The Alex Mason Series: Books 4-6 by David Archer & Blake Banner

Author:David Archer & Blake Banner [Archer, David & Banner, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Right House
Published: 2024-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

I made my way toward the stairs with the uniform at my shoulder.

“You told her I was here?”

“No sir. She came in asking for you.”

I stopped at the top of the stairs and looked him in the eye. “So how’d she know I was here?”

He was very blond and his cheeks went red. “I don’t know, sir. She came in real excited and upset, asking for Alex Mason. She said she had information. I tried talking to her but she was real insistent. She wouldn’t talk to nobody unless it was Alex Mason.”

“OK.”

I trotted down the stairs and saw her immediately. She was leaning against the reception desk in a gray mac crying. She had blonde hair, blue jeans and white sneakers. As soon as she saw me she moved toward me. Her voice was on the edge of shrill.

“Are you Alex Mason?”

“Yes. Who are you?”

“I’m Claire!” She said it with a small stamp of her foot. Like she’d told me a hundred times already. “Claire Wilson! I’m Chet’s girlfriend. Is it true he’s dead?”

She had a strange cadence to her voice that reminded me of Christopher Walken. I ignored her question and asked one of my own.

“How’d you know I was here?”

“Chet!” she said, with that same “I told you a thousand times” tone, and I told myself if she kept it up I was going to put her across my knee. Instead I nodded and took hold of her arms. “You got a car?”

She nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“Give me the key.” I turned to pink cheeks and told him, “Tell Macdonald I’m at the hospital. I’ll call him.”

Outside she had a beaten-up Ford pickup. She gave me the key and I climbed behind the wheel. She got in the passenger seat and I pulled out of the parking lot and onto the I-20, west. The light had an ugly, dirty gray quality to it because of the vast, black cloud that now filled the entire southeastern sky behind us. The few cars that were on the road had their headlamps on.

“So let’s start again,” I said, “and quit whining and stamping your foot like you were four. I’m Alex Mason, you are Claire Wilson, Chet Baker’s girl. Now, explain to me, one, how did he know about me? Two, why did he talk to you about me? And three, what have you got to tell me?”

She studied me with a pouting mouth and resentful eyes. “You’re not a very nice man.”

“Cut it out! Answer the questions.”

I accelerated hard and almost hit a hundred before I had to brake and come off onto South Garfield. It was two miles through town from there to the Midland Memorial Hospital, and we did it in less than two minutes. She didn’t talk all the way there. When I pulled into the parking lot, the wind had changed and the sky was turning black overhead. I killed the engine and turned to face her.

“You came looking for me because you wanted to talk to me.

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