J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 1: Web of Evil, Hand of Evil, Cruel Intent

by Jance, J. A.

  B. nodded. “Thanks for dropping them off. As soon as I’m done with my sandwich, I’ll check them out. The drives and the computer.”

  “Thank you,” Ali said.

  “And what about Dave Holman?” B. asked. “Did you tell him about the possible connection between his case and our identity thief?”

  “Not yet,” Ali said. “I’ve tried calling him several times. He must be busy. The calls go straight to voice mail.”

  “Keep trying,” B. urged. “The more I think about it, the less I like it.”

  Ali stayed long enough for B. to polish off the sandwich. Once he reached for her computer, she stood to leave. She still hadn’t heard back from Leland Brooks, and she wanted to make sure someone was at the Manzanita Hills house in advance of the deputies with their search warrant.

  “You’re welcome to stay if you want to,” he said.

  Ali shook her head. “I’ve already seen you working on computers,” she said. “It’s about as much fun as watching grass grow.”

  “That’s funny,” B. said. “It’s almost the same thing my ex-wife used to say.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Leaving the village, Ali tried calling both Dave and Leland again. To no avail: Neither of them answered. On the way, she drove up to the Manzanita Hills house, expecting to see a pallet or two of tiles sitting in the driveway. There wasn’t one, and Leland wasn’t there, either.

  Exasperated, Ali called B. Simpson back. “Have you taken a look at either one of the thumb drives?” she asked.

  “Both of them,” he said. “And you’re right. They were both infected, but now that I know how this guy works, it wasn’t hard to disable the worm. I just finished working on Morgan’s. Why?”

  “Someone was supposed to deliver a tile order today,” Ali said. “But there’s no sign of it here, and no sign of Mr. Brooks either. I’m wondering what happened.”

  “Would you like me to check Morgan’s address book and see if I can find a phone number for you? Do you happen to remember the name?”

  “Tile Design,” Ali answered impatiently. “Something like that.”

  “Import Granite and Tile Design?” B. returned a moment later. “On Buckeye Road?”

  “That’s the one,” Ali said. “Can you give me the number?”

  “And down here on the notes, there’s a whole series of invoice numbers,” B. said. “Would you like those as well?”

  Ali noted them. Once she dialed the number, she spent the next several minutes on hold before someone from customer service came on the line.

  “My name is Alison Reynolds,” Ali told the woman. “My contractor is Build It Construction here in Sedona. I was told my order of limestone tile would be delivered today, but it hasn’t shown up.”

  “You were expecting an order today?” the woman asked. “Where again?”

  “In Sedona. At my construction site on Manzanita Hills Road. The contractor is currently unavailable, and I was told I needed to have someone on site to sign the invoice and accept delivery.”

  “I’m so sorry, Ms. Reynolds,” the woman said. “I see the order right here, but there must be some kind of mistake. We don’t make deliveries in Sedona on Fridays. And your tile is in transit, but it isn’t due at our warehouse here in Phoenix until late next week at the earliest.”

  “But I was told it would be here today.”

  “Perhaps it’s an order from another company,” the woman said cheerfully. “It’s possible that the contractor ordered from more than one supplier. You should probably check with him.”

  I would, if I could find him. Ali thought grimly. If he really is out of jail.

  She was still fuming when she pulled into the driveway at Skyview, where she was relieved to see Leland Brooks’s pickup parked right outside the house. That meant he was back here. Maybe he was vacuuming or doing some other noisy chore that made hearing the ringing of his telephone impossible. If nothing else, he might be able to unravel the puzzle of that missing load of limestone tile.

  “Hi,” she called, coming inside. “Leland? Anybody home?”

  There was no answer as she closed the front door and turned to deposit her keys and purse on the burled-wood entryway table. When she looked up from doing that, she was astonished to find herself faced with a complete stranger. A dark-haired man with a grim expression was seated directly across from her on the leather couch. In one hand, he held a gun—an enormous handgun—that was trained on her. Both that hand and the other one, the one resting casually on his knee, were covered by latex surgical gloves. That was definitely a bad sign—a very bad sign. The man was dressed all in green, like one of the doctors on Scrubs, and he wore a pair of surgical booties on his feet.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. “What the hell are you doing in my house? Who let you in? And where’s Leland Brooks?”

  The man’s face twisted into a sardonic grin. “So many questions,” he said, “and from someone who no doubt thought she already had all the answers. First let me see that Glock of yours. I understand you never leave home without it. Take it out from wherever it is you carry it. Take it out very carefully and put it right there on the floor in front of you. Then move back to the door and sit there. No heroics, Ms. Reynolds. One false move, and I promise you, I will pull the trigger.”

  He spoke so calmly, so deliberately, that Ali had no doubt he meant every word. With her heart slamming wildly inside her chest, she did as she’d been told: She carefully removed the Glock from its small-of-back holster and put it on the floor. Then, as directed, she moved back to the door and slid down to the floor in front of it.

  How can this be happening to me? she wondered. Why didn’t I see it coming?

  There had been no warning. None. One moment things had seemed completely normal. She had been performing the perfectly ordinary tasks of stepping into her house and closing the door behind her. The next moment her life was on the line: There was a stranger in her house, and she was staring down the barrel of a deadly weapon.

  “You still haven’t told me who you are,” she said. With her whole body quaking, she struggled to steady her voice. She needed to put up a good front and to sound less threatened than she felt.

  “Why don’t you tell me who I am?” the man returned.

  Just then Ali heard a car pulling up in the driveway. A car door slammed shut. Hearing it, she was terrified that school had let out early for some unknown reason and her son, Chris, was about to walk into a trap. But then a second door slammed as well. She heard the sound of approaching voices, of two men talking. Her captor heard them, too.

  “Whoever it is, get rid of them,” he whispered urgently. “Now! And no tricks, either.”

  When the doorbell clanged right above Ali’s head, the sound was so loud it took her breath away. She knew that she needed to call for help. Someone was right there, on the far side of the door, but if she did call out and sound an alarm, what would happen? She would be dead, and so might the unsuspecting people outside. For a long time, she didn’t move and didn’t speak.

  “I said get rid of them,” the man hissed.

  The bell rang again. “Ali,” Jacky Jackson said. “Your car’s parked right outside. We know you’re in there. Why aren’t you answering the door?”

  “What do you want?” Ali croaked, her voice cracking with a combination of fear and raw emotion. She tried to pull herself together. I can’t let him know how scared I am, she told herself. I can’t.

  “It’s Jacky,” the agent said, as if she couldn’t recognize his voice. “I’ve brought someone along who wants to meet you. You need to meet him, Ali. It’s important. He wants to talk to you about that offer we discussed yesterday. We’ve been looking for you all morning long, traipsing all over hell and gone.”

  The only thing that was important right then was survival. Ali knew that in a fair fight, Jacky Jackson would be no help at all—in fact, he’d be less than no help. But his unexpected and unwelcome presence right outside her door at this e
xact moment did serve one useful purpose. It made Ali mad as hell, and that helped clear her head and made her focus.

  “Go away,” she ordered. “Leave me out of it. I already told you, I’m not interested.”

  “But you don’t understand,” Jacky wheedled. “This is one of the major players in this deal. He flew in last night for the express purpose of seeing you. He wants to be sure you understand what’s at stake here—what kind of an offer you may be turning down.”

  And what I’m keeping you from walking into, Ali thought.

  “You could be here with the pope himself, for all I care,” Ali returned. “I’m not interested. My answer was no yesterday, and it’s still no today. What part of N-O don’t you understand, Jacky? Go away and leave me alone.”

  “If you let us walk away from here, you’re going to live to regret it,” he said.

  Yes, that may be true, Ali thought, but only if I’m alive long enough to care.

  She waited until the car doors slammed again and the engine turned over. Tires crunched in the gravel of the driveway. By sending Jacky and his friend away, Ali knew that she had saved his weaselly little life and that of his friend as well. Now she needed to save her own.

  “Who are you?” she said to the man. “What do you want?”

  “You tell me,” he replied. Obviously, he was enjoying this dangerous game of twenty questions.

  On the trail of a possible identity thief, Ali and B.’s amateur sleuthing had led them to Singleatheart. This man had evidently doubled back on the same trail and had come looking for them in return—looking for Ali. Devoid of her Glock, all she could do was bluff.

  “You’re from Singleatheart,” she said.

  He smiled again—a chilling grimace that filled Ali’s soul with dread. “I’m just not from Singleatheart,” he told her deliberately. “I am Singleatheart. Who helped you find me? Who helped you destroy my files?”

  “Does it matter?” she said. “And what makes you think I had help?”

  “I know you had help,” he returned. “You may be a lot of things, Ms. Reynolds, but you’re no computer genius. I saw what equipment you have lying around here. There’s a Mac down in the basement—one your son evidently uses—but that’s it. Less than basic.”

  “And I suppose you consider yourself some kind of self-styled computer genius?” Ali replied. “Maybe you are, but once we break your encryption code, we’ll have all your secrets.”

  She knew it was dangerous to taunt him, just as it was dangerous to taunt a coiled rattlesnake, but she couldn’t help herself. She needed to do something to unsettle him. Words were the only weapons at hand.

  “So you didn’t only destroy my files,” he snarled at her. “You stole them.”

  Without warning, he sprang from the couch and crossed the room, brandishing the gun like a club. Before she could raise her hands to defend herself, the blow fell. The weapon slammed into the flesh of her cheek with a tooth-jarring intensity that sent her sprawling, bouncing off the door and sliding across the tiled entryway. As stars exploded in her vision, she came to rest against the legs of the burled-wood table. The room spun and swam around her. Blood spilled from the cut on her cheek and slopped into her eye, blurring her vision that much more. She tasted blood in her mouth as well, and the pain was more than she could imagine. But by then he had grabbed the crewneck of her sweatshirt and was hauling her to her feet.

  “Who helped you?” he snarled.

  He was mere inches away. She could feel his hot breath on her face.

  “No one,” she managed. “I didn’t need any help.”

  “That’s a lie,” he said, shaking her as though she were a rag doll. “You just said ‘we.’ Who’s we?”

  With that, he let loose of her shirt and gave her another powerful shove, one that sent her careening across the room. She landed backward onto the couch, hitting the back of it hard enough that her head snapped whiplash fashion. The room spun around her again. When it stopped spinning, he was looming over her once more.

  “Who helped you?” he repeated. “It sure as hell wasn’t that useless little Brit.”

  For the first time since the confrontation had begun, Ali put it together. This guy was here, in her house. He had driven here in Leland’s truck and let himself in with Leland’s keys. For all she knew, Leland Brooks was lying dead in the basement.

  “What did you do to him?” she managed. “Where is he?”

  “Indisposed at the moment, I’m afraid,” the man replied. “He refused to tell me what I wanted to know. Maybe he didn’t say because he didn’t know. But you do know, and you’re going to tell me!”

  “Where is he?” Ali demanded. “Is Leland hurt?”

  It was all she could do to force the words out past her already badly swollen lips. She wondered in passing if her jaw was broken, but the pain was so intense that it was almost as though she were observing someone else’s battered and bloody body and hearing someone else’s labored voice.

  Staring down at her, he said nothing. The fact that he wouldn’t answer her questions was answer enough. In a moment of appalling clarity, Ali knew that whatever horrors had already been visited on poor Leland Brooks would also be coming to B. Simpson as soon as this monster knew who B. was. And when that happened, Ali knew it would be her fault for dragging Leland Brooks and B. Simpson into this nightmare along with her.

  “Tell me what I want to know!” her tormenter ordered. “Tell me now or else.”

  “Or else what?” she spat back at him. “Go to hell!”

  He reached for her then. She thought for a moment he was going to hit her again, but just then a bell sounded, and it was enough to make him hesitate. The ringing seemed to be coming from the far distance, like the bell signaling the end of a round in a boxing match. It took a moment for her to realize that the sound was coming from her cell phone. It was ringing from the spot inside her bra where she sometimes stowed it. The same place Edie Larson carried hers.

  “Don’t answer that,” her attacker ordered in a hoarse whisper. “Don’t even think about touching it.”

  It wasn’t until he was headed back up I-17 that Dave Holman realized he’d never bothered to turn his phone back on when he’d left the Morrisons’ house after the interview with Jenny. As soon as he turned it on, he saw he had six messages. Four were from the office, telling him with increasing urgency that his warrant was ready, and did he want to be on hand when they went to search Ali Reynolds’s house? Two of the voice mails were from Ali herself. After calling in to the office and letting them know he was on his way, he tried calling Ali back. When she didn’t answer, Dave felt a small surge of relief. He knew that she’d been pissed at him this morning when he’d told her about the search warrant, and she probably still was. He’d talk to her later and try to smooth her ruffled feathers. She had offered to show him files purported to be from Bryan Forester’s computer. And even though he had turned her down, he should probably attempt to revisit that decision. In the meantime, he had another problem.

  Dave now suspected that Bryan Forester had at least one accomplice in the plot to murder his wife. Dave was also thinking that one of those accomplices could have been Matthew Morrison. Sure, Bobby Salazar had sworn that Morrison hadn’t been behind the wheel of the car turned back in on Monday, but if Matthew wasn’t involved in the Forester homicide, why had he killed himself? Jenny Morrison had taken the position that her husband’s death was accidental. Dave’s homicide-detective gut told him it was definitely deliberate.

  This wasn’t just idle speculation. Dave sensed there was some kind of connection between Matthew Morrison’s dead computer and Bryan Forester’s overwritten files. Someone had made a concerted effort to obliterate the information on three different computers. That meant the data from one of those held an important clue, a key to everything that had happened. All Dave Holman had to do was find it.

  Neither Ali nor the intruder said a word while the phone continued to ring. It was maddening for A
li to know there was someone on the other end of the line. If she answered, there might be enough time for a desperate scream for help. But she knew better. By the time she flipped the phone open, she would be dead. If help came at all, it would come too late.

  After ringing five times, the phone subsided into silence. The man was still standing over her, holding the gun.

  “Who helped you?” he demanded again. “And where the hell are your real computers?”

  Ali didn’t answer. A trickle of coppery-tasting blood ran across her tonsils. As she fought off her gag reflex, her phone jangled again. This time she knew it was announcing a voice mail—a message she didn’t know if she’d ever have a chance to hear, much less return.

  “Get up,” he ordered.

  Ali didn’t move. She couldn’t. After a moment he grabbed her sweatshirt again. Holding it so tightly against her throat that she could barely breathe, he jerked her to her feet and propelled her across the room and into her bedroom. As she stumbled into the room, she caught a glimpse of poor Sam dodging for cover under the bed. That was also when Ali caught sight of Leland Brooks. Duct tape pinned his arms to his body and bound his legs together. From the knees up, he appeared to be soaking wet, and so was the carpeted floor all around him. Trussed, helpless, and absolutely unmoving, he lay on the floor between the bed and the dresser. As far as Ali could tell, he wasn’t breathing. Was Leland unconscious, or was he already dead?

  She struggled and twisted, trying to escape her attacker’s ironfisted grasp. “What have you done to him?” she demanded. “Is he dead?”

  “Not yet, but he will be soon if you don’t give me what I want.”

  She knew from the way the man said it that he wasn’t making idle threats. She knew instinctively that he was a killer who would kill again. He would murder Ali and Leland Brooks in cold blood without a moment’s hesitation.

  “What do you want?” Her lips were almost swollen shut. She could barely speak.