Or would be soon. Very soon.
The first stumbling block of getting Jonas out had been accomplished, even if it had taken two damned decades.
He reached for his lighter and pack of Camels on the coffee table. Lighting up, Margrove let his thoughts spin to the future. He could see it all now—the book tour and television and newspaper interviews. In the interviews he’d talk about the legal ins and outs of the case, how he’d worked the court system and discovered the damning mistake in the evidence chain regarding the murder weapon. It would lead to how he through perseverance and hard work had sprung his client. Yes, it had taken nearly twenty years, but Jonas was still a young man, on the good side of forty, and he had dozens, no, hundreds of fans. Jonas knew. He’d been the one to keep the websites and social media accounts active, made sure Jonas was never far from the public eye, and it didn’t hurt that he’d grown into an Adonis. Well, maybe that was a stretch, but he was good-looking in a brooding, bad-boy way that kept the girls and women interested.
Oh, yeah, things were going to be fabulous.
He took a drag on his cigarette, leaned back, and blew smoke rings at the ceiling of this used, dilapidated single-wide. All that was going to change. No more hiding up here from Celeste. Nope. As a matter of fact, maybe no more Celeste. His wife was getting under his skin and not in a good way. She was into health food—something called “clean eating” that didn’t include any of the foods he liked. No beef. No nachos. No pizza. And booze? Forget it! Cigarettes? Tantamount to poison! Celeste couldn’t abide the smell of them; though, when he’d met her, she smoked like a chimney. What was it his mother had said, “There’s nothing worse than a reformed sinner.” Well, amen to that. Celeste was his third and, he vowed, last wife, twenty-years younger than he, a hairdresser, and much too serious these days with her interest in yoga, green tea, and fake hamburger. How “clean” was faux meat?
Another advertisement flashed onto the television screen, this one for Ci—boner medication—and he paid a little more attention. Lately his dick wasn’t what it had been, not as super sensitive and hard as it was in his heyday. But he blamed Celeste for that, too. She was just impatient, or tired or . . . whatever.
Click.
He heard the sound again. Over the announcer telling him how to put a little juice in his love life and the whistle of the wind cutting through the woods.
So what was the hell was it?
No one knew he was here.
Hell, no one even knew about this place.
Just Celeste.
Well, and Jonas. But that was a given.
Still . . . he picked up his baseball bat, the one he kept near the front door—just in case. He’d been a defense lawyer for over most of his adult life and had dealt with some nasty characters, so he made sure his Louisville Slugger was always nearby.
Flipping on lights, he made his way down the short hallway to the bedroom.
Empty.
He paused and felt the air. Did he sense a breeze? A draft of cold air over the heat waving from the old baseboard heaters? Probably nothing—the place was drafty.
Still, the skin at the base of his neck prickled.
A warning.
But he saw nothing.
Heard no one.
“Too much booze,” he chided. In the bathroom, he stopped to take a leak and caught a glimpse of himself. His thinning hair long enough to pull into a ponytail, his jowls fleshy despite the facelift he’d had fifteen years earlier, his thin skin showing veins beneath the surface.
Once a good-looking, smartly dressed, much-sought-after lawyer who could demand exorbitant fees for which he did exemplary work. The days when he had six assistants at his beck and call, when the staff boasted three knockout female clerks who never resisted him. When celebrities called him to take care of their indiscretions. Those had been the days.
Wasted.
Long gone.
But maybe, just maybe, they would be back and he’d make things right. A chin and neck lift, maybe a few hair plugs as he was getting a little thin over his crown and he’d be back at the top of his game. Again.
Returning to the living area to shut things down and turn in for the night, he noticed the light over the stove was out.
Hadn’t it been on earlier . . . or had he shut it off? Maybe the ancient bulb had finally burned out.
He waited.
Nothing moved.
He was getting paranoid in his old—make that later middle—age. He had to think of the future. He left the bat on a side chair, close at hand, then finished his scotch and thought he had time for one last smoke, so he lit up and started straightening his notes despite the headache starting to pound at his temples.