LuAnn ripped the phone free from Riggs and slammed it down.
Riggs faced her. “Would you like to fill me in on what’s going on? Who are you supposed to have murdered? Somebody in Georgia?”
LuAnn stood up and pushed past him, her face crimson from the abrupt revealing of this secret. Riggs grabbed her arm and pulled her back roughly. “Dammit, you’re going to tell me what’s going on.”
She snapped around and, quick as a ferret, connected her right fist flush with his chin, causing his head to snap back and hit hard against the wall.
When he came to Riggs was lying on the bed. LuAnn sat next to him holding a cold compress to his bruised chin and then pressed it against the growing knot on his head.
“Damn!” he said as the cold went through his system.
“I’m sorry, Matthew. I didn’t mean to do that. I just—”
He rubbed his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe you knocked me out. I’m not a chauvinist, but I can’t believe a woman just flattened my butt with one punch.”
She managed a feeble smile. “I had a lot of practice growing up, and I’m pretty strong.” She added kindly, “But I think your head hitting the wall had a lot to do with it.”
Riggs rubbed his jaw and sat up. “Next time we’re having an argument and you’re thinking about popping me, just let me know and I’ll surrender on the spot. Deal?”
She touched his face gently and kissed him on the forehead. “I’m not going to hit you anymore.”
Riggs looked over at the phone. “Are you going to meet him?”
“I don’t have a choice—that I can see.”
“I’m going with you.”
LuAnn shook her head. “You heard him.”
Riggs sighed. “I don’t believe you murdered anyone.”
LuAnn took a deep breath and decided to tell him. “I didn’t murder him. It was self-defense. The man I was living with ten years ago was involved in drugs. I guess he was skimming off the top and I walked right into the middle of it.”
“So you killed your boyfriend?”
“No, the man who killed my boyfriend.”
“And the police—”
“I didn’t stay around long enough to find out what they were going to do.”
Riggs looked around the room. “The drugs. Is that where all this came from?”
LuAnn almost laughed. “No, he was a small-timer. Drug money didn’t have anything to do with this.”
Riggs wanted desperately to ask what did, but refrained from doing so. He sensed that she had divulged enough of her past life for now. Instead he watched in silent frustration as LuAnn slowly got up and started to leave the room, the bedspread dragging behind her, the well-defined muscles in her bare back tensing with each stride.
“LuAnn? That’s your real name?”
She turned to look at him and nodded faintly. “LuAnn Tyler. You were right about Georgia. Ten years ago I was a lot different. A lot.”
“I believe it, although I bet you’ve always had that right cross.” He attempted a smile, but neither of them was buying it.
She watched Riggs as he dug into his pants pocket. He tossed something to her. She caught the keys in the palm of her hand. “Thanks for letting me use your BMW; you might need the horsepower in case he starts chasing you again.”
She frowned, looked down, and then walked out of the room.
CHAPTER FORTY
Wearing a long black leather coat and a matching hat, her eyes hidden behind a pair of Ray-Bans, LuAnn stood outside the “Ordinary,” an aged wooden building that was part of Michie’s Tavern, a historic structure originally built in the late 1700s and later moved to its current location down the road from Monticello in the late 1920s. It was lunchtime and the place was starting to fill up with tourists either lining their stomachs with the fried chicken buffet offered there after touring Jefferson’s home and its neighbor Ash Lawn, or fueling up before setting out on the tour. Inside, a fire blazed in the hearth and LuAnn, who had arrived early to check things out, had soaked in the warmth from the flames before deciding to wait for him outside. She looked up when the man walked toward her. Even without his beard she recognized him.