She pretended to sip, then tipped the glass under her arm, letting enough of the liquid drip to the floor.
Thanks to Max, she knew what was in her glass. The mixture that Smyth could find in any bar and that, with a simple aspirin added, would render her incapable of fighting him but keep her conscious enough to remember every single thing he did to her.
Just as Julie remembered. And every one of his other victims did.
Because David Smyth Jr. was not only a rapist, he was one who needed to know that his women remembered him and knew that they couldn’t beat him.
He wasn’t going to touch her until he thought she’d had enough of the drink to serve his purpose.
Julie would be turning on the lights again any second.
“Drink,” he said. He was close now. Too close. He’d see her if she didn’t sip.
Desperate, she pulled down the top of her dress. Bending forward, she emptied the glass. And lifted herself up, exposing herself to the fiend’s gluttonous gaze.
“All done,” she said, slurring her words just enough to give him pause. She dropped her glass. It didn’t spill a drop.
“Come to Papa...” Junior’s voice sounded victorious, and Chantel braced herself for his touch.
Come on, Julie. Turn on the lights.
His hand planted itself on her exposed breast. Chantel moved lethargically. Fell down to the floor and rolled over onto her stomach. She couldn’t let him that close again. No one touched her breasts without her permission.
Ever.
She couldn’t let him find her gun.
Her mind knew. Her body felt a little...weak. He’d touched her. Intimately. Roughly. As her stepfather had. She knew the touch of a man intent on rape.
And she was afraid of what she’d done.
* * *
LEAVING GUESTS WITH their mouths open, Colin pushed past them and into the main room, looking for Julie, and Chantel and Leslie. This had to stop.
Money for the library be damned.
Lights out with Smyths in the house was not acceptable. He wouldn’t put it past Smyth Jr. to have turned them off himself.
He couldn’t find his sister. Or Chantel.
He knew the worst had happened.
He was going to kill him.
Shoving a couple of his clients and their wives out of the way, he headed for the main room, the podium where Leslie had announced the unexpected murder. She had to be close by.
No one was there.
Just as he was turning to leave, he heard her voice—or thought it was her voice.
She sounded drunk. Her freneticism fueled his, and he stormed forward into the room off from the dining area—the room where the caterers had set up for the evening.
“Oh, God, James, I’ve made a horrible mistake. I let Julie go out there and now she hasn’t come back. The lights aren’t back on and...”
“Leslie.” The voice was harsh.
“It’s him, James. Chantel...she set a trap...for Julie’s sake...but it’s him. For me, too.”
Colin was close enough to see them now. Leslie, like a rag doll, being held up by the upper arms in her husband’s hands.
“What do you mean, for you, too? Who are we talking about? Leslie, talk to me.”
Morrison shook her so hard Colin felt his own teeth rattle.
He thought of the rumors he’d heard. About James hurting his wife.
“David Smyth Jr.,” Leslie said. “He’s the one who hurt me. He raped me, James. He was a kid. Told me he needed a ride...my dad knew his dad. I believed him. And he raped me...”
Colin froze. He knew Smyth had to be stopped. It wasn’t just Julie; it wasn’t a one-time thing that got out of control because of the alcohol like everyone had said.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you, but I couldn’t, don’t you see? What it would have done to you to not be able to do anything about it. And then he...poor Julie. It’s my fault, James. All my fault. I was afraid to say anything, and then he hurt Julie, too.”
Leslie was slumping down to the floor, in spite of James’s attempt to hold her up. Colin’s gut wrenched for the woman, for his friend, but he couldn’t help them. Not then.
“Where is he?” he demanded, not recognizing the harsh tone of his voice. He had to get whatever he could out of Leslie before she became completely hysterical. Or passed out.
She must have been drinking. The pressure, knowing Julie and Smyth were going to be together that night, had gotten to her...
“She was supposed to scream,” Leslie said. Which made no sense.
“Where’s Julie?” Colin was upon them now, his hand at Leslie’s back as she crumpled against her husband, who’d slid down to the floor with her.
“It’s not Julie. It’s Chantel.”
“I’m right here, Colin.” Julie’s voice sounded behind him. “I tried to get the breaker back on, but it’s stuck...”
“Where’s Chantel?” he barked like a madman.
“Upstairs. I’ll take you.” Julie grabbed his hand, glancing back at Leslie with James. “Get the lights,” she said just as a soul-destroying, nerve-breaking scream rent the air. Coming from upstairs.
Julie said something. It sounded like, “Oh, good.” And then, “Hurry.”
Colin ran.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHANTEL HADN’T WANTED to scream so soon. But she wasn’t going to be raped for the job. Why the lights didn’t come back on, she didn’t know. The chances of the camera she’d planted along the floorboards getting enough footage in the dark were slim.
But she couldn’t let it go this far.
Smyth had his hands on her. Running them along her sides. Groping her.
She moved away, fought him, and he smacked her down to the floor. She hit her head. But she kept her legs squeezed shut against her gun. She didn’t have enough evidence to end this yet. Not until someone saw them.
He’d covered her mouth when she’d screamed and now was talking. Dirty talk, like when she was fourteen. Her mind started to freeze him out. Freeze them out. To shut down. She had to hold it together. Hone in on her goal. He thought the scream was all part of the night’s acting, that Leslie was calling another meeting downstairs. He thought that gave him time.
It excited him—all the murder-mystery tension. He was telling her what he was going to do to her.
Her video chip might not be getting picture, but it would record sound.
She asked him, in a perfectly calm tone, if he knew how to do the things he was saying he was going to do. Told him he was nothing more than a daddy’s boy who wished he were a man. She laughed at him.
The effort sent a sharp pain through her head.
Nearly slobbering with his disgusting passion, he told her about another night, another woman, as he continued to squeeze her butt. He told her she’d know soon enough that she didn’t get to choose whether or not she allowed him to do what he said he was going to do. He was going to show her.
He gave her details. She remembered a desperate spin around, a fourteen-year-old knee that fate had placed in just the right spot for her...
Sound was good.
Like the sound coming from outside the room—footsteps storming up the stairs, voices in the hall asking what was going on.
More footsteps.
And just after the door burst open, the lights came back on.
“Get up, you bastard. I’m going to kill your sorry ass.” Colin burst into the room, reaching for Junior.
Telling the video he was going to be a murderer.
Not Colin. He was the good guy.
Still thinking about that, Chantel realized that David Smyth Jr. was reaching for his ankle. Recognized the holster beneath his raised pant leg. He had a gun
! She’d miscalculated.
“Police! Freeze!” she said, all Harris as she sprang up, dizzy but capable, grabbing her gun and running straight into Colin, knocking him back just as she got a shot off.
Junior’s gun fell to the floor.
And so did Chantel.
* * *
“YOU WERE AMAZING.”
Colin heard his sister gushing. Didn’t disagree with her.
But he couldn’t look at the woman she was talking to, either.
Police! Freeze! As if in a bad movie, the moment kept replaying itself in his mind. Chantel was a cop?
A cop!
One who’d shoved him aside like he was of no consequence and then shot at another human being.
A cop. Who worked for Commissioner Reynolds.
A cop. And a liar.
She’d betrayed him—worked him—knowing that he was a man who didn’t trust easily.
“I can’t believe you’re really a cop...” Julie had said the words half a dozen times at least. In a far different echo than Colin’s thoughts were repeating them. “Even with a head injury, you pulled your gun—I can’t believe you had a gun strapped on beneath that dress you were wearing—and shot his hand before he could pull the trigger. Colin would have been dead...”
Julie’s voice broke again. She’d been crying on and off for the past hour. Reliving the night, and another night, as well. Ridding herself of years’ worth of pent-up anguish, Colin figured.
“I just did my job.” Chantel’s words were slightly slurred. And not at all cultured. She’d been given something to help with her headache. They’d taken her straight in for tests the second the ambulance had arrived and already had the results back. There were no brain bleeds. The swelling was only surface. Other than a mammoth headache, she was going to be fine.
“I’m sorry I had to lie to you. To both of you. I had to do my job.”
He got the message, whether Julie did or not.
She hadn’t been in love with him; he’d been part of the job.
Even as he had the thought, Colin recognized that it wasn’t completely true. But he clung to it, anyway. Because he could.
Because it was easier.
She’s a cop!
Chantel...Harris, he now knew, was in a hospital bed. Just for the night. Under direct order from Commissioner Reynolds. Her boss.
She was being held for observation.
He still couldn’t believe she’d planned the whole thing. The woman who’d lain so sweetly in his bed over the past weeks had purposely put herself alone in a room with Julie’s rapist.
To avenge his sister and all women like her. Because it was her job to do so. She was a cop.
Her intelligence had missed the fact that Leslie Morrison had been one of Smyth’s victims, though. And apparently the fact that Junior wore a loaded ankle holster.
And then there’d been the breaker glitch. Old breakers had a tendency to stick or snap. Thankfully, the one at the old Estrada mansion had merely stuck. As soon as James had reached the breaker box, he’d managed to get the lights back on in the building.
“I understand why you lied,” Julie said, holding Chantel’s hand from the side of her bed where she’d been sitting for the past fifteen minutes. “You had a job to do. Besides, you were just there to help Leslie. What you did for me...you didn’t have to. You did that because you cared. How could I possibly be upset about that?”
His sister didn’t get it. Chantel had played them both. Used them both. In order to help them.
Because it was her job. Didn’t have to mean she’d cared.
She’d gone to bed with him.
For the job?
Women did it all the time.
She’d shoved him aside like a sack of potatoes and saved his life.
Not that he wasn’t perfectly capable of having saved it himself...
He’d been thinking about asking her to marry him before she finished her book and had to leave.
She wasn’t a writer.
She wasn’t leaving.
She’s a cop!
Colin was content to have Julie there—sitting with...the cop. It kept him from having to step up. Or sit closer. His sister seemed to have taken her life back.
And was certainly taking the night’s events in stride. But then, she’d had a heads-up on most of it.
Except the part where the woman they’d taken into their confidence, their home, had been an undercover cop. Playing a part.
But Julie was better. She’d faced Smyth and survived. She’d had the satisfaction of watching him be put in handcuffs.
He had his sister back, which made all of the confusion and betrayal worth it to Colin. He just couldn’t pretend to have personal feelings for the stranger in the hospital bed.
“How’s Leslie?” Chantel asked, looking over Julie’s shoulder to where he was sitting against the wall. “Did I hear that James called?”
“He did. The doctor’s been to see her, and she’s sedated. But James seemed to think that she was going to be fine. Better than fine. He thinks that tonight was a turning point for her.”
Chantel nodded.
“I feel horrible thinking that he was the one who was hurting her,” Julie said. Colin had told her about Leslie’s self-sabotaging accidents.
“I thought so, too,” Chantel told her, her eyes drifting shut. Colin was glad to know that she’d been wrong about something.
And that he’d been right all along.
* * *
LIKING THE TOUCH of Julie’s hand against hers, Chantel drifted in and out a little bit. It had been a long night. Much more tense than she’d expected as she’d lain there alone in the darkened room and knew that the entire operation was up to her.
And that no one had her back.
She’d been in danger before. Risked her life before. She’d witnessed death and destruction, blood and horrible tragedy. She’d pulled mangled bodies out of smashed cars.
But lying there, knowing that if something happened to her, Colin would never forgive himself—because she was there to help his sister and because he seemed to blame himself for everything that happened to anyone he cared about—she’d had a moment when she’d wanted to stop the whole thing.
He hadn’t looked at her since she’d declared herself just before shooting the gun out of Junior’s hand.
She’d known she was going to lose him.
She just hadn’t realized how badly it was going to hurt. How could you hurt over something you’d never had to begin with?
Colin had been falling in love with Johnson. Not Harris.
Her door opened. Probably someone else coming in to draw blood or look in her eyes, check the machine holding her IV drip or...
She looked up to tell whoever it was that she was fine, that she didn’t need anything and would probably get more rest at home if they’d just let her out of there....
“I told Wayne not to call you,” she said, looking at the ashen face of her best friend in the world.
“I knew better,” a voice said from behind Max.
Wayne.
“After all we went through.” Meri’s voice came next, softly, as she followed her husband and Wayne through the door. “We’re a team. Family,” she said. “Of course he’d call us.”
Aware of Julie’s fingers leaving hers, Chantel sat forward to return Meri’s hug and Max’s. Wayne gave her a soft punch on the shoulder.
“If I’d known what you were planning to do, I’d never have helped you,” Max said, frowning down at her.
“Yes, you would have,” she told him, all trace of Johnson’s highfalutin tone gone now. “And as you can see, I’m perfectly fine.”
She loved that they were there. But she wanted them gon
e. Colin was standing now, and she didn’t want him to leave.
Meri turned as Chantel looked in Colin’s direction. “Oh!” she said, as though just noticing him. Julie had already left Chantel’s side by the time Meri had made it into the room.
“Colin, Julie, this is Max, Meri and, in case you didn’t figure it out, my partner on this assignment, Detective Wayne Stanton. Everyone, meet Colin and Julie Fairbanks.”
The guys shook hands. Politeness all around. Meri took Julie’s hand in between both of hers. “I heard you helped Chantel tonight...”
Meri wouldn’t have been told about Julie’s rape. That was all yet to come. What was going to be done about Smyth’s past crimes.
“Max and Meri are my closest friends,” she said, looking directly at Colin. She wanted him to care. To look at her real life and have it matter to him.
He nodded politely, looking toward the door.
“He’s a pediatrician,” she continued and added, “His first wife was my best friend, Jill.”
Julie came forward, took a seat on the end of Chantel’s bed. Claiming ownership? Chantel wanted to think so. But knew she wasn’t thinking all that clearly. “The friend you told me about? Who was murdered?”
She nodded. And hoped Julie wouldn’t blame her for the parts she’d left out.
“And you were there?”
The fact that Julie asked the question told her she didn’t know what to believe. What parts of what Chantel had told her were true. “Of course. Everything I told you about that day was true. I just didn’t tell you I was in uniform. Or that Jill had lunged for the guy with the gun because he was about to shoot her partner.”
Colin visibly pulled back, and she knew she’d lost him. She could have withheld that last detail. But there was going to be no more hiding.
She wasn’t good at it.
And he didn’t deserve it.
“You said you all became family over what happened,” Julie said then, looking at Wayne and Meri and Max, who were all standing on the opposite side of her bed, between her and the door.
Colin remained standing in the corner—clearly ready to go. But he wouldn’t leave without Julie.
Meri smiled and nodded at Julie. “My ex-husband, who was a former Las Vegas detective, was after me. I had to leave Max and our young son to protect them from him.”
Love by Association Page 24
