by Ana Barrons
Dale tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “If she were my wife, I’d kill the bastard with my bare hands.”
Sam frowned. “But she isn’t, is she? Last time I looked you didn’t have a wife.”
Dale knew he’d gone too far, but sometimes the situation with Suzannah pissed him off so much he felt like he was going to explode. “We’ve been friends for too many years now for—”
“You work for me now, Dale. Don’t ever forget that.”
Dale ground his teeth. “You remind me often enough.”
“Because you challenge my authority. If you were anyone else, I would have fired your ass a long time ago.”
“Who else can you trust to take care of things? Ned doesn’t have the stomach for it. He’s only doing this for her. But if push came to shove do you honestly believe he’d go to prison for her?”
“Ah. That’s a tough one. Self-preservation is a powerful instinct. But then, I’ll never let it come to that.”
They were quiet. Dale circled the block, scoping out the cars and the people on foot in the vicinity of Rossi’s house. When he spotted the unmarked car in the alley he knew that what came next would be the most critical operation of his life.
“I wish you hadn’t insisted on coming along,” Dale said, annoyed. “It makes everything more complicated. I can get her out of there without you. For that matter, so can Kowalski and Nielson.”
“Suzannah is my wife. It’s my responsibility to protect her. Yours is to make sure Rossi protects her as well.”
“Why Blair Morrissey, Sam?” Dale asked on impulse. “Was it just the resemblance?”
Sam didn’t answer right away, and Dale had decided he wasn’t going to, when he spoke.
“That was what drew me to her, yes,” Sam said, staring out the window. “Suzannah saves the best part of herself for Joe. He owns her passion. I had it once, in that first year. With Blair, it was almost like I had Suzannah back. It was what made Blair special, you know. She made a man feel like he was the greatest, most inventive lover on earth. Even if his wife preferred another man.”
Dale glanced over but said nothing.
“It’s my own fault, really,” Sam said quietly. “I needed what Blair could give me, and I got careless. She loved to be spontaneous, like Suzannah was in that first year we were together. We did risky things together. Foolish things.” He trailed off, but Dale could see the light in Sam’s eyes as he reminisced about the woman his wife had murdered in cold blood.
“You’ll stay with her?” Dale asked. “After your second term as president?”
“I don’t think you have it in you to comprehend love like this. I will never, ever let her go. If she leaves me, I will follow her.”
“You’re obsessed with her.”
“I suppose I am. But she needs me. At some level, I think she knows that. No one else understands her the way I do.”
Dale pulled the car into an alley a couple of blocks from Rossi’s house and switched off the ignition. “I guess you’re lucky Rossi doesn’t want her.”
Sam turned away. “I guess I am.”
Chapter Forty
When Catherine came to she was in so much pain she wanted to pass out again. She opened her eyes slowly. Except that one eye wouldn’t seem to budge. Must be swollen shut. The room was still dark, but there was a light moving around. She tried to find the source and finally spotted it—a flashlight, in the hand of the man who had beaten her. Fear like none she had ever known stabbed through her gut.
Oh, God. Don’t let him hurt me anymore.
He was pulling books off the shelves, a handful at a time, and shining the light in the space they left in the bookshelf. She saw him reach behind a stack of books and pull out notebooks of some kind, then lay them on the desk, flip through them quickly and dismiss them. Once he shone the light at her, but she quickly shut her eye and pretended she was still unconscious.
She must have disturbed another burglar, and he had beaten her to keep her quiet. But he hadn’t just beaten her—he’d brutalized her. And he had enjoyed it. An icy chill raced up and down her spine. The man across the room was a killer—she knew it in her bones. And she was trapped in here, alone with him.
God help me.
Slowly she became aware of sensations other than pain. There was something covering her mouth. She tried to lift her hand to take it off and discovered that her arms were bound behind her back, tightly. So were her legs. Tears dripped down her cheeks and over her nose, stinging the side of her face that rested on the floor. She prayed the man would find what he was searching for and leave without hurting her any more. He’d disabled her and kept her from screaming. What more could he possibly want with her? If he’d wanted to rape her, he would have done it already, wouldn’t he? She instinctively squeezed her legs together.
That was when the real horror hit her.
She was naked.
* * *
Marcus Hall set the binoculars on the seat beside him and took a sip of Starbucks coffee that had long since gone cold. Catherine Morrissey had let herself into Campbell’s house exactly forty minutes ago and hadn’t come out yet. She obviously had a key to the place, yet she showed up in the middle of the night dressed head to toe in black. And Campbell’s bedroom light had been off since eleven.
He wondered for the hundredth time what this “evidence” was that proved Campbell had been blackmailing Sadler. Hall hadn’t been able to find any kind of link between the two men—other than Catherine and the investigation into her sister’s death. Which had to mean Campbell, and possibly someone else in the West Wing, knew something about Blair Morrissey’s murder. Was Campbell protecting the president? Or was it his former boss and good buddy Sam Mitchell he was protecting—the guy who had married Joe Rossi’s college sweetheart?
He couldn’t remember where he had heard about Suzannah Mitchell and Rossi, but at the time he’d found it amusing. Tonight Rossi had left the station at eleven-thirty and gone home in a cab. Hall had Dan Rankin watching the place, and the latest report was he’d seen a blonde in a baseball cap and sunglasses enter through the back door ten minutes later. Hall kept his suspicions about the woman’s identity to himself, but had instructed his partner to keep an eye out for somebody else watching the house. If he were right, there would be two Secret Service agents very close by.
And Catherine Morrissey was risking a prison sentence to set the bastard free.
“Women are so fucking stupid,” he muttered, and picked up the binoculars.
Chapter Forty-One
“It was an accident,” she said.
Joe had trouble swallowing. “An accident.”
It was too much to take in all at once. This woman he had once been in love with, the wife of the vice president of the United States, had murdered someone—by accident?
“I’m trusting you with my life, Joe. By telling you this.” When he didn’t answer she said, “I can trust you, right?”
“How did it happen?” His voice sounded thin. He felt old suddenly. Jaded. He sat on the bed.
Suzannah knelt behind him and began kneading the muscles in his neck. She was the murderer, and here she was, trying to get him to relax. She must have sensed he was too distracted to appreciate what she was doing, because she stopped and pulled him down onto the bed. He could have held her off, but he wanted her to keep talking, so he played along. Ever the predictable one, she climbed on top of him.
“You’re worried for me, aren’t you?” she said softly, stroking his cheeks. “No one ever has to know about it, darlin’. It’ll be one of those unsolved mysteries. After a while people will forget she ever existed.”
Joe stared at her. Brilliant blue eyes empty of a soul gazed back at him. Suzannah was spiritually defective, and he had never seen it before. It chilled him.
“Her family won’t forget,” he said.
“I told you. It was an accident. I didn’t intend to kill her. It just...happened.” She snuggled into him. “I was trying to scare her, that’s all. So she’d stay away from Sam.”
“You killed her because you were jealous?”
“Hardly. He was getting careless. Oh, put your hands on me, for God’s sake. Do you think this is easy for me?”
It was like wrapping his arms around a snake. And yes, he did think it was easy for her, because not only did she not have a conscience, she still held to the delusional belief that he loved her and wouldn’t reveal her secret.
“Of course I don’t,” he said, stroking a hand down her back. She shivered and snuggled closer. “I’m just shocked that you could make a mistake like that.” Yeah, that’s what it was. A big fucking mistake.
She slid down to the floor and knelt between his legs. “I knew you’d understand,” she said, and nuzzled his lap.
Uh-oh. He didn’t like where this was going, so he sat up fast. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his head down for a kiss, but he was so repulsed he couldn’t open his mouth. It was stuck shut.
“What is wrong with you tonight?” she asked in that hurt tone she used when he wasn’t doing what she wanted him to do. “Are you too tired or what? We can take a little nap first if you want.”
“Was Blair threatening to go public about the affair? Is that why you shot her?”
Suzannah glared at him, then got to her feet. “I’m a lot more talkative after my sexual needs have been met.”
“I can’t believe you,” he said. “A woman is dead and all you care about is getting laid?”
She pulled a cigarette out of a purse lying on the nightstand and lit it. “I can’t bring her back to life, so I may as well go on with mine. The whole country is depending on Sam and me. Blair Morrissey didn’t understand that. It was all a joke to her. She thought she could fuck the vice president of the United States and have a grand old time, and it didn’t matter one whit to her whether they were caught together. Well it mattered to me.”
“No shit.”
“Remember that awful piece in the Star with the photo of Sam and me making out in a parked car? Well guess what? That wasn’t me with my darling husband. It was that little slut.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “I actually had to cover for him and say it was me, and yes, Sam and I are so in love that we get caught up in the moment sometimes, no matter where we are.” She took a long drag and blew out the smoke. Her eyes were blazing. “I could’ve killed the two of them. Do you have any idea how humiliating that was?”
“What are you going to do about it, Suzy?”
She stared at him. “About what?”
About what? “You killed a woman. She’s dead. And at least two other people are dead because of it—Sadler, and a guy who worked in Blair’s apartment building, Luis Ramirez. And for all I know other people are going to die to cover it up. I’m guessing Ned is behind all of that.”
Suzannah crossed to the nightstand and stood with her back to him. “I don’t like the sound of this, Joe. You’re scaring me.”
“I’m trying to get you to face reality here. You can’t brush this under the rug. Blair Morrissey is dead. Forever. Her family is suffering.”
“Ah. So we’re back to Catherine.” She practically spat the name. “That’s why you’re so interested, isn’t it? If it were anyone else you, wouldn’t be acting like this right now.”
He slapped his hands on the sides of his head. “This is the craziest conversation I’ve ever had with anyone in my entire life. Why am I not laughing?”
She faced him. “Nobody ever has to know about this. If the police press charges against you, I’ll get them dropped and we can start over. In the very worst case you’ll be convicted and I’ll get Sam to pardon you. And then, after Sam finishes out his second term I’ll file for divorce. We can—”
Joe was shaking his head. “Have you totally lost your mind? Do you honestly believe I’m going to let this drop?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Why?”
“Because you love me.”
“I don’t love you.” As the words left his mouth he knew he was making a mistake, but he couldn’t stop himself. “I told you that the other day. I’m in love with Catherine. Not you. Get it through your head, Suzannah. I do not love you.”
Her eyes hardened. “What are you saying? You’re going to report me to the police? Like they’d believe you over me?”
“I think it would be better if you went to them yourself. Explain that it was, uh, an accident. The gun went off. I don’t know.”
“And lose the election? That’s what you’re suggesting?”
“Sam will get the best lawyer in the country to defend you,” he said. “You can plead temporary insanity or something. Christ, I don’t know.”
She flipped her hair back, a dismissive gesture. “Yes, well, you’re the one who’s insane if you think I’m going to turn myself in. As far as I’m concerned we never had this conversation.” She faced the nightstand. “Promise you won’t tell a soul about this, okay, Joe?”
“I can’t do that. I’m sorry.”
He stared down at the floor for a moment, gathering his thoughts. When he raised his head, Suzannah was facing him, a tiny pistol clutched in her hand.
“Jeez, Suz,” he said. “You going to shoot me too?”
Chapter Forty-Two
She couldn’t hear the grandfather clock anymore.
Of course not.
Dr. Campbell would want his office to be soundproof. It wouldn’t do her any good to scream, even if her mouth weren’t gagged. It was difficult to draw a breath, and she was on the verge of passing out again. Maybe if she lay still, the man would go away eventually and Ned would find her—and then what? He’d see immediately that there had been someone else in the house with her. She could say she’d come to surprise him and then the burglar had knocked her out and tied her up.
No, no, that didn’t make sense. This man planned to somehow dispose of her so Ned would never know he’d been there. Maybe he’d dump her by the side of the road and a passing motorist would help her. Or maybe he’d dump her in the river, and there would be no one to help her.
Her heart was thumping so hard she wondered if she could have a heart attack. It would be a better way to die than what this man probably had in mind.
Her poor parents. What hell they would go through, losing two daughters in one year, both to violent deaths.
Would it be months before her body was found too?
A sob welled up in her throat, and though she struggled to hold it back, a sound escaped. Within a second the flashlight found her again.
No more! Please!
He was shining the light all over her body, she could see it though her eyes were shut. At the thought of him touching her she shuddered, and he saw it.
“It’s about time you woke up,” he said, in that evil, raspy voice. “I didn’t want to have to fuck a cadaver.”
She curled into a ball, the pain intensifying with every movement. If she could speak, she would beg him to kill her now, before he raped her. She couldn’t bear to have this beast inside of her.
And then, an explosion of light...
“What the hell is going on!”
Ned!
“Don’t get your bowels in an uproar,” the man said. “I followed her into the house and found her in here going through your stuff.”
Ned knelt beside her and tipped up her chin, then gasped. “Oh, my God! Catherine?” He sounded horrified. She tried to nod, but every movement hurt so bad.
“Look what she did to your room, Campbell. If this were my office, I’d beat the shit out of her. I figured I was doing you a f
avor.”
They know each other.
“Did you crawl out from under a rock, Perelli? Did Dale French know the kind of scum he was sending me? I would think Sam would have better taste in—”
“Shut your stupid mouth,” Perelli said. “Now we’re going to have to kill her.”
With her good eye, Catherine could see the stricken expression on Ned’s face. Her heart sank. The man who’d beaten her and nearly raped her was a part of this, along with Ned and Sam—Sam Mitchell? The vice president?
Which one of them had killed Blair?
“She’s so out of it I don’t think she—”
“Bullshit,” Perelli said. “I’ll throw her in the trunk of my car and take care of her somewhere else, where she won’t stain this nice carpet.”
“You think I’m going to let you put your filthy hands on her?” Ned stood and started pacing. “God damn it! How did this happen? What the hell was she looking for?”
“Isn’t that obvious? The book.”
“What book?” Ned demanded. “What are you talking about? And I don’t recall giving you permission to smoke in here.”
From her vantage point on the floor, Catherine could see the movement of legs and feet, and occasionally a face came into view. She lay still, both to avoid the agonizing pain that shot through her with every move and to avoid drawing attention. Ned was pacing, running his hand over his head, obviously torn about what to do with her. The man, Perelli, was right—Ned had let the cat out of the bag. She could promise not to tell anyone, but he wouldn’t be dumb enough to believe her. Ned was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. A blanket drifted over her body. Ned. He wasn’t going to brutalize her, thank God, but he wasn’t yet prepared to untie her.
“Please,” Perelli said. “Don’t insult my intelligence.”
Ned snorted his derision. “Animals don’t have any intelligence.”
“You’re starting to piss me off, Campbell.”
