Come Hell or High Desire

by Misty Dietz

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  He was right, of course. Besides being ultra-professional, Ross was always courteous to a fault. Which only threw Zack’s gritty edges into sharp relief. He glanced down one last time at the box of security invoices and knew where he needed to go next. After clicking off the light, he opened the door to the vault and stepped into John’s office, holding the door so Ross could pass through.

  “I’ll do some research on those invoices,” Ross said.

  “No, that’s okay. I’ll handle it. Thanks for everything.” He turned back to slam the vault door. “Until the authorities confirm that I’m not their prime suspect, I don’t want you in their crosshairs because of me. I spoke to my lead foreman a few hours ago and everything is ready to rock on our end, so go get some rest. Looks like you need it.”

  “How nice of you say so,” Ross said wryly.

  Zack smiled at his CFO and felt in the zippered pouch to confirm that both the newspaper clipping featuring Ann’s mother and the two invoices were still there, then moved around Ross toward the door.

  “Are you sure about not cooperating with the police? With your background—”

  “With my background, they were ready to lock me in jail and throw away the fucking key. I didn’t kill the monster who was screwing with Ann, but I’ll die trying to find out who did—because he’s the one…he’s the one who took her from us.”

  Ross nodded. “I hope you have the fortitude to see this through.”

  Zack grabbed John’s Red Hawks baseball cap from the desk and left Ross standing there, a look of concern etched on his face. But Ross’s concern had nothing on the wild spew of emotions winging through Zack’s veins so fast he was almost dizzy with it. Because if Sloane ended up in the crosshairs next, he’d need more than fortitude.

  He’d need a higher power.

  Or Donovan.

  When Zack pulled to the corner two blocks from Sloane’s place at Blackhawk Gates, Morgan was lounging against a local heroin dealer’s red Camaro. Right where she’d promised she’d be. He’d made a quick call to her before he left the office. A rush of gratitude warmed him as he cut the engine and raised the binoculars, searching the strip for the unmarked police car that was surely staking out Sloane’s place.

  Waiting for him to show up.

  He’d shown up all right, but they weren’t going to know thanks to Morgan and a posse of her more adventurous friends.

  There. Two men sitting in a generic blue sedan that afforded them views of two sides of Sloane’s building, including the parking lot. Time for action.

  Zack emerged from the El Camino, adjusted the baseball cap in an exaggerated motion, and began walking briskly across the street toward the alley and away from Morgan.

  At these signals, a man with more tattoos than naked skin walked by the Camaro with a scantily clad woman on his arm. Morgan pushed away from the car and started screaming at the pair. The plan was for them to take the scene into the middle of the strip on Broadway. By the time he reached the alley, Zack heard cars honking and more people yelling. A few moments later he heard a flash bang—his signal to run.

  In the alley behind Sloane’s apartment, he peered around a parked Hummer to see if the blue sedan had been dispatched to the disturbance.

  Bingo. I owe you one, Morgan.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  It was coming again. Sloane saw Zack gasping, felt his panic as he ran through some sort of tunnel. She cried out, but he couldn’t hear her, so embroiled in his own fight to be free of the darkness. There were sounds all around her, so many at once she couldn’t make sense of it.

  Suddenly it grew so cold her pulse seemed to suffer the effects of hypothermia—the slow pounding of her blood was hypnotic, drowning out the voices until there was only deafening silence between each irregular heartbeat. Silence lengthening until…

  There was something crawling over her legs.

  Rats! Scrambling all over her, their tiny, hooked claws breaking skin, their teeth sinking deep. Oh God. Ohgod-ohgod-ohgod.

  She screamed and flailed, scratching and tearing with her nails at the phantom rodents until she finally awoke, pinned to Zack’s chest, her body quaking in residual horror.

  Incoherent words of comfort spilled from his lips as he sat on the floor with her cradled in his lap. She felt the bunching muscles of his arms as he held her upper body immobile against his solid warmth. She became aware of his heartbeat against her bare arm. Steady. Strong.

  Slowly, her gasps subsided into hiccoughs. He brushed his thumb against her cheek. She burrowed into his heat and felt him wince. “Oh! I’m sorry!” She leaned away, but he pulled her back. “How’d you get here? Get in here? Cops have gotta be watching my place.”

  “They don’t know I’m here.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. “An old friend came through for me. She missed her calling as an actress so I’m sure she enjoyed it.”

  “What’s that mean? Wait, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.” I’m seriously jealous.

  Another first. Sucks.

  “It’s not what you think. Morgan and I grew up on the same streets. She’s like my little sister. Tonight, she created a ‘disturbance’ in the area, and I slipped into your building when the undercover vehicle moved down the block to check it out.”

  “You left her alone downtown at three in the morning?”

  “Morgan has self-defense down to an art, access to drugs from your worst nightmare, and a wicked way with a knife, so she would have been fine on her own. But, the disturbance was only an act with other friends enjoying their parts. And since we’re on the topic of getting in here, you need to buy more foolproof locks.”

  “You’re not lecturing me about my locks.”

  “I’m qualified, believe me.” His teeth gleamed in the shadows.

  “This isn’t funny, Zack.”

  “Shhh. Let me hold you for a minute.”

  She laid her head back down, the rough pads of his fingertips raising goose bumps as he traced circles down her arms. He was a man on the run, trying to find a missing woman while falsely accused of murder, yet he was comforting her.

  She’d developed such strong feelings for him in such a short time. It seemed unrealistic, implausible, and uncontrollable.

  Kinda like love.

  He just can’t know about Abigail.

  She bit down hard on her lip to keep her drama from erupting. Zack’s fingers slowed against her skin, a Braille system translating her emotions.

  She inhaled deeply to diffuse the tension. The tinkle of water in her aquarium made a soothing accompaniment to his heartbeat, the glowing tank the only source of light in the apartment, casting mesmerizing blue-green ripples on the wall.

  This was crazy. Getting involved with a man who could blow her cover, unravel her dreams, and ruin her family name forever. If exposed, her failure to find Abigail before she was murdered would taint her mother’s career. Her father’s psychiatry practice, too. She should really box this whole psychic crap up and put it on the shelf. Get back to her life at Skinny Dipping. Spend time with her friends. Date a new, interesting guy every week.

  That’s what she needed—uncomplicated fun.

  More than that, she could move on with her charity foundation now that she had the crystal rhino—

  Oh! She bolted upright in Zack’s lap. “I found the missing rhino in Colette’s office. It’s how I know—or feel reasonably certain—that Ann left with Colette Saturday night.”

  Zack frowned. “Wait. What?”

  “After I gave my statement at Ann’s, I went to the church, thinking I would either try to talk to Colette, or more likely, take something she or Dallan had touched in the church. If I could get in there.”

  “That was foolish.”

  She was about to place a palm against his chest to rise from his lap when she remembered his injury. “Let me see your chest.” She scooted off his lap and
would’ve ripped the shirt out of the waistband of his jeans if he hadn’t grabbed her wrists.

  “It’s just a bruise.”

  She reached for his shirt again. “Let me see.”

  He shook his head, fingers tightening around her wrists. “I’m good.” The look in his eyes told her she could play nurse in another way however.

  She wet her lips, her respiration climbing another notch seeing his pupils expand. “F-fine, suffer, then.”

  “I didn’t say I was a martyr. I’ll take some ibuprofen if you have it, but first finish telling me why you think Ann went with Colette.”

  “I didn’t really have a plan, but when I got to the church, they had this—vigil, I supposed you’d call it—already in progress. There had to be five dozen people at the church. At one in the morning. Seriously, how did they all find out Dallan was dead so soon? It had only been a couple of hours.” He shrugged, and she continued. “Anyway, Colette admitted knowing Dallan was a philanderer, but she stayed with him because he was her ticket to prestige. She even knew about Ann’s baby.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Nope. And when I asked her how she knew, she said she had a ‘troubleshooter.’”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I asked, but she started crying. When I knew I wouldn’t get any more information from her I fixated on that.” Sloane pointed at the crystal rhino. She saw the surprise on Zack’s face. “It was on her desk. When I took it, she didn’t even notice.”

  “How’d she get it?”

  “No freakin’ idea, but it showed me Ann sitting in Colette’s vehicle. They talked about the Fall Festival and were apparently on their way to a meeting at one of the committee member’s houses.”

  “The meeting wasn’t at the church?”

  “No, but Ann didn’t seem to think anything was amiss until they made an unexpected stop at someone else’s house—someone named Patty. I saw Ann’s momentary confusion, but when she asked Colette why they were there, Colette said Patty had asked for a ride to the meeting.”

  “Did Ann know her?”

  “Certainly seemed like she did, but it was apparent she’d never been to Patty’s house before.”

  “Did they go in?”

  “In the car, Colette’s phone rang. She asked Ann if she’d mind letting Patty know they were there and help her start loading the baskets for the bazaar. Colette said she’d finish her call and be in shortly. But she didn’t, Zack. Colette never went into the house. She didn’t talk on the phone either. She watched Ann go inside, and then she backed out of the driveway and went home. Alone. After that, the crystal didn’t have any other information.”

  “How do you know this was even the right time-frame for last Saturday night? It could have been earlier. Days or weeks earlier, knowing how they like to get an early start on that kind of stuff.”

  “I really don’t think so. In this vision with Colette, Ann was wearing the same outfit that she wore in my other vision of her—when she’d freshened up after the attack in her foyer. You know as well as I do that Ann doesn’t wear the same outfit too often.”

  She could tell he agreed.

  “I knew Colette knew something. Whoever’s house that was is her troubleshooter. We can find out which church members are named Patty as well as their addresses really quickly, but I doubt that was really her house. It was all a ruse.”

  He eased up from the floor to the edge of the sofa. Sloane left to get him some pain killers. When she came back into the living room, she gave him a bottle of pills and a glass of water. He took a sip and downed four of them.

  “Did you recognize the house Ann went into, or maybe the neighborhood?” he asked.

  “It was a newer home, nothing fancy, but nice. Maybe if we drove around—”

  “We don’t have time. Unless…could you tell how much time had passed between Ann’s and Patty’s house? Could you see the directions?”

  “A psychometric object only reflects thoughts and feelings of the person touching the object, and apparently, when Colette touched the crystal in her office, she was only thinking about keeping Ann talking and getting her to Patty’s, not which streets she took to get there. She was nervous, but that’s all that was really on her mind. Can we take this to the cops?”

  “And say what? That the pastor was having an affair?”

  “Colette’s involved somehow.”

  “Of course she is, but we don’t know how until we can identify her accomplice.” She felt his eyes on her in the distorted shadows from the shifting aquarium water. “I hope the vision wasn’t too hard on you.”

  It had sucked because he hadn’t been there to anchor her. “I’ve had worse. I must’ve drifted off. When I came home there was a message from the police department. They’ve sent the blood samples from Ann’s hallway to the lab. Detective Barnaba wants you to come in for questioning. He said they won’t hold your escape against you if you cooperate this time.”

  He laughed humorlessly. “Right. Barnaba’s more apt to throw me to the piranhas than take any statement from me.”

  “Why?”

  “Too much water under the bridge.”

  “You can’t go on being a fugitive, Zack. You did nothing wrong.”

  “I wounded a suspect who is now AWOL. He either died holed up somewhere from blood loss or isn’t as hurt as I thought he was, and is plotting his next move… Or worse yet, he’s the big bad for some other whack job who’s got a sick game in progress.”

  “Big bad. As in a hired killer?”

  He nodded.

  Scary and scarier. She exhaled slowly. “So what’s your gut say?”

  “That’s my line.”

  “Just answer the question. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a bitch when I don’t get enough sleep.”

  Zack smiled for real this time. “You’re hot when you’re mad.” She chucked a sofa pillow at him. “Fine. I think the person I tangled with at Ann’s is the heavy for someone else.”

  “But why? What does this have to do with Ann or Tori?”

  He eased down in a stuffed chair. “I’m guessing the diary plays a role—or what certain people might have thought would be incriminating in it.”

  “Like Ann’s involvement with Dallan.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Tori was the one to tell you about the diary. Who else might Ann or Tori have told?”

  Sloane’s mind spun for a moment. “You went back looking for a second one, didn’t you?” At his nod, she continued. “Do you think that’s why Dallan was at Ann’s condo? To look for the diary?”

  “Probably. In it she admitted to having an affair with him. That kind of information, if leaked, would end his pastoral career.”

  “How did he found out about it?”

  “That’s why I asked you who else Ann might have told besides Tori.”

  Sloane racked her brain. “I really don’t think Ann would have told anyone else at the store. Oh shit, what if Tori was somehow involved with Dallan, too, and that’s why she was murdered? What if Dallan’s the one who killed her?”

  She jumped up and reached for her phone, but Zack was quicker. He grasped her shoulders.

  “Easy now. Dallan was definitely involved, but I don’t think he was the major player. Remember, someone took him out, too. Someone who wanted me to take the fall for killing him. Only, I got there too early for the bad guy to get away unscathed.”

  She froze. “But who would know you were on your way to Ann’s the same time Dallan would be there?”

  “On my way there I called my buddy Archie, and my client, Tim Benjamin.”

  Her gut rolled. “Why would you call Benjamin?”

  “Based on your vision of him and Ann, I wanted to see how he’d react to talking about her. So I made up some shit about Ann misfiling documents and other details about the opening of the amusement park later today.”

  “And?”

  “He didn’t act contrary to his ordinary pompous self. I d
on’t get the feeling he was involved in…all this. But it really wouldn’t matter whether my timing at Ann’s was perfect or not because my fingerprints were all over her place already. I’d automatically be a person of interest when the police dusted the scene.”

  So clearly this wasn’t connected to Skinny Dipping as he’d originally thought. Instead it was definitely something about people associated with Samuel’s Construction.

  “Wasn’t Benjamin surprised you called him so late?”

  “Big projects like the amusement park know nothing of the time clock. My employees and their families are counting on me to see this through. Ergo, I even take calls from him in the john. And vice versa.”

  “Okay, so what do you think about him as a possible suspect in Ann’s disappearance? He certainly has the money to hire someone to do his dirty work.”

  “It’d offend his ego to hold someone against her will. He wants people to kiss his ass of their own accord.”

  “And if they don’t? Then what? Will he try to coerce them?” Lord knew he was a master at controlling the stipulations of his sponsorship. Maybe it wasn’t worth putting up with his bullshit, after all. There had to be someone else in the business community who’d believe in her project.

  “I don’t know what to think. None of this is adding up.”

  He looked so tired suddenly. She patted the sofa, and he came to sit beside her. “How did you get away from the cops?”

  He pulled her legs into his lap, running his palms over her thighs. “Luck? I don’t know—timing, riverbank knowledge, and help from an old friend, I suppose.”

  Sloane leaned her head against the top of the sofa, his touch at once soothing and arousing. An ambulance raced by on the street below. “I want to meet your friends.”

  “Archie’s a good man. He and his wife Twyla are going to have their baby any day now. If they haven’t already tonight.”

  She wanted to ask about his childhood, how he’d met Archie and Morgan, what his favorite foods were, his happiest memories—goodness, so many things—but it would have to wait. They had more pressing things to discuss.

  Like survival.