by Docter, K. L
“I kept quiet!” The knowledge he’d never fit in with Vanhouten’s disgustingly rich fraternity friends never ceased to enrage Greg. Even after he’d acquired a wife descended from their rarified gene pool, they’d treated him like a reject from the projects.
“Blackmailers aren’t friends. They’re parasites on society, leeches, and never welcome in any circle.”
“You’re breaking my heart.” He sneered. “Call me all the names you want. It doesn’t change the fact I’ve had nothing to do in jail the past six months, but twiddle my dick and follow a particular congresswoman’s illustrious career. Laura’s become quite the people’s darlin’, hasn’t she? Being so strident on the abortion issue and all.”
That barb dug deep and hit a raw nerve. Simon blanched. “Leave my wife out of this.”
“Laura’s up for re-election in November, isn’t she?” Greg smiled. “It would be a shame if your dirty little secret came out. Her adoring public might forgive her if she cheats on you. But cheat on them? Once they hear she had an abortion in college, an abortion performed by a medical student without a license to practice, her congressional career will die a fiery death.” He had the man by the short hairs, and they both knew it. “Of course, those juicy headlines won’t do your baby-making career much good either.”
“You’re a bastard.”
He laughed. “Since my mother was a cheap whore who’d fuck anyone for a line of coke, I am. But I intend to be a rich one.” He took a step forward, forcing Simon to step back, even though a desk stood between them. “Just give me the money. I’ll go collect my wife and the kid, and leave you and yours alone.”
Simon didn’t do anything for several moments. Then, without comment, he turned to the original Cézanne hung behind his desk. He took down the painting from the wall and opened the safe Greg knew from experience was hidden there, filled with money for those times the doctor’s bleeding heart was tapped and he funded some stupid girl through an unplanned pregnancy.
The moron didn’t keep track of the money he gave away for tax purposes. It was free for the taking. Greg figured he was as entitled to that money as some slut who couldn’t keep her legs together. At least he wouldn’t piss it down the drain on some worthless brat created in the back seat of a car alongside an empty six-pack of beer.
After pulling straps of $100s from the safe, Simon faced him. “I’ll make a deal with you.” He had the gall to flick a thumb through one stack of bundled cash.
It took everything he had to keep from punching the man’s superior expression off his face. “You’re in no position to make deals tonight, Simon.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I have twenty thousand here.” He reached into the pocket of his Levi’s, drew out a set of car keys and threw them in the middle of the desk. “Those are the keys to my new Lincoln Mark LT four-by-four pickup parked in the back lot. It’s fully loaded, worth over sixty thousand. I’ll sign over the title and write you a check for another fifty thousand if you’ll walk out of here and never come back. And, I mean never.” He held up his hand before Greg could respond. “You also have to leave Felicia and Amanda alone.”
There was no way Greg would agree to his terms, but the memory of his empty safe deposit boxes waved a bright red flag in his mind. He had to have an immediate infusion of cash. “Write the check for half a mil.”
“Are you insane? I’m not a–”
“‘Freakin’ bank’, I know.” He shrugged. “That’s the deal.” For that kind of money he’d delay his departure until morning and hang around the Bay area until the banks opened so he could cash the check. The doctor was good for it. He knew better than to stiff Greg with a stop payment.
As expected, Simon caved. “Whatever it takes!” He pulled his checkbook from the desk drawer, wrote the check, and set it on top of the cash and keys. Then he reached back into the safe, pulled out a vehicle title, signed it and tossed it in the middle of the pile on the desk. He silently watched Greg pocket everything. Keys and truck title wadded in his left front pants pocket. The check and straps of cash distributed between his right front and back pockets.
The desk surface was empty again before Simon spoke. “Now, get out of my clinic and out of my life once and for all, Bishop. And if I ever hear of you getting near Felicia and Amanda again, I’ll–”
“What? Go to the police?” Greg laughed, no longer willing to humor the idiot. “I don’t think so. You can’t afford to reveal your secrets.”
“There are records.”
The power in the room shifted with those three simple words. Greg felt it deep in his gut. “What are you talking about?”
“What we did, what you blackmailed me into doing,” Simon paused, shrugged. “I’m a doctor. I have to keep medications, procedures straight. I wrote it all down. If you break our deal, if you come back here again or go after Felicia or Amanda, I’ll hand those records over to Felicia. Then your little house of cards will come tumbling down.”
Anxiety and desperation uncoiled in Greg’s chest. The first time he’d experienced the ugly emotions was when he was a skinny five-year-old squeezed behind his mother’s dresser hiding from one of her more violent Johns. Exposure could kill him now, as easily as it would have then. His entire future was built on his haughty wife’s shoulders. “If you had records, you’d have used them before.”
“I’m using them now. I won’t allow you to hurt Felicia and Amanda ever again.” Something flickered in his eyes. “How does it feel to be on the receiving end, Bishop?”
Greg stared at him, trying to gauge whether Simon had grown a conscience or was simply blowing smoke up his ass. “You’re bluffing.”
Simon actually looked down his patronizing nose at him. “I may not want to expose my wife to your blackmail. That doesn’t mean I won’t reveal you to yours. Once Felicia hears the truth, your power is gone. You’ll lose all that glorious money that means so much–”
Before he could finish his taunt, Greg reacted. Scrambling over the desk, he grabbed Simon’s head in both hands and smashed it against the open safe door. Over and over, unable to stop, he beat the doctor’s head bloody on the metal surface until, his blind rage subsiding, he let the man fall to the floor.
Staring down at the body bleeding out into the muted gray carpet, Greg sucked air into his lungs. Huge noisy gulps that sounded suspiciously like sobs.
Was he dead?
Jesus!
Served the prick right.
Christ! He shuddered at the sight of gore on his hands and clothes. The metallic scent of blood mixed with the smell of his own sweat and the rubbing alcohol he’d spilled on his hands. His stomach heaved.
Focus.
Think.
Plan.
His insides grew ice cold as the lifelong mantra settled him. His brain kicked into overdrive as he sifted through everything he’d ever learned. He never knew what he could use in a future con so he’d spent his life soaking up information like a spong–
He knew just what to do.
Stepping over the body, he walked into the attached full-sized bathroom Simon used when he occasionally ran late for one of his wife’s political functions. After showering Simon’s blood off, Greg changed into the clothes he found hanging in a closet, switching the contents of his pockets. Then he left the building to turn off the water to the fire sprinklers.
Back inside, he located the Records room, kicked the locked door open, and tore files at random into several piles to which he added hospital gowns soaked in flammable chemicals he found in a storage closet. He opened up all of the oxygen and nitrous oxide tanks in the two operating rooms before wending his way through the building, splashing chemical cleaners and any other flammable liquids he could find, from Simon’s office to Records and back again to his starting point at the operating rooms.
Minutes later he knelt near Simon’s office doorway across the hall, cigarette lighter in hand, when he heard the doctor moan. He listened for a heartbeat. Two. There wasn’t ano
ther sound. “Simon says,” he murmured, touching the slim blue flame to the chemically soaked carpet, “absolutely nothing.”
With a distinctive whoosh, a flickering line skated over the tips of the saturated carpet fibers down the hall in two directions. Wallpaper caught fire and curled. As Greg watched, a large spray of woody stalks and silk flowers went up in a flash of snapping blues and greens, reds and yellows. The self-renewing fuel gave birth to another line of flames that crawled along the ceiling tiles overhead. Within minutes, he could hear a growing roar in the examination rooms, popping sounds as glass and electrical components exploded. Smoke billowed from the Records room.
Time to go!
In the increasing pall of noxious smoke, he doubled over and worked his way toward the far back corner of the building. Coughing, his lungs burned as he pushed his way through an emergency exit. He ignored the blare of the door alarm. There was no ignoring the powerful force that suddenly rushed up behind him, scooped him off his feet and slammed him into the grass twenty feet behind the building.
Stunned, he gasped for air and stared up at a ball of fire dissipating into the night sky, followed by a ringing silence that seemed to last for an eternity. Scrambling for safety he topped the berm separating the clinic from the employee parking lot thirty feet away. He dug keys out of his pocket as he ran toward the lone truck parked in the doctor’s reserved parking space.
In seconds, the truck was unlocked and he sat inside patting himself down. Still in one piece despite how close he’d cut his escape, he looked through the windshield at the broken silhouette of the fertility clinic. He coughed smoke from his lungs, watching what was left of the building burn fiercely across the moonlit California sky.
Vanhouten was right. There had been enough oxygen and nitrous oxide in those tanks to level the building. There was no way anything could survive that! The doctor and his records were history. Greg’s secrets were safe forever now.
Reaching into his right pocket, he pulled out the wadded title to his new truck and threw it into the glove box. Then he emptied his pockets of cash, skimming the stacks of Ben Franklins before he tossed them on top of the title. Good. All here. It would have been a shame if any of it had fallen from his pocket and been blown to smithereens along with the doctor. It wasn’t like Vanhouten could use it anymore, and the tracker Greg had sitting on Felicia—or Rachel as she was called—didn’t come cheap.
He stared at the half-million-dollar check with disgust. He didn’t dare stick around long enough to cash it. This was one cavernous, money well he hadn’t completely tapped. It was gone. Up in smoke and flames. With a decisive movement, he shredded the check and scattered the pieces out the truck window in the brisk coastal breeze.
The debt to be laid at Felicia’s feet had grown substantially in the last hour. “I think it’s time,” he muttered, leaving the truck’s headlights off when he spotted a police cruiser squeal around the corner of the intersection down the hill, “to settle that debt with my darlin’ wife.” There was no one standing between him and his wife’s millions now.
Chapter Four
Denver, Colorado.
At the first crack of gunfire, Rachel dove headfirst into the garden she was weeding. Listening for the second report she expected to follow, she prayed Amanda stayed at Patrick Thorne’s house where she’d gone an hour ago to play with her new friend, Suze.
Gasping for air, she inhaled the rich, spicy scent of freshly turned soil and crushed nasturtiums instead. Dirt and grit bit into her cheek and the bare flesh exposed by her cutoffs and T-shirt. The mid-afternoon sun beat hot on her shoulders and legs, and all she could do was lie there and watch a fat bumblebee dip into a russet blossom three inches from her nose.
Had she run almost nine hundred miles only to die like this, grubbing alone in the dirt like a spineless worm?
A surge of anger gave her the impetus to lift her head. She peeked over the flimsy wall of twelve-inch annuals between her and the street. A second gunshot rang out, belched in a cloud of black smoke from an ancient Volkswagen bus that disappeared around the corner.
Backfire?
She groaned, more relieved than embarrassed by her overreaction. Her chin dropped. Taking several deep draughts of the thin Colorado air, she worked to calm the pounding of her heart inside her ribcage. Her efforts made her head swim. A minute later she was able to push herself out of the three-foot section of the garden she’d mown down.
Her nerves had been on edge since she fled Dallas on Friday, five days ago. If she weren’t so overwrought it would have occurred to her Greg would never stand at a distance and take potshots at her. No. Greg liked to look into her eyes when he meted out his punishments.
An icy shiver skimmed her skin. Each day that passed without his appearance should have reassured her she’d made the right decision to accept Katy’s arrangements with the Thornes. As long as Greg didn’t track her and Amanda to Denver, they were safe.
Problem is she hadn’t felt safe since Amanda was born and she discovered what kind of man she’d married. She couldn’t pluck enough weeds from Evelyn Thorne’s gardens by day to tear the anxiety from her heart at night. Her growing sense of trepidation kept her awake long after the morning stars dimmed above the mile-high city’s cloudless skies.
How could the justice system simply hand Greg a “get out of jail free” card? She’d always suspected the man had connections in high places, but how had he arranged for the evidence in his case—evidence she’d risked everything to provide—to disappear before he went to trial? If he’d accomplished that feat while behind bars, how in the world was she and Amanda going to stay out of his clutches?
She felt like there was a giant bull’s-eyes painted on their backs, that it was only a matter of time before Greg tracked them down. During their marriage the man would spend weeks, months, laying meticulous groundwork for one of his cons. He’d had six months to plan dozens of new punishments for his betrayer.
“’Til death us do part, darlin’.”
His words echoed over the expanse of time and distance, ringing a fresh peal of dread in Rachel’s breast. With one hand, she swept clumps of soil off her tangerine T-shirt and whispered a small prayer. Please don’t let him find us!
She tossed her worry as well as a forgotten fistful of dandelions clutched in her hand into the metal bucket at her side. She flicked cotton dandelion seeds from her fingertips and rubbed at an ache in her lower back.
Examining the flowerbed she’d weeded before lunch, she sighed with satisfaction. She’d made it her mission today to eradicate every weed in the nasturtium bed that ran the length of the house. As missions went, it wasn’t much. But it was something she could control, and the very least she could do for the woman who’d given her another hole to crawl into, saving her from running one more mile.
There weren’t many people who’d hand over their home and greenhouse to a total stranger for a month. Evelyn Thorne was either a saint or naive as sin. Exactly the kind of mark Greg specialized in conning out of their life savings.
Her insides twisted at the thought of how many innocents had suffered at Greg’s hands. But it was the last innocent, the little girl who’d built an impenetrable wall around her world that tormented Rachel most.
Amanda hadn’t said a word when her mother pulled her out of bed on Friday and drove her away from the sparse home they’d built with Katy. Just as she hadn’t spoken that awful night when Rachel’s doctor friend, Simon, hustled them out of their house to his clinic where he tended Rachel’s broken body. In pain, sedated, she hadn’t registered that her daughter had gone completely mute until the next morning when she woke up in the hotel room where Simon had stashed them. The child just stood there at the side of the bed, her doe-like brown eyes fixed on her mama, clutching the doll her father gave her a week earlier to replace her puppy savaged by a rogue coyote.
Simon hadn’t missed the signs though and, when he gave Rachel money to escape San Francisco, he’d given her
enough to take Amanda to a doctor when they got settled. Now that they were on the run again, Rachel despaired of helping her little girl back to normalcy.
Suddenly appearing from nowhere, the precocious child from next door who’d been first to welcome the new arrivals hunkered down beside Rachel. She pointed at the garden. “What happened to them flowers?” Suze Brown asked in a voice designed to wake the dead.
Rachel’s pulse jumped back into the stratosphere. She managed to smile at the five-year-old and then at Amanda, who squatted down in imitation of her newfound friend, her doll tucked under one arm. “I had a little accident,” Rachel said without explaining her ignoble dive into the dirt.
“Looks like Mr. Donovan’s big slobber dog rolled all over ’em.” Suze squinted at a bent stem. “Miss Evie’s gonna be sad you broke them pretty flowers.”
“They’re not all broken,” she reassured her. “See those little ones? They’re baby nasturtiums. I’ll move them, and they’ll grow bigger and fill in the space.”
“That’s a funny name. Nasty-shamus.”
Amanda giggled.
Rachel was more startled by that natural burst of sound than the backfire made by the Volkswagen minutes earlier. Hope filled her heart as she searched her daughter’s face. “Can you say nasturtium, too, Amanda?”
She used to say so much more, her vocabulary even at three far beyond her years. Yet she said nothing, hugging her doll like it was an impenetrable shield she’d placed between herself and her mother.
Rachel’s hopes died. It was only then she noticed the doll her daughter clutched in a death grip was not the one her father gave her. “Honey, where’s your baby?”
“She’s taking a nap in my playroom.” Suze pointed next door at the dormer window attached to the second story bedroom where the children liked to play. “We traded.”
“Suze, you have to give it back. Amanda doesn’t like anyone else to play with Becca.” An understatement. She’d cried painfully soundless tears the one time Rachel took the toy away, ostensibly to wash the dirty clothes, but hoping to throw away the constant reminder of the child’s father. Amanda was so upset Rachel gave it back to her to avoid causing her further trauma.
