Read That Touch of Ink for Free Online Page A

said.
    “Not dead.” His voice was low, intimate.
    “And when I wasn’t thinking you were dead, I thought you might have killed someone.”
    “I didn’t kill anyone.”
    “How do you know it’s over?”
    “There was only one way out and I did what I had to do.”
    Four gunshots. My new five thousand dollar bill. Tex’s John Doe with the four old gunshot wounds—and one fresh one to his head.
    All of a sudden, I realized that I didn’t know this new Brad. I didn’t know him well enough to know if he was capable of shooting someone or coming back from the dead.
    What I did know was this: the one thing Brad Turlington did not seem to need was a watch.
    I became obsessed with the perpetual moving hands on the face of the gold timepiece. The lone crab Rangoon I’d eaten tossed in my stomach, and my face flushed. I pulled my hand away from Brad’s and touched cool fingers to my forehead. I was burning up. I had to get out of there, to process what I thought, acknowledge what I was starting to fear. It couldn’t be, I told myself.
    “Brad, I think it was a mistake to call you. Do you mind if we call it a night?” I asked.
    “You want to leave already?” he asked.
    “I want to go home. Alone.” I stood up. Before he had a chance to follow, I hurried out of the restaurant to my car. My tires squealed against the asphalt as I peeled out of the lot, wondering if the former love of my life was a murderer. I was so lost in my thoughts that I was two miles into my drive before I realized I was being followed.

FIVE

    The car behind me sped up and swerved across the stripe in the middle of the road. Just my luck to be followed by a drunk driver. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and accelerated, trying to keep a cushion of space between us. I wasn’t successful.
    There were no other cars around, and the drive from the Polynesian restaurant back to my apartment included a couple of relatively familiar surface streets. I turned right on Turtle Creek Boulevard and snaked down the hill, did a practiced dogleg over the creek before approaching Greenville Avenue, and then made another right. When every pair of headlights eventually turned away except for one, I got nervous. The car behind me wasn’t acting like a drunk driver anymore.
    The dark sedan closed the gap between us and rammed my back bumper. My head bounced forward, then back. I tried to brake, but the car behind me pushed me forward. My handbag fell onto the floor and the contents spilled out. My phone slid under  the passenger side seat. I looked into the rear view mirror but couldn’t see the driver. The windows were tinted. All I saw was a dark blob behind the wheel. I hit the gas, speeding up again.
    Semi-warm air from the open window, the closest I could get to a fall breeze in Dallas, pushed my hair away from my face and fought against the nervous sweat that had broken out on my forehead. I turned onto a narrow side street, double-backed on the last turn before hitting a cul-de-sac, and returned to Greenville. I slowed and looked in the rearview. The car was a brown sedan.
    I sped up and turned into a neighborhood I knew well. The sedan followed. I turned right, then left, then right, then left, then two rights, then a left, then three rights. My Alfa Romeo swung wide on the turns. I fought to straighten it out when I hit a dark street. I checked the rear view mirror. He was still there. The traffic light ahead of me turned yellow. I was too far away to clear it, but I hit the gas and sped through the intersection after the light turned red, accelerating until I reached my apartment. The assigned parking spaces were in a lot behind the building. I pulled into the entrance on the east side of the building, swung the car around and cut the lights, and backed into my space. No other cars pulled in.
    I glanced up at my bedroom windows. I lived in the back unit on the second floor. It overlooked the less-than-glamorous parking lot. Soft light filtered