Page 62 of Kill For Me Kill For You
Maybe forty-eight hours. Maybe seventy-two with it being the holidays. Three days. Tops. That’s how long it would take for the cops to track her down.
Naomi had used Amanda. Used her pain. And for that she wanted answers. She wanted payback. She couldn’t let this go. She would put Crone aside for now, track down Naomi. She was done with being a victim. She wasn’t going to let Naomi get away with this.
She had to fight back.
She had to find Naomi before the cops found Amanda.
It might not help much, but if she told the police she’d been manipulated – pressured into this – it might just make a difference. That and the fact that she’d tried to walk away and he hadn’t let her. She’d had to fight.
Amanda changed the strapping on her knee, took more painkillers, grabbed her coat and headed out.
Killing Wallace Crone would have to wait.
The clock was ticking.
And she had to find out the truth.
30
Ruth
She woke at dawn.
There was no blackout blind on the bedroom window. Just thin drapes. The sun on her face brought her gently awake. Ruth turned over, spread out an arm and found Scott’s side of the bed empty and cold.
She sat up. Looked around.
She was in someone else’s apartment, the Airbnb Scott had booked in Hartford. They’d gotten in late and Ruth, tired and emotional, had gone straight to bed. Last she’d seen of Scott the night before was him lying down beside her, still dressed. Just keeping her company until she fell asleep. Scott had said he wanted to unpack, would watch TV later. She could tell he was too wired to sleep.
Her watch read six twenty a.m. It was Thanksgiving tomorrow. They’d already apologized to Scott’s parents, and Ruth was the excuse why they couldn’t be with them in Florida. He’d told them they’d decided to stay home for the holidays, that they’d made no plans for Thanksgiving this year. It didn’t feel like Ruth had a lot to be thankful for.
She wondered if Scott had come to bed at all last night. The thought made her uneasy. She got up, yawned and stretched and felt the familiar pull from her scars. It was always the same first thing in the morning. Irritated by the heat and the cotton, they itched and stung after she’d been lying in a warm bed.
Ruth wore one of Scott’s T-shirts, which doubled as a nightgown. She pulled open the drapes and looked out at the street below. The apartment sat on the top floor of a three-story building. The building was what Scott called a ‘perfect six’, the old style of middle-class apartments built over a hundred years ago: two apartments on each floor with three-story bow fronts on each side of the oblong building. Scott’s parents used to live in a perfect six when they’d first got married. These historic apartments on Park Terrace overlooked the park, hence the name, but behind them was an area of the city crumbling into decay. This part of Hartford was called Frog Hollow. The Park River used to flow close to the houses and the land was part marsh and part swamp until Samuel Colt started making guns there, and with it came other businesses – the first to make bicycles and sewing machines in the country.
Frog Hollow grew up around the factories, and as they closed their doors so did the neighborhood.
Still, Ruth thought the view pleasant. Almost peaceful.
She found Scott in the kitchen watching the news on a small flatscreen television that sat on the counter, beneath the cupboards.
‘I’m starving,’ said Ruth as she put her arms around him.
He said nothing. Scott felt like a tightly wound spring. Hard, cold and ready to explode. The tension radiating from him gave her a jolt, like a shock of static.
She recoiled, said, ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine. I’ll go out in a minute and get some groceries.’
His voice sounded dead. Monotone.
His gaze never left the TV. The president was due back from his golf trip to make some kind of statement, probably something stupid, judging by the man, thought Ruth.
Ruth went back to the bedroom, found her case, threw it on the bed and popped the lid. She picked out jeans, sweater and underwear. She showered, dressed and dried her hair. When she returned to the kitchen twenty minutes later, Scott still hadn’t moved. The news channel was still speculating on the president’s upcoming speech.
Then the female news anchor interrupted an interview, cutting them off to take up the full screen.
‘Some breaking news now on our top story – Murder on the Upper East Side. Sources in the NYPD have confirmed to our reporter that a senior advisor to the Mayor of New York City was found dead in his hotel room at the Paramount last night . . .’
