Read Online Speaking in Tongues by Jeffery Deaver - Free Book Online Page B

lower lip the way he remembered her doing whenever she’d been troubled. She gripped the porch banister and lowered her head.
    Tate Collier, intercollegiate debate champion, national moot court winner, expert forensic orator, recognized the body language of an impending confession.
    “Go ahead,” he said.
    “The night of the water tower thing—I was . . . out.”
    “Out?”
    She sighed. “I mean, I didn’t get home. I was at Brad’s in Baltimore. I didn’t plan on it; I just fell asleep. Megan was really upset I hadn’t called.”
    “You apologized?”
    “Of course.”
    “Well, it was one of those things. An accident. She’d know that.”
    Bett shook her head dismissingly. “I think maybe that’s what started her drinking before she climbed up the tower. It didn’t help that she doesn’t like Brad much.”
    The girl had described Bett’s fiancé as a nerd who parted his hair too carefully, thought sweaters with reindeer on them were stylish and spent too much time in front of the TV. Tate didn’t share these observations with Bett now.
    “It takes a little while to get used to stepparents. I see it all the time in my practice.”
    “I held off going over to his place for a while after that. But last night I went there again. I asked her if she minded and she said she didn’t. I dropped her at Amy’s on my way to Baltimore.”
    “So, there.” Tate smiled and caught her eye as she glanced his way.
    “What?”
    He lifted his palms. “It’s just a little payback. She’s over at somebody’s house, going to let you sweat a bit.”
    So, no need to worry.
    You go your way and I’ll go mine.
    “That may be,” Bett said, “but I’ll never forgive myself if I just forget it and something happens to her.”
    Tate’s phone buzzed. He answered it.
    “Counselor,” Konnie’s gruff voice barked.
    “Konnie, what’s up?”
    “Got good news.”
    “You found her?”
    Bett’s head swiveled.
    The detective said, “She’s on her way to New York.”
    “How do you know?” Tate asked.
    “I put out a DMV notice and a patrol found her car at the Vienna Metro station. On the front seat was an Amtrak schedule. She’d circled Saturday trains to Penn Station. Manhattan.” The Metro would take her from Vienna to Union Station in downtown D.C. in a half hour. From there it was three hours to New York City. Konnie continued. “You know anybody up there she’d go to visit?”
    Tate told this to Bett, who took the news cautiously. He asked about where she might be going.
    She shook her head. “I don’t think she knows a soul up there.”
    Tate relayed the answer to Konnie.
    “Well, at least you know where she’s going. I’ll call NYPD and have somebody meet the trains and ask around the station. I’ll send ’em her picture.”
    “Okay. Thanks, Konnie.” He hung up. Looked at his ex-wife. “Well,” he said. “That’s that.”
    But the violet eyes disagreed.
    “What, Bett?” he asked.
    “I’m sorry, Tate. I just don’t buy it.”
    “What?”
    “Her going off to New York.”
    “But why? You haven’t told me anything specific.”
    Her palms slapped her hips. “Well, I don’t have anything specific. You want evidence, you want proof. I don’t have any.” She sighed. “I’m not like you.”
    “Like me?”
    “I can’t convince you,” she said angrily. “I don’t have a way with words. So I’m not even going to try.”
    He started to say something more, to cinch his argument, to end this awkward reunion, to send her back out of his life. But he considered what she’d just said and recalled something—what the Judge had said after Tate had finished an argument before the Supreme Court in Richmond in a death penalty case, which Tate later won. His grandfather had been in the audience, proud as could be that his offspring was handling the case. Later, over whiskeys at the ornate Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, the somber old man hadsaid, “Tate, that was wonderful, absolutely