Kate’s gut clenched. She hadn’t realized how tense her facial muscles were until she tried to speak.
“I don’t like that,” she snapped. “Keep your damned gun out of my face.”
He chuckled.
They reached the end of the alley and she stopped to look both ways before merging onto Thirteenth. Brightly lit and busy, with heavy traffic moving steadily in both directions and a fair number of pedestrians on the sidewalks, this next block and a half or so before the freeway entrance was probably her best chance of escape. The gun on her shoulder was the biggest obstacle.
Would he shoot her if she tried to open the door and run? She wasn’t sure, but she didn’t really want to find out. Dead was dead, no do-overs allowed. Besides, if he was quick enough when she reached for the door handle, he might just be able to grab her and keep her in the car that way. He was close enough, so close that she could feel the heat of his arm behind her head and smell the oniony odor of his breath.
“You got any money?” Mario asked. “I bet prosecutors make a lot of money.”
“Not much.”
She had exactly six dollars tucked away in her briefcase, which, as a result of her sudden stop after discovering Mario in the car, now rested on its side in the passenger-seat footwell. Since she got paid Monday, that six dollars had to carry them through. It was just enough for the fresh milk and bread they needed, and Ben’s lunch money.
Headlights shining in the alley behind them caught her attention as she turned right onto Thirteenth, carefully wedging in between a white pickup in front and a small red car behind. Glancing back, she saw a black Taurus waiting in the mouth of the alley for its chance to join the stream of traffic, and her heart skipped a beat.
She was almost positive that was Braga’s car.
“How much?” Mario growled.
Kate did a lightning calculation. If that was indeed Braga, and she thought it was, jumping from the car and running toward him was her best hope of escape. But getting the gun out of the way would greatly increase her chance of escaping uninjured.
Go for it.
At the thought, her heart began to pound so hard it felt like it was trying to beat its way out of her chest. Cold sweat poured over her. She flicked a quick look at Mario through the rearview mirror, praying he wouldn’t notice. He squatted there on the edge of her backseat like a malevolent Buddha, looking pleased with himself and the situation, observing the scene out the windshield with transparent interest. The gun rested negligently on her shoulder.
He thinks he’s got me trapped.
“A hundred bucks,” she lied. “Give or take a couple of dollars.” Then she glanced down at her briefcase as she braked gently, one of a dozen or so cars braking for the red light at the intersection before the one leading to the expressway ramp. Now, while the light was red and the car was stopped, was the best chance she was going to get, she knew. “It’s in my briefcase. Why?”
“ ’Cause I want it.” Mario looked down at her briefcase, then shifted himself, reaching between the seats, reaching for the briefcase.
The gun moved when he did. Suddenly, it was no longer there.
Kate’s heart lurched. Her breath caught.
This is it.
Grabbing the door handle, she shoved the door open, throwing herself from the car with such force that she landed hard on her hands and knees on the pavement. It hurt, but she didn’t have time to think about it.
“Shit,” Mario yelled as the car lurched forward.
Adrenaline shot through her system as she caught a terrifying glimpse of him snapping upright and turning toward her, but she didn’t stick around to watch. She was already scrambling to her feet, already running screaming down the center line between the stopped rows of traffic. Her heart pounded like a jackhammer. Her shoulder blades tensed in horrible anticipation of a bullet smacking into her flesh at any second. Her stomach cramped as she glanced fearfully back over her shoulder. The driver’s door was still open, but the Camry wasn’t moving. No sign of Mario—or the gun. Around her, the street pulsed with life, with brightly colored neon signs flashing slogans like Girls! Girls! Girls! and Fully Nude. Adult bookstores with their big front windows blocked by newspapers glowed from within like jack-o’-lanterns. Seedy locals and businessmen in suits and tourists—even women—in casual clothes mingled on the sidewalks and hurried through the crosswalk in front of the stopped cars while hookers, obvious in leather miniskirts and thigh-high boots or bra tops and hot pants or tiny, shiny dresses, claimed the corners and curbs. Music blared from the bars through the open doors as patrons continually went in and out. The air smelled of car exhaust and booze. A few heads turned in her direction. One or two car doors opened, and the men driving popped their heads up, yelling something to her, presumably asking questions or offering help, but Kate was barely aware of them. Her entire focus was on the black Taurus that was maybe six cars back.
Even as she reached its front bumper, the driver’s door opened and Tom jumped out, drawing his gun as he moved.
“Kate!”
“Tom! Tom, help!”
He yelled something else, a question, she thought, at her as he raced for her and she bolted toward him, but her pulse was thundering so she couldn’t understand what he was saying. She reached him at last, running straight into his arms. Gun and all, they closed around her, catching her up against him, holding her tightly.
Oh, God, I’m safe.
Clinging, burrowing her face into the velvety smoothness of his coat, breathing in the warm, Downy-tinged scent of him as she gasped for air, she was aware that he was cursing and asking her what had happened all in the same breath, but she was too shaken to hear properly or reply. Then the light must have changed, because suddenly all around them everyone was back in their vehicles and traffic began to move and the cars behind the Taurus began to honk their horns impatiently as they started trying to cut around the stopped car.
With a quick glance over her shoulder, Kate could see that her Camry was gone with the rest of the traffic ahead of them.
Mario stole my car. That was her first, instinctive reaction. Then, I made it. I got out.
Thinking of what might have been, she shuddered convulsively from head to toe.
“Damn it to hell and back anyway.” Holstering his gun, wrapping his arm tightly around her, Tom hustled her around to the passenger seat of the Taurus and bundled her inside. Then he loped around the front of the car again and slid back behind the wheel, flashing his badge at an irate motorist who made an obscene gesture out the window at him as he drove past. The motorist yanked his arm back inside and sped off.
Heart racing, still breathing way too fast, Kate lay back against the plush leather seat in a boneless bundle of nerves as Tom put the Taurus into gear and drove off. Her face was turned toward him. He glanced her way, his eyes narrowed and dark in the uncertain light.
“What just happened here?” His voice was sharp. His face was tense as his gaze slid over her. “Holy mother of God, were you just carjacked?”
She was going to have to lie to him again. The thought made her sick to her stomach. The temptation to tell him the truth and let the chips fall where they may was almost overwhelming. But if she did, she would lose everything. For Ben’s sake, she had to be strong, had to think fast, had to come up with one more halfway plausible lie. She couldn’t tell him about Mario. But if she left out the identity of the man in the car . . .
If you’re going to lie, stick as close to the truth as possible.
“There was a man in the backseat when I got in my car.” Her voice was unsteady. “He had a gun.”
She couldn’t help it. She shivered at the memory.
The curses that fell from Tom’s mouth then turned the air blue. Kate watched the clean lines of his face tighten, watched his lips thin and the set of his jaw grow grim.
“Did he hurt you?” he asked as he pulled the Taurus over to the curb and shoved its transmission into park.
; His eyes raked her, as if he were searching for some visible sign of injury. The entrance to the Vine Street Expressway was yards away, and traffic was rushing onto it. She wondered if her Camry was on that expressway, speeding away.
She hoped it was speeding away.
“No.” She shook her head.
“Anybody you know? The guy from last night, maybe?”
She saw that he had his cell phone in his hand and was punching numbers into it. Clearly, the reason he had pulled over was to report her car stolen, along with the circumstances surrounding the theft. She couldn’t ask him not to; he would immediately become suspicious. She was just going to have to deal.
And lie, lie, lie.
He was already talking to somebody on the phone. When he asked, she gave him the license plate number and a (slightly wrong, although she had to be careful not to be too wrong in case they actually caught Mario) description of the perpetrator, while claiming she hadn’t really gotten all that good a look at him, thanks to the dark, shock, etc. All the while, she prayed that Mario wouldn’t be caught, because if he was caught, he might talk. Although if he told the police about Baltimore, at least she would no longer have to lie and the hold he had on her would be broken forever.
If it wasn’t for Ben, she thought, she would almost be glad of it.
“They’re putting out an APB on your car. Somebody’ll come by your house later to take your statement,” Tom said when he was finished. They were still parked beside the curb on Thirteenth Street, with traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, flowing past in a steady stream. A pink-and-green neon palm tree advertising the Oasis Bar flashed changing rectangles of color over the black dashboard. The headlights of oncoming traffic plus the streetlights that stood on every corner made it easy to see him. He was staring out through the windshield, frowning thoughtfully. Then his eyes cut toward her.
Kate braced herself.
“Put on your seat belt” was all he said. As she complied, he restarted the car and pulled out into traffic. “Where to?”
“I have to pick up Ben.” She gave him the address.
He nodded. She borrowed his phone to call Suzy and explain about being late, without telling her precisely what had happened, because she didn’t want Ben finding out and worrying before she could tell him herself. When she disconnected, they drove in silence for a while. After they crossed the bridge over the Delaware, Philly’s glittering skyline gradually receded into the distance. Traffic thinned out and speeded up, and except for the occasional slash of oncoming headlights cutting through the Taurus’s interior and the swoosh of wheels on pavement, the ride was quiet and dark. Having almost recovered her composure, Kate looked out to see a bone-white moon rising over the jagged line of rooftops to the east. Its roundness was reflected in the black waters of the river that ran alongside the expressway. The scene was beautiful, she thought—and cold.
Almost as cold as she felt. Wrapping her arms over her chest, she glanced at Tom.
Big mistake.
“So, you still hell-bent on stonewalling me?” he asked.
They weren’t too far from the West Oak exit, the one she took to get Ben. His tone made it almost a throw-away question, no tension behind it at all. But as Kate looked closer, she saw that his jaw was tight and his mouth was thin.
“I don’t know what you mea—” she began, but he cut her off with an impatient sound.
“Let’s see: A right-handed woman uses her left hand to shoot and kill a vicious punk with a rap sheet as long as my arm. Then she’s harassed at home by another punk who just happens to know her and her kid’s names. Later that same night, a man—Same punk? Different punk? Who the hell knows? Because it seems to be open season on this woman—tries to break into her house. The following night, an armed man is hiding in her car when she gets into it, and she barely manages to escape.” He slanted a hard-eyed look at her. “So, what do you think, Counselor, in your professional opinion? Is our girl having a run of really shitty luck, or is she involved up to her pretty neck in something she’s not coming clean about?”
By the time he finished, Kate was glaring at him.
“You know what? I don’t appreciate your attitude.”
“Well, gee, isn’t that just the biggest coincidence? Because I don’t appreciate being jerked around.”
“You know what else I don’t appreciate? You trying to trick me. Why didn’t you just ask me outright whether or not I’m right-handed? Instead of pretending that you had a gift for Ben so I would reach for it?” That still stung.
A beat passed. “I did have a gift for Ben. The basketball is a gift.”
Kate snorted. “Which you got for him so you could give it to me so I would reach for it.”
“I got it for him so he’d have a decent shot at learning the game of basketball. Handing it to you—okay, maybe I had an ulterior motive in the way I handed it to you.”
“Maybe?” Scorn dripped from the word. But at the idea that the gift itself possibly wasn’t part of the trick, she felt a little better. If she believed that part of it, which, thinking about it, she guessed she kind of did. After all, he could have handed her anything.
“Get off here,” she added, because West Oak was the next exit.
He pulled into the right lane. The exit was just ahead. “You want to talk about ulterior motives, seems to me like you might have an ulterior motive in the way you just changed the subject,” he said, as he guided the Taurus off the expressway and around the dark, curving ramp. “Like dodging giving me any kind of explanation for the run of bad luck I mentioned.”
“Okay.” Her voice was tart. “You want an explanation? I’ll give you the best one I have: Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, all the publicity I’ve gotten since I managed to survive being taken hostage has brought these creeps out of the woodwork? That they’re homing in on me right now because I’m on TV all the time? And that maybe the reason a right-handed woman—and yes, I admit it, I am right-handed, you’ve got me there—shot a man with her left hand was because I grabbed the gun with my left hand as I was scrambling to my feet and didn’t have time to switch it to my right hand before I fired it to save my life?”
Her words hung in the air between them as they reached the bottom of the ramp and he stopped, looked both ways, and then pulled out onto West Oak. She got the feeling that he was weighing them, testing them, going over them again in his mind.
“That’s your story?”
She bristled. “No, that’s not my story. That’s what happened.” She glanced out at the passing streets, which were lit only by the moon and the illuminated windows of houses in this residential area. “You want to turn right up here at Pine.”
They reached Pine, and he complied. “So you think this guy who was hiding in your car targeted you because you’ve been on TV?”
The skepticism in his voice was too much. She was lying, he suspected she was lying, and she knew it, and the thing was, she didn’t want to lie anymore. She hated telling lie upon lie, especially—and she hated facing this, too—to him. But she could not tell the truth.
“I don’t know.” Her voice wobbled with the helplessness she was feeling, and ironically, that made it more convincing. Lying was the only option she had, but she didn’t have to like it. “I don’t know, okay? All I know is he was in my car, and he had a gun, and I think he would have hurt me—or worse—if I hadn’t gotten away.”
Something, either her obvious emotion or the thought of what might have happened to her had she not managed to escape, shut him up.
Kate took a deep breath, trying to get herself under control, and glanced around. They were just about half a block from their destination. The yards were bigger here where the Perrys lived, and the houses were farther apart. Consequently, it was much darker. Shiny black bags full of leaves were piled beside the road, waiting for city services to come and pick them up, and a few stray leaves blew across the pavement in front of the car like small golden magic carpets caugh
t in the headlights. The Perrys’ rambling ranch house was set far back on its lot, and she could see it as they approached. Big trees dotted the yard, most of them nearly leafless now, although a couple of sturdy evergreens did a good job of providing privacy from the street. Kate caught just a glimpse of light spilling from the windows.
Her heart ached at the thought of Ben innocently waiting for her inside. He had no idea of the jeopardy they were both in.
Whatever it took, she had to handle this, for Ben’s sake.
“Next driveway,” she said.
“You know, there’s just one problem.” He pulled into the long, unpaved driveway that led back to the Perrys’ house. Gravel crunched beneath the wheels as he drove toward the house. “None of what you said explains why you’ve been scared to death ever since I first walked into your office. The hostage situation had been resolved by then. You were safe. But you were still scared. You are still scared.”
She wanted to tell him the truth then. She really did. But she couldn’t, and because she couldn’t, she had to play the game as if her lies were the truth.
“If I said you were wrong, you wouldn’t believe me, so what’s the point?”
The car was even with the walkway that led into the house now, although a fat pine tree kept the front door and most of the front of the house except for the garage, which was directly ahead of them, hidden from view. He braked, and the car stopped.
“I’m not wrong.”
“See?” She gave a brittle little laugh. “Listen, I appreciate all your help, but I wish you’d leave now. I’ll get one of the Perrys to give Ben and me a lift home.”
Putting the transmission in park, he turned off the ignition. The headlights shut off automatically. The interior of the car went as dark as the night outside, but she could see the hard outline of his forehead and cheek and chin, and the gleam of his eyes as he turned to look at her.
“You don’t want me to leave.” There was cool certainty in his voice. “I think you’re forgetting something. The guy who took your car has your keys. I assume your house key was on the same key ring?”
Guilty Page 24
