Playing Dead in Dixie Read Online Free PDF Page B

called the sheriff up in Bollingwood, Virginia," he said.  She recognized the name of the town closest to the bus crash site.  "We went over the tour bus manifest over the phone.  There wasn't a Carly Devlin on the list."
    She relaxed a little.  "There wouldn't have been."
    He quirked an eyebrow.  "Why not?"
    For the first time since she'd arrived in Bangor, Georgia, the truth was her best ally.  "Because I sneaked on the bus in Atlantic City."
     
     
    AGENT JIM PHILLIPS STARED at the waterlogged bag lying on the steel morgue tray, his heart sinking.
    Banks, the morgue attendant who'd let him into the exam room after hours, yawned and scratched his belly.  "That what you're lookin' for?"
    Phillips drew a pen from his breast pocket and slid it beneath the flap of the pink faux-alligator bag.  Inside lay a flat black wallet, a tube of lipstick, a little plastic container of melted breath mints and a cheap ball point pen.  He pulled the wallet out with the tip of his own pen, reaching for a box of latex gloves sitting on the end of the morgue tray.  Snapping on the gloves, he carefully opened the wallet.
    Anything in the wallet that had been made of paper was soaked through and illegible, but three plastic credit cards and a driver's license remained intact.
    Phillips looked at the driver's license photo first.  It was Lottie, all right.  Wavy black hair, sea-green eyes, and a face that even the D.M.V. couldn't render anything but gorgeous.  He glanced at the name and vital statistics just to be sure, then released a disappointed sigh.
    "Why'd you go and run, Lottie?" he murmured to the pretty girl in the driver's license photo, ignoring the look Banks shot him.  He considered, briefly, the idea that Dominick Manning had found a way to rig the bus to wreck, but the facts didn't lend themselves to such a theory.  Manning couldn't have made the big rig jackknife at just that point on the highway, for one thing.
    And nobody had known she was going to make a run for it.
    It was supposed to have been just another Tuesday at the Palais Royale Casino.  That was how he'd told Lottie to play it.  Let Manning continue to believe she was just the clueless little bookkeeper pulling another eight hours of crunching numbers while in face, she was gathering evidence to put Dom Manning in prison where he belonged.  But Phillips should have known Lottie would play it her own way.
    The last time they'd met, he'd seen leaving on her mind.
     
     
    "I WAS GETTING TIRED OF New Jersey."  Carly sat on the top step of the porch, her face lifted toward the moon.  The cool, blue light turned her features to alabaster, like a statue of some mysterious, ancient goddess frozen in time.
    Wes lowered himself beside her, wrapping his arms loosely around his knees.  "And you figured south was the way to go?"
    She gave a little shrug.  "Already been north."
    "Any particular reason you wanted to leave Atlantic City in a hurry?"
    She made a short, waving gesture that could have meant just about anything.  "Why does anyone leave Atlantic City?"
    "The money ran out?"
    "Something like that."
    He digested her answer, testing it for believability.  He wasn't quite sure why he was bothering to give her the benefit of doubt; normally he was the suspicious sort.  He was a cop.  Came with the territory.
    And there was at least one problem with her version of the story: he'd found in her bag.  Folks with two hundred bucks on them didn't risk sneaking aboard a chartered bus.  Two hundred would've paid for a ticket on Greyhound and a cheap motel room for a couple of nights, giving her time to find work in a place like Charlotte or Atlanta.
    Anywhere but Bangor, Georgia, where the biggest business in town was the lumber mill south of Hollow Road.
    And that was problem number two.  Nobody came to Bangor, Georgia.  They came from Bangor, came through Bangor, sometimes even came back to Bangor, as he had.  But nobody from the outside ever came to