Another uniformed officer came out of the door shortly after them. We couldn’t have picked a busier place to conduct a transaction we wanted to keep secret if we’d picked the main terminal at a major airport.
Grady strode straight for us. I rolled down the window.
He handed me a sheaf of papers. “I wasn’t going to take the original. I photocopied it for you.”
“Everything okay here?” a man’s voice said from behind Grady.
Brandon Rigman stepped up beside Grady into that I’m-here-if-you-need-me distance. Close enough he could have easily seen that Grady handed me something. I dropped the papers down between the door and my seat and brought both hands up to the edge of the window. Hopefully, if he had thought he saw Grady give me papers, he’d think he’d been mistaken when he saw my empty hands. Though it made for an awkward looking posture from me.
“Yeah. Everything’s fine.” Grady stepped back away from the car. “Mark accidentally left his belt behind when he checked out his personal items earlier today. I told him I’d look for it.”
The man was a good liar. Granted, many police officers were since they often had to lie to criminals, but it didn’t instill confidence in me that he wasn’t playing us. He could still be the guy. If he wasn’t, Rigman was.
And now they both might know we had the file.
I held my breath until Rigman and Grady walked away, going their separate directions, and I pulled out of the Fair Haven police department parking lot.
Mark looked down at his chest. “I’m going to need more clothes.”
The regret in his voice made me think he didn’t want to go back to his house for them. I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t want to return there, either, even after the crime scene clean-up team did their work. But he hadn’t brought anything with him to Elise and Erik’s house because the police hadn’t allowed him to remove anything from his home. Thankfully, he’d already moved a lot of his belongings into my place in preparation for our wedding.
“We can go to my house to get some of the clothes from there, and then I’ll bring you back to Elise’s.”
“Have I told you lately that I love you?”
He had, but I had a feeling I’d never get tired of hearing it.
I changed my signal light, and instead of turning right and heading directly for Elise and Erik’s, I took the right turn onto the gravel road leading to Sugarwood.
The dark-colored car behind me made the right turn as well even though it’d been signaling to go left.
My heart felt like it hit the bottom of my throat and then tumbled down into my stomach.
“I’m trying not to be paranoid and panicky.” My voice said the opposite of my words. “But I think we’re being followed.”
19
“What?” Mark twisted in his seat and looked out the back window. “Are you sure?”
I explained to him what I’d seen. “It must be Grady Scherwin. The car could be an unmarked police cruiser.”
“Grady wouldn’t have a reason to follow us. He knows what we have and why we have it. It’s more likely Rigman.”
“What would Rigman gain from following us?” Oh crap. There was another option for who it could be. “It might be Isabel’s husband.”
Mark was still watching the car behind us. “Isabel our cupcake designer?”
A lot had happened while he was in jail and I couldn’t talk to him. I caught him up as quickly as I could. “If he’s the one following us, he’s trying to find out where Isabel is hiding. I can’t lead him back to my house.”
Mark groaned. “Let’s take care of two problems at once. Make the next turn. I’ll watch to see if the car continues to follow us, and we’ll be heading away from Sugarwood just in case it is Isabel’s husband.”
I slowed to take the turn. My car fishtailed slightly on the snow-covered road despite my caution. The car behind gained on us.
I made the turn and accelerated again. Trees bordered the left side of the road, and a deep ditch lined the right. Even with the bright moonlight, I could barely make out the shoulders of the road under the snow.
Hopefully Mark knew where this road would take us because I didn’t. I hadn’t had a reason to travel the back roads in this direction before now.
“Still there,” Mark said.
I glanced in my rearview mirror. Still there and getting closer. Whoever it was didn’t seem to care anymore if we knew he was following us.
That couldn’t mean anything good.
My heart felt like it was pounding too high in my chest. “Maybe you should call the police.”
Mark reached into his jacket pockets, then patted the pockets of his jeans. “I left my phone in the plastic bag on your counter with my wallet and everything else.” His voice sounded hollow. “I thought we’d head straight back after grabbing the file from my place.”
The car tailgated us now. I picked up my speed slightly. In the moonlight, I couldn’t see the driver clearly enough to tell who it was. I wasn’t even sure if it was a man or a woman.
I tried to watch the car in the rearview mirror while still watching the road. The car drew closer, and its front lights disappeared from my view. Almost like it was going to—
The driver hit my car like we were two bumper cars at a carnival. My car jumped forward and skidded to the side. My hands clenched around the wheel, fighting the drag. My foot wanted to slam on the brakes, but I could hear Erik’s voice in my head during our winter driving lessons, telling me not to touch my brakes if I was sliding.
I straightened the car out and hit the gas, aiming down the middle of the road to give myself the biggest cushion between the trees and the ditch, praying we wouldn’t meet any cars driving in the other direction.
Our only hope was to outrun him. I didn’t know much about cars, but I knew mine had great acceleration when I went to pass another vehicle on the highway.
“Where’s your phone?” There was a frantic note to Mark’s voice, but I could barely hear him over the blood pounding in my head.
