by Kate Aeon
Her hands locked tightly together, she looked from one man to the next trying to see what they were thinking and getting... nothing. No expressions, no emotion. Nothing. They were hearing her out. But she couldn’t tell whether they believed her or not.
“Michael flirted with me. And took everything he could find out about me before the judge — my grades, my public service in high school and at college, and the story about how my sister and I were poor and just trying to earn enough money to further our educations, and how I was going to be a teacher and how she wanted to be a nurse. His details were all true, but he made the two of us sound like saints. And, worse, he’d put together this little photo presentation of our crappy trailer and how clean and bare the inside was, and how my sister and I shared a foldout couch in an eight-by-eight sunroom. The judge wasn’t thrilled about our interest in psychic readings, but he was very, very generous. He told me to research the law surrounding any further businesses I might pursue and to pass this suggestion on to my sister as well. He made us return the money to any of our customers who requested it and forbade us to do anything further along psychic lines. And then he dismissed the whole thing. And as soon as we were out of the courthouse, Michael asked me out. I turned him down, explaining that I didn’t intend to date until after I got my degree. And a job. I was determined to keep my grades up and my scholarship intact. I couldn’t afford distractions.” She turned to Brig. “I’m surprised that you found the case.”
“Your ex-in-laws told me about it,” Brig said. “And it was easy enough to confirm the broadest facts, and easy to fill in the missing ones with a lot of things that weren’t true.”
“The Schaeffers were not happy with Michael choosing me,” Phoebe said. “They had this rich blonde country-club debutante who’d graduated from Vassar picked out for Michael. I didn’t fit their plans. But the deb didn’t fit Michael’s. So he married me instead — lucky me. I was a sucker who thought he was a nice guy who’d had bad luck with women before and just needed more love.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Toeller said suddenly. “I’ve been going through Michael’s file. Schaeffer was trouble before you met him. He’d had a long history of serious behavior problems that his parents covered up with money. He’s one of the bad guys.”
Brig nodded.
Alan said, “You don’t have to worry anymore, Phoebe. Everyone who matters is on your side now. We’re all watching out for you. Michael isn’t going to get anywhere near you again.”
Phoebe leaned back in the chair, her leg propped on an ottoman, with thunder roaring outside and lightning crashing, with rain slamming into the windows, and she thought, It’s over. I can’t believe it, but it’s over, and I’m still alive.
She would have thought she’d feel better. She didn’t.
Alan was watching her. “What’s wrong?”
“He isn’t in jail yet, I guess,” she said. “I need to know that he’s locked up. That he isn’t going to ooze up through the floor or something and grab me.”
She smiled at Alan, and he said, “We’ll take care of you. We’ll keep you safe. I promise.”
A knock on the door. Brig went to answer it.
“Next door was our guy,” a woman in uniform said.
Brig pulled her in out of the rain.
“He has a huge setup in there. Has recording devices attached to the phone taps, a psychic-line prompt taped so that he could play it before speaking to her, TV monitors — one that must have been for the bug you found on the front window and three others that we located only by checking the angles. One was in her bedroom and one in the bathroom. And there was a third that covered the whole parking lot plus the street leading up to it.”
“The... bathroom?” Phoebe said.
“Yes, ma’am,” the officer told her.
“How did we miss them?” Brig wanted to know.
“These are micro-cameras. Each about the size of the head of a pin. He pushed them into the cottage-cheese ceilings and onto the light pole in the parking lot The things were about three millimeters across, total. He had to have paid a freaking fortune for them.”
“So that’s how he knew when she left, when she got home, when she was asleep. That’s how he stayed out of sight.”
The office nodded. “Sure looks like it.”
“We didn’t find lockpicks or a set of keys or anything like that but with all the lockpick technologies on the market, he didn’t exactly have to struggle to find a way in. His only risks were in getting caught, and his little listening post made sure that wasn’t going to happen.”
“We’re going to need to get the uniforms and the black-and-whites out of here,” Brig said. “Put plainclothes people down.”
Agent Toeller said, “Actually, the FBI has jurisdiction on this one. The two murders in the school shooting take precedence over the current lesser crimes. Have your people clear the roadblock and get them out of the area. We’ll have two agents in his listening post, two staying in the upstairs rooms in her place. We’ve also obtained clearance to use a snowbird’s townhouse across the green. I’ll be there with my partner. I want to keep the traffic down, let him think it’s clear, so we’ll have a couple of plainclothes guys outside.”
“As persistent as he was in coming after her,” Brig said, “I have to believe he isn’t going to just give up and go away. He didn’t spend the fortune that he’s already spent to not get what he wanted. Keep some of my people on it, Toeller. You may need the extra manpower.”
The churning in Phoebe’s stomach agreed with Brig.
But she was safe from Michael. The FBI had the case. They knew where Michael had been and where he was going to try to be. What he was driving. What he looked like. How he’d gotten to her the first times. They were watching over her.
She wanted to believe she was safe.
But she couldn’t.
Not until Michael was behind bars. He’d been planning this. He’d been preparing contingency plans. She knew he had. She knew him. Michael loved contingency plans. Which meant she had to be careful. She had to keep her eyes and ears open. And she had to do whatever she could to help put him behind bars.
“What do I need to do to help you?” she asked.
Brig started to say something, but Toeller held up a hand. “You can help us best by going back to your place. Do whatever you would be doing right now, act like this is a normal night. If Schaeffer put in four bugs, he may have a fifth that we haven’t found yet. He may have some sort of listening device. He may have a remote set on his phone taps that will let him connect from a distance. We don’t know, but we do know that if he thinks you’re alone and all the excitement is over, he may come back. He may make an attempt to come after you.”
“I don’t want her to do that,” Alan said. “I don’t want her to be the bait.”
“We have the area covered. We’re not going to miss him, Dr. MacKerrie, and we’re not going to let him slip by us.”
Alan said, “I’d feel better if I could stay with her.”
“I’d feel better, too,” Phoebe agreed.
Toeller shook his head. “He’s less likely to be lured into coming after her if you’re with her. And we want to get this man as quickly as possible, before he hurts someone else.”
Brig was frowning. “I’ll clear all my people out of the way,” he said. He looked at Toeller, and Phoebe saw some wariness in his eyes. “You’ve got it under control, right?”
“We’ve got it,” Toeller said.
Brig turned to the uniformed officer. “Tell them the FBI has claimed jurisdiction and we’re clearing off,” he said. The cop didn’t like it, and Phoebe could see that Brig didn’t like it. Brig turned back to her. “You’ll be all right. Just stay inside, do what they tell you to do, and stay safe until they give you the all clear.”
“I understand,” she said. She would go home. Lock her doors. Sit at the phone and read tarot for strangers for a few hours, and maybe a little longer than that. And Micha
el would come after her, and the FBI would arrest him, and he would finally be charged with the murders of her two students and for the murder of his first fiancée. He would be behind bars.
By morning it would probably all be over.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Alan watched Brig walk Phoebe next door. He watched the police leaving, watched FBI agents disappearing behind doors and into cars. It’s going to be okay, he told himself. She’ll be fine. She has two FBI agents with her. She’s safe. Michael may try to get her, but he isn’t going to get past these people.
But he was uneasy.
Of course he was. She was this delicate little woman with a bad knee, and if the bastard got through to her, she wasn’t likely to be able to fight him off a second time.
Michael Schaeffer wasn’t going to get through to her. That was the part of this that Alan had to hang on to. The FBI had the bastard. They knew where he’d been hiding, and no doubt were backtracking him from his lease. They knew how he’d been doing the things to her that he’d been doing...
God! Alan just about couldn’t even let himself consider that. Her ex-husband had actually been in the same room with her. While she was drugged and helpless. At least once. Maybe more than once. Chick had dragged Alan to Phoebe’s front door not because Phoebe was having a nightmare but because that monster had been in there with her. He could have done anything to her right then. But he hadn’t.
Michael liked pain, she’d told him. Fear. And he liked being the smartest, outwitting people, leaving them baffled and confused. He liked winning, showing off, making the other guys look like bumblers and fools.
Alan was scared for her. Still. Dammit. He needed to do something to keep his mind off of this. Off the waiting, because the waiting was going to be the hard part. With luck it would only be a couple of hours. If it was any more than that, it was going to be like living under siege.
He didn’t want to think about that.
He called the hospital ER. He got one of the nurses. Had her give him to Morrie.
“How is it tonight?”
“Not bad so far,” Morrie said. “You feeling any better?”
“Yeah. Phoebe’s okay. My hand hurts like hell, but it’ll heal. I’m keeping ice on it. But we have some bad things going on here. Can’t talk yet, but I’ll fill you in as soon as I can.”
“The nurses were describing your hand-smashing barf fest. Sounded pretty impressive, dude.”
“Not my finest moment. But I’ll be okay.”
“I feel better, then. So. You wanna get your ass back in here and cover your shift so I can go home?”
“No way. I have to stay here in case Phoebe needs me.”
“Is this a good time to bring up the Pussy Pool? Do I have, like, money coming to me?”
“This is not a good time. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t swamped, because I feel guilty as hell for dumping the night on you. But things could get bad here. And with the hand, I’m guessing I’ll be out for a couple of days, maybe. Have to let the swelling go down and get the fingers working together again.”
“With the horrible weather outside, it’s going to be good in here,” Morrie told him. “Barring storm-related disasters, we’ll be sitting in an empty house all night. Nobody is coming out in the middle of this shit for a three-day cold.”
“Good.”
“Later, then, man.”
The phone call had eased Alan’s mind about one of his worries. But either he was going to pace in the middle of his floor like a trapped tiger or he was going to find something to keep his hands and his mind busy. He wished he could be with Phoebe. He wished he could see her. Hold her. Touch her.
He’d been such a fool for thinking that she could be like Janet. There was never a woman alive who was less like Janet. Never a woman more warm, more passionate, more sweetly funny and mind-blowingly sexy.
But he couldn’t belittle Phoebe by saying she was just about sex.
He could see her in his future. Every night. Every day. He could see them walking hand in hand when they were old — someplace cool and green. Someplace with rolling hills that rose up to embrace them. They would have a little house that backed onto a hill, and it would have wildflower meadows around it and beautiful big old trees that bent over the house like protective parents.
And the kids would visit. And the grandkids.
He stopped.
After Chick’s death, he had sworn that he would never again have kids. That he would never again chance the heartbreak, the devastation, the loss of a whole world that having a child would make possible.
He had been afraid. He had been frozen.
And now he was looking into a fantasy future that included children and grandchildren, that would make possible loss on a scale he could not even begin to conceive.
No.
He had been right to swear off of having another family. Look at him — at this moment he was facing the possible loss of a woman he had only known a handful of days, and he was a frantic mess. He wasn’t strong enough to face a future that included marriage. He wasn’t strong enough to look at another baby and hold that baby in his arms and feel the life in her or him and know that at any instant that life could be ripped away, and with it whatever little pieces of himself he had managed to salvage from the wreckage of the last time.
He found his wallet, pulled out Chick’s lucky stone, and held it in his hand for just a moment. It was comfort. It was his talisman. The painted forget-me-not was worn and faded, but it was enough. He’d had Chick, and she was enough. She would have to be enough.
That was what he’d do.
He’d get out his tape recorder and a tape. Dictate notes on the book. He hadn’t worked on the book since the day Chick had shown up outside his office. He’d been too scattered. He would write, and he would tell the stories he remembered about her. Before they faded like the painted flower. He would put them down and rejoice in the true happiness he had once had. In the love that still lived in his heart.
Chick was enough. Had to be enough.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The FBI agents put Phoebe in between them walking over to her front door, and one went in and did a quick sweep of her place while the second kept her on the stoop — in the wind and the rain — long enough to make sure they didn’t have any surprises waiting for them inside.
Then they got her inside. “This place is a defense nightmare,” the first agent muttered to his partner. “Two sliding glass doors; only two windows, and both of those face the front; that damned skylight. And the people with the end units have second-story balconies that connect directly to the roof, so they could step from the balcony onto the roof and walk across the roof to any other unit in the building. The floor plan is all cut up, and the patio privacy fence shields both sliding glass doors from the sidewalk.”
They both paused and stared off into space for an instant at exactly the same time, and Phoebe almost got spooked. “Copy that,” one of them said, and Phoebe looked harder at them and finally saw the tiny earbud and wire each wore.
“Our team across the street says they have the best possible view of your patio,” one of the agents said.
She ought to remember their names. They’d told her, but they’d done it right in the middle of her finding out she couldn’t stay with Alan, that Alan couldn’t come with her, and that to help the FBI capture Michael she was going to have to go back into her place and act as live bait. They were tall, they dressed the same, they had the same short haircuts and square-jawed all-American G-man looks that spoke of plenty of exercise and ferocious attention to detail.
They were clearly competent. Focused. They established their watch posts — one in the unused upstairs bedroom, which had the window and gave the only halfway decent view of the patio and traffic outside the townhouse, and one in the loft at the top of the stairs, which gave the best possible view of the front door, the ground-floor window, and the sliding glass door in the living room.
They couldn’t see her room. But the only access to her room was the sliding glass door, and they’d already established that its new locks were good ones and that no one would be coming in that way with anything less than a sledgehammer. Which they would hear.
They spent a few minutes reassuring her. Two agents stationed in the townhouse next door waited for any chance that Michael would reappear there. Two agents in the place across the green had a clear view of the front of her house, while her two agents had the vulnerable spots on the inside covered. Men were stationed around the parking lot, watching for anyone using Michael’s space or anyone coming to any of the townhouses in her unit. Police were looking out for red Porsches driven by men who might match Michael’s description.
“Just do what you would usually do at this time of night,” the agent whose name she couldn’t remember told her. “He’s not likely to try anything in the middle of this storm, anyway. So try to relax.”
Phoebe thought about the cost of the new locks on her doors and about the fact that she’d gotten in almost no phone time for the last few days and didn’t yet have the rent covered, either. She sat at the table and got out her cards and tried to ignore the storm screaming overhead — and the fact that she felt completely exposed sitting at her table.
The agents faded upstairs and assumed their posts.
She wasn’t alone. But not being alone didn’t seem to be helping her feel any better.
Her skin was crawling, and she couldn’t bear to sit still. She had the awful feeling that she and the FBI and the local police were missing something. That Michael wasn’t going to just walk into this trap. That he was going to avoid it and still get through to her.
She couldn’t affect anything Michael might do. All she could do was help the FBI as they’d asked her to. And all they’d asked of her was that she do what she would normally do at this time of night.
