by Sandra Brown
The station returned to its broadcast of a game show, morons jumping up and down and squealing over a shiny new vacuum cleaner. Tori muted the sound and tossed the remote into Amber’s surprised hands.
“Take over for me with Mrs. Perkins. She’s got fifteen more minutes of cardio. Call Pam and tell her to take my one o’clock with Clive Donovan and to cover my spin class at three. Don’t call me unless there’s an emergency, and for godsake don’t forget to set the alarm and lock the door when you close up tonight.”
“Where are you going?”
Tori didn’t bother answering as she brushed past Amber. She didn’t owe her employee or her clients an explanation. Her best friend had been reported kidnapped. Kidnapped, for crissake. And Emily, too.
She had to do something, and she would start by going home and getting herself ready for whatever the rest of the day might bring, although she dreaded to think what that might be.
She was in her office for no longer than it took to grab her cell phone and her handbag, then she left by the employee door at the back of the health club and got into her Corvette. She gunned it to life and roared from the parking lot.
The car was as responsive to Tori’s high-speed driving as Tori had been to the clumsy sexual forays of the husband who’d bought the car for her. He’d been a type-A in the boardrooms of his various businesses, but confidence deserted him in the bedroom. Tori had set her mind to making the sweet, shy man feel like King Kong between the sheets. She’d succeeded. To the point that he’d suffered a stroke and died before their first wedding anniversary.
That had been the only one of her three marriages to end involuntarily. She’d been sad for weeks following his death because she’d actually been fond of Mr. Shirah. That’s why she’d kept his name when she had two others to choose from in addition to her maiden name. Besides, she liked the sound of it. Tori Shirah. It had an exotic ring to it that suited her style and flamboyant personality.
Her other reason for remembering him fondly was that his legacy to her had financed the construction of her sleek and sexy fitness center, the first and only of its kind anywhere near Tambour.
As she drove, she punched in Honor’s cell phone number. It went straight to voice mail. Cursing a red light she sped through, she scrolled her contact list to see if she had a number for Stan Gillette. She did. She called it. Same thing. Straight to voice mail.
She whipped around a school bus that was hauling kids to day camp, and a block later reached the driveway of her condo. She brought the Vette to a screeching halt and within seconds was inside her house. She dropped her purse onto the floor of her entryway, stepped over it, and went down the hallway, pulling her workout top over her head as she went.
She flung the top onto her bed as a voice behind her said, “Are they as firm as they used to be?”
“What the—” She spun around. Leering at her from behind her bedroom door was Doral Hawkins. “What the hell? You scared the shit out of me, Doral!”
“That was the plan.”
“You always were an asshole.” Indifferent to her bare chest, she placed her hands on her hips. “What are you doing here?”
“I called your club. The bimbo who answered the phone told me you’d just left. I was only a coupla blocks away.”
“You couldn’t have waited for me outside like a normal person?”
“I could have, but the scenery is better in here.”
She rolled her eyes. “Again… what are you doing here? You know about Fred, right?”
“I found his body.”
“Oh. That’s awful.”
“Tell me.”
“Sorry.”
“Thanks.”
She was becoming so exasperated, she wanted to shake him. “Maybe I’m dense, Doral, but I still don’t get why you’re here when your brother’s just been murdered. Seems to me like you’d have other things to do besides ogling my tits.”
“I have some questions to put to Honor.”
“Honor?”
“Honor?” he repeated, mimicking her. Dropping the amicable pose, he advanced on her, took her face between his hands, and mashed her features together until they were distorted. “Unless you want that Botoxed face of yours squashed like a ripe persimmon, you’d better tell me now where Honor’s at.”
Tori didn’t frighten easily, but she wasn’t a fool either.
She was well acquainted with Doral Hawkins’s reputation. Since losing his charter fishing boat to Katrina, he had no visible means of support, beyond the small stipend the city paid him. Yet he lived very well. She had nothing on which to base her suspicion that Doral was participating in something illegal, but she wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that he was.
He and Fred had been perpetual troublemakers in grade and middle school, bullying fellow students and faculty alike. By high school they were committing petty crimes: stealing hubcaps, knocking out the stadium lights with their deer rifles, terrorizing kids who didn’t kowtow. Had it not been for Stan Gillette reining them in, they’d probably have gone off the deep end. Some said his influence had saved them from certain incarceration.
To their credit, they had been very good to Honor after Eddie was killed. But rumors had circulated that, despite Stan’s intervention and influence, the pair hadn’t been altogether converted to the straight and narrow, and that Fred’s becoming a police officer had only served to legalize their bullying.
Tori hadn’t had an occasion to test the gossip about their propensity for meanness because she rarely crossed paths with them. When they were in school, she had gone out with Doral a few times. He had grown mean and nasty when she’d stopped him at second base and wouldn’t let him go any further. He’d called her a cunt, and she’d fired back that even cunts had standards. He had disliked her ever since.
Now he looked mean and dangerous, and he was hurting her. She’d had enough experience with men to know that showing fear was as good as inviting more abuse. She’d been down that rocky road with husband number one. She’d be damned if she’d go down it again. Even with a cretinous thug like Doral, the best defense was an offense.
She shoved her knee into his crotch.
He yelped, dropped his hands from her face to cup his genitals, and hopped backward out of harm’s way.
“Don’t touch me again, Doral.” She grabbed the workout top she’d discarded moments before and pulled it on over her head. “You’re ugly, and you’re stupid, and what makes you think I know where Honor is?”
“I’m not fucking around, Tori.” He pulled a handgun from a holster at the small of his back.
“Oh no, a gun!” she said in a high falsetto. “Is this the point where I’m supposed to faint? Plead for mercy? Put that thing away before you hurt somebody, namely me.”
“I want to know where Honor is.”
“Well join the freakin’ club!” she shouted. “Everybody wants to know where she is. It appears she’s been taken hostage by a killer.” She could coax tears from her eyes whenever it was convenient to do so, but the ones that flowed now were for real. “I heard about it on TV and came straight here from the club.”
“What for?”
“To get ready in case—”
“In case of what?”
“In case of anything.”
“You expect to hear from her.” He made it sound like an accusation.
“No. I hope I do, but from what they say about this Coburn guy, I fear the worst.”
“Like he’ll do away with her and Emily.”
“Jeez, you’re a genius.”
He didn’t address the insult. “Has she talked to you recently about Eddie?”
“Of course. She talks about him all the time.”
“Yeah, but I mean, has she told you something about Eddie? Something important. Did she share a secret about him?”
She tilted her head to one side and peered into his eyes. “Are you still smoking dope?”
He lurched toward her threateningly. “Cu
t the crap, Tori. Has she?”
“No!” she exclaimed, giving his chest a shove. “What are you talking about? I don’t know anything about a secret. What kind of secret?”
He studied her for a moment, as though trying to spot signs of deception, then muttered, “Never mind.”
“No, not never mind. Why’d you come here? What are you after? The same guy who shot your brother took Honor and Emily. Why aren’t you out looking for them?”
“I’m not sure he took them.”
That stunned her. “What do you mean?”
He bent closer still. “You and Honor are like this.” He held his hand within an inch of her nose and crossed his middle finger over his index. “If she knew this guy—”
“You mean Coburn?”
“Yes, Coburn. Lee Coburn. Did she know him?”
“Where would Honor have met a freight dock worker turned mass murderer?”
He stared at her for a moment longer, then spun away and left the room, sliding the pistol back into the holster at the small of his back as he lumbered down the hall.
“Hold on.” Tori grabbed his elbow and brought him around to face her. “What are you getting at? That the kidnapping is some kind of hoax?”
“I’m not getting at anything.” He yanked his arm free of her grip and wrapped his fingers around her arm instead. “But I’m gonna be on you like white on rice. If you hear from your pal Honor, you’d do well to let me know.”
She hiked her chin up in defiance of the implied threat. “Or what?”
“Or I’ll hurt you, Tori, and I bullshit you not. You may be rich now, but you got that way by selling your pussy to the highest bidder. One dead tramp would be no great loss to the world.”
Chapter 19
Son of a bitch!”
Coburn hissed the profanity under his breath out of deference to the kid. As for her mother, who’d already frowned at him for a slipped bullshit earlier, she was now staring at him as though a horn had grown from the center of his forehead.
He waggled the cell phone. “I guess you heard that.”
“That Agent Lee Coburn has been dead for over a year? Yes, I heard that.”
“Obviously she hasn’t got her facts straight.”
“Or I bought into your lies and now I’m—”
“Look,” he said, angrily cutting her off. “I didn’t ask for you either, okay? You want to go back to your house, take your chances with Doral Hawkins and anybody else who’s in The Bookkeeper’s pocket? Fine. Go. I’ll hold the door open for you.”
It wasn’t fine, of course, and he wouldn’t let her go even if she chose to. On her own, she wouldn’t live long. He’d been described as cold and heartless, and the adjectives fit. But even he would be uncomfortable sending a woman and four-year-old to certain death. Besides, she would be useful, now and later, toward building a case against The Bookkeeper. She probably knew a whole lot more than she was aware of. Until he’d wrung every last ounce of information from her, she stayed with him.
On the other hand, she and the kid were going to be a major pain in the ass.
He hadn’t counted on having to take care of anybody but himself until Hamilton could bring him in, and that was going to be dangerous enough, what with every gun-wielding yahoo within a hundred miles believing him to be a killer and kidnapper. He’d more or less resigned himself to not making it out of this intact, if he lived through it at all.
But now he was responsible for Honor and Emily Gillette, and with that responsibility came the commitment to seeing that they survived even if he didn’t.
Essentially taking back his offer to let her go, he said, “Whether you know it or not, you hold the key that will bust open The Bookkeeper’s crime ring.”
“For the umpteenth time—”
“You’ve got it. We just have to figure out what it is and where to find it.”
“Then drive me to the nearest FBI office and escort me in. We’ll all look for it together.”
“I can’t.”
“Because?”
“Because I can’t blow my cover. Not yet. Right now Hawkins and The Bookkeeper think that I’m just the freight dock worker who was lucky enough to get away. An eyewitness to the mass murder. Which is bad. But not nearly as bad as an eyewitness who’s also an undercover federal agent. If they discover that, the target on my back gets bigger.”
“But the FBI would protect you.”
“Like Officer Fred Hawkins of the Tambour P.D. was going to protect you?”
He didn’t have to spell it out. She connected the dots. “The Bookkeeper has local FBI agents on his payroll?”
“I’m not willing to bet my life against it, are you?” He gave her time to answer. She didn’t, which was as good as her saying, No, I’m not. “You wouldn’t be sitting there if you didn’t believe at least some of what I’ve told you.”
“I’m sitting here because I believe that if you’d intended to hurt us, you would have done so as soon as you arrived yesterday. Also, if everything you’ve told me is true, then our lives, mine and Emily’s, are in danger.”
“You’re right so far.”
“But the main reason I came with you has to do with Eddie.”
“What about him?”
“You’ve raised two questions that I want answered. One, was his death really an accident?”
“It was made to look like it, but I don’t think it was.”
“I have to know,” she said with feeling. “If he died of an accident, that’s one thing. Tragic, but acceptable. Fate. God’s will. Whatever. But if someone caused the crash that killed him, I want them punished for it.”
“Fair enough. What’s the second question?”
“Was Eddie a bad cop or a good cop? I know the answer to that one. I want you convinced of it, too.”
“I don’t care one way or the other,” he said, meaning it. “He’s dead. All I care about is identifying The Bookkeeper and putting him out of business. The rest of it, including your dead husband’s reputation, makes no difference to me.”
“Well, it makes a huge difference to me. And it will to Stan.” She gestured to the cell phone still in his hand. “I should call him, tell him we’re okay.”
He shook his head and pocketed the phone.
“He’ll be beside himself when we turn up missing.”
“I’m sure he will be.”
“He’ll fear the worst.”
“That you’re at the mercy of a killer.”
“He won’t know otherwise. So, please—”
“No.”
“That’s cruel.”
“So’s life. You can’t call him. I don’t trust him.”
“You mistrust on principle.”
“Now you’re catching on.”
“But you trust me.”
He looked at her askance. “What gave you that idea?”
“To have dragged me along with you, you must trust me to some extent.”
“Not as far as I can throw you. Probably even less than you trust me. But, like it or not, we’re dependent on each other.”
“How is that?”
“You need my protection to survive. I need you in order to get what I came after.”
“I’ve told you repeatedly—”
“I know what you’ve told me, but—”
“Mommy?”
The kid’s voice interrupted him. Honor dragged her vexed gaze off him and looked back at her daughter. “What, sweetheart?”
“Are you mad?”
Honor reached over the car seat and patted Emily’s knee. “No, I’m not mad.”
“Is Coburn mad?”
Hearing the kid say his name caused his gut to clench. He’d never heard his name spoken in a child’s voice. It sounded different.
Honor pasted on a smile and lied through her teeth. “No, he’s not mad either.”
“He looks mad.”
“He’s not. He’s just… just…”
He did his earnest best not to l
ook angry. “I’m not mad.”
The kid didn’t buy it. Not entirely, but she switched subjects. “I have to tinkle.”
Honor looked at Coburn, a silent question in her expression. He shrugged. “If she’s gotta go, she’s gotta go.”
“Can we drive to a gas station? I could take her—”
“Un-huh. She can go in the bushes.”
Honor debated it for about fifteen seconds, then was prompted with a plaintive “Mom-mee.” She opened the car door and got out. As she helped Emily from the backseat, she told her that they were going to have an adventure and led her by the hand to the rear of the car.
Coburn heard nothing more except a few conspiratorial whispers. Emily giggled once. He tried to block out the practical implications of a female having to pee in the great outdoors and instead to concentrate on more pressing problems. Like deciding what to do next. As Honor had said, they couldn’t keep driving around in a stolen car.
So where could they go? Not to his place. It was sure to be staked out. He didn’t trust Stan Gillette to safeguard them. He was in thick with the Hawkins brothers, so chances were good he was crooked. Honor was certain of his love and loyalty to her and Emily, but Coburn wasn’t ready to accept that, not without seeing evidence of it for himself. Gillette could also be a law-abiding former Marine who would feel honor-bound to notify the authorities immediately. In which case he still had to be rejected.
The deed done, Emily opened the passenger-side door and grinned across at him. “I did it!”
“Congratulations.”
“Can I ride in front?” she asked.
“No, you cannot.” Honor guided her into the backseat.
“But I don’t have my car seat.”
“No, you don’t.” Honor shot a condemning glance at Coburn for abandoning the kid seat along with her car. “We’ll break the rule just this once,” she told Emily as she helped her to buckle up.
When Honor was once again in the passenger seat, Coburn asked, “Do you know of someplace we can go?”
“You mean to hide?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. We’ve gotta stay out of sight until I can get through to Hamilton.”
