Page 35 of Priceless (Return to Culloden Moor #7)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I was able to change my flight online, so there was no need to converse with anyone at the airport.
A few questions from customs, and that was it.
From Newark, I caught my last flight home.
The man who sat beside me was as old as that drummer at the party, with big hearing aids jammed inside big ears that were covered with white whiskers. The hearing aids didn’t seem to work.
I eventually put in earphones, closed my eyes and pretended I couldn’t hear any better than he could. The rest of the flight was peaceful.
The minute I was home, I drew a bath and climbed in, accepting the painful heat as the first round of punishment for my stupidity. I pretended that, for each bubble that popped, another memory was erased, another memory cell obliterated.
I was holding my breath, soaking my head, in the middle of my tenth bath in as many days when I heard a thump. Definitely a thump!
I came up for air, pushed the bubbles away from my face, and listened.
“What in the hell is going on here?!”
Raina! “Shit!” What day is it?
“Laira!”
“I’m in here!” When her footsteps got close, I added, “I’m in the bath!”
The door flew open. She put her hands on her hips and gave me a look that was a hundred percent our deceased mother. “What in the hell is going on here?”
“You said that.”
“I didn’t get an answer.”
“I’m still formulating my response.” I waved at the door. “I’m getting cold.”
She came inside and closed it, something she would never have done before. If nothing else was sacred, we respected each other’s bathroom privacy.
She checked herself in the mirror, then sat on the lid of the toilet. “Good of you to put the garbage can on the street, what with it overflowing with pizza boxes. Looks like you missed trash day?—”
“I did?—”
“Last week.”
“Oh.” I focused on scrubbing my feet beneath the water, trying to hide my puffy face. “What day is it?”
“Sunday. The twenty-eighth.”
“Oh, no!”
“Oh, yeah. Got back on the grid yesterday, as scheduled. Tried to call you to give you my flight number. I was worried sick?—”
“My phone died.”
“Oh, yeah? When was the last time you had it?”
I shrugged.
“Laira. When did you turn off your phone?”
“This is the twenty-eighth?”
“Yep.”
I counted on my pruned fingers. The ceilidh was the thirteenth, train was three days later, so the sixteenth. “Twelve days ago…on the train.”
“What train?”
I winced. “The train from Inverness to Edinburgh.”
“Scotland? You went to Scotland?”
“Yeah. I…took a trip. Got out and stretched my legs. Made some…friends. Everything you hoped I would do, I did. Happy?” I reached for the tap and turned on the hot water.
Raina came over and turned it off. “If the water’s cold, it’s time to get out. Besides, you have something urgent you have to do.”
“Urgent?”
The last time someone had urgent news, it was about Jacob’s brother. If all that was true. Maybe he’d just needed a break from the farce…
The tears surprised me. I thought I was all out. They stung worse than the bubbles, so I turned my face to the wall and blinked hard.
“Yes, urgent. You have about five minutes to get dried and dressed, and then you’re going to tell me, while I clean the house, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE!"
I hadn’t intended to tell Raina anything, but she’d caught me in a vulnerable moment. Every time I told her something new that I’d remembered, she made me back up and start again. By the time the house was clean, she’d gotten most of my embarrassment out of me, even if it was all out of order.
We finally collapsed onto the couch. She still had a dishtowel over her shoulder, and she would probably leave it there, to remind me how hard she’d worked. It was surprising how cluttered a kitchen could get when no meals had been cooked for nearly two weeks.
“Tell me how it started again.”
I rolled my eyes and went back to the very beginning, to the minute I’d pulled that Bee Naked card out of my purse, until I took that walk through the neighborhood while dictating into my phone.
“But you sent it by text?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s bullshit. You must have been dictating into the AI app. Which one?”
“I’m telling you, I sent it by regular text.”
She groaned and pushed herself up again. “I’ll get your phone and show you.”
“I told you, it’s dead.”
“I found it under your bed and plugged it in.”
While she ducked down the hall, I got distracted by the jump in my heart rate. As long as that phone was off, I could stay calm. If there was any chance Jacob might call, I couldn’t breathe.
Raina came back in, waving the pocket-sized slice of pain.
“Don’t turn it on!”
She stopped in her tracks and called me a chicken-shit with her face.
“I’m serious, Raina. Don’t turn it on. I swear I will have a heart attack and die just so you’ll feel guilty for the rest of your life. Don’t think I can’t do it. I’ve practiced.”
“Practiced?”
“On that boat. When the killer whales came. In fact, I feel like they’re swimming up to the front door, right now.”
She rolled her eyes and turned the phone on. The little jingle played and I ran to the sink, sure those last two pizzas were coming up again, even though I’d eaten one of them yesterday.
“Wow. Your acting skills have improved.” She came up behind me. “Unlock this and show me how to text Jocko.”
“And then you’ll let me turn it off again?”
“As soon as we figure out how he conned you.” She pushed it into my hand. “Unlock it.”
“He probably hasn’t tried to call. The joke was over when I left, right?” I slid my finger in a pattern and unlocked it, then pushed the phone back into her hands. “I don’t want to look.”
“Wow. No. He hasn’t tried to call at all.”
My heart tried to fall out the front of my chest. “See?”
“Only forty-one times.”
“Forty-one times? You’re lying.”
She turned the phone to show me, then looked again.
“Sixteen texts. He just doesn’t want to give it up.
Probably thinks you have a lot of money.
You told him about the business, didn’t you?
” She pushed my hand away. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to read them right now.
” She flicked her finger up the screen. “Four texts from Whitney. Ten from me. And one from this other long number with a U.K. code.”
“What’s a U.K. code?”
“Four-four.”
“Jocko’s code starts with 011.”
“011-44 Something?”
“Yeah.”
“That explains it.”
“What?”
“That’s a phone number. The 011 sends the call out of the US, then the country, which is the 44. The 7 means it’s a mobile number. The rest is his number. You were texting Jocko just like you said. But it wasn’t some AI program. Weren’t you even suspicious?”
I tried to defend myself. “It doesn’t look like a phone number.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “How can you possibly be my sister?”
“I must have gotten the looks.”
“Okay. So. You haven’t told him you know?”
“I’m sure he’s figured it out by now.”
“If that was true, he wouldn’t keep calling. Maybe if he knows for sure that he’s busted, he’ll stop calling.”
“I’ll just get a new phone, a new number.”
“Bullshit. You’ve spent enough because of him.” She started pushing buttons.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to call him.”
“No!” I backed away. “Hang up!”
“Let’s just see who answers. I’ll put it on speaker.”
“Let’s just forget it ever happened.”
“Such bullshit. Listen to me. I work in cyber security, remember?” It started ringing. “If this guy is scamming unsuspecting women like you, don’t you want him stopped? Let’s just make sure we have the right guy?—”
“I don’t care! Hang up!”
It connected. “Hiya, this is Jocko’s phone.”
It was Vonnie’s voice.
My brain started scrambling like a self-solving Rubik’s cube. Then the cubes started falling off. I had to run, to get as far away as possible, before I heard another word.
I flew to the door and outside. Didn’t know if my feet ever touched the floor.
“Hello?”
Raina turned off the speaker and put the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
“Can I help ye?”
“I hope so.”
“Laira? Is that ye, then?”
“No. No, this is her sister. You know her?”
“Sure, sure. Listen, my boss man’s been trying to reach her for weeks.”
“I know. I just found her phone.”
“Oh, gad. Tell me she’s all right.”
“She’s fine. She’s okay. Just…going through a lot right now.”
“Aye, so’s Jocko. I mean Jacob. He prefers to go by Jacob now.”
“I bet he jumps when anyone calls him Jocko.”
“Jumps, growls. Never know what he’ll do. But it sounds like ye ken why.”
“Then you don’t know?”
“Tell me. We’re at our wit’s end here.”
Raina smiled. An ally in Scotland was exactly what she needed. “I’m going to give you my phone number. I don’t think we should do this on their phones, you know?”
“Aye, sure. Fire away.”