Flashback by Justine Davis (classic reads .txt) 📕

He went still as commanded. The FBI announcement didn’t surprise him, she noted. She could almost feel him assessing, and she wondered if he was trying to figure out where in the slinky dress she’d hidden the gun jammed into his back.

“Who sent you?”

“Don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, lady. Ouch!”

This as she shoved harder into his back. “You just totaled my car. I liked that car. Talk.”

“No way.”

He looked like a cousin to the man in the desert, she thought. Whoever was behind this, he should work on his hiring practices. He needed to get better quality in his work force.

“When he hired you, didn’t he give you a story to tell if you got caught?”

“Yeah, but—” He broke off, realizing he’d been suckered.

She knew she didn’t have much more time. She exerted a little more pressure with her right hand, digging into his flesh. “Tell me who sent you, and I won’t shoot you and pretend I had to do it to keep you from hitting me.”

He swore, a string of words she hadn’t heard in a while. “You won’t. You can’t. He told me you’re a cop, you’d have to explain.”

So he had known who—or at least what—she was. “I’ll lie,” she said sweetly. “Not hard to do when someone’s trying to kill you.”

“Son of a bitch, he said you’d be easy,” the man muttered. “Said you were just some lab rat.”

I’m also part of Athena Force, she told him silently. We’re never easy.

She heard the commotion behind them, and knew the crash had been heard inside and they were about to draw a crowd. With a sigh she gave up the threat tactic.

“He was wrong. But then he usually is, didn’t you know that?”

The man twisted his head to give her a sideways glare from muddy-brown eyes that were bloodshot. Hung over? she wondered. Or worse?

“Don’t know anything about him,” he muttered. “Except he wants you dead. Bad.”

“That,” Alex said grimly, “I already figured out.”

The crowd drawn from the party arrived, the clamor growing as they saw what had happened. Soon they were surrounded by onlookers and, thankfully, the security guard for the club.

“Could somebody call 911?” Alex asked. Then, with some relish, she moved her right hand and stepped back, letting the driver see her “gun.”

“Before my shoe goes off,” she added, brandishing the spike heel in his face, and grinning at the man’s stupefied expression.

“That’s his story and he’s sticking to it,” Alex told G.C. wearily.

They were at the farm, having breakfast on the back porch overlooking the fields. When she’d called last night, knowing he’d hear it from someone and wanting it to be her first, G.C. had insisted she come and stay until this was resolved. Since she much preferred it to the house in Alexandria anyway, she’d acquiesced.

Not that the Alexandria place wasn’t a lovely house, but Alex was a country girl who loved the green, rolling hills of the Virginia horse country and, much to her mother’s dismay, would rather muck out a stall than take tea on the patio.

G.C. took another sip of his morning coffee, and Alex took a bite of Sylvia Barrett’s delicious omelet, feeling only a faint twinge from the cut on her bandaged arm, before they returned to her tale of last night’s events.

“But he admitted to you someone had sent him?” G.C. asked.

“Not in so many words, but yes, he did. He referred to a ‘he’ who told him what to do. But I guess he figures better to take a fall for battery than attempted murder, so to the cops he’s insisting he just stole the car and lost control because he didn’t know how to drive it. That he had no idea who it belonged to, that he just took mine because that was the one the valet had unlocked and had the keys to.”

“How is the valet?”

“I called the hospital first thing this morning. He’s going to be okay. The guy slugged him pretty good, and he needed a few stitches, but no permanent damage.”

“Good. I hope you asked them to let us know if he needs anything?”

She nodded. “I feel bad for him, he just got in the way of…whatever this is.”

“What it is,” G.C. said sternly, “is a big mistake. And when we find out who’s behind it, they will be eternally sorry.”

For some reason this seemed like the opening she’d always been waiting for.

“G.C.? Just how well did you know Marion Gracelyn?”

“Why, she was a family friend for years. You know that.”

He wasn’t looking at her. G.C. never avoided looking at her when he spoke to her.

“I didn’t mean the family,” Alex said softly. “I meant you.”

His gaze snapped to her face. For the first time in her life Alex saw her grandfather involuntarily betray surprise.

And she guessed she had her answer.

“Alex, there was never anything untoward—”

He stopped when she shook her head. “Of course there wasn’t, G.C. You wouldn’t. And I don’t think she would have. But wow.”

“Wow?”

“Talk about the dynamic duo. The mind boggles to think what a powerhouse that would have created. Definite wow.”

To her relief he smiled. “Thank you, my dear.”

He didn’t say for what, but Alex knew. “I’d never judge you, Grandpa. You never judge me, after all.”

Her use of the more common appellation made his eyebrows rise, but he only smiled at her. And then changed the subject.

“What exactly did you do at this party, my girl, to so rile things up?”

Alex, who had already weathered the storm of her mother’s hysteria—centered on the damaged dress after she discovered Alex was for the most part unhurt—needed her grandfather’s calm assessment just now. So, quickly she told him what she’d learned tonight. All of it. Although, she wasn’t sure some of it was relevant. Any of it, for that matter.

“It could all be just the usual gossip making the rounds,” she said when she finished.

“It could,” her grandfather agreed. “It’s fairly typical, I’m afraid.”

Alex heard the chirp coming from