“It is working, with one unexpected glitch that’s being eliminated.”
“We both have children to raise,” Frank said.
“Did I ask you here?” Alexander paced, exuding nervous energy, glaring at them, waving the gun. “You were not invited, so don’t complain about the reception. First you freak Denise out on the street, in traffic, on the ferry. Then you start snooping around through the woods. You think we’re stupid?”
“You are, if you expect to get away with this. Too many people know we’re here.”
Alexander looked thoughtful. “I don’t think so. If you were leading the cavalry, there’d be bugles by now.”
The man who saved his life was going to kill him now, Frank thought calmly. He remembered his father, dead at the same early age. Some families inherit deadly diseases; had he inherited a gene that left him at risk for homicide? Was it a congenital defect?
Headlights swept up outside.
“You were right,” Denise said, as she entered. “The flag was up. I took it down.”
Frank’s heart sank along with any hope of rescue. Rory sat quietly beside him, tears in her eyes. Why had he brought her here? He never should have allowed her to come to Seattle with him.
“Is their stuff gone?” Daniel asked.
“Hope all his pills don’t hurt the sea life. He had a regular pharmaceutical fruit salad. I hate being ecologically incorrect, but”—she shrugged—“I dumped them in the drink.” She looked sweetly at Frank, whose ears roared when their eyes connected.
“That’s my girl. Let’s all go into the kitchen,” Alexander said.
“Dinner is ruined.” Denise waved her gun, pouting like an irate housewife.
Why the kitchen? Frank wondered, until he saw the heavy trapdoor in the floor. Alexander strained to lift it, grunting as it creaked open.
“Don’t throw your back out, hon.”
Rory took offense. “You knew he was a married man with a child when you first—”
“Shut up,” Denise said.
“Downstairs,” Alexander ordered. He smiled again. “Farewell, Rory,” he said softly.
The low-ceilinged steps descended into a darkness that smelled dank and earthy, like an open grave. This is where we disappear, Frank thought. Everybody back in Miami will believe that we abandoned our families and ran away together. They will never know the truth. Kathleen will never know.
“I won’t go down there,” Rory said stubbornly.
“Yes, you will.” Alexander wrenched her arm, forcing her toward the door as she resisted.
Frank saw Rory’s terrified eyes and lunged for Denise. She cried out as he gripped her wrist, trying to twist the gun from her hand. Surprisingly strong and quick, she clipped him sharply with her shoulder and tried to trip him, knocking him off balance. The gun flew away from them both, slid across the wooden floor and was swallowed by the dark opening, bouncing off the steps below. Distracted, Alexander released Rory, who staggered back and yanked an iron skillet off the stove. The heavy lid clattered away. She swung the skillet at Alexander, chicken parts flying.
“Get away! Get away from him, Denise!” Waving Denise aside with his left hand, Alexander leveled the gun with his right. The muzzle less than two feet from Frank’s chest, hesqueezed the trigger. Frank braced for the bullet, then sprang forward.
“Kill him, kill him!” Denise screamed.
Alexander tried. The gun had jammed.
The men grappled. The freezer door sprang open as they crashed heavily into the refrigerator. Denise rushed to the cellar, frantic to find her gun, as Rory tried to stop her.
Frank reached a groping arm into the freezer, jerked out an ice tray, swung it by its metal handle and bashed Alexander square in the face. Blood spurted from his nose, and he dropped to his knees.
“Get out, get out! Run!” Frank shoved Rory toward a back door.
Alexander was struggling to his feet, one hand to his nose. Frank slammed the cellar door, leaving Denise in the darkness below, as they scrambled out the back door. The first breath of cold night air seared his lungs as they dashed toward the shadowy woods.
Lucca had been right about the most reliable choice of a weapon. Frank wondered how long it would take Alexander to clear the chamber of his jammed automatic, and for Denise to find hers. Two pistol shots were his answer, cracking in the night as they crashed through the trees.
“Run!”
“Where?”
There was no place; they were trapped and alone on this fog shrouded island.
Voices, shouts back at the house.
“Should we go to the landing?”
His heart thudded. “That’s probably where they’ll look first. There are a few other houses on the island, they seem deserted, but maybe we can find somebody, a caretaker, ormaybe we can break into one and find a phone or a weapon.” He felt her shudder.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t believe you.”
She reached out to him.
“We better keep moving,” he told her.
He tried to remember the direction of the houses but had lost his bearings. No moon, no stars, only dense fog. Rory cried out as they stumbled, half falling down a steep incline into the icy water of a small running stream.
Something ripped as branches jabbed at his skin and snagged his clothes. Some small furry creature brushed his legs, then careened into the dark. They tried to skirt the stream.
Headlights bloomed behind them. Two sets, one on each flank, the Range Rover and their rental. The fog lights of the Rover tunneled through the mist. Frank and Rory tried to pick up their pace. The darkness around them was like a black well, visibility so poor that they nearly ran headlong into the wall of a shed behind a house. He groped for the door. Bolted, padlocked. The house shuttered, locked. The lights and straining engines hurtled toward them, terrifying small night creatures that fled in their path. Frank groped for something, anything. A box of firewood on the front porch. He fumbled for a piece to wield as a club and grasped something else, an axe. He gripped the worn wooden handle close to the razor-sharp metal head. No time to use it for breaking into the house. Headlights closed in. They ran for their lives.
They had to be close to the far end of the island, he thought. His heart had caught up with the action and was pounding. He glanced back and saw that the headlights were fixed, no longer moving. Their pursuers were on foot now, flashlight beams stabbing the swirling mist, closer than he realized. His rib cage tightened like a vise around his heart,
each breath a painful spasm. He found it difficult to breathe. What was happening to him? Had the cold and the exertion damaged his borrowed heart? “They’re almost here,” he gasped. “If I don’t make it, try to double back to the rental. I think there’s an extra key in the glove box.”
She tugged at his arm. “Don’t leave me. We have to stay together.”
“Careful,” he breathed, shocked to realize they were back at the drop-off over the stream. They had been circling blindly through the mist. The sounds and the beams of light closed in.
“Go, go,” he croaked, his strength spent. “I’ll stay here.”
“No.”
“Go!” His chest about to explode, he pushed her away and into the darkness.
A figure loomed, blocking the Rover’s fog lights. From the size it had to be Alexander.
Frank tried but failed to catch his breath, the pain in his chest worse. Desperately he marshaled whatever strength he had left as the footfalls came closer. Tightening his grip on the axe handle, he crouched, heart pounding.
Alexander still did not see him, his flashlight nearly useless in the fog. Frank lurched toward him, swung the axe at his knees, and connected. Alexander cried out and stumbled forward. The two wrestled to the ground, Alexander rolling atop him. Together they slid down the incline; their bodies crashed into logs, branches and stones, then splashed into frigid water. The shock felt like a thousand needles piercing his skin.
The axe lay
somewhere in the brush halfway up the slope. Where was the gun? The world spun as he struggled to sit up. Roaring with anger and pain, Alexander slammed him back into the icy water, onto the rocks, fists hammering his chest. His heart in spasms, Frank felt light-headed andqueasy, as helpless as before his surgery. His new heart, someone else’s heart, could no longer endure the stress, the cold and the physical combat. The water was only about three or four feet deep, but he remained submerged, at rest on the rocky bottom. He no longer felt the cold, he felt the warmth of Biscayne Bay, saw blazing sun and silver Miami skyline against a blue backdrop. The bay and the pastel towers of Miami Beach shimmered behind him. Beyond that, the blue-green Atlantic stretched east to Africa. He was earth, sea and sky, part of it all. He caught the stare of a prehistoric bird with ancient eyes and saw Rory’s hair flashing bright in the water. Endless streams of brilliant orange butterflies fluttered across his vision, their wings like wind chimes gently rippling. He took a deep breath and relaxed.
Something inside him errupted, forcing him up and out of the water. He surfaced raging and murderous, gagging and cursing as though possessed. He caught Alexander by his jacket, dragged him down and rolled him over into the stream, hands gripping his throat, his own strength frightening. As they thrashed in the shallows, Frank’s fingers closed around a jagged stone the size of his fist. He smashed it into Alexander’s forehead again and again until the man stopped struggling.
Frank crawled onto the bank breathing heavily. A woman was calling. He didn’t know if it was Denise or Rory. Denise slid halfway down the bank sideways, a gun in her hand.
He gazed up at her as he struggled slowly to his feet, wet clothes leaden. “You killed me once,” he heard himself say. “Are you going to kill me again?”
She gasped, motionless in the dark. He tried but could not see her eyes.
“Don’t you move, Denise! I’ll shoot the hell outa you ifyou do. I’ve got the gun!” Rory was above them, her voice bold, a flashlight trained on Denise.
Dazed and blinking in the light, he slogged forward to take Denise’s gun.
“You killed him,” she cried, peering over his shoulder to the figure lying motionless in the water.
Daniel was not dead. He regained consciousness and was helped, moaning, out of the water by Denise. As she did so, Frank staggered up the slope to Rory and stumbled upon Daniel’s gun in the dried grass.
“You lied!” he whispered in shock. “You didn’t have the gun!”
“What else was I gonna say? ‘Pretty please don’t shoot or I’ll scream'?”
“You know I never meant to hurt you, Rory,” Daniel pleaded, bloodied and hobbling. “Just listen to me, we can work something out.”
“Forget it, Daniel. I’m grown accustomed to bein’ a widow, I’d just as soon be one again, so shut your damn mouth.”
They managed to get them both back to the house and into the cellar. “Don’t leave me down here,” Denise begged, before Frank could close the door. “Please?”
He hesitated; after everything, she still moved him. “My medication,” he asked. “Where is it? Is it really gone?”
“No.” Her lips twitched in a small, quick smile. “I can show you, I threw it in the woods at the edge of the road. We can find it.”
He closed the door, bolted it and turned to Rory.
“She was lying,” he said simply, “it’s gone.”
“Are you sure?”
“I know when she’s lying.”
Frank changed into dry clothes from Alexander’s suitcase, which was already packed. Tucked inside the bag was the gold pocket watch engraved with the words Gratitude Is Greater Than Gold and presented in 1897 to a hero named Daniel Alexander. Frank gave it to Rory to take home for Billy, then broke into the grocery at the landing, found a phone that worked and summoned help.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The first rescue boat arrived as the fog lifted at dawn. The paramedics brought his backup medication from their hotel room as Frank had requested, but because he had been registered under Alexander’s name, police ordered it withheld. The pills were finally released to him at noon, after medics who saw his bracelet and his scar, confirmed with the national registry and insisted. He had been deprived of his life-sustaining antirejection medication for nearly thirty hours.
The local cops were confounded, but by early evening, with the help of computer-generated fingerprints and longdistance conference calls, Alexander’s identity and his “death” in Miami had been confirmed.
He and Denise had planned to leave for the Orient. Instead, they were charged with kidnaping, assault and attempted murder, pending more serious warrants from Miami.
Alexander had suffered head injuries, a broken nose and a shattered right kneecap. Hospitalized in a prison ward, he stonewalled, the police said. Not Denise. “She’s talking her brains out,” a detective said, adding that she appeared eager to make a deal with prosecutors.
Their flirtation caught fire soon after the burglary at the Alexander house, she told them. They were bored with their jobs, and dissatisfied with their personal lives. Tax troubles would have eventually led to the Tree Taverns being padlocked by the state. A divorce would have divided Daniel’s assets and multiplied his problems. When the lovers hatched their plot to seize it all and more, Nick Bolton was a natural for the role of body double. A loner, a Gulf War veteran from Galveston, Bolton had no one to report him missing. All he had was Denise, whom he loved. He stayed, despite their rocky romance. She repaid his devotion by using her professional expertise to choreograph his death. She wore a red wig at the house that day, in case she was seen. Later, in her official capacity, she fingerprinted the corpse of her former lover, then switched the dead man’s fingerprint card with a prepared card bearing Alexander’s prints.
Cold, Frank thought. How incredibly cold.
Denise now claimed that she, too, was a victim. Her only crime, she insisted, was loving a man who coerced, influenced and intimidated her into joining his deadly scheme. She blamed him for everything, including both murders. An unlikely defense for a woman who wore a badge and a gun but probably the only one that might win sympathy from a jury.
Ron Harrington, also an accomplice, had agreed to split the million-dollar life insurance he had collected on his former partner. Daniel had returned to Miami for his share, according to Denise, and killed Harrington to keep him quiet.
The long day at police headquarters stretched into night before Frank and Rory were free to return to the hotel.
“Want me to stay?” asked the deputy who had whisked them away from headquarters.
“Why?”
“To run interference,” he said.
Frank shook his head, perplexed by the offer. He and Rory walked into the lobby hand in hand, bruised, exhausted beyond belief and totally unprepared. They were surrounded, overwhelmed by reporters, cameras, lights and microphones.
Local newspapers were in hot pursuit of the story; versions had already moved on the wires. Crews from all the TV tabloids had arrived or were on the way. They said as little as possible and retreated to their room.
Rory offered him the phone after a long and tearful conversation with Billy and his grandmother. “Do you want to call home?”
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
They slept exhausted, in each other’s arm.
Heart Transplant Patient Tracks ‘Donor’ to Seattle, read the morning paper’s front-page headline. The subhead said, Murder Plot Suspected as ‘Widow’ Joins Search. Frank and Rory looked haggard and disheveled in the accompanying photos. There was also a picture of Denise wearing a number under her chin.
Rory stayed with Frank during hours of tests at Seattle Medical Center. He showed no symptoms of rejection and an echocardiogram indicted his heart was still functioning normally. During a phone consult with the Miami team, doctors determined that preliminary results were good and a heart biopsy could wait until his return to South Florida.
They made
arrangements to fly back to Miami the next day.
There were still reporters in the lobby when they returned to the hotel that evening. Clearly impressed, the desk clerk told them they had been on the NBC Nightly News, Hard Copy and Inside Edition. There were messages from Geraldo Rivera and Larry King.
They asked that all calls be held and ordered dinner in their room. They soaked in a hot tub, nursed each other’s cuts and bruises and relaxed in silence, lying on the big bed, holding hands, the lights out and the drapes open to the sparkling skyline of the city.
They arose early, ordered coffee and a light breakfast, then packed to go home. The hotel limo would shuttle them to the airport at noon.
The unspoken question hung between them.
“What are we going to do?” he finally said. He sat on the small sofa, she in a chair. He took her hand.
“Me?” she said brightly. “I’m gonna hire a lawyer and file for divorce. Nobody ‘ud deny I have grounds. Never dreamed I’d go from widow to divorcée without a weddin’ in between.”
“I mean us. What do we do?”
The pause was painful. “I think you know.”
He did, he saw it in her eyes.
“We both have enough scar tissue around our hearts to know that hurting other people don’t make you happy.”
“Oh my God, Rory.” His voice sounded weary.
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
“I don’t know where I am in my marriage. What about you, will you be okay?”
“Yes.” She paused and looked surprised. “I will, I really will, me and Billy. ‘Member when I didn’t think I could makeit, and I thought I heard Daniel sayin', ‘You can do it, you can do it'? I was such a fool. That obviously wasn’t Daniel, it was somethin’ tough inside me. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Her eyes locked on his. “We can’t spend life looking in rearview mirrors. I can raise my child and be strong enough not to intrude on you and yours.”
He held her hand. “If you remember, I’m the one who intruded in your life. Look, you have a mess ahead of you. The insurance company will want the money back. We’ll have to find Daniel’s assets and fight him for them.”
Pulse Page 27
