Cringing, she listened to footsteps on the gravel, and then, with rising terror, to the softer tread of footsteps on concrete. He was almost even with them now.
The ping of a trunk release had her looking sharply back at the car inside the garage. The driver was behind it now. He lifted the trunk—
“Back off, you bastard!” a woman screamed, lunging up from the depths of the trunk, spraying something for all she was worth in the man’s face. Lucy saw at a glance that she was small and blond and young and big-eyed with terror.
“Ahhh!” He fell back, shrieking, his hands clapping over his face as she leaped from the trunk, spray still spewing from the small black canister in her hand. Even from a distance Lucy caught a whiff of the acrid scent of pepper spray. “I’ll kill you, you bitch!”
The woman stumbled as her feet hit the concrete, then she gathered herself to run—
“Stop right there,” the man with the gun yelled. His hand came up, the gun aiming at the woman, who screamed like a banshee as she swung her spray toward him.
Spray versus gun: Lucy knew how that was going to end. Faced with watching a woman who was as much a victim as they were die before her eyes, she did the only thing she could. She sprang out from her hiding place and swung at the head of the man with the gun, like his head was a baseball and her shovel was a bat.
He must have heard the whistle of it coming, because he turned to look at the last moment, just enough to keep her from taking off his head. But the blow knocked him sideways, and sent his gun sailing.
It was enough.
“Run,” Lucy cried, throwing her shovel aside. As it landed with a clatter, she turned and darted out the garage door, with Jaden and the unknown woman just steps behind her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Heart pounding like a jackhammer, Jess bolted into the woods after Lucy and Jaden. She was dizzy and sick at her stomach and her legs felt like wet string, but she ran like her life depended on it, because she knew it did. Casting a single terrified glance over her shoulder before the slope she was plunging down blocked the garage from her sight, she saw the man she’d fought off with pepper spray burst from the garage. He had attacked her in her office and tried to drown her, and she was almost sure he was the assailant who had grabbed her in front of her apartment. The too-sweet smell of his cologne lingered in her memory: it had been the same every time. But she didn’t even know who he was, and as for the second man, she hadn’t gotten more than a glimpse of him. As she looked back at her pursuer, his hand snapped up and she saw he had a gun. It was pointing straight at her. She ducked, bending almost double as she crashed through the undergrowth. The sound of a bullet smacking into a tree just slightly ahead of her made every tiny hair on her body stand on end. One of the girls screamed.
“Be quiet,” she called to them in an urgent undertone. “Any sound we make helps them track us.”
After that there were no more screams, but there was nothing they could do about the sounds that marked their frantic passage. Full night had not yet fallen, but it was as dark as night under the trees. The ground was slippery with leaves, and brambles tore at Jess’s clothes. Insects whirred, and the smell of damp earth was strong. A few leaps ahead, Lucy and Jaden were scarcely more than shadows fleeing through the dark.
Behind them came the unmistakable sounds of pursuit.
Jess’s heart leaped as another bullet sang past her, so close she could feel the wind of its flight against her cheek. Up ahead, there was a thunk as it hit something solid—and a cry as one of the girls went down.
Oh, no. Jess’s blood turned to ice in her veins.
“Jaden!” Lucy cried, turning back. Reaching the girl’s side in two great bounds, she was relieved to find that she was moving, groaning, rolling onto her side.
“Are you hit?” Jess crouched beside her, casting fearful glances back all the while. The men were coming, she could hear them, they had to move …
“My leg,” Jaden groaned, and Jess saw she was clutching it just above her knee. Putting her hand where Jaden’s rested, she felt the warm ooze of blood.
“We’ve got to keep going,” Lucy said urgently, wrapping an arm around Jaden’s waist. She looked across the injured girl at Jess. “That one guy’s a murderer. He killed Miss Howard—Allison Howard. If he catches us, he’s going to kill us, too.”
“How do you know he killed Allison Howard?” Jess wrapped her arm around Jaden’s waist, too, and between the two of them, she and Lucy managed to haul Jaden to her feet.
“We saw him. He saw us, too. That’s why he’s after us.” Three abreast now, they ran awkwardly on.
“Oh, my God. I knew she was dead.”
“Who are you, anyway?” Lucy asked.
“My name’s Jess. I know who you and Jaden are. I’m a lawyer. I’ve been looking for you.”
They wove through the densely packed trees and smashed through tangles of vines and stumbled over roots and fallen branches at a lurching run. Another bullet sang past, smacking into a tree to Jess’s left. Jaden gave a frightened little cry, and Jess felt cold sweat break over her in waves.
“Do you have any idea where we are?” Jess asked desperately as she tried to come up with a plan, some avenue of escape, that might save them. If she hadn’t happened to have had Grace’s pepper spray in her pocket—and Lucy hadn’t hit that second man with the shovel—Jess had little doubt that she would have been dead now. Clearly they meant for Lucy and Jaden to be dead, too. She could still hear the men coming after them, although they seemed to be moving more slowly and methodically now. Stalking them, Jess thought, and shivered as another bullet, this one thankfully wide of the mark, hit something with a sharp crack.
“No clue,” Lucy gasped.
“You guys should leave me,” Jaden’s voice shook. “Stick me under a bush where they won’t find me and run. Without me, maybe you can get away.”
“Like that’s gonna happen,” Lucy scoffed as, bent almost double, they barreled on through the trees.
“The driveway.” Jess remembered it. Her breathing was labored now. Jaden wasn’t heavy, but she was tall, and holding onto her was awkward. Sheer terror gave Jess added strength. “If we could figure out where it is and try to go parallel to it, it should lead out to a road.”
“Look up ahead,” Lucy said. Jess looked. She could see a glimmer of a lighter kind of darkness through the trees. Horror clutched at her heart as she realized they were running out of woods. A gun exploded behind them. The bullet whistled maybe a foot to the right. Cowering, they lowered their heads and sprinted. Bursting out of the woods, they found themselves on a C-shaped curve of grassy land that jutted out all on its own. It was a promontory overlooking the Potomac, Jess saw with a rush of panic as they ran out almost to the edge in hopes of finding a way down, far enough to see that all three sides were sheer drop-offs of close to a hundred feet. The sky was dark now with a shifting layer of thunderheads, and the rising moon was just visible above the horizon. Down below, the water was inky black. The promise of a storm hung in the air.
“What do we do now?” Lucy cried as it became obvious to them all that they had reached a dead end. The rush of the river below was loud enough to partly muffle her words.
“Go back,” Jess said.
But it was too late. Even as they whirled, meaning to plunge once again into the cover of the trees, the man who’d attacked her emerged from the woods. They froze. Looking at him, knowing they were trapped, knowing there was nowhere left for them to go, Jess’s heart practically leaped out of her chest.
She let go of Jaden.
“Stay behind me, girls,” she ordered, and moved in front of them.
“Gotcha.” Walking toward them, the man waved his gun almost playfully at them. Just looking at the tall, black-haired man with his long face and narrow jaw sent fear shivering along Jess’s nerve endings. Heart pounding like a trip-hammer, she took a deep breath, meaning to yell at the girls to run for the woods and do the same herself
, on the theory that he couldn’t shoot all three of them and if they stayed where they were they were, almost certainly dead anyway.
But the emergence of another man from the woods shocked her into immobility.
“Mr. Dunn,” she gasped when he got close enough for her to be sure of his identity. For a moment she thought, given who he was, this had to be a rescue. Then she saw the gun in his hand and realized with a sense of shock that it was he whom Lucy had hit in the garage. From both men’s satisfied expressions, she realized something else, too: they hadn’t been stalked, they’d been herded through the woods. Once they’d escaped from the garage, here on this promontory was exactly where their pursuers had wanted them to end up. How easy would it be to pitch them, or their bodies, if they resisted, over the cliff?
Jess felt surging nausea at the thought.
“Hello, Ms. Ford.” Mr. Dunn’s tone was genial. His gun gave the lie to it. Unlike his friend, who held his gun almost negligently, Mr. Dunn pointed his weapon directly at her. They both stood no more than three feet away. “I’m sorry it’s come to this. I liked you, you know.”
Facing what she realized was almost certain death, knowing that the lives of the two teens hung in the balance as well, Jess went with the only plan she had left: stall for time. The one thing she could be certain of was that Mark would be moving heaven and earth to find her. She even knew, or thought she knew, where she was: Frog Hill. But how, could Mark possibly figure that out?
“You should’ve kept your nose out of other people’s business,” the other man said to Jess. Behind her, she heard a soft rustle. A glance over her shoulder told her that Jaden had sunk to the ground. Lucy crouched beside her, wrapping what looked like a tank top around her bleeding leg. Jess’s skin prickled as cold sweat broke out along her hairline. If Jaden was sitting, making a break for it became out of the question. “If you hadn’t seen me that night when you went chasing after Tiffany Higgs, none of this had to happen. Or maybe it did. You probably would’ve gone looking into what happened to Allison no matter what. I’ve been watching you, you know. And listening, too. Good thing I planted a bug in Allison’s office when she started causing trouble, or I wouldn’t have known what you got into today in time to stop you from telling Ryan about it.”
“Who are you?” Jess felt goose bumps chase each other up and down her arms as she looked at him. One hand slid into her jacket pocket. She didn’t know how much pepper spray she had left, but the canister was still there. “I don’t even know you.”
“I know you don’t. Since you saw me with Tiffany Higgs, I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to stay out of your way. I figured you’d recognize me if you saw me again, and if you kept working at Ellis Hayes you were gonna see me sooner or later. What could I do? I had to get rid of you. God knows, I’ve been trying.”
Mr. Dunn said, “Jessica Ford, meet Ed Lally, Ellis Hayes’s director of security.”
Jess’s stomach turned inside out as she realized that the man who’d been trying to kill her had been in the building all the time.
“You killed Miss Howard,” Lucy spoke up. The girl had courage, Jess had to give her that. Although maybe calling attention to herself at such a time was a little foolhardy. “We saw you.”
Lally inclined his head at Lucy and Jaden. Jess’s throat was suddenly tight with fear as he lifted his gun and took careful aim at Lucy, mouthing “Bang.” She heard the girl suck in air, and with a quick sidestep she moved between them. Lally lowered the gun a fraction. Jess felt her knees sag.
“I saw you too, Red. I have to give you credit, you were hard to find. If I hadn’t been keeping a watch on Allison’s accounts to see if the cops had started looking for her, I don’t think I ever would have caught up to you, although I was searching. But when I saw somebody kept getting free doughnuts, I had a feeling it had to be you. And I was right.”
Jess looked at Mr. Dunn. Maybe there was another way to get them off this cliff alive. If she could talk them into a more populated area, she would. “Allison had compiled an extremely damning dossier on Rob Phillips. I’m assuming she put it together during preparations for his trial. It concerns the murders of four young women, and it’s vitally important that the authorities get it. If you’ll take me to a computer, I can access it for you.”
Mr. Dunn laughed. “Nice try, Ms. Ford. But I don’t need you to access it for me. I know all about it. It seems Ms. Howard was playing devil’s advocate, trying to see what prosecutors might dig up on Phillips in preparation for his trial. And did she come up with some stuff! I was pretty impressed with her work when I saw it, I don’t mind telling you. Prosecutors never did find any of it. Nobody ever has. The problem was what Ms. Howard did with the information once she put it together. What do you think she did, Ms. Ford? Tell somebody in the firm about it, maybe? Keep quiet and see if the prosecutors put it together? No, she decided to use it to enrich herself. She took that information and used it to blackmail one of our clients. She sent a copy of everything she’d put together to Senator Phillips, along with a demand to be paid three million dollars to keep her mouth shut. You see how reprehensible that was? Senator Phillips came straight to me and told me about the information and that he was being blackmailed. Of course, at the time we didn’t have the slightest inkling who was doing it. But we managed to trace it back to Ms. Howard. I hope I don’t have to tell you that I was outraged. What she did was one of the worst breaches of legal ethics I’ve ever heard of in my life. It was a complete violation of attorney/client privilege. It was sleazy, Ms. Ford, and underhanded and low, and totally unworthy of our distinguished firm. Senator Phillips left it in my hands to deal with, so I did. We paid Ms. Howard the money she wanted to shut her up, and then I asked Mr. Lally here to rid us of the stain on our reputation.” He looked at Lally. “You did a good job, too. You killed her, and you did it in such a way that nobody except these three people here have even realized she’s dead. Then you got our money back for us.” He looked back at Jess. “It was an honor killing, Ms. Ford, plain and simple. I’m proud of it, not ashamed.”
Jess’s mind boggled. “But Rob Phillips—”
“Is our client,” Mr. Dunn said firmly.
Jess stared at him in disbelief. A spurt of anger took the edge off her fear. “If we’re talking about breaching legal ethics, how does threatening Tiffany Higgs’s son to get her to recant a rape allegation you knew was true fit with that?”
“Senator Phillips was unhappy with us because of what Ms. Howard did, and rightly so. What it took to make him happy was to get his son acquitted, so we did what we had to do to make that happen. We owed him that. We did threaten Ms. Higgs’s son, yes, but only because she wouldn’t take a payoff. But we were going to see that she got a nice sum of money, too.”
“Except then she threatened to go to the media about what we’d made her do,” Lally said. “I don’t mind telling you, that made me a little upset.”
“So you killed her.” Jess’s voice was soft. A cold, hard knot had formed in her chest, and she kept darting quick little glances around to see if she could come up with a way out. So far, nothing had occurred to her. Except her pepper spray.
She didn’t like her odds.
“You do what you got to do.” The way Lally said it made it a confirmation.
“So Allison’s dead, Tiffany’s dead, but Rob Phillips is not only alive but free and able to go on his merry way?”
Mr. Dunn said, “We owe our loyalty to our clients.”
Jess thought of her team, and her stomach twisted into a pretzel. “I can’t believe Pearse was a party to this.”
“He’s not high level enough. No, Ms. Ford, when it comes to Ellis Hayes, the buck stops here. It was only me, with Mr. Lally’s—or, as Ms. Howard knew him, Greg Abernathy’s—able assistance.”
Suddenly Jess thought she saw something moving in the trees. Her throat constricted. Her blood seemed to freeze. Her imagination, or …?
“Drop your weapons! Federal agents!” T
he roar belonged to Mark. What seemed like a battalion of agents rushed from the woods. “Drop your weapons!”
As quick as that, a hand closed around Jess’s arm and she was yanked almost off her feet. Lally pulled her in front of him, imprisoning her with an arm locked around her waist. With a gasp of horror, she felt the hard jab of a gun against her temple. Terror quickened her breathing, made her heart race.
“Back off, Ryan,” he yelled. “Or I’ll kill her.”
Jess saw Mark then. Flanked by other agents in firing stance, he was maybe twenty feet away, with his gun aimed at Lally.
“Drop it, Lally,” Mark ordered again.
Lally laughed and started backing toward the cliff edge, dragging Jess with him. Suddenly she saw his only possible way out: a leap into the Potomac’s dark waters. Would he take her with him? Her legs turned to jelly at the thought.
Lucy and Jaden had already been surrounded by agents. They were on the ground, looking at her with horror. Mark was advancing steadily, keeping pace with Lally’s progress, but not getting any closer. His gun was aimed at Lally’s head. But Jess knew him. With Lally’s gun at her temple, he wouldn’t take the chance unless he had absolutely no other option.
She risked a quick glance to the side. Out of her peripheral vision she saw that the cliff edge was maybe a yard away. He was going over the edge. Jess’s heart pounded. Her breathing came fast and shallow. Her pulse rate shot sky high.
“Let her go, Lally.” Mark’s voice had gone soft and dangerous.
Suddenly Lally shoved her violently away from him. Tumbling to the ground, Jess caught just a blur of movement behind her. She thought he was going over the edge in a low, fast dive—and then the night shattered around her as gunfire exploded all over the place.
Jess screamed and flattened herself on the grass.
Seconds later Mark dropped to his knees beside her. Scrambling up, she cast herself against him.
“Jesus Christ, you took ten years off my life tonight. Are you all right?” He held her away from him, looking her over with fear shining from his eyes.
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