation, he removed the revolver from the box and loaded it, as Eddie had taught him. He placed it within easy reach.

  Better.

  Next, he picked up Rachel’s cell phone.

  38

  He began his search in the cell phone’s address book. Scrolling through the list, he found the expected numbers. His own cell phone number. The salon’s. Tanisha’s cell and home numbers. Cell and home numbers for a handful of women whom he recognized as members of the salon staff.

  He also found two numbers that he didn’t recognize.

  One was for Prescott Property Management. The number had an Atlanta area code.

  The other was for someone named Thad H. The area code prefix of 314 was unfamiliar.

  He turned back to the laptop, accessed the Internet, and found a site that listed nationwide area codes. The prefix of 314 was assigned to St. Louis, Missouri.

  Thad, in St. Louis? Rachel had never spoken of a guy named Thad, or of knowing anyone in St. Louis.

  Picking up the cell once more, he went to the call records. He checked incoming calls. Most of the calls listed in history had come from Joshua’s cell phone, but two had come from Thad’s number.

  The first
call from Thad had come that past Saturday. The second was yesterday afternoon, around the time Tanisha said Rachel had received what seemed to be an emergency call.

  What had this Thad guy told her that had upset her so much? Something about Bates, maybe?

  Frowning, he reviewed outgoing calls.

  Most of the outgoing calls Rachel had placed to the salon, or to Joshua, but she had made one yesterday afternoon, to Prescott Property Management.

  Did she own property somewhere? He knew nothing whatsoever about that, if she did. But what else was new?

  He switched back to the address book. He hit the button to call the property management firm.

  The line rang three times, and then a recorded message greeted him: “Thank you for calling Prescott Property Management. Our normal business hours are nine A.M. to six PM., Monday through Friday—”

  He terminated the call.

  Next, he called Thad’s number.

  Voice mail picked up immediately. A man with a soft voice spoke, “Hey, you know who it is. Leave me a message and I’ll hit you back. Have a blessed day.”

  He left a brief message stating his identity and asking Thad to call him back about Rachel, and then he hung up.

  Settling in front of the computer again, he found the Web site for Prescott Property Management.

  The company had a comprehensive, professional-looking site. They had locations in Atlanta, Macon, and Savannah, with the primary office based downtown on Auburn Avenue. They managed properties throughout the state of Georgia, specializing in rental management of houses, condos, and vacation homes on Georgia’s barrier islands.

  On the About Us, page, there was a photo of the president

  DON’T EVER TELL 209

  of the company, LaVosha Prescott. She was an attractive black woman in her thirties, with shoulder-length braids and a welcoming smile.

  He could not recall ever meeting her, seeing a picture of her, or hearing Rachel mention her name.

  Yet Rachel had a business relationship with the company. They must have managed a property of hers. Why else would she have stored their number in her address book?

  The place Rachel owned, wherever it was located, was where she’d gone. It was the only logical conclusion to draw from the available facts.

  He remembered their drowsy pillow talk from a couple of nights ago.

  “Love, do you ever think of going away?” she asked.

  “Going away?”

  “You know, like having a sanctuary...from the world. Somewhere you could be totally safe . . . without a care at all.”

  “Like a getaway or something?”

  “Hmmm... like that.”

  “To get away from who?”

  “No one in particular. Life... the world. Just the four of us—you, me, Justin... the dog...”

  He looked at the profile of Dexter Bates. He thought about Rachel and their unborn child.

  I’m going to find you, Rachel, whether you want me to or not. It’s too dangerous for you all alone out there.

  Coco pawed his leg. He glanced down.

  “What’s up, kid?”

  Coco whined, tail wagging. He noticed that her small food bowl was empty.

  “My bad.” He rose from the kitchen table and retrieved the dog’s food from a sealed plastic container in the pantry. “I’ve been so busy I forgot to feed you.”

  He dumped half a cup of kibble into the bowl. As he straightened, he had a line of sight from the kitchen into the two-story family room, where Rachel had hung so many pictures and pieces of artwork.

  A revelation rose in his mind, like a deep-water sea creature swimming upward to poke at the ocean’s surface... and then it swiftly plunged back into the murky depths of his subconscious.

  He stood there, frozen, willing the thought to return. But the harder he strained for it, the farther it receded.

  Coco was poised above her bowl, big eyes fixated on him, as if waiting for him to announce his great discovery.

  “Never mind, it’s gone,” he said. “Maybe it’ll come back.”

  39

  By twenty past nine, the last customers had left the salon, and the stylists began going home for the night. Binoculars lifted to his eyes, Dexter watched as the women streamed out of the building, still running their mouths.

  There was one person left inside. It looked like the coowner, Tanisha May—she’d been in the photo on the card with his wife. She was sweeping the floor and talking on the phone.

  He waited until the other stylists had gotten into their vehicles and driven off. Then he slid on a pair of latex gloves and left the car. Hands in his pockets, he crossed the parking lot, as if heading toward the video store.

  When he hit the wide promenade, he made a sharp right toward the salon. Arriving underneath the awning, he cast a quick glance around the parking lot to confirm that no one was watching. He grabbed the door handle.

  Although it was after hours, the door was open. As he’d observed the stylists leaving, he’d noticed that no one had locked the door behind them.

  Sweeping the floor behind the front desk, Tanisha looked up, phone pressed to her ear.

  “Sorry, we’re closed,” she said, and offered a tired smile.

  “We sure are.”

  He twisted the dead bolt in the door. Turning back to her, he opened his jacket and showed the Glock stashed in his waistband.

  Terror flashed in her eyes.

  “Hang up the phone,” he whispered. “Tell them something came up and you’ll call them back.”

  Stuttering, she followed his instructions. Her hands shook so badly she nearly dropped the phone into its cradle on the front desk.

  “Anyone else in here with you?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Expecting someone to drop by, or pick you up?”

  “N-no.” She shook her head again.

  He believed she was telling him the truth. Fear had dilated her pupils, and when people were afraid and caught off guard they tended to be honest.

  “Let’s go into the back office,” he said. “You walk ahead of me.”

  She hesitated.

  “We don’t keep a lot of money here.”

  It took a moment for him to comprehend what she meant.

  “You think I’m here to rob you?” He laughed. “Why would I want to steal from a salon that was opened with my money?”

  “Your money?”

  “Rachel never told you? Sweetheart, we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “Move. To the back. Now.” He brushed his fingers across the butt of the gun.

  On shaky legs, Tanisha walked slowly down the center aisle. He followed a couple of paces behind, looking around.

  Each of the stylists had a dedicated station with a styling chair, full-length mirror, shelving, and utility cart that held the tools of their trade. The name of each stylist was elegantly inscribed above their respective mirrors: Precious, Tanisha, Jordan, Ashley...

  Rachel’s station was near the middle of the shop, on the right. The space was clean, all of the brushes, combs, curling irons, clippers, scissors, and other implements put away. It looked as if she had gone home for the day.

  “Stop right there,” he said to Tanisha.

  Tanisha halted. She looked hesitantly over her shoulder.

  He moved closer to Rachel’s station. There was a wedding photo on the shelf. His wife in her white bridal dress— as if this were her first marriage—stood beside a very tall, broad-shouldered brother with thick glasses. Both of them were cheesing for the camera.

  “What’s this guy’s name?” He tapped the photo.

  “Joshua.”

  “Joshua who?”

  “M-Moore. Joshua Moore.”

  He grunted. “He looks like a pussy.”

  Tanisha stared at him, comprehension brightening her gaze.

  “You’re the man Rachel’s running from,” she said.

  “I’
m the one who’s going to find the bitch. Keep moving to the back.”

  They reached the STAFF ONLY door. Tanisha opened it.

  He shoved her through the doorway. She shrieked, staggered, tried to run.

  He caught her by her mane of hair and slammed a hard fist into her face, busting her nose.

  Crying out, she slumped against the wall and fell to her knees.

  He calmly closed the door behind them and swept his gaze around the area, confirming that they were indeed alone.

  Head bowed, Tanisha had her hands to her face. Blood trickled down her fingers, and she was weeping quietly.

  “I’m Rachel’s husband from Chicago,” he said. “She stole my money and used it to open this goddamn shop.”

  Tanisha was shaking her head fervently. “We...we got a bank loan...”

  He kicked her in the ribs. She gasped, buckled.

  “A bank loan?” he said. “That’s your cover story? No wonder she went into business with you, you’re just alike. Lying, scandalous bitches.”

  “But...but it’s the truth!”

  He grabbed her by her hair and flung her across the room. Screaming, she crashed against a coffee table, and magazines and empty cups cascaded to the floor.

  “Where did Rachel run off to?” he asked.

  “I... don’t...know...help me... Jesus...”

  He hauled her off the floor and body slammed her onto a sofa. Her head banged against the wall, and her eyes swam dizzily. Copious amounts of blood drained from her smashed nose.

  He flipped her over as if she weighed no more than a doll and mashed her face against the cushions. He sat on her outstretched legs.

  She wailed, squirmed underneath his weight, but he was too heavy for her, and she was too battered to mount a real fight.

  He lifted her work apron and the shirt underneath, exposing her smooth-skinned back. Almost tenderly, he massaged the skin with his gloved fingers, and located the tender area of her right kidney.

  “Where do you think Rachel ran off to?” he asked quietly.

  “I don’t know!” Voice distorted by the sofa.

  He clenched his hand into a fist and hammered it against her kidney. She went as rigid as if she’d been given an electrical shock, and released a high-pitched shriek that would have shamed Mariah Carey.