A Blind Eye Read Free Page B

for feet under the stalls, glad that the only person to witness my humiliation couldn’t see. “Yeah.”
    â€œChristian, listen. I climbed into your car because I needed to get away. They kidnapped me in London and brought me here. I ran away and hid. First in the cemetery, then in your car.” She breathed hard, and her pale face grew even whiter. “But he’s here. I heard his voice in the restaurant. How did they find me?”
    Kidnapped from London and dumped in a Portland cemetery? Unlikely. Plus, if she really was kidnapped, wouldn’t the police have shipped her home? And there’s no way they—whoever they were—could have tracked her here to the restaurant. The only person who saw us together was the airport traffic guard.
    Either she was taking me for a ride, or she was crazy. A lunatic. An escapee from the Shepherd Hill School for the Totally Insane. I’d wasted enough time with this pink-haired psycho. Maybe I should let whoever scared her into the bathroom take her home to her padded cell.
    I cracked the door and peeked out. Our waitress stood by our table, talking to two men in dark suits. She lifted a napkin, probably looking for money. The men showed her something in a black wallet that looked suspiciously like a police badge. Perfect. Crazy and a criminal. I knew it. I turned to Scarlett.
    She groped her way along the bathroom wall, her hands up high, searching for something. A window? There were none.
    â€œI’m gonna go talk to them,” I said.
    She spun around, her back pressed against the yellow tiled wall. “No.”
    I left the woman’s bathroom—thankfully—and approached our table slowly, listening. I ducked behind a half-size wall topped with fake plants that had faded to an unnatural color of green.
    â€œI don’t know,” the waitress said. “They were here a minute ago.” They all stared at the table—their backs to me—as if by watching long enough, I might materialize out of thin air.
    â€œDid you see them leave? Did you give them a bill?” The man asking the questions was the taller of the two, lanky with light-brown hair. He had a calm, deep voice that came from his throat. “Did you run a credit card?”
    â€œNo, they must’ve left without paying.”
    I pulled out two twenties then walked over and dropped them on the table. “Sorry about that. I went to get some cash.” I motioned toward the ATM machine I’d noticed in the vestibule as we came in.
    â€œWhere’s the girl?” the shorter cop asked. He had reddish-blond hair and a nasty scar across one eye.
    When I saw them close up, they didn’t look like cops. The tall man wore a cheap, poorly tailored suit, the other man, a tough-guy leather jacket. They looked like suspects on America’s Most Wanted . But more than that, they didn’t feel right. My guts screamed at me to keep out of it. When I left the bathroom, I’d planned on turning Scarlett in, but it felt like leaving her on the I-205 all over again.
    â€œShe left,” I said, hopefully in an easy-come, easy-go kind of way. “I gave her some money and put her on a bus.”
    The tall guy stepped aside and started punching numbers on his phone.
    â€œWhich bus?” the one with the scar asked.
    I knew nothing about public transit in the greater Portland-Vancouver area. I tried to bluff. “Who are you? Do you have some kind of warrant or license or something? Maybe I should call the cops.” I got out my cell phone to show I meant business.
    â€œYou don’t want to do that,” Scarface said. He opened his jacket to reveal a big handgun parked in a shoulder holster. “Which bus?”
    I glanced at the waitress. She was stacking our dirty plates and hadn’t seen his threat.
    I should’ve left Scarlett on the highway. Well, maybe not on the highway but at least at the airport. This was more mess than I