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I nodded. “From a distance, yes, but I don’t know him.”
“What kind of vehicle?” Constance asked.
“A big, black SUV. I don’t know what kind. I’m not a car person.”
“Do you remember any part of the license number?”
“It didn’t have a plate on the front.”
Constance opened a notepad. “Have you received any threats? Phone hangups, anything like that?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Nothing—wait a minute. I forgot to mention that I got a note on my windshield this morning. I’d parked on the street, down a few houses from mine, and I thought somebody had mistaken my car for one of my neighbors’. The note said to leave the USB stick under the red bush or else. Almost everybody has a red bush, and I had no idea whatthe stick…”I added air quotes. “…meant, so I ignored it.”
“Can we see the note?” Constance asked.
“It’s in my purse.”
“Which didn’t travel with her to the hospital,” Duke added.
Constance took down a note. “Have you noticed anybody following you, lurking around, anything out of the ordinary in your neighborhood recently?”
I’d already asked myself the same thing. “No.”
Duke sat back. “Run us through your day.”
It confused me how much I wished he was still holding my hand. “I started in the office on Wilshire, the same as any other day. Well, not exactly the same, because I just got a promotion, and this was my first day out in the field.” I explained my previous position and how I’d been selected by the merit review board for my new job in external auditing. “Which means I go out into the field now to check on companies.”
Unlike Constance, Duke didn’t take any notes.
The door opened, and Lucas Hawk joined us, taking a seat next to Duke. With a buzz cut, dark brown almost black eyes, and a deep voice that cut through you, he was scarier than I remembered, a lot scarier. But that circumstance had been very different from today.
Thankfully, Lucas didn’t acknowledge having met me before. “What did I miss?” he asked.
“The incident was definitely intentional,” Duke said. “She saw him but doesn’t know him.”
That relaxed me a little. At least Duke believed me.
“But she hasn’t received any threats,” Constance added. “Or have any reason to suspect anyone in particular. So we don’t have a suspect yet.”
“Nope.” I shook my head.
“Go ahead,” Duke urged me.
“Right. I had two meetings in Thousand Oaks. After I finished the meetings, I started back to the office.” I explained when I’d first noticed the SUV, my call with my brother, how I’d considered stopping at the fire station but didn’t, and how the SUV had finally run me off the road. Then I explained what I remembered from after the crash—the man in the leather jacket and then the other person who stopped at the crash.
“Back up a second,” Lucas said. “Are you sure it was a lighter he was holding and not something else?”
“Positive.” I’d already reviewed that part in my head. “He flicked the flame on and off as a threat and he yelled about telling him where the stick was.”
Lucas’s brow creased. “And what was that about a deer?”
“I had to swerve right to keep from hitting it. Deer collisions cause two hundred deaths a year in this country. I didn’t want to be one of those.”
“And this was when?” Lucas asked. “In relation to going off the road?”
“Right before,” I admitted. From Lucas’s look, it was clear where this was going.
Great.He didn’t believe me about the lighter, and he didn’t think my crash was related to me being chased and hit by Black Jacket Guy either. He thought I was just a girl who couldn’t drive. He’d ignored the part about the guy demanding information from me.
