by Kay Hooper
“Max.” Kane felt curiously suspended, caught between a moment of realization and one of dawning fear.
“Yeah. I have a hunch the younger brother was the corpse Dinah was about to start looking for. She was probably looking at the Seattle end a lot more closely than we’ve been, and she was suspicious of that fire and the insurance money. I don’t know how close she was to the answers, whether she suspected Sanders or was just looking for a connection to Seattle and somehow alerted him. We may never know.”
“Christ.”
“And correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Max Sanders have a key to the gate at the job site? And official clearance to get into your office building so he can roam wherever he damn well wants?”
Kane swung around to stare at the open door of his office. The fear was clawing at him now. “Jesus.”
“Kane—”
But Kane dropped the phone, the rolled blueprints, and bolted for the door. He reached the hall just as Sam charged past with a worried look on his face. As Kane joined him, he barely took in the bodyguard’s hurried explanation that Faith “should have been visible on the hallway monitor by now.”
They turned the corner together, seeing a long corridor stretching before them. And Faith’s shoulder bag lying on the floor beside the emergency exit that led to the stairwell.
“A mirror,” Sam was saying bitterly, staring up at one of the video cameras. “He used a fucking mirror!”
Kane bent to pick up Faith’s bag, feeling as though something was dragging at him, slowing him down when he needed to be moving fast, so fast, because they had her and the thought of what they’d do to her ripped at his sanity.
“No,” he said clearly. “Not again.”
SIXTEEN
Whatever he’d used to knock her out—chloroform, she supposed—Faith hoped it hadn’t kept her unconscious for long. She couldn’t be certain since there was no clock in the room where she awoke.
It was a powder room. Pedestal sink, toilet, not much else.
Head pounding and nausea churning, Faith got her hands underneath her to push herself up off the cold tile floor, and only then realized she was handcuffed. She managed to sit up, but it was a long while before the dizziness passed enough for her to struggle to her feet.
She tried the door, which was locked, then decided to splash cold water on her face to wash the cobwebs from her mind.
Afterward, she almost wished she hadn’t, because with clarity of mind came terror.
She hadn’t seen who had grabbed her; it had all happened too fast. But she had no doubt she was in deadly danger. The fact that he had knocked her out rather than killed her told her he wanted something from her. He wanted whatever it was she had taken from him, the elusive thing still lost somewhere in the darkness of her mind.
She would be tortured. Like Dinah.
Faith wanted to pound on the door, to scream and scream, and it took all her strength to keep herself from doing just that.
Don’t be an idiot. And don’t expect the cavalry to come riding to the rescue, either. That only happens in the movies. If you want to live through this, you’ll have to help yourself.
Faith pressed her ear to the door but heard nothing.
Move, just move. Look for something that might help you get free, get out of here.
There was no medicine cabinet or linen closet, and not even a picture on the walls to offer her a bit of useful wire.
Remembering suddenly, she worked her cuffed hands around until she was able to dig into the right pocket of her jacket. It was there, a thin, flexible piece of metal.
A lock pick.
It felt familiar in her grasp, and her fingers moved with swift, sure skill that required no thought. Within seconds she was free.
For a fleeting moment, Faith wondered where on earth she had learned such a thing, and why, but there would be time enough later to ponder that.
She hoped.
The locked door was more stubborn than the handcuffs, but she kept working at it.
If this damned thing would stop slipping, I could—There!
She returned the lock pick to her pocket and carefully eased open the door.
She was facing a fairly long hallway that was a solid wall on the other side and on her side boasted only one other room, its open door spilling light. At the end, she thought she could make out stairs leading upward.
She was in a basement.
She heard the voices. There were two of them, angry male voices that were a bit muffled. They came from the other room.
Her first impulse was to run as fast as she could, her instincts urging her to race from danger, to flee while she had the chance. But intellect prevailed. She stood a better chance of escaping if she moved cautiously and silently to slip past that open door unnoticed by the men inside.
Hardly breathing, keeping close to the wall and moving with utmost care, Faith eased down the hall toward the lighted doorway. As she neared it, the voices became distinct.
“… You must have been out of your mind to hang around MacGregor and Payne all day!”
There was something familiar about that voice, but before she could probe her memory to identify it, the second man spoke.
“At least I was doing something useful! I wasn’t hiding in my nice little lake house praying no one would find me!”
A coldness deeper than anything Faith had ever felt before washed over her, and the dizziness returned far worse than before, forcing her to lean against the wall and close her eyes, to swallow the sick terror welling up from a dark nightmare place inside her.
She remembered the voice from her painfully violent vision: Careful! She can’t tell me what I want to know if she’s dead.
Faith heard her breath catch, and the tiny sound was just enough to free her from the paralysis of sheer terror. It was him. The man who had lurked in the darkness as Dinah was being tortured, who had ordered the one hurting her to break her fingers or something else, anything else, whatever he had to do to make her talk …
And she had sat in Kane’s office with him without recognizing his voice, without realizing that Dinah’s tormentor was talking briskly to Kane about structure and construction materials. Max Sanders.
The need to run was overwhelming, but Faith forced herself to move slowly, one step at a time, down the hall. As she crept nearer, the voices grew louder, more distinct.
“I’ve told you—you’re moving too fast, allowing Kane and the police to panic you. If you’d just been willing to sit tight, to keep your mouth shut—”
“I’m not the one who killed Jed, goddammit! What was that if it wasn’t panic?”
“It was our only option! It has to look like he was the one blackmailing Cochrane, and that Cochrane found out and killed him. That’s the only way we’ll distract the police and Kane. Once I finish planting evidence for the police to find, it’ll be crystal clear that Jed was the blackmailer. Dinah found out somehow, and he kidnapped and killed her—in one of Cochrane’s warehouses—intending to pin the blame on Cochrane.”
“He was my brother!”
“He was a fuck-up and we both know it!”
Brother? Jed and Max were brothers?
There was a moment of tense silence inside the room, and Faith edged closer. Were they facing away from the door? Could she slip past without being seen?
“I had to take the heat off us, Max. You’d done a damned fine job of stirring everybody up until we could hardly breathe, until it was only a matter of time before Kane or one of his bloodhounds figured it all out.”
“So I took a chance with the pipe bomb, so what? What was I supposed to do after she hooked up with Kane—ignore it? Sit around like you wanted to, Connie, and wait to see if she got her memory back and spilled everything to Kane?”
Connie. Oh, God … it is Conrad. That realization stabbed through Faith; she knew how this would hurt Kane.
“You could have waited! For Christ’s sake, Max, even an idiot could have realized
that every time you went after her and failed, you gave them more reason to look for answers—and more time.”
“Look—”
“No, you look. I had to scramble to find evidence to make the story hang together and point away from us. Jed had to be sacrificed. It would have worked, Max. But then you had to blunder in once again, grab the girl from under Kane’s nose. And if you don’t think he’s turning Atlanta upside down right this minute looking for her—”
“So what? He didn’t find Dinah, did he?”
“You’re a fool,” Conrad said.
Faith risked a quick glance into the room and felt her heart sink. They were facing each other no more than a few feet inside the door, and chances were very good that both men would see her if she darted past.
“I just want the box back, Connie, that’s all.”
“If she remembered where she’d put it or knew where Dinah put it after that accident, don’t you think it would be in the hands of the police by now?”
“She’ll remember quick enough once I get my hands on her. She’ll talk then.”
“Oh? The way Dinah talked?”
“Surely you don’t think this one will be that tough? She’s no bigger than a minute, and it’s easy to see she’d jump out of her skin if anybody yelled boo.”
“She survived that car accident, didn’t she? She came out of a coma when she should have ended up a vegetable. I wouldn’t underestimate her if I were you.”
“She’ll talk,” Max repeated stubbornly. “We’ll get the box, and then we’ll be safe. If you think it’s necessary, we can plant the box so it looks like Jed had it—all that clear evidence of blackmail. He gets the blame for that, Cochrane gets the blame for killing him, and we lay low for a few months.”
“And what about Faith Parker? They’ll know exactly when she disappeared, Max, and you told me yourself Cochrane’s still at the police station being questioned. He has an alibi for the time she vanished.”
“You can fix it so it looks like he hired somebody,” Max said, impatient. “You’ve always been able to fix things, Connie, ever since we were kids back in Seattle. Should be easy enough.”
Conrad swore viciously. “Easy? Do you realize how many rabbits I’ve already pulled out of my hat for you? Christ, if you’d just killed her in Seattle or, better yet, hadn’t been careless enough to leave that envelope in the office where she was bound to see it—”
“How was I to know Jed had hired a secretary with too much curiosity for her own good? Once she saw the note from me to him it was only a matter of time before she figured out the insurance scam. I had to get rid of her.”
“But you didn’t get rid of her, did you? You didn’t even make sure what she looked like, killed the sister instead and the mother with her.”
“Look, never mind all that, it’s water under the bridge. I’ve got her now, and I don’t intend to stop until she’s told me where that goddamned box is.”
You hid it in the only place you felt really safe. That’s why I couldn’t tell him. He wouldn’t have been able to get into Haven House, and so he would have burned it down to destroy the evidence. They would have been killed, all of them. Karen and Eve, Andrea and little Katie. I couldn’t let that happen.…
Faith closed her eyes briefly, then opened them and tried to figure out her options. She had to get past the open door and the men inside the room … and she had to get out of this house. Unaware of where the windows and doors were, she was bound to make mistakes, especially if she was running.
But what choice did she have? She risked another look into the room. Conrad had turned toward a desk against the far wall, and Faith could have laughed aloud when Max turned in the same direction. Both their backs were now to the door.
Now or never.
Holding her breath, Faith slipped quickly and silently past the doorway.
“If you’re determined to be stupid, at least don’t be insane,” Conrad was saying angrily. “To bring her here! There’s no way I’ll allow you—”
“I didn’t know if you wanted another body pinned on Cochrane, so …”
Faith reached the foot of the stairs and went up them swiftly. From what had been said in that room, she gathered she was at Conrad’s lakeside vacation home somewhere outside the city. Which meant she had no idea where she was.
Away. Just get away. Worry about where you are later.
At the top of the stairs she found herself in a small hallway, which led to a dining room and a kitchen, where there appeared to be an exterior door. At the end of the hall was a living room, with another staircase going up.
Don’t go up. The nitwits in the movies always climb the stairs, and how they expect to get off the roof when someone’s chasing them—
“I know,” Faith whispered. She continued to move carefully, desperate to make certain no squeaking floorboard betrayed her to the men below. The front door, she thought, was probably near the living room, but this door out of the kitchen was closer.
As soon as she opened it, Faith detected the unmistakable odors of a garage. A closed garage. And garage doors were very noisy when they opened.
She swore inwardly and drew back into the kitchen, just as she heard heavy, quick footsteps on the basement stairs and Max swearing grimly.
With no time to do anything else, Faith slipped through the door into the garage, closing it silently behind her.
He’s very good at playing cat and mouse. Don’t hide. Get away.
The garage was dark; Faith had to feel her way. Moving as fast as she dared, she nearly fell over the hood of a sports car. Were the keys in it? She tried the doors but they were locked.
Growing accustomed to the darkness now, she made out the garage door, which was closed, and two windows, which were high up and also closed. Nothing to stand on.
Was there an automatic door opener? She peered up at the tracks above the car and made out the box. So there would be a remote in the car, most likely, and one by the door to the kitchen.
She felt her way back to the door, fear growing, horribly aware of the minutes ticking away. She heard the voices inside rise in a violent argument, heard them get louder as Max and Conrad came in her direction, and then a deafening gunshot.
Terrified, Faith punched the panel of the garage-door opener. Instantly, the garage was filled with bright light, and the big door began to move up laboriously and loudly.
Nearly blinded, Faith lunged for the garage door and ducked under it just as the kitchen door opened and she heard a curse behind her.
She ran.
It was dark and cold and wet; the rain must have stopped only recently, because water dripped everywhere. The drive was narrow, hardly more than two rutted tracks, and treacherous because of the mud. The woods pressed in toward her on both sides; she had no idea in which direction the lake lay.
She ran.
All she could hear was her heart thundering, her breath rasping in her throat, but Faith was certain he was behind her, gaining on her. Maybe he’d be in the car, maybe he was on foot, but he was behind her, she knew that. More than once she slipped, but miraculously kept her footing well enough to continue moving forward, away from the house.
Something loomed up out of the darkness ahead of her, reaching for her, and for an instant of sheer terror Faith thought one of them had circled around and gotten ahead of her.
“Faith. Jesus, Faith—”
She found herself caught tightly in Kane’s arms, so tightly she wasn’t sure if it was her heart or his pounding so wildly, and gasped, “Behind me. He’s behind me—”
And then everything happened very, very fast. Kane swung her around so that his large body shielded hers. She heard an engine roar, and bright lights stabbed suddenly through the darkness, pinning her and Kane in the stark glare. She heard the sounds of tires spinning wildly on slippery ground, saw headlights coming drunkenly at them, and then the engine screaming louder, and she saw Kane’s arm stretch out, saw something gleaming in his hand
.
His first shot made glass shatter, and then there were other guns, other shots, and he was moving, carrying her away from danger as the car careened off the drive and plowed into the trees with a sickening crunch of metal.
The engine screamed again, then gurgled and died.
“It has to be later than midnight,” Faith said. “It just has to be. This has been the longest day of my life.”
“I wish you’d let me call a doctor,” Kane said.
“You heard the EMS medic. I’m fine. No injuries, no shock, not even aftereffects of the chloroform.” Faith curled up in the big chair before the fire Kane had lit while she’d been in the shower, and watched him as he stood gazing at the flames.
“Still,” he said. “Like you said, it’s been a very long day.”
“And I should be exhausted. But I’m not.” She paused, aware of his silence and the tension between them. “Did you say Bishop was flying down in the morning?”
“Yeah. He would have come tonight, but we were able to find you fairly quickly. Guy already had the information on Conrad’s lake house, and I couldn’t think of any other place he’d go, so …”
“The cops were shooting too, Kane. It might not have been your bullet that killed Max Sanders.”
He turned his head and looked at her. “I hope it was mine.”
“Revenge?”
“Justice. Now he’ll be rotting in the ground.”
She drew a breath. “What about Conrad? They say he might pull through.”
“I hope he does,” Kane said calmly. “I want him in prison. I want him to spend the rest of his life in a small, bare cell.”
“He probably will. Once Richardson sorts through their blackmail box, he’s bound to find Conrad’s prints on the photographs and papers. He and Max wouldn’t have been so desperate to get the box back if they hadn’t been positive what was in it could convict them.”
