MADIGAN'S WIFE

by Linda Winstead Jones

  “He will,” Ray said, not sounding very convinced. “Eventually.”

  Grace stood and looped her arms around Ray’s neck. Rested her body against his and breathed deep. “I have a better idea.”

  *

  Hatch’s house wasn’t nearly as upscale as Heather’s. It was an ordinary little frame house on an ordinary little street. The lawn had been mowed, but no attempt had been made to pretty the place up with flowers or neatly arranged bushes.

  Ray glanced at Grace, caught her studying the house as if she could see through the drawn curtains.

  “You’re becoming quite the little investigator,” he said as he shut off the engine at the curb.

  She turned her head to look at him. “I just want to get Potts caught and put behind bars. Don’t you?”

  “Sure.” He threw open his door and stepped onto the street. Grace waited in the passenger seat while he rounded the car to open her door for her.

  Once this was over and Grace was no longer in jeopardy, what would happen? When the pursuit of Potts and the threat to her life was done, she wouldn’t need him anymore. He could head to Mobile and report to Stan’s undercover unit, and Grace could go back to her quiet, uneventful life. A life without worry or danger or passion. And without him. Was that what she really wanted?

  Their conclusion that Hatcher might’ve been the one who’d hired Potts was reaching, at best. And Grace’s suggestion that they call on Hatcher themselves instead of calling Luther was unlike her. Maybe he was bringing out a long hidden adventurous spirit. Then again, maybe Grace had simply wanted to get out of the suite for a while. Maybe the walls were already closing in on her.

  He rang the bell, then knocked loudly. Nothing.

  “Maybe he’s not home,” Grace said, her voice low and soft. This had been her idea, but she was obviously having second thoughts.

  Ray grinned. “You don’t have to whisper.”

  She looked annoyed and properly chastised as he banged on the door again.

  Nothing.

  Ray cocked his ear toward the door. “Did you hear that?”

  Grace held her breath. “What?” She still kept her voice at a whisper.

  “I could’ve sworn I heard someone say come in. Didn’t you hear it?”

  She shook her head.

  “There it is again,” Ray said, lowering his own voice. “Didn’t you hear it that time?”

  Grace shook her head. “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Yes, you did,” he insisted, looking deep into her warm, dark eyes.

  She started to shake her head again, and then stopped. The shake turned into a nod. “Oh.”

  He reached for the doorknob. Grace’s hand shot out and covered his.

  “This is breaking and entering,” she whispered.

  “What’s a little B and E to a hacker?”

  She blushed.

  “Besides,” he said as together their hands turned easily. “The door’s unlocked. I don’t think entering alone is much of a crime.”

  She cowered behind him as he stepped into the small foyer and called out. “Hello?”

  “I don’t think he’s here,” Grace said. Her whisper was now no more than a soft wisp of air. She grabbed onto the tail end of his shirt and held on tight.

  “Let’s have a look around.” He glanced over his shoulder as he stepped into the living room. Grace’s face was pale, her eyes wide and afraid. His Gracie? Adventurous? Never. “Don’t touch any…”

  Her focus changed, her grip on his shirt tightened, and she clapped a hand to her mouth. Ray snapped his head around to see what caused her reaction.

  Christopher Hatcher, dead, was slumped in a heap of flesh and bones and wrinkled green silk pajamas on the floor of his living room. There was no blood, but his head was twisted in an unnatural position and his open eyes stared sightlessly to the ceiling.

  Ray grabbed his Colt and spun around slowly. Nothing in the room breathed or moved, but for him and Grace. Hatch was long dead; Potts was long gone. Grace hid her face against his back and cursed low and soft, her words lost in a sob. He steered her into the foyer, where Hatcher’s body would be out of her sight.

  While he held her he studied the area around the knob on the front door, checked out the condition of the frame. There was no sign of forced entry, not at this entrance, anyway.

  “What do we do now?” Grace whispered when she’d regained her composure.

  “Call Luther.”

  “He’ll arrest us,” she said. “We can’t claim that Hatcher said come in, now can we?”

  “We have no choice.”

  They went into the kitchen and, using a kitchen towel to protect possible fingerprints on the phone, Ray called Luther at home.

  Again, he woke the homicide detective up.

  “I didn’t get to bed until six,” Luther grumbled when he was awake enough to realize who was on the other end of the line.

  “You get back to sleep, then,” Ray said tersely. “I’ll call the Feds and let them handle Potts’s latest victim. You know, the one most likely who hired him to kill Carter Lanford.”

  Luther’s voice changed, was immediately alert. “Where the hell are you?”

  *

  She’d seen enough death to last her a lifetime.

  By the time she and Ray got back to the suite and closed the door behind them, Grace was ready to collapse. Luther had been unrelenting in his interrogation, and had made it clear that they were both very lucky not to be spending the night in jail.

  All she wanted to do was hold Ray and cry. She didn’t know exactly why she wanted to cry. Not for Christopher Hatcher, who had almost certainly hired Freddie Potts to kill Carter Lanford. Not even for Heather Fanner, who had lost both her lover and her friend in a little more than a week.

  Ray, knowing she was upset, gathered her against his chest as soon as the door was closed and locked behind them. And she knew, as he held her close, that what she wanted to cry for was them. For Ray and for her. For everything they’d missed and would miss in the years ahead. Tears stung her eyes. Luther was right. If she and Ray couldn’t make it, how did anyone in the world have a chance at lasting happiness?

  He lived with death and danger. She needed to be safe. He lived on the edge. She needed him to be safe. All they had was their love for each other, and dammit it wasn’t enough.

  No matter how shaken she was, she remained determined to stay as long as Ray would have her. He’d made the choice to go to Mobile, and she would not walk away from him again, no matter what. She would not offer ultimatums or demand that he choose her over his life’s work. But she wouldn’t follow him, either.

  All they had was this moment, and she was determined to savor it the way she continued to savor her memories of the time they’d had before their marriage had started to fall apart.

  He stroked her hair. “You have to put it out of your mind. Dismiss it. Forget what you saw.”

  He made it sound so easy…

  “Come on. Change your clothes, brush your hair, and I’ll take you somewhere nice for dinner.” His hands stroked her back comfortingly, with an easy, tender strength. “Steak. Chinese. Seafood. You pick. Anything you want, Gracie.”

  She lifted her head to look at Ray. The tears in her eyes were already dried, leaving only a hint of a sting behind. She studied him carefully, lovingly, memorizing the cut of his jaw, the softness of his mouth, the depth and passion in his startling blue eyes. The strength and gentleness that made him who he was. As she looked, she traced his jaw with a lazy finger. She was tempted to tell him she loved him, still. That she had never fallen out of love, no matter how hard she’d tried.

  But all he wanted was this, their physical connection, a temporary affair before he moved on. He was no doubt working her out of his system the same way she’d so foolishly planned to work him out of hers.

  Once he went to Mobile he would replace her. The way he’d replaced her before.

  But she didn’t care about that.
Not now. All she cared about was this moment. Tonight.

  “I have a better idea,” she whispered, rising up on her toes to softly kiss Ray. “How about you order us a pizza.”

  *

  Chapter 16

  «^»

  They ordered pizza, ate it hot and cold, and then settled on the couch in front of the television. Ray in a pair of boxers, Grace in a T-shirt. She leaned against his side, and Ray wrapped his arm possessively around her. Exhausted, sated, snuggled against his warm, male skin, she was perfectly contented.

  Where did he get his courage? she wondered. Had he been born with it? Or had his bravery been built, one iota, one crisis, at a time. She could use a little courage herself, right now. Courage to stay. Courage to speak the uncensored truth.

  It was nearly ten o’ clock when someone banged on the hotel room door. Ray reached for the pistol on the table by the couch and shooed Grace toward the bedroom. She hadn’t taken two steps before Luther called out, letting them know it was he at the door.

  Grace went to the bedroom and pulled on a thick terrycloth robe, and Ray grabbed his jeans from the chair near the blue couch, where he’d tossed them a while ago. She reentered the main room as Ray opened the door and Luther breezed in. She wasn’t hiding from this. Whatever he had to say, she wanted to hear it all.

  “You all right?” Luther asked Grace, gruff and semi-concerned.

  “I’m fine,” she answered softly, remembering their conversation from last night. Luther thought she was bad for Ray, would hurt him again. Not for the world…

  She would like to think that this was a purely social call, but after the day’s grisly discovery she assumed Luther had more questions about Christopher Hatcher’s murder. Besides, with his rumpled suit and piercing eyes and clenched jaw, he looked to be all business.

  “Do you know her?” Luther thrust his hand out, showing Grace a simply framed 5 X 7 photograph of a fair-haired woman.

  “She looks familiar,” Grace said, racking her brain.

  “She lived one street over and a block down from you.”

  Knowing that, the vague memories came together easily. “I used to see her out running. We’d wave, but I didn’t know her.”

  “Gillian Bickmore.”

  “You said lived,” Ray said tersely. “Past tense.”

  “Her body was found this morning, by a neighbor wondering why she hadn’t collected her papers for the past couple of days.” Luther reached into his pocket for a hard candy, but didn’t open it. He played with it, rolling it in his nervous fingers. “He snooped around, peeking through windows until he saw her. It appears that she was poisoned, though I won’t have the results of the autopsy for a few days.”

  He told them about Gillian’s missed days at work and the new boyfriend, Jimmy, she’d told her co-workers about. And that she’d been dead a couple of days.

  “Since we ID’d Potts,” Ray said.

  Luther nodded. “Yeah. This one was weird, too. Gave me the creeps. The woman was laid out on her bed dressed in a sexy nightgown. Her hair was combed, she was wearing makeup, it looked like someone had straightened the sheets and covers around her so she’d look nice and neat once she was dead. Whatever poison or drugs he used, it wasn’t something that caused pain. The expression on her face was almost peaceful.” He shuddered and slipped the cellophane off his candy. “The pillows were fluffed up, a dim bedside light was left burning. It was almost as if the man who killed Bickmore … liked her.” He shuddered as he popped the candy into his mouth.

  “Any hard evidence?” Ray asked, his voice soft.

  Luther shook his head. “Not yet. Crime scene techs are still there, but so far they haven’t found a single fingerprint in the whole house.” He cursed under his breath and bit down on his candy with a loud crunch. “If Potts is staying with a woman, or moving from one to another, unless someone recognizes him there’s no way we can track him. He’s apparently changing his look regularly, since Gillian’s co-workers said she described him as a brown-eyed blond hunk,” he rolled his eyes in apparent disgust, “and Grace said when she saw him kill Lanford he had brown hair and pale blue or green eyes…”

  “He did,” she said softly.

  “And you said he had dark hair when you saw him last night.”

  She nodded her confirmation.

  “Maybe we’re talking about two different men,” Ray suggested. “We don’t know that Gillian Bickmore’s Jimmy is Freddie Potts. Method of death is different, and the physical descriptions don’t match.”

  “Only hair and eye color are different,” Luther snapped. “They can be easily changed. He’s a big guy, and he was in Grace’s neighborhood. This Jimmy picked Gillian up while they were both jogging.”

  Ray muttered something foul, and Grace winced. It was Potts, she knew it. He’d watched and waited and hooked up with a poor woman who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The hit man had been close, all this time.

  “One way or another we have to find this guy. I don’t need any more dead people in my town, you hear me?” Luther ran a distracted hand through his hair. “Unfortunately we have no way to go to Potts,” he said softly. “We’re going to have to wait and hope he comes to you.”

  “No,” Ray said without hesitation, pointing an accusing finger at his ex-partner. “Grace is not going to be your bait. I’m not going to troll her around town and wait for this guy to bite.”

  The tired homicide detective grabbed another hard candy from his jacket pocket, glanced at the peppermint and then dropped it back. He looked plumb worn-out. “Do you really think we’ll have to do that?”

  Grace looked up at Ray. Luther was right. They might be able to hide for a while, but Potts was still out there and he was coming for her.

  Luther had delivered nothing but bad news, and he wasn’t finished. “Ray,” he said. “Can I have a word with you?” He jerked his head toward the door that led to the hallway.

  “I’ll go…” Grace began.

  “No,” Ray said, grabbing her arm and pulling her to him, forcing her to remain at his side. “Whatever Luther’s got to say, you can hear it.” He laid sharp eyes on Luther and silently dared him to argue.

  Luther just sighed. “It’s Morgan,” he said, jerking his head to the hallway again as if he expected that bit of information to change Ray’s mind.

  Ray groaned softly, low in his throat. It was a growl of pure frustration. “She knows. What about him?”

  “Daniels opened his big mouth and blabbed.” Luther scowled. “He denied it, but Morgan and his cameraman were at the Hatcher house less than an hour after you left, and he was asking a lot of very informed questions. He already knows too much.” Luther laid his almost-apologetic eyes on Grace. “He knows about you.”

  Ray cursed, low and long, and pulled her tighter against his side. “I swear, if Morgan uses Grace’s name or picture on the air, I’ll do a hell of a lot more than break his damned nose again.”

  “Doesn’t he have a restraining order against you?” Luther asked.

  “Yeah.” Ray raked a distracted hand up and down Grace’s arm. “And if he’s smart, he’ll stay far enough away to keep me from violating that court order.”

  *

  Knowing Potts was still around, and that he had most likely killed again, made Ray edgy. He wasn’t any calmer than he’d been last night when Luther had delivered the news.

  He didn’t want her to leave the suite at all; every time someone passed in the hallway he tensed. And he couldn’t stand still. He fidgeted and mumbled and paced.

  Grace tried to convince herself that the last two nights had been a mistake. She couldn’t do it. Nothing that felt so good and right could be a mistake. She loved Ray, she adored him, and together they had something special. Until he stirred things up by getting himself hurt. Until she ruined everything by bolting like a frightened rabbit.

  She couldn’t stand to sit here and watch Ray pace, so she left the couch on silent sock-covered feet
and crept up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her head against his back. This was such a wonderful place to be, safe and sheltered. Together after so long. All those years ago, when she’d known she couldn’t live without Ray, she’d been right. For the past six years she had not been living. She’d been existing. Making it from one indifferent day to the next waiting for the numbness to go away, waiting for this moment.

  He covered her hands with one of his, threaded his fingers through hers.

  “Looking to kill a few minutes in the sack?” he asked, his voice not quite as casual as he tried to make it.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Well then, don’t go pawing all over me, baby,” he said gruffly. “I have a hair trigger where you’re concerned.”

  She didn’t back away, but rested her cheek against his back and held on tight, closing her eyes and breathing deep.

  She’d been a coward for so long, and in so many ways. If only she had a touch of Ray’s strength, just a little of his daring…

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  He didn’t say a word, but tensed in her arms. The muscles in his back and his stomach went rigid. As far as she could tell he didn’t breathe.

  “Don’t go ruining a good thing,” he finally said softly. “Just because we’re good in the sack and I’m keeping watch and you’re scared…”

  “That has nothing to do with it.” She rotated her head and rested her chin against his back. It was easier this way, not looking at his face, not staring into those intense blue eyes. Maybe she’d found a little courage, but she was still far from brave. “I’ve always loved you, Ray.”

  He turned around, took her chin in his hands and forced her to look at him. He had always made her face her worst fears, hadn’t he? He’d always asked for just a little too much.

  “Then why did you leave?” he asked softly. “Give me a reason I can understand.”

  She couldn’t think of another way to tell him, she couldn’t explain anymore. “I love you.”

  The pager he had clipped to his belt beeped; a discordant noise at the most wrong of times. He reached down and touched it blindly and the beeping stopped.