by MJ Rodgers
Wait a minute. Zane would have shot him?
A.J. frowned. How did Zane know he would have a gun in his right hand?
Zane hugged her to him as he kissed her hair. For the first time in a very long time she caught a whiff of his distinctive sandalwood and sage scent. And with it drifted an elusive memory.
She had smelled that special scent once before when these strong arms had cradled her against his chest.
No, not just cradled her. What was it? The impressions were coming back, so vague, so blurred. She struggled to isolate and clarify them.
It was black everywhere. Her side and arm hurt terribly with every bounce. She couldn’t open her eyes. She could smell sandalwood and sage mixed with the scents of pine and spruce and cedar. There was a distant thunder, rhythmic, relentless. Just like there was now.
The distant thunder of his heartbeat.
A.J. jolted out of Zane’s arms, leaned back. She looked into his face, directly into his eyes.
“You were there that night in the forest two and a half months ago. That’s how you knew about my wounds. That’s why you got caught up in that fantasy. You had been part of the real thing. Only when it was really happening, you had a gun in your hand. And when I passed out on that forest floor, you were the one who shot Wessel!”
Zane returned her straight look with one of his own. There was no denial on his lips or in his eyes. How could he sit there so unmoved, so unresponsive? Anger rose in her.
“Damn it, Zane, I could strangle you for this. Why did you make it seem like I had killed Wessel? Why did you just disappear? Why didn’t you come forward and tell them you were the one who got him?”
“Because as long as everyone thought you shot him, there would be no questions.”
His face was calm. His voice, too. Yet there was something in the sound of those words, something in his eyes, that completely extinguished the anger in A.J. She leaned forward.
“But there would have been questions if they knew it was you?”
“A lot of questions.”
“Why, Zane? What was Wessel to you?”
CLARISE CLOSELY EXAMINED the small, dark smudge on the white uniform Tripp was holding up to her.
“We only noticed the smudge because an attendant serving breakfast spilled some egg on her uniform and needed a replacement,” Tripp explained.
Clarise examined the smudge with growing alarm as she looked at the locker it was still hanging in. “This must be the uniform the woman wore who accompanied Cranston out of the complex.”
“She can’t be one of our attendants then,” Tripp said. “If she was one of our attendants, she would have worn her own uniform out of the complex.
“I realize that. It must be a female guest. Which means they broke into this locker and both took a uniform to wear.”
“I don’t understand how they could break in,” Tripp said. “There’s no sign of tampering. The only way to open it is with a magnetic card key. Other than you and Linbow, I’m the only person with a key to this locker.”
“Whoever they are, they’re good. Too damn good. Come on, Tripp. It’s time to put that project to hack into the FBI fingerprint file on priority status. We have to find out who Cranston really is, and fast.”
Chapter Thirteen
For one very long moment, Zane said nothing in response to A.J.’s question. She sat poised, uncertain, wondering if he would ever tell her. When he finally spoke, it was in that quiet, matter-of-fact way a person used when he had something unspeakable to say.
“Wessel was the man who killed my wife.”
The unconditional silence that followed Zane’s words shivered through A.J. She remembered that day more than a year before when her growing curiosity about her rising competitor had compelled her to order a background check on him.
“On the personal side, there was a wife,“ Piper had said. “They were only married a few months when she died in some street accident. The details are all here in the file when you want to take the time to peruse it.”
A.J. had taken the time. She looked at Zane’s face now, trying to see past that rock-hard countenance she knew could hide the man inside so well.
“The police file said your wife’s death was an accident. She was buried beneath a scaffolding that came loose.”
“It didn’t come loose. It was deliberately dropped.”
“How did you find out?”
“I was away on assignment with my recon unit when the…call came.”
Neither his voice nor expression changed. Only A.J.’s growing sensitivity to Zane allowed her to feel the impossible pain that must have come with that call. She took his hand within both of hers as he went on.
“I flew home, talked to the construction workers at the site of the accident. One of them remembered a guy in overalls approaching that scaffolding while everyone else was headed for a lunch break. He thought it strange. When he got back from lunch, his supervisor told him the scaffolding had fallen and crushed two women on the sidewalk beneath it.”
“What did the police say when you told them what the worker said about the guy on the scaffolding?”
“They accused me of being blinded by my grief. Told me to stop trying to blame someone for a tragic accident. That was when I knew that I was going to have to do my own investigation if I wanted to be sure of the truth. I took a month’s leave. I reasoned that if it hadn’t been an accident, the intended target had to be the woman who was killed with my wife.”
“You were sure it wasn’t your wife?”
“If you had ever met her, you would have been sure, too Lynn couldn’t have made an enemy if she tried. A sweeter soul never walked the earth.”
A.J. believed it, too. The truth of it was in his eyes and voice. For a moment she felt a strong pang of jealousy toward that sweet soul.
“I found out the other woman, a Mrs. Susan Stoddard, was apparently in the throes of a dying marriage. Two weeks before her death, she had gotten drunk in some uptown bar and had been asking around if anyone knew of someone who could ‘take care of’ her philandering husband, who was threatening to leave her for another woman.”
“In other words, she was looking for a hit man. And Wessel answered the query?”
“I’m sure he did. Susan Stoddard’s husband was conveniently run down by a hit-and-run driver not three days later. When I spoke to Stoddard’s sister, I found out that the two women were having breakfast together when the news about the husband reached them. The new widow jumped to her feet and started screaming about being drunk and not really wanting the guy to do it.”
“Rather telling admission considering her barroom conversations.”
“Yes, rather telling. I did some more checking. I found out that there was a free-lance hit man who frequented uptown bars and let it be known that if you had the money, he’d do the job. I reasoned that if he had contracted with a drunk Susan Stoddard to kill her husband, and the widow subsequently refused to pay him, either out of denial or fear, he wouldn’t have had any qualms about finishing her off, too.”
“What did the police say this time when you told them about what you had found out?”
“They said they’d look into it and warned me to stay out of the way. They said that if they found me poking around any more, they’d arrest me for interfering with their case.”
“But without your efforts, they wouldn’t have had a case.”
“They still weren’t convinced they did even after they verified what I had told them. When three months went by and they still didn’t have any leads as to who the hit man might have been, or even if there had been a hit man, they shelved the whole matter. That’s when I decided to find the killer myself.”
“Which is why you resigned your commission.”
“I figured I needed my own detective agency as cover to start poking around, which the police could lock up a Marine for attempting but couldn’t keep a licensed P.I. from doing.”
“And you hired buddies from t
he service to help you.”
“They were the only ones I could fully trust with what I was trying to do between our regular cases. I picked up Wessel’s trail several times, only to have it end at the morgue with another one of his victims. A couple of my guys posed as disgruntled yuppies in bars and talked it up about doing away with someone in their lives.”
“Hoping that Wessel would contact them and offer to do the job, of course.”
“Yes, but we never got a nibble. It wasn’t until later I found out why. Before Wessel approached a prospective client, he always checked to see if the intended target was legitimate. Ours weren’t, of course. Anyway, finally, two and a half months ago, I heard about this businessman in an uptown bar talking about killing his creep of a brother who had robbed him in some deal.”
“And that brother was Mitchell Klamm.”
“Right. I knew the setup was just the type Wessel would go for. So I staked out the target, Mitchell Klamm, and waited, hoping the hit man showed. I was down the street when Wessel opened up on Klamm. I chased you both. When Wessel dumped his truck and tried to lose you by footing it through the forest, I followed. Unfortunately, I lost you both in that thick underbrush. By the time I found you again, Wessel was standing over you. I killed him.”
A quiet shiver snaked through A.J. at the sound of that last sentence, spoken with such matter-of-fact calm. A lot of other things that had puzzled her began to become clear.
“Then you wrapped strips of my shirt around my wounds to control the bleeding, carried me through the forest to my Jeep and drove it to the emergency room, ringing the bell and leaving me there so everyone would think somehow I had done it.”
That combative smile circled his lips. “You already had a reputation for being tough as nails. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to advance it into the superwoman category.”
“Why didn’t you just come forward? It was self-defense.”
“It wasn’t self-defense. His gun wasn’t pointed at me.”
“It was pointed at me. You killed him to save me. The police would understand that.”
“Would they? I had been tracking the man who had murdered my wife, something the police had specifically warned me not to do. They could have said that I didn’t kill him to save your life. They could have said I did it for revenge. If they wanted to, they could have charged me with Wessel’s murder. And if they learn the truth of that night, they still could.”
She knew he had said that last part purposely. He had given her the details knowing full well that if she were to repeat them, he would be in serious trouble. Even if the police didn’t charge him with murder, they would certainly charge him with a lot of other things.
“Looks like my reputation as superwoman is just going to have to remain intact.”
He smiled, understanding what she was saying. He leaned over to kiss her very warmly and thoroughly, and her heart did a happy little somersault. When he leaned away a moment later, she felt she could smile forever.
“And now that all this extraneous sidetracking is over, we have some very important things to discuss,” he said.
Their lovemaking was extraneous sidetracking? Men were so romantic.
“This last fantasy is definitely different from the previous two. I think it’s imperative that we explore the ramifications of those differences.”
“You’re right, we should,” she agreed reluctantly. “The biggest difference I see is that in those other fantasies I remained Patsy. But in this one I asserted my personality.”
“And in doing so, changed the fantasy from Patsy’s to yours.”
“Yes, that’s when it definitely started to reflect the people and events in my life.”
“Not just the people and events in your life, A.J. Specific people and unpleasant events.”
“Only that stage nuzzling I had to watch between Peter and Patrice never actually happened. Peter was always congenial with Patrice in my presence. I never knew how they felt about each other until just before our wedding.”
“How did you find out?”
“Three weeks before the ceremony, Peter told me he had to go away on business. That wasn’t unusual. He traveled a lot, although this trip seemed to come up suddenly. The next day I received a letter from him.”
“Saying he had gone away with Patrice?”
“Yes. He said he and Patrice were in love. Most of the letter was an apology to me, telling me how sorry he was that he had to hurt me. He told me they were going away together and would not be back. They both figured it would be less painful for me and Adam if we never saw them again. He wished me happiness. That was the last I ever heard from Peter.”
“Does it still hurt, A.J.?”
His voice was gentle, yet strong. She looked into his eyes, their deep admiring glow trained on her, just as they had been from that first moment in the courtroom.
“Not anymore,” she said, smiling because she knew Zane had done that for her.
He kissed her smile. The way his eyes caressed her face made her heart feel very soft and spongy and full.
“A.J., has it occurred to you that the unpleasantness in your fantasy was tied to Peter’s presence, the man to whom you were emotionally attached, just as the unpleasantness in Patsy’s fantasy was also tied to the presence of the man to whom she was emotionally attached?”
“What are you getting at, Zane?”
“Bear with me a moment. How did you feel when you were in Patsy’s fantasies before Bruce Harper made his appearance?”
“Good. Very good.”
“Every time?”
“Yes.”
“And the moment Harper arrived? How did you feel then?”
“Irritated. Angry.”
“Despite the fact that the man should have meant nothing to you.”
“Right.”
“Now tell me about this last time. Did you feel anything different when you fought being taken over by those negative emotions?”
“I was still irritated and angry, but after telling Bruce to get lost, I felt a lot more like myself and a lot less like Patsy.”
“And as soon as you felt more like yourself, Bruce left and Peter Danner appeared, and the anger intensified when you saw him with Patrice.”
“Yes, that’s right. It got much worse. I could have killed him.”
“I know. I felt that anger, just as though it was radiating out of you. I’ve felt your emotions in each one of these fantasies, A.J. Or at least I thought they were your emotions.”
“Well, until this last time, they were really Patsy’s emotions we were both feeling.”
“Were they? I don’t think so. I think we’ve had this all wrong from the beginning.”
“Wrong? Wrong how? You’re not going to start saying these aren’t Patsy’s disks again and that I’ve created everything that’s happened with my imagination.”
“No, I believe these are Patsy’s disks. That shipboard fantasy was straight out of the notes to her lawyer. You couldn’t have imagined it, although I do think that part about the glass getting stuck in your wound happened in the fantasy because you hurt your arm in that climb last night.”
“The slight ache in my arm altered the fantasy?”
“Or the fantasy blew that slight ache all out of proportion. I think what I’ve been feeling—what we’ve both been feeling—are emotions that have been imprinted on these disks intentionally to give the person going through them negative experiences that never really happened.”
“But we both read Patsy’s discussion with her attorney. Bruce Harper was emotionally cruel to her.”
“Was he? Those discussions took place after Patsy’s visit to Fabulous Fantasies, A.J.”
“But the episodes in the boutique, on the ship—”
“Could have been incidents of minor importance, blown all out of proportion through these fantasies in order to convince Patsy to dump her husband. Think about your anger at Peter. You said yourself that you had never felt it before, righ
t?”
“That’s true.”
“His actions had hurt you, but they had never angered you. Until this fantasy. Why in this fantasy?”
“So you’re saying these fantasies have presented Patsy’s husband and my fiancé in the worst kind of light and generated incredible anger toward them. Could Harper and Temark have been right all along? Could their wives’ experiences at Fabulous Fantasies have turned Patsy and Fran against them?”
“I’m beginning to think so.”
“But how? How could something like this be made to happen?”
“Clarise talked about tapping into the motor cortex of the brain and stimulating a specific section to elicit a selective feeling of leg movement for Woodson. What if they’ve found a way to tap into the hypothalamus, the center of pain and pleasure, and stimulate a specific section of it to elicit predetermined emotions?”
“Even if they could do that, why would they? There is no connection between Linbow or Clarise or any of the people at Fabulous Fantasies with the Harpers or Temarks.”
“There wasn’t any connection between anyone at the park and Karlie Kasen, either,” Zane said.
“Karlie Kasen?” A.J. repeated. “Who’s Karlie Kasen?”
“The ex-fiancée of my client, Norman Powers.”
She understood he was ready to tell her about his client now because he trusted her. Fully. Because they were a real team. Because the intimacy between them was more than physical.
That knowledge reached A.J. like a lovely, unexpected gift.
“So your client is someone named Norman Powers, and he’s the reason you’re involved in this case,” she said, telling herself to remain professional and to stop letting this confidence make her feel so damned pleased.
“Yes. Norman Powers’s fiancée, Karlie, also attended theopening day of Fabulous Fantasies eighteen monthsago. And just like Fran and Patsy, after that weekend was over, Karlie returned home claiming she no longer loved the man in her life. The only difference was that in Karlie’s case, she and Norman weren’t yet married.”
