She started ordering, and I couldn’t shake the feeling I was getting, so I looked to where Ray and Shelly were standing, thinking he was still aiming his glower at me, but they weren’t there.
I turned to the seating area.
And the instant I did, a man who’d been watching me averted his head.
Quickly, he pulled the hood of his blue hoodie up over his hair, got up and hustled toward the door.
My skin went cold.
He had dark hair.
And the man I’d seen out my office window skulking toward Bohannan’s place had dark hair and had been wearing a hoodie.
And there was no paper cup on the table where he was sitting, and he didn’t have one in his hand.
And he’d been watching me.
“What do you want?” Megan asked. “I’m buying this time.”
I didn’t answer.
I moved toward the door, shrugging my purse off my shoulder to get my phone.
“Delphine?” Megan called.
Hoodie man twisted slightly at the door like he was looking back at me.
He didn’t quite look back at me.
He bolted out the door.
Oh my God!
I didn’t think.
I bolted after him.
I didn’t get a good look at him, but he was probably younger than me.
And he was a man.
He was also wearing running shoes.
I was in low-heeled booties, which were not running shoes.
It wouldn’t matter if I was in running shoes, he would have lost me.
Still, I kept after him.
Though I realized I’d need to check out the local Pilates place, because I got a block and a half and I was struggling, and he was so far ahead of me, I’d never catch him.
In my defense, that block and a half was uphill.
However, some type of exercise was definitely on the agenda.
It was then someone raced by me so fast, he made a breeze that ruffled my hair, and I watched Ray’s back as he sprinted after Hoodie Man.
Hoodie Man must have sensed he had someone in pursuit who could actually pursue, because he darted into an alley.
Ray ran like the wind and followed him.
I got my second wind and followed them both.
But by the time I got to the back alley, I didn’t see them, either way.
I stopped, wheezed, pulled my bag open, and was digging for my phone when Ray came into view, coming out of a side street and back into an alley from a block down.
“I lost him!” he shouted. “You see him?”
I shook my head, gathered some oxygen, and shouted back, “No!”
He took off the other way, darting down another side street.
I pulled out my phone and dialed Bohannan.
“Larue,” he greeted curtly after one ring.
“I think I…I think I just…”
I looked one way and then the other.
I was alone in the back alley.
Then I went back to Bohannan.
“I think I just saw the killer.”
Forty-Seven
Queen
Ray came back to me after Bohannan ordered me to “get your ass out of the goddamn alley” and I’d gotten my ass out of the alley.
Megan was at the corner of the block up from me, shouting, “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I’m coming right back,” I shouted in return.
“You all right?” Ray asked.
He was barely breathing heavy.
I looked up into his sea blue eyes.
Seriously.
He was fabulous.
“Yes. I just need to get back to some classes. I can’t even run a block.”
“Was that him?” he asked.
I knew what he was asking.
Now that cooler heads might be prevailing…
Maybe?
“I don’t…he was watching me, and he was being strange, and now I’m worried that I might have overreacted.”
Ray’s torso swung back.
“I know. I’m sorry. I…you’re worried. About Shelly being safe. And I freaked you.”
“You’ve probably had people watching you and being strange for a long time. I guess it doesn’t get any easier.”
Oh boy.
“When someone’s killing people, though,” he carried on, “it’d freak anybody.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“Your friend is coming.”
I looked back up the street to see Megan heading our way.
“She knows.”
I turned again to Ray. “What?”
“It’s nobody’s business, but she knows. Shelly. She knows I’m bi.”
Well then.
That was laying it out there.
“We got an agreement. That’s nobody’s business either, still nobody asked. I don’t…” he searched for a word, “do anyone that means anything to me. He didn’t mean anything to me. And it’s not like I need that all the time. It’s just something I need. And he was a good go-to because he wanted no strings. It worked. No idea some crazy women were taping us. No idea they’d blow up my life.”
This poor guy, caught in someone else’s web.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated.
“She freaked out that day, she was so happy to meet you. She’s a big fan. She loves your show. She watched it with her mom. Not a lot of happy memories with that woman, but that’s one of them.”
Now he was talking about Shelly.
God, I’d been what I hated people being, gossipy and in someone else’s business.
I twisted quickly and Megan was almost on us.
“Can you give us just a sec?” I asked.
She halted, stepped backwards a few steps, and stopped, but didn’t take her eyes from us.
And again, I returned to Ray.
I looked right at him and admitted, “Yes, we were talking about you, and I apologize for that too. However, we didn’t know you and Shelly have a deal.”
He started to look mad. “You of all people know, it’s not your business.”
I, of all people, did know that.
I nodded.
“She knows. Shelly. She knows about it. She’s seen it. I showed it to her. I didn’t want her seeing it somewhere else, but she already knew I’d been with him. People think she’s not very smart, but she is. She’s just a happy person. Desperately happy. She’d been faking that for a long time. I got her to a place she didn’t have to fake it anymore. Now she has to fake it again. She’s just trying to pretend it didn’t happen. Let it blow over. It’s not working.”
“God. Again, I’m so sorry.”
“Now she knows you know and she’s embarrassed.”
So he wasn’t angry for himself we were whispering, he was angry for Shelly.
“Ray, right?”
“Like you don’t know who I am,” he bit.
Definitely getting angry.
“It will blow over,” I told him.
He stared at me.
“It will,” I repeated.
“Parents are taking their kids out of my programs.”
“Small-minded people,” I said. “That’ll pass too. Kids need those programs. They need them more than the parents need to be bigots.”
“I get small-minded people. Lived with that all my life. What about the kids?”