Pray for the Innocent by Alan Orloff

Author:Alan Orloff [Orloff, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kindle Press
Published: 2018-03-05T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Four

If Dragunov had seen the acknowledgments page and killed Feinbaum and Connelly because of it, then surely he’d seen the next page, too. Which meant . . .

King stabbed his chubby fingers at the buttons on his phone, trying to call his princess. With great effort, he forced himself to calm down enough to click the correct number. He jammed the phone to his ear and listened to it ring on the other end.

Once. Twice. Three times. No answer.

Four times. Five.

Voice mail. Hello, this is Amanda. Please leave a message, and I’ll get right back to you! Thanks bunches!

King didn’t leave a message, just stared straight ahead, phone still at his ear. Finally, he snapped out of it and called another number, Amanda’s landscaping business.

“Green Things, how can I help you?” A chipper voice, but not Amanda’s.

“May I please speak to Amanda? This is her father.”

“Oh, hi, Mr. King. Uh, Amanda’s not here. She hasn’t come in yet today.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” A short pause. “Is something wrong?”

“No. No. Not at all. Please ask her to call me when she gets in, okay? It’s important.”

“Absolutely, Mr. King.”

He clicked off and dialed the landline at her house. While King still received most of his calls on his own landline, he knew Amanda had been ready to dump hers. King had insisted she keep it, though, for those occasions when there was an emergency and the power was out and her cell phone needed charging. When he’d told her that, she’d scoffed at his archaic notions—and paranoia—but after he offered to pay for the service, she’d relented.

The house phone rang five times, then rolled into a different voice mail, which King also ignored.

King lowered himself onto the bed, fighting the rising panic. Glanced at the time. Amanda was probably just at the grocery store or the hairdresser or visiting a supplier’s nursery, and she was too busy to answer her phone. Or maybe she’d turned her phone off for some other perfectly plausible reason; King did that himself every so often, preferring to have a little time to think without the possibility of being interrupted.

Even as he imagined those scenarios, he knew he was spinning stories. Amanda kept her phone with her, and on, and charged, 24/7. That’s what people in her generation did.

King considered his options. He could wait there and keep trying to get in touch with her. But passivity in the face of anxiety wasn’t a good prescription, not for him. He could try to hunt her down. But . . . he didn’t have a car; he’d left it at the Stop Inn. Taxi back there to retrieve it? What if Locraft had someone watching the car, waiting for him to resurface? They’d nab him for sure.

Where was the nearest rental car place? He always rented one at the airport. Wasn’t there one company that delivered? Shit. He didn’t have time for messing around. He punched in Emily’s phone number. She answered immediately.

“What’s up, Professor King?”

“Listen, Emily. I didn’t want to drag you farther into this thing, but I’m afraid I need your help.

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