Page 163 of Summers at the Saint
He sighed and poured the dregs of his wineglass into the sink.
“The sheriff told me Charlie Burroughs tried to outrun a state trooper earlier tonight. He hit a telephone pole going nearly a hundred miles an hour. His head injuries were so bad they’re air-lifting him down to the trauma hospital in Jacksonville. Marcie was with him, but not injured as severely.”
Whelan winced. “Will he live?”
“They don’t know yet.”
“Do you hope he does?”
“Charlie was like an uncle to me. I trusted him completely, but now that I know the level of betrayal, what he was capable of? I honestly don’t know how I feel about him. I don’t want him to die. I want him to live, so I can look him in the face and ask him why.”
“I understand,” Whelan said, but clearly, by the look on his face, he didn’t. “I’ll let myself out.”
“Whelan?” Traci called, but he didn’t turn around as he walked out the front door.
CHAPTER 71
Traci sank down onto one of the barstools drawn up to the kitchen table. She regarded her own half-full glass of wine and dumped it out.
Lola sat at her feet, looking up, her expression unreadable.
“Men, huh?” Traci said. “They want what they want when they want it.”
Lola scampered to the back door and began scratching at it.
“Again?” Traci grabbed the retractable leash and clipped it to Lola’s collar.
The golf course grass was thick and damp beneath her feet. Lola trotted along in front of her, stopping to sniff every tree trunk and clump of flowers. Once, she stopped to bark a warning to a green tree frog whose hysterical peeping made Traci chuckle.
Lola trotted over to a bed of asparagus ferns and caladiums planted in the shade of one of the live oaks, and took care of business.
“Good girl,” Traci said, taking out the plastic poop bag she’d stuffed in her back pocket, along with her phone.
As she was stooping, her phone pinged with a notification from the Ring camera at her front door.
She opened the app and stared in horror at the grainy image of a man in a hoodie standing on her front porch, peering into the house through the sidelights on either side of the door. He was dressed inbaggy gym shorts, with the hood pulled low over his forehead, but she recognized him. Garrett Wycoff. Had she locked the front door after Whelan left?
She turned and began sprinting back toward the house as fast as she could. She stopped twenty yards short of the house, crouching down behind a tree. Hands shaking, she scrolled through her contact list and tapped Ray Bierbower’s number. It rang three, then four times. “This is Ray,” his voice mail said. “Leave me a message.”
“Ray,” she whispered. “This is Traci. I just got a Ring notification. There’s a man standing on the front porch of my house. I think he’s trying to break in. I’m out on the golf course with my dog, but Felice is in the house alone. Please send a patrol car ASAP.”
Her next call was to Whelan. As pissed as he was with her, would he even pick up?
“Hey,” he said, his voice holding lingering traces of his annoyance.
“Whelan, I’m out on the golf course, walking Lola. I just saw Garrett on my Ring camera. He’s at the house, and Felice is there, alone.”
“Jesus,” Whelan said. “Did you call nine-one-one?”
“It’ll take forever for them to get here from the mainland,” Traci said. “I left a message for Ray Bierbower. Can you come back here? Please?”
“I’m just across the causeway. I’ll turn around. But you stay away from the house, okay? In the meantime, call nine-one-one and stay put until Bierbower or the cops or me get to your place. Understand?”
“Felice is there by herself,” Traci said. “What if he—”
“He won’t.”
She called 911, and then the sheriff’s number, repeating the request for help.
