She gets away scot-free, and you’ll be forever hunted, and all for your measly bonus? We moved millions around tonight with the details I gave you. What sort of imbecilic crook are you? My reward is far greater than—oh, my God, no! Her eyes widened in utter shock and disbelief as the penny finally dropped. It was a sting. She had been duped.
“Excuse me, ladies. I hate to interrupt your poignant moment of closure, but I gotta use the john,” Mickey said dryly and left the room, leaving the gym bag sitting securely on the table beside Ginette.
Chapter Seven
Ginette moved to sit opposite Victoria.
“I’ll take this private moment to gloat. I just love the idea I got one over on the exalted Victoria Gresham. I interviewed her, you know.” She nodded to the door Mickey had just exited.
“She was a super-geek, a technical analyst for FinCEN.” Victoria’s inner alarm bells rang fit to burst her eardrums.
Ginette carried on completely unperturbed.
“A little bit odd, but aren’t they all? As soon as she came into my office with this brilliant prototype tool—FX something or other—I had her punted off-site quicker than she could blink. It was so easy to set all the blame at your big bad boardroom door. Your rabid shark reputation goes before you in the employee pool.”
Ginette smiled endearingly at her. “She was so easy to corrupt. My hard-luck story had you playing the part of my dirty, underhanded ex, and she was on my side from the start. In fact, she even helped me flesh out my kidnap idea. I simply dangled her bonus money like a carrot in front of her nose. It’s amazing how easy it is to make people hate you.” She scooted closer and whispered, “I drugged you on your day off. All she had to do was scoop you up off the floor. I told her you have a little drinking problem in case she had scruples about drugs. And then she helped me clear out our joint accounts as well as the household ones. So now I’m free of you and she has the money you ‘owed’ her for her code. Simple but effective.
Everyone’s a winner. Oh, well, not you, obviously.” Ginette sighed contentedly at her cleverness.
Duh, dumb-ass. Victoria rolled her eyes, looked pointedly at the gym bag, and then at the door. She had to do it several times before Ginette finally frowned.
“What?” she half whined. But it was too late. Already Victoria could hear sirens approaching from maybe half a mile away.Alarmed, Ginette dashed out into the hall. Victoria could hear her tearing around slamming doors and checking all the rooms before finally rushing back to the kitchen.
“She’s gone,” she blurted, eyes fixed on the bag. “What the fuck? She ran and didn’t even take the money? Do you think she heard the sirens and panicked?”
Victoria raised her chin indicating she had the answer, but she was unfortunately gagged. Hissing with frustration, Ginette scurried behind and none too gently undid the knots. Victoria smacked her lips against the dryness in her mouth.
“She never wanted the money, you idiot. She wanted the security access to my offshore accounts. She’s been riding you like the short-assed pony you are. You handed me and our domestic bank details over to her on a platter. All she had to do was make me believe it was you emptying my accounts. I should have known you’d never have the smarts to shift money like that. Godammit.”
Ginette gawped, the answer not penetrating her brain.
Victoria sighed.
“It’s over, Ginette. She duped you. She duped us both. Your money is not in Switzerland. It’s in Monaco. I saw it there myself, just before I helped her put my illegal funds right in there with it. And I bet it’s moving out of there even as we speak.”
“How did the police find us?” Ginette’s IQ seemed to drop in inverse proportion to the rise in siren decibels. She was panicking now.“Courtesy of our host. This is the smokescreen for her exit.
Here we are. I’m chained to a stove, and there’s a big bag of money and a gun with your prints all over them. I do believe, Ginette, that you look pretty much like a psycho ex who’s kidnapped me and cleaned out our joint accounts. Which is exactly what you are. Can you believe that bitch has the nerve to try to bring a moral into the end of all of this?” She gave a bitter laugh.
“What? But you can tell them it’s not me,” Ginette screeched.
“And confess to money laundering and tax evasion? She’s screwed us, Ginette, plain and simple. There’s no easy way out of this.” Victoria shrugged ruefully. Even the stricken look on Ginette’s face did little to placate her. “This police bust buys her all the time she needs to get out of the state. And if she’s as smart as I now think she is, out of the country. In fact, most definitely the country. I wonder how long she meditated over this sting.”
“You know what really pisses me off?” Ginette spat as she lunged for the gun in her panic. “That you’re such a smart-ass about fucking everything. Even your own fucking kidnapping.”
“And do you know what pisses me off? That you’re so stupid yet I’m the blonde!” Victoria yelled after her as Ginette crashed out of the kitchen.
❖
A smokescreen. A smokescreen for a getaway . Well, two can play that game, Ginette’s mind screamed as she tore up the hall. She passed the open door to the lounge. Smokescreen! The log fire blazed happily. She dashed into the room looking around for anything combustible. Cushions? The rug? She grabbed a throw blanket off the back of the couch, flinging a corner into the fireplace, draping the rest of it out over the floor and up onto the soft furnishings. It smoldered rather than burned. Damn, pure wool! Then she noticed the kerosene lamps decorating each end of an old pine dresser. She shook one. Half full. She hurled it into the fireplace, recoiling at the loud whoosh as it shattered.
The fire exploded out of the hearth, spewing into the room.
Rugs, floor planks, couch, anywhere kerosene had splashed, flashed into flame. Black smoke belched up to the ceiling and rolled around the pine beams.
Ginette prayed the distraction of a cabin fire would cloak her getaway down the back roads. She began to double back to the kitchen to grab the money and Victoria. They would pile into her car and run for it.
A muffled boom blew a huge ball of blinding smoke out into the hall. Her vision fell to within a few inches of her stinging eyes. Acrid smoke cut at her lungs. She froze.
Could she plow into the black cloud? Would she make it through or fall, choking after a few steps? Her hesitation wasted precious seconds. The snap and crackle of flames made her stomach shrink with fear. Survival instinct won out. Ginette turned and fled out the front door with Victoria’s scream of “What the hell have you done?” ringing in her ears.
She fell into her car and pulled the cell phone from her pocket with shaking hands, hitting the speed dial. A glance in the rearview mirror terrified her. The entire side of the cabin was alive with flame. The roof shingles were engulfed. Smoke plumes and sparks punched the night sky. She stared at the inferno sick with fear. Victoria was still in there, chained to the stove.
The cell phone in her hand spat out a voice, “Ginette?” She answered as if in a trance. “I set fire to the cabin. Vic’s still in there. Oh God. I swear, Mickey, I swear I didn’t mean to leave her.”
She didn’t listen to the answering curses. She knew what she had done.
❖
The smoke was killing her. Victoria could hear the whole house crackling. Wood was popping and exploding. Heated air ran along her skin. And thick, acrid smoke billowed down the hallway, seeping into the small kitchen, slowly asphyxiating her.
Her burning eyes poured tears. Her lungs screamed with every sucking breath. She was enveloped in suffocating blackness. She knew she had been abandoned. She knew she was trapped and alone with only her bleak fate for company. If my life were to flash before my eyes right now, this ending would seem appropriate somehow.
Glass broke in a windowpane nearby. Glass had been shattering with the heat for several minutes. The same blistering heat was getting closer. Mercifully, it would not be her killer. She would no
t burn to death. No, she would merely drown in thick smoke.
“Hey! You can’t go in there,” a man’s voice was calling out.
“The fire crew’s on its way. Hey, you. Wait.” Gunshots rang out deep in the woods. Panicked cries, and then someone was standing beside her. A strong body brushed past her, wheezing, gasping in the acrid gloom. She heard a clank, the screech of metal levered on metal. And then her hands were free, she could pull the cuffs away from the stove. A loud thump as the lever was dumped on the floor. Clumsily, she reached out to her rescuer as a wrenching wail, almost human in its sadness, filled the room around them. A resounding crash, and a scorching wave of heat flooded the small kitchen. Part of the cabin’s structure had collapsed, and soon, the rest would disintegrate on top of them.
Strong hands scrabbled for her chained ones. She recognized them as Mickey’s. Mickey had come back for her! Into this death trap! They clung together for an instant, both sucking in the clean air that rode on the back of the structural collapse. It was a small reprieve. Flames would find this new fuel, and find them, too.
Now their enemy was fire, not smoke. Victoria could already feel heat flaying her skin. The rear of the building was in flames, blocking the exit. They had to move, but there was no way out.
Groping through billowing blindness, Victoria lurched forward, dragging Mickey behind her.
Five paces to the door, where the tiles turned to hallway carpet. The heat here was worse, but not unbearable.
Six paces along the hall to the garage door. Please let the garage still be sound. Please don’t let it be a burning wreck. She inched the door open. There was no rush of heat. It was cooler, with less smoke, but still total darkness.
Fourteen paces now, to cross the floor to the window where the sun had poured in on her first day.
Mickey seemed to sense where Victoria had brought her.
She elbowed through the small window, punching out the sharp shards, blood running down her forearm.
Victoria was suddenly lifted bodily and pushed through the opening, until she dropped onto the scorched grass below. She had barely time to draw a cool, clean breath when Mickey landed on top of her.
She lay in a dazed heap, sucking in rasping lungfuls of air when paramedics and police swarmed over her, pulling her clear of the burning building. She was immediately bundled on a gurney and surrounded by the emergency crew. She glanced over anxiously. Mickey had staggered to her feet pushing away helping hands.
“Careful.” A gentle hand steadied Victoria’s shoulder. “Lie back. Let me fit this mask—”
A shot rang out in the woods. Everyone instinctively ducked. But not Mickey. Victoria saw her standing upright even as everyone dived for cover. A second shot, and more scrabbling from the police and paramedics before it became clear the shooting was too far away to be dangerous.
Victoria lurched upright on the gurney, searching for Mickey through the milling uniforms, blue flashing lights, and swirling smoke. But she had disappeared in a blink, like a magician’s assistant.
Chapter Eight
“And so, Ms. Gresham…” Detective Spacek continued to report from the foot of her hospital bed. He used the bored drone he’d adopted days ago, when he’d obviously realized his investigation was never going to get anywhere. “After that, we apprehended Ginette Felstrom running around in the woods. She claimed to be disoriented and suffering from amnesia. Forensics showed she had discharged a firearm within the past forty-eight hours, but the weapon has so far not been located. It probably never will be if she just dropped it in the woods during her wandering.” His mouth pulled a particularly sour twist, as if he were sucking on something incredibly unpleasant. Victoria coolly observed his discomfort as she sat plumped up on starched white pillows in a private room of the local hospital.
“But we believe it was her gunfire that caused the general confusion among the rescue services, allowing your mystery rescuer access to the burning cabin, and then later, to escape into the woods.”
“Ms. Felstrom is a member of a private gun club. It wouldn’t be surprising if she had residue from a firearm on her, Detective Spacek.” Her voice was still croaky from the smoke inhalation, but improving all the time.
“And your cuffs?”
“A sex game.”
He nodded, his withered cheeks not even carrying a blush.
He looked pointedly at the dark bruises and cuts still marking her wrists.
They both knew there was nothing for him here. She was the four hundredth and ninety-seventh wealthiest woman in America. She had all the aces and all the answers. And she only played when the odds were in her favor. All that was left for him to do now was to wrap up his report and get the hell out of her hospital room.
“The tall girl that got you out?” Finally, he turned to the last loose thread they both knew would forever dangle, because Victoria was never going to tell him the truth. “You’ve never seen her before.” A statement, not a question. He knew her answer already.
“Didn’t see her. Thought she was a firefighter.” He placed his hat back on his head, signaling the interview was over and he was ready to depart.
“Well, I guess I’m done here, Ms. Gresham. I’ll file my report. Your lawyers can ask for a copy if you feel the need.” She nodded. “I see. Thank you, Detective Spacek.” Giving a polite nod, he turned to leave, only to bump into Ginette at the door. She had several magazines rolled under one arm and carried two plastic cups of steaming coffee. They eyed each other warily as the detective politely held the door. Sliding past him with not so much as a nod of acknowledgement, Ginette perched herself on the edge of Victoria’s bed, scattering the magazines across the covers.
“The vending-machine coffee is atrocious, and it’s a good fifteen-minute walk to the local Sludgebucks, so you’ll have to make do with this canteen muck. It’s pure tar. All you need are some feathers and you got your own revenge kit.” Victoria laid her head back wearily on the pillow, uninterested in magazines and conversation. Ginette prattled on, nodding toward the door Spacek had exited.
“They took so many swabs, prints, and DNA samples, I could clone myself.” She sounded disgusted with the processes of law and order she had been forced to endure. “I mean, I’m innocent, so I should get all that stuff back, right?” Victoria glared at her, and she shifted awkwardly.
“Well, innocent in that they know nothing…that kind of innocent.” Ginette tried to appease. Victoria’s laser-beam glare remained.
A complete change of subject was in order. Best turn the spotlight on someone Vic currently despises more than me. I wonder who that could be? Ginette assessed the situation with Machiavellian shrewdness.
“Did you know the cabin had been rented out in your name? Seems that bitch thought of everything.” Victoria’s stony silence was fraying Ginette’s nerves. She needed her influential ex to be on her side now that all the money was gone. How else was she ever going to recover anything?
“Come on, Vic. She was a bitch, a dirty, two-faced con artist. I was way out of my league. I just wanted to stiff you for that big fat bank account and our itty-bitty joint one. Okay, okay, so I’m a bitch, too, but wasn’t that one of the things you used to love about me?” She pouted defensively.
She was a very attractive woman and knew it. Her looks and guile had taken her far in life, but under her hardcore materialism ran a mischievous wit and charm that had actually been the glue in her relationship with Victoria. They made each other laugh, they were in synch, and they were real with each other, warts and all. In fact, if they had never become lovers they would have been firm friends. It was this base foundation of actually liking each other in their expensive, shallow, high-maintenance world, where honest feelings never flourished, that held them tentatively together—even now. Especially now, when in the midst of their acrimonious split, they shared a joint problem. They’d both been played for fools. They had both been belittled and beggared by the same scourge. Now they had a common enemy and a co
mmon goal. And they knew they worked well together—like the tag team from hell.
“You realize I had to hire practically an entire corporate law firm to broker a deal over my back taxes?” Victoria finally snapped. “The world and his wife noticed the way my money was whizzing around the globe this week. I might as well have stashed it on a roller coaster with fireworks.” Victoria shook her head, exasperated. “Of all the stupid, selfish, ill-thought-out schemes. Why did you do it, Ginette?”
“I wanted more than you were offering.” Ginette explained as simply as she could. What was the problem here? You move in with a millionaire and you become used to the luxury. You become addicted to the lifestyle. What’s not to understand?
“I mean, the offer of my own place and a secure job was fine…” Her finger traced an imaginary pattern on the bed cover. “I still have that, right?” She popped a panicked glance at Victoria.
Victoria sighed and merely nodded at her ex’s audacity. She just hadn’t the energy to scream at her until she turned blue and a nurse with a lot of drugs had to be summoned. So instead she muttered, “Just tell me every stinking little detail…again.” Ginette’s shoulders relaxed a little.
“I met her at work. She was another one of those big geeky weirdoes we seem to breed. Anyway, by that time, I was looking for a better settlement. Our arguing had gotten us nowhere, and I knew you were never going to budge. I just wanted some of the surplus money that always seemed to be lying around. Tons of it sitting there all unspent, doing nothing but earning boring old interest.” She had a dreamy look on her face as she remembered all those beautiful zeros.
“So you had her fired and withheld the bonus on the code she delivered? Then you used that same money as a bribe for helping you stage a phony kidnapping, so you could strip my accounts.”
Green-Eyed Monster Page 8
