Page 97 of Gone Before Goodbye

Maggie waits. She doesn’t want to rush this or do anything that might be clocked as suspicious.

Count to sixty, she tells herself. Count to sixty and then excuse yourself.

She makes it to twenty-five. That seems like enough. She takes another sip and slowly rises from her stool.

“You okay?” Bob asks.

“Yeah, fine. I’m just going to go—”

Bob suddenly clasps her forearm with a firm grip. She can feel the power in his fingers as they close talon-like around her skin.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Just a warning.”

“Take your hand off me.”

“We know about your past.”

“Let go of me.” Then: “What are you talking about?”

“You’ve had problems,” Bob says. He releases his grip. “You had”—finger quotes—‘issues.’”

“Why did you make quote fingers around the word ‘issues’?”

“What?”

“I had issues. It’s how I lost my medical license. It’s why I’m here. No need to put that in quotation marks.”

“So you get my concern?”

“No.”

“You hadissues—and what’s the first thing you want to do when you arrive? Seek out a bar. You feel me?”

“I wouldn’t feel you with oven mitts,” she says. “My issue wasn’t alcohol.”

“Still, Maggie. Maybe you and I just have this one drink and go back up?”

So Bob had been sent down to keep an eye on her, but not in a way she’d worried about. “Sounds like a plan. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to pee.”

She heads down the bar, gives the security guard a quick half smile, and pushes open the bathroom door. Alena is waiting. She has a phone in her hand.

“Where did you get it?” Maggie asks.

“It’s one of the men’s,” Alena tells her. “He’s with my friend. We, uh, distracted him. She still is. I don’t know how much time you’ll have. Use WhatsApp. Delete the call from his recent list when you’re done and leave it on the toilet in the second stall. I’ll come back to get it.”

“Thank you,” Maggie says.

But Alena is already pushing open the door. “Hurry,” Alena says before disappearing back into the bar.

Maggie steps into the second stall. The phone is unlocked. WhatsApp is up on the screen. She holds the phone in her left hand and is about to dial a number when she realizes something.

She doesn’t remember anyone’s phone number.

She has used her mobile phone and contacts for so long that she can’t remember Sharon’s number. The house’s number, yes, that she remembers from her childhood, but when the bills started stacking up, Sharon got rid of those phones. Porkchop doesn’t have a mobile. He uses the payphone at Vipers for Bikers.

Wait, hold the phone. So to speak.