The Last Exchange by Charles Martin

Author:Charles Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2023-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26

After

The party continued into the early hours of the morning. Most slept where they fell or found a couch within reach. The house was littered with medicated bodies. Frank was up early and out of the house but I let him go, choosing instead to sit tight. I cracked the windows, allowing the sea breeze to dry the sweat on my skin. I thought about cranking the car but needed to save my gas in the event Amber made a run for it.

My suspicion was that cracks had surfaced in the life of the happy couple. Amber had signed up to carry a child and then profit off having done so. She had not signed up to be one insignificant member of a multi-person posse. And given the party that occurred here last night, I’d wager Amber was feeling a bit overlooked and underappreciated. She had retreated to the master bedroom just after 9:00 p.m. while Frank played video games in the basement until almost midnight, which was when the pool party started hopping. At which point he’d entertained the crowd, eventually disappearing discreetly with three girls into the pool house. Amber emerged from her room around 2:00 a.m., scoured the pool deck trying to find him, could not, and returned to her room only to reemerge five minutes later, load into the blacked-out Escalade, and drive herself to the hospital.

I followed the Cadillac to the emergency room where Amber stayed until early morning, during which time I secured a second AirTag. Just to be sure. Unless their relationship was entirely business, I sensed trouble in paradise. At 8:17 a.m., she exited the hospital, got into her car, and spent the next hour talking on the phone and driving aimlessly through the streets of LA and Hollywood, eventually returning home. Twenty minutes later, an argument commenced. From what I could tell, Amber woke Frank, who did not want to be awakened on his day off, and relayed the night’s events. Frank, not interested, told her to go away, although he used one or two more colorful words.

So Amber did what he said. She went away. Far away.

The range in my rented Lincoln might top four hundred miles, while the range in Amber’s Cadillac was probably five to six hundred, which I doubted would get used given that it was being driven by a woman with a baby sitting on her bladder.

I was right. We stopped every hour to ninety minutes. Each time for the bathroom and then potato chips, M&M’s, ice cream, and a cheeseburger. In that order. Followed by a two-hour nap in the shade in a Walmart parking lot. My thermal showed that with the engine running, she crawled in the back, stretched out, and lay very still for a little over two hours. Well rested, she entered the Walmart and routed through the bathroom and then the grocery aisles, emerging with several plastic bags. Loading into the Cadillac, she pulled her SIM card from her existing phone, opened the packaging on a prepaid, and made the swap.

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