Photo Finish (9781101537510) Read Online Free PDF

mother.
    â€œPut those pictures down.”
    I held them between my fingers, as if poised to tear them. “You can always get more. Most photographed woman in the world and all. There are a million pictures of her lying around. I just saw twenty-eight of them.”
    â€œShe gave those to me. I can’t get more that she gave me.”
    He was out of bed and across the room so fast, I just had time to slip the pictures into my shirt pocket. He tried to fight me for them, but I was dressed and he wasn’t. I stood on his left foot until he stopped punching at me.
    â€œI’ll return them when you give me a few answers. You have lived in South Carolina, and your mother was killed in a car accident in South Africa. Did you happen to tell me anything else true? Is your grandmother dead? What about all those other tobacco-smoking Banidores? You really an orphan?”
    He pulled on a pair of jeans and looked at me sullenly. “I hate them all. The way they talk about her, they were so happy when she died. It was as if all their dreams came true at once. The fact that Jim died of AIDS five years after I had to go live in fucking stupid Charleston—I wasn’t supposed to mention that. Poor, dear Jim picked up a virus in Africa when he went out to get Andrew, they told all their friends at the country club. We should never have allowed Helen to keep the boy to begin with. Then all my he-man cousins made my life miserable claiming she was a whore and I wasn’t even one of the family. As if I wanted to be related to that houseful of cretins.”
    â€œDid you kill your grandmother?”
    He gave a hoarse bark of laughter. “If I’d thought of it in time. No, she died the old-fashioned way: of a stroke.”
    â€œSo what made you decide to go after Davenport?”
    â€œI always meant to. Ever since the day she died. Chasing her all over Europe. It was a game to him. She didn’t have a life. She knew she’d lose me to those damn Banidores if she ever got caught with another man, and I was the one person she really loved. I was the only one she care about losing.
    â€œShe was trying to protect our life together, and he—that Davenport—he was trying to destroy it. For twenty-four hours he got a taste of what that was like, how it feels when someone knows where you are and is following you. I missed him when he snuck out of that apartment building last night, but when the lady yelled he wasn’t home, I found him at the bus stop. He got on a bus, and I followed the bus. He got off and went into a bar. I went in behind him. But it wasn’t enough he was scared. I told him who I was, what he’d done, and he tried to tell me it was a job. Just a job. He killed my mother, he ruined my life, and he thought I should slap him on the back and say, ‘Tough luck, old sport, but a man’s gotta do . . .’ and all that crap.
    â€œThat was when I couldn’t take it anymore. I got into the car. He started to go back into the bar and I couldn’t stand it. I just drove up on the sidewalk and— I should have gone straight to the airport and taken the first flight out, but my passport and ticket and everything were still here. Besides, I never thought you’d find out before I left this afternoon.”
    I leaned against the door and looked down at him. “You never thought. You are an extremely lucky guy: Hunter Davenport is going to live. But he has very expensive hospital bills and no insurance. You are going to pay every dime of those bills. If you don’t, then I am suddenly going to find evidence that links you to that Toyota. The cursory washing they give it at the rental place— Believe me, traces of Davenport’s blood will be on it a long time. Do you understand?”
    He nodded fractionally. “Now give me back my pictures.”
    â€œI want to hear you say it. I want to know that you understand what you’ve agreed