Read Online A Place of Hiding by Elizabeth George - Free Book Online Page B

said.
    â€œI'm fine,” Cherokee replied. “You've been great. Thanks. To both of you. It must be a real freak-out, me showing up like this. I appreciate being taken in.” He nodded to Simon, who took the pan of soup to the table and ladled some into the bowl.
    â€œThis is something of a red-letter day, I must tell you,” Deborah said. “Simon's actually opened a carton of soup. He'll usually do only tins.”
    â€œThank you very much,” Simon remarked.
    Cherokee smiled, but he looked exhausted, like someone operating from the last vestiges of energy at the end of a terrible day.
    â€œHave your soup,” Deborah said. “You're stopping the night, by the way.”
    â€œNo. I can't ask you—”
    â€œDon't be silly. Your clothes are in the dryer and they'll be done in a while, but you surely didn't expect to go back out on the streets to find a hotel at this time of night.”
    â€œDeborah's right,” Simon agreed. “We've plenty of room. You're more than welcome.”
    Cherokee's face mirrored relief and gratitude despite his exhaustion. “Thanks. I feel like . . .” He shook his head. “I feel like a kid. You know how they get? Lost in the grocery store except they don't know that they're lost till they look up from what they're doing—reading a comic book or something—and they see their mom's out of sight and then they flip out. That's what it feels like. What it
felt
like.”
    â€œWell, you're quite safe now,” Deborah assured him.
    â€œI didn't want to leave a message on your machine,” Cherokee said. “When I phoned. It would have been a real downer to come home to. So I decided to try to find the house instead. I got totally screwed up on that yellow line on the subway and ended up at Tower Hill before I could figure what the hell I'd done wrong.”
    â€œGhastly,” Deborah murmured.
    â€œBad luck,” Simon said.
    A little silence fell among them then, broken only by the sounds of the rain. It splattered on the flagstones outside the kitchen door and slid in ceaseless rivulets down the window. There were three of them—and a hopeful dog—in the midnight kitchen. But they were not alone. The Question was there, too. It squatted among them like a palpable being, breathing noisome breath that could not be ignored. Neither Deborah nor her husband asked it. But as things turned out, neither needed to do so.
    Cherokee dipped his spoon into his bowl. He raised it to his mouth. But he lowered it slowly without tasting the soup. He stared into the bowl for a moment before he raised his head and looked from Deborah to her husband.
    â€œHere's what happened,” he said.
    Â 
    He was responsible for everything, he told them. If it hadn't been for him, China wouldn't have gone to Guernsey in the first place. But he'd needed money, and when this deal came up to carry a package from California to the English Channel and to get paid for carrying it
and
to have the airline tickets provided . . . well, it seemed too good to be true.
    He asked China to go because there were two tickets and the deal was that a man and woman had to carry the package over together. He thought Why not? And why not ask Chine? She never went anywhere. She'd never even been out of California.
    He had to talk her into it. It took a few days, but she'd just broken up with Matt—did Debs remember China's boyfriend? the filmmaker she'd been with forever?—and she decided she wanted a break. So she called him and told him she wanted to go, and he made the arrangements. They carried the package from Tustin, south of LA, where it had originated, to a place on Guernsey outside of St. Peter Port.
    â€œWhat was in the package?” Deborah pictured a drug bust at the airport, complete with dogs snarling and China and Cherokee backed into the wall like foxes seeking shelter.
    Nothing illegal, Cherokee told her. He was hired to carry