I've Died Here Before novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Level Three

I took the check.

I folded it in half, put it in my coat pocket, and said, "Thanks for the tea."

Then I walked out of the tea room with my chin up and forty phones following me.

Holden didn't look up once.

Hattie caught me at the hotel's side door and hissed, "You took the money?"

"I took the evidence."

"That's a check, Addie."

"It's a check with her name on the account, and he's standing outside."

Across the loading dock, Dean Vickers leaned against a black sedan in his gray coat, scrolling through a phone.

He wasn't a monster to look at.

He looked like a man who coached his niece's soccer team.

"That's him," the voice said, very low. "That's the gray coat. That's the man who walked me to the rail. Don't get close."

"We're not getting close," I said. "We're following."

"We are what?" said Hattie.

Her car was a nine-year-old hatchback with a cracked dashboard and one working speaker.

We let Dean pull out first.

I'd never followed a car in my life.

I had hired drivers, taken cabs and been driven home from every party since I was twenty-four.

"Stay two cars back," the voice said. "No, three. He checks his mirrors when he turns."

"How do you know?"

"I don't. It's what I'd do."

Hattie gripped the wheel.

"I love her," she said. "I love her so much."

Dean drove twelve blocks and turned into a parking garage on West Twelfth.

We took a spot on level two and went up the stairs on foot.

On level three, Dean's sedan sat alone in a corner, engine ticking.

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