Flashback by Justine Davis (classic reads .txt) 📕

short memory or the fact that Corbin had some powerful politicians in his pocket.

“Alex?”

She snapped back to the conversation. “Sorry,” she said quickly. “I was just thinking.”

“About?”

“Oh, others that I’ve lost contact with. Ever see Billy Church?”

Pepper laughed. “Didn’t you hear? He moved to New York with the boyfriend. Said he couldn’t stand to be around his father anymore.”

“As I recall, Billy’s boyfriend was a heck of a lot nicer than his father is,” Alex said with a grin, making Pepper laugh. Then she zeroed in on another target. “What about Bryant Rollins?”

“Oh, dear, isn’t that just a mess? They’ve never gotten over the embarrassment of that election fraud thing. You don’t see any of them anywhere anymore. I think they even dropped their club membership.”

A fate worse than death, Alex thought wryly. But Bryant Sr. had been another victim of Marion Gracelyn’s integrity. When he’d manipulated voter registrations and spent huge amounts of money to arrange for absentee ballots to go astray, she’d found out the truth and outed him. He’d tried to deflect it by painting her as the opposition perpetrating a smear, but by then her reputation for integrity was too established—and his too tarnished—for him to have much success.

And to add insult to injury, he lost anyway, by a margin big enough to make his efforts irrelevant.

I’ll bet that’s what bothered him the most, Alex guessed. Bryant Rollins Sr. was not the kind of man who would ever accept being irrelevant. And she could easily see him being out for revenge.

“What are you up to?” Pepper asked. “You’re still with the FBI, right? Doing that CSI thing? Is it as exciting as it is on TV?”

“Hardly,” she said, although she supposed having a car blow up almost underneath you might qualify as excitement in some people’s view. “Most of our excitement happens in the lab.”

Pepper wrinkled her nose; science had never been a favorite subject of hers. “Well, someone has to do it, I guess. And you were always good at it. You were always good at everything. So, have you found a man who appreciates you yet?”

An image of Justin popped into her head with a vividness that nearly made her gasp.

“Well, well,” Pepper said. “I think I’ll take that expression as a yes. Do tell!”

Alex answered with as little as she thought she could get away with. Her relationship with Justin, and its changed parameters, was something that was still too new to chat about carelessly.

As early as she could without insulting anyone, including her mother, Alex slipped away from the party. It was a warm spring night, and she gratefully kicked off the strappy high-heeled sandals once she was outside. And nearly groaned aloud at the relief as she walked normally down to the portico where the parking attendant stand was.

“Ready for your car?” The young, red-jacketed valet was earnest and exceedingly polite, managing not to laugh at her in a floor-length gown with bare toes sticking out and a pair of spike-heeled shoes in her hand.

She smiled at him for that. He blushed.

“Yes, thank you,” she told him.

“I’ll be right back, Ms. Forsythe.”

He was good, too, she thought, if he remembered her name out of the hundred or so people there.

He was also, she thought after a few minutes, incredibly slow. The parking lot wasn’t that big, even if you included the overflow lot down the hill a few yards. Yet she hadn’t even heard—

Ah, she thought as she heard an engine start from the back of the lot, there it is.

Her mood changed yet again as she heard the squeal of tires.

Leave ten thousand miles of wear on the asphalt, why don’t you? she muttered inwardly.

She saw the top of her small SUV over the roofs of the shorter cars in the lot as it careened her way. And there was literally no other way to describe the racing, skidding approach. He nearly clipped the corner of the big limo parked at the closest end of the row.

Her annoyance grew.

The valet had seemed nice, she thought, but this was ridiculous.

He made the last turn and headed toward her, still speeding.

She noticed three things at once.

The driver no longer had on the red jacket.

He was accelerating.

Right toward her.

No time to think. Her car leaped up over the curb, came after her like a hungry tiger. The driver seemed to realize he was in trouble. Tried to swerve. She knew there wasn’t enough room.

Alex dove right. Behind the concrete pillar that held up the portico. Rolled. Prayed it would hold. Not sure it could.

A split second later, still bearing down on her, her car plowed into the pillar.

Chapter 16

The pillar held.

It cracked. Leaned. Chunks fell.

But it held.

Alex rolled to her feet, heedless of the damage already done to her mother’s hideously expensive dress. Her ears were ringing from the explosive, grinding sound of the impact. Despite that, she heard a faint tinkling sound. Realized it was bits of glass falling from the shattered windshield.

Something had clipped her left arm. She felt the sting and the wetness of blood. Instinctively she flexed it, assessed. Not impaired, she quickly decided.

She couldn’t see into the crumpled car from where she was, but she could see movement in the driver’s seat. He was alive.

She stepped forward, toward the car, ignoring the stabs at the soles of her bare feet as she encountered debris from the wreckage.

The driver trying to extricate himself wasn’t the parking valet, but she’d expected that. She hoped the young man was still alive.

Then she focused completely on the matter at hand.

The driver and car thief, someone she didn’t recognize, had gotten himself almost out of the car. But he’d had to stop to try to free his right foot from some entanglement. That gave her the precious seconds she needed.

As he twisted to shove at something in the damage cab, she moved swiftly. Came up behind him. Jammed the object in her hand into his back.

“Don’t