Free Bloodfire by John Lutz Page B

thousand dollars. Not that he’d consider doing it. And Elizabeth Gomez was right, he’d never see the twenty thousand; Gomez would snip all loose ends to her murder, one of which would be Carver.
    He gathered up a quart of milk and a dozen large eggs. Some vitamin-fortified cornflakes with TV cartoon characters on the box. He carefully selected a head of lettuce that would probably turn brown in his refrigerator. On the way to the front of the store, he found room between the groceries tucked beneath his arms to fit in a can of sliced peaches. For the cornflakes.
    Impulse buyer, he admonished himself. He shouldn’t have reached for the peaches. And he shouldn’t have listened even as long as he had to Elizabeth Gomez. There was a point where judgment crumbled.
    He checked out in the express lane, behind a guy not only with more than ten items, but with half a cart full of groceries. That was criminal, but the checkout girl let him get away with it, so what could Carver do?
    Still irked by having to wait in line, he carried his paper sack of groceries to his car. He didn’t look around as he set the sack on the front seat, slid it over, then leaned on his cane and lowered himself in behind the steering wheel.
    He drove from the parking lot onto the main highway and headed toward the turnoff to his cottage. A steady breeze was bearing in from the east, bringing with it the rot-and-life scent of the sea. Death and renewal. Had the ocean smelled the same a million years ago?
    A small white car, a Ford Escort, appeared in the corner of his rearview mirror and stuck there like a decal. Elizabeth Gomez was driving, still wearing her tinted glasses.
    At the cotttage, Carver sat in a webbed aluminum chair with his stiff leg propped up on the porch rail. Elizabeth Gomez refused his offer of the other chair and stood leaning with her buttocks against the rail, her back to the glittering sea. They were in the deep shade of the porch roof, sipping Budweiser from the can. She’d parked the Escort, which Carver noticed had a rental company bumper sticker, alongside the cottage, almost out of sight.
    The first thing she said was, “You’re no longer being followed, but Roberto still thinks you might accept his twenty-thousand-dollar offer. That you’ll find me and give me to him.”
    Carver touched the base of the moisture-beaded can to his thigh. Cold condensation worked through the material of his pants. “How do you know all that?”
    “I have a few friends in my husband’s organization. If I ask, they take a chance, tell me things I should know. They told me Roberto hired you under false colors. You accepted the job, then you backed off when you found out what was going on.” She took a sip of beer and placed the can on the rail. She’d removed the tinted glasses, and it looked for a moment as if her dark eyes were misting. “After Belinda got killed.”
    “If you know I know the story,” Carver said, “what do we have to talk about?”
    She removed the wide-brimmed hat now. Her hair, raven black and straightened, tumbled to her shoulders, changing her appearance entirely. Made her look like a rock singer, or a funky fashion model. Even the baggy gray dress couldn’t hide the lissome curves of her lean body. He’d heard Elizabeth was a beautiful woman. Heard right. She said, “You don’t know the whole story.”
    “About your pregnancy?”
    “Yeah.”
    “And why you left your husband?”
    “Yeah again.”
    “I don’t care,” Carver said. “Domestic difficulties don’t interest me. They’re not my business. Point is, you want out, Gomez doesn’t want you out, and he’s a tough guy to leave.”
    “Oh, he’s not that hard to leave. Only thing is, you leave everything else when you leave Roberto. I mean, like life itself.”
    Carver gazed beyond the toe of his moccasin, at the ocean rolling in the sunlight. A pelican flapped past, dipped suddenly at a fish. Made a splash but came up empty and flapped on.