The FBI Thrillers Collection

by Catherine Coulter

  “You will,” said Tammy. “You will. We’re going to walk over to that black circle. You’re going to sit down in the middle of it. I won’t even tie your hands behind you. Now, move it, little sister.” Tammy pulled out a gun and aimed it at Lily.

  “No, I’m not going anywhere,” Lily said. “Will the Ghouls still want me if I’m not in the circle? What if you’ve already killed me with that gun of yours? Will they still want me then?”

  “We’ll just have to see, won’t we?” Tammy raised the gun and aimed it at Lily’s face.

  • Simon wished he were on his motorcycle, weaving in and out of the heavy, early-morning traffic. Why didn’t Savich have a bloody siren? Why were there so many people at this hour?

  When there was finally a break in the traffic, Savich pressed his foot hard on the accelerator. Simon looked out the back window, saw six black FBI cars, one after the other, coming fast, keeping pace with them.

  “Tell me, Sherlock,” he said, his heart thudding fast, hard beats. “We’ll be there soon. Tell me about Tammy.”

  • Slowly, Tammy lowered the gun. “You think you’re pretty cute, don’t you?”

  Lily slowly shook her head, so relieved she was nearly sick. She’d been ready to feel a bullet go right through her heart, to just be gone, and that was it. Sudden and final and she was dead. But she was still here, still alive, with Tammy, who was still holding that ugly gun.

  The circle—it appeared Tammy wanted her in that circle, still alive. “Where is Marilyn? She’s your cousin, isn’t she?”

  “You want to know about my sweet little cousin? I’m not real happy with her right now. See, she told your brother everything about me. Then he used her for bait. That was ruthless of him. I like that in a guy. She was waiting for me right there in the open, in that airport, standing next to that stupid agent who was supposed to be guarding her. From me. What a joke that was. I cut the agent’s throat, and everyone saw a crazy young man do it. Everyone believed it, but it was really me.

  “You want to know why I hate your brother? It’s not hard. He killed my brother, shot my arm off, just left it dangling by a few strips of muscle, and I saw it hanging there and I thought I was going to die. And they strapped me down to this bed because your brother told them I was bad trouble, and then they cut the rest of it right off in the hospital and I nearly died. All because of your damned brother.”

  Then Tammy let loose, screamed to the rafters, “One goddamned arm! Just look at me—my fucking sleeve is empty! I nearly died from the infection, damn him to hell. He shot my arm off! After I set the Ghouls on you, after they’ve gnawed you to a bloody mess, I’m going to get him, get him, GET HIM!”

  Lily kept her mouth shut, tried to pull herself together enough to work on the duct tape. She wished she could raise her hands and use her teeth, but Tammy would notice that for sure. At least her hands were still bound in front of her; that might give her some chance.

  Tammy drew a deep breath as she slowly lowered the gun. Her eyes focused again, on Lily. “You’re like him—stubborn.”

  “How did you get past all the agents guarding the house?”

  “Stupid buggers, all of them. It was easy. There’s hardly any challenge anymore. I didn’t let them see me.”

  Lily didn’t want to believe anything that outrageous, but she said, “And they couldn’t see me either?”

  “Oh yes. Nothing to it. Just dragged you out, wearing that cute little nightgown—sorry I didn’t get you a coat. But I figured after you realized what was going to happen to you, you’d want to feel the cold, better than being dead and not feeling anything at all. Now, little sister, move into the goddamned circle!”

  “No.”

  Tammy raised the gun and fired. Lily cried out, unable to help herself. She threw herself to the right, off the bale of hay, felt the hot whoosh of the bullet not an inch from her cheek, and rolled and kept rolling, pulling and twisting at the tape on her wrists. Another bullet hit a pile of moldering hay and spewed it upward.

  Then Tammy stopped shooting. She walked over to Lily and stood still, staring down at her, the gun pointed at her chest. Lily looked up, frozen, afraid to move, afraid even to breathe.

  Lily said, finally, “You have a problem, don’t you, Tammy? The Ghouls won’t come if I’m not staked like a tethered goat in that black circle, right? So get used to it. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Tammy didn’t say a thing to that, just turned and walked away, her strides in those heavy, black boots long and solid. Lily watched her disappear into the tack room and close the door behind her, hard.

  It was so silent that Lily could hear the barn groan as the rising wind hit it. Then Lily heard a scream, a woman’s scream, Tammy’s scream and two gunshots, loud, sharp.

  Dillon ran out of the tack room toward her, his SIG Sauer in his hand, yelling, “Lily! Oh my God, are you all right, sweetheart? Everything’s okay. I got into the tack room, shot her before she saw me. Oh God, are you hit?”

  She felt such relief she thought she’d choke on it. She yelled, “Dillon, you came! I kept her talking, knew I had to keep her talking. Oh God, she’s so scary. Then she started shooting at me and I thought it was all over—”

  Lily stopped cold. Dillon was nearly to her, not more than six feet away, when suddenly Lily didn’t see her brother anymore. She saw Tammy. She wasn’t holding Dillon’s SIG Sauer; she was holding that same little ugly gun that was hers. Her brain froze. Just simply froze. She couldn’t accept what she was seeing, what was right in front of her, she just couldn’t. Oh, God.

  “Honey, are you okay?”

  It was Tammy’s voice, no longer Dillon’s.

  Then Lily realized it really was Tammy. She thought she’d seen Dillon because she wanted to so much, and Tammy wanted her to. And Tammy thought it was working.

  Oh God, oh God.

  Lily said, “I’m okay. I’m so glad you’re here, Dillon, so glad.”

  Tammy dropped to her knees beside Lily and turned her onto her side. “Let me get that tape off you, sweetheart. There, let me just slip the knife under the tape. Good, you’ve already loosened it. You could have gotten yourself free and away, couldn’t you?” Then Tammy Tuttle pulled Lily against her and hugged her, kissed her hair. Stroked her single hand down her back. Lily felt Tammy’s slight breasts against hers.

  Tammy had laid the gun on the ground, just a hand’s length away from her, not more than six inches. “Just hold me, Dillon. Oh, God, I was so scared. I’m so glad you came so quickly.”

  She cried, sobbed her heart out, felt Tammy squeeze her and kiss her hair again. Lily’s hand moved slowly toward the gun, slowly, until her fingers touched the butt.

  Tammy swept up the gun, tucked it into her waistband, and said, “Let me help you up, honey. That’s right. You’re okay now. Sherlock is just outside with the other agents. Let’s go see them.”

  Tammy was holding her tightly against her side, walking toward the barn doors. No, not really toward the doors. She was swerving to the left now, toward that big black circle.

  Just as Tammy flung her onto her back and into the circle, Lily grabbed the gun from Tammy’s waistband, raising it at her.

  Tammy didn’t seem to notice that Lily had her gun, that she was pointing it at her. She’d turned toward the barn doors, raised her head, and yelled, “Ghouls! No young bloods for you this time, but a soft, sweet morsel, a female. Bring your axes, bring your knives, and hack her apart! Come here, Ghouls!”

  The barn doors blew inward. Lily saw whirling snow blowing in, and something else in that snow. A dust devil, that was it. That was what Dillon had seen as well, wasn’t it?

  The snow seemed to coalesce into two distinct formations, like tornadoes, whirling and dipping, coming toward her. But they were white, twisting this way and that, in constant motion, coming closer and closer. Lily felt frozen in place, just stared at those white cones coming closer, not more than a dozen feet away now, nearly to the black circle now. She had to mov
e, had to.

  Tammy saw that something was wrong. She pulled a knife out of her boot leg, a long, vicious knife. She raised that knife and ran toward Lily.

  Lily didn’t think, just raised the gun and yelled, “No, Tammy, it’s over. Yes, I see you. The minute you got close, I saw you, not my brother. The Ghouls won’t help you.”

  Just as Tammy leaped at her, the knife raised, the blade gleaming cold, Lily pulled the trigger.

  Tammy yelled and kept coming. Lily pulled the trigger again and again, and Tammy Tuttle was kicked off her feet and hurled a good six feet by the force of the bullets. She sprawled on her back, gaping holes in her chest. Her one arm was flung out, the empty sleeve flat on the ground.

  But Lily didn’t trust her. She ran to her, breathing hard and fast, nearly beyond herself, and she aimed and fired the last bullet not a foot from Tammy’s body. Her body lurched up with the bullet’s impact. She fired again, but there was only a click. The gun was empty, but Tammy was still alive, her eyes on Lily’s face, and Lily couldn’t stop. She pulled the trigger, like an automaton, again and again, until, finally, only hollow clicks filled the silence.

  Tammy lay on her back, covered with blood, her one hand still clenched at her side. Even her throat was ripped through by a bullet. Lily had fired six shots into her. Lily dropped to her knees, put her fingertips to Tammy’s bloody neck.

  No pulse.

  But her eyes were looking up at Lily, looking into her. Tammy was still there, still clinging to what she was. Her lips moved, but there was no sound. Slowly, ever so slowly, her eyes went blank. She was dead now, her eyes no longer wild and mad, no longer seeing anything at all.

  There was utter silence.

  Lily looked up, but the Ghouls were gone. They were gone with Tammy.

  30

  Washington, D.C.

  FBI specialists from the evidence labs went over every inch of the barn at the Plum River in Maryland.

  They found candy wrappers—more than three dozen—but no clothing, no bedding, no sign that Tammy Tuttle had been there for any time at all.

  There was no sign of Marilyn Warluski.

  “She’s dead,” Savich said, and Sherlock hated the deadening guilt in his voice.

  “We can’t be sure of anything when it comes to that family,” Sherlock said matter-of-factly, but she’d moved closer and put her hand on his shoulder, lightly touching him.

  Two Days Later

  It was late afternoon, and the snow had stopped falling. Washington was covered with a blanket of pristine white, and a brilliant sun was overhead. People were out and about on this cold, crystalline Sunday even as the national media announced the shooting death of the fugitive killer Tammy Tuttle in a barn in Maryland.

  Lily came into the living room, a cup of hot tea in her hand. “I called Agent Clark Hoyt in Eureka, on his home number since it’s Sunday. I just couldn’t help myself, couldn’t wait. Bless him, he didn’t seem to mind. He said that Hemlock Bay was rife with gossip over the deaths of Elcott and Charlotte. The mayor, the city council, and the local Methodist church are holding meetings to plan a big memorial service. No one, he said, really wants to delve too deeply into why they were killed, but it’s possible that the floating rumors could even exceed the truth.”

  Lily paused for a moment, then added, “I also called Tennyson. He’s very saddened by his parents’ death. It’s difficult for him to accept what they did, that they used him—used both of us—to gain their ends. He said he knows now that his parents were feeding me depressants all those months and that they had been the ones to arrange for my brakes to fail when I was driving to Ferndale.”

  “But how did they know what you would be doing?” Sherlock asked.

  “Tennyson said he called them from Chicago, just happened to mention that he’d asked me to drive to Ferndale, and when. I feel very bad for him, but I wonder how he could have been so blind to what his own parents were.”

  “They fooled you as well,” Savich said. “At least enough. No one wants to see evil; no one wants to admit it exists.”

  Lily said, “I’ve decided to fly to California for the memorial service. I’m going for Tennyson. He’s been hurt terribly. I feel that I must show him my support now, show everyone that I believe he was innocent of everything that happened. He knows I’m not coming back to him, as his wife, and he accepts it.” She sighed. “He said he was leaving Hemlock Bay, that he never wants to see the place again.”

  “I can’t say I blame him,” Simon said.

  Savich said, “Please tell Tennyson for us that we are very sorry about what happened.”

  “I will.” Lily raised her head, listened, and smiled. “Sean’s awake from his nap.”

  Both Savich and Sherlock were up the stairs, side by side, their hands clasped.

  Simon smiled at Lily, sipped his coffee. Savich had made it, so it was excellent. He sighed with pleasure.

  “So, Lily, as your new consultant, I think it’s very good for you to go back for his parents’ memorial service. It will put closure on things. It will be over. Then you will begin to move forward. Now, I’ve been thinking hard about this.”

  “And what did you decide, Mr. Russo?”

  “I think the first step is for you to move to New York. It’s never wise for a client to be any distance at all from her consultant.”

  Lily walked across the living room, gently placed her teacup on an end table, and sat down on Simon’s lap. She took his face between her hands and kissed him.

  Simon sighed, set down his own cup, and pulled her close. “That’s very nice, Lily.”

  “Yes, it is. Actually it’s better than just nice.” She kissed his neck, then settled herself against him. “I just wanted to tell you that you’re the best, Simon. I can’t believe it’s all really over—that I’m even going to get all my paintings back. But you know what? I want to stay in Washington for a while. I want to settle down, let the past sort itself out, and when I’m ready for the future, I want it to be with a clean slate, no excess baggage dragging along with me. I want to launch No Wrinkles Remus again. I want to be my own boss for a while, Simon.”

  She thought for a moment that he’d argue with her, but he didn’t. He rubbed his hands up and down her back and said, “Our time together hasn’t had many normal moments, like this. I think the consultant will need frequent visits, lots of contact, and both of us can think about things looking forward, not back.”

  She kissed him again and pressed her forehead to his. “Deal,” she said.

  Simon settled back and wrapped his arms around her, her cheek pressed against his neck. He said, “I forgot to tell you. An art dealer friend e-mailed me, said Abe Turkle is in Las Vegas gambling, and winning. He said Abe looked and acted like some big lumberjack; no one would believe for an instant he’s one of the top forgers in the world.”

  “I wish I could remember what happened to that painting he gave me at his cottage.”

  The doorbell rang.

  Dillon and Sherlock were still upstairs playing with Sean. Lily pulled herself off Simon’s lap and went to answer the door. When she opened it, a FedEx man stood there, holding out an envelope. “For Dillon Savich,” he said. Lily signed the overnight receipt and brought the envelope back into the living room.

  She called out to Dillon. Shortly, Savich, carrying Sean over his shoulder, Sherlock at his side, came downstairs.

  Dillon patted his sister’s cheek. “What you got, babe?”

  “An overnight envelope for you, Dillon.”

  Savich handed Sean to Sherlock and took the envelope. He looked down at it, bemused, and said, “It’s from the Beach Hotel in Aruba.” He opened the envelope, pulled out a sheaf of color photos. Slowly, he looked at each of them.

  “Come on, Dillon, what is it?”

  He raised his head and said to Sherlock, “These are the photos that Tammy took in the Caribbean to show to Marilyn.” There was a white sheet of paper behind the last photo, just a few lines writt
en on it. He read aloud.

  “Mr. Savich, Tammy was right, the beaches here are very beautiful. I’m glad she didn’t kill you.”

  MARILYN WARLUSKI

  ELEVENTH HOUR

  AN FBI THRILLER

  Catherine Coulter

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Eleventh Hour

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2002 by Catherine Coulter

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.