Come Hell or High Desire

by Misty Dietz

  “Lord. No wonder John never talked to Ann about her mother. She would have been devastated. Did they ever find out who was sending Serena the hate mail?” she asked.

  “No. Gunther didn’t know anything about that since he hadn’t been her initial bodyguard. He came on board about six years after she’d left the States. Apparently they’d hidden her well enough that the secret-admirer-turned-hater lost track of her. So no more letters.”

  “Still. Pretty creepy.”

  He watched a tremor run through Sloane’s body. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, and her nipples beckoned him from beneath the silky material of her shirt. This one was black and hugged the tops of her arms, leaving her golden shoulders bare should he want to run his tongue along all that soft skin.

  Needing to move, he retrieved a blanket from the living room. A smile lit her eyes when he draped it around her shoulders. Which made him even more agitated. He walked away from her, leaning against the counter with his arms and ankles crossed in front of him.

  “So where do all the pieces fit together?” Sloane laid down Serena’s picture, and the blanket slipped off one shoulder, exposing her made-for-sucking neck. “If at all.”

  He bit the inside of his cheek. “I don’t know.” He pushed away from the counter and picked up the CD. “Let’s get this over with.”

  He held it out to Sloane, but she only pushed the player at him. As the first few stanzas oozed from the speakers, Zack slipped into a chair, the music a siren’s song luring the testosterone from his glands, the woman’s throaty sound an erotic, auditory delight.

  YOU PROTECTED ME,

  YOU TOUCHED ME,

  AND YOU LEFT ME SO CONFUSED.

  MY STRONG MAN IN A RUSH,

  YOUR LIPS CARESS MY BLUSH,

  YOUR TOUCH SO SOFT AND SWEET.

  I’M UP AGAINST A WALL.

  NO, I CAN’T TAKE THE FALL.

  PLEASE BELIEVE ME, BABY, I TRIED.

  THE WORLD’S MY LONELY STAGE,

  I NEED A BRAND NEW PAGE,

  BUT YOU BROUGHT ME TO THE BRINK.

  YOU WANT ME TO STAY,

  BUT I’M SURE TO RUN AWAY,

  CAUSE I KNOW MY HEART’S A FOOL.

  MY FICKLE WAYS DON’T TRUST,

  MY LEAVING IS A MUST,

  YET I GIFT YOU MY ONE TRUE SONG.

  SONG OF SECRETS. OH, MY SONG OF SECRETS.

  YOU KNOW MY SECRETS.

  MY BURDEN, MY SECRET,

  IN MY HEART, IN MY SOUL,

  MY SONG, SONG OF SECRETS.

  As the music faded, Zack became aware of the drone of vehicles outside. He looked at Sloane. She appeared just as enthralled.

  “What a handful,” he said.

  Sloane’s lips curved slightly. “No wonder John was obsessed with her. She was always slightly out of reach. She might have given him her body, but he could never have more.”

  “Until Ann.”

  “Her one true song. Her song of secrets.”

  They stared at each other, letting the significance sink in. The depth of John’s love for his only child had never been so poignant. Nor Zack’s need to find Ann at any cost. He’d never live with himself if he didn’t. “The questions then are, who wanted to scare Serena all those years ago, and why. And is that person the same one who took Ann?”

  “Or persons. You said earlier that you think the person you wrestled with at Ann’s was a hired heavy, not the actual person behind the scheme,” she said.

  “Yeah, I know. Square one seems to be finding out who was obsessed with Serena.”

  “Did Gunther mention any other suspicious activities during the time he was her bodyguard? Or before or after his stint?”

  “No, I asked about that, but apparently his employer arranged an elaborate scheme so Serena could vanish. She stopped performing and went underground for a few years. It caused a brief sensation in the States, but since she wasn’t as big a star in other countries, and she had plenty of money, she eluded attention by going overseas. According to the reports Gunther received prior to his assignment, the hate mail stopped as soon as she left town, so John’s plan was successful.”

  “Sounds like a lonely life,” she said.

  Did it? He wasn’t sure. Less complications. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Sloane opened her mouth to say something, then shut it. Those golden shoulders dropped. He burned to press a kiss in the shadow between her throat and collar bone.

  She shivered. “Okay, well, I need to get going. On my way to the store I’ll call Barnaba to see—”

  He grabbed her arm. “No, Sloane. Stay off his radar. We can’t rule him out of this, you know.”

  “Okay.”

  “He’s been inside the Samuel’s building for months now. It would have been easy for him to pick up on Ann’s schedule. As I saw in the vision, he definitely pays attention to her.”

  Sloane’s land line rang. She checked caller ID before answering. At his questioning look, she picked up and mouthed Carmen. Within moments she gasped, pressing a hand to her stomach. Cold pressure built in Zack’s chest.

  When she disconnected, he grasped her arms. “What happened?”

  She said nothing, and he followed her as she walked mechanically into the living room. She turned on the television and flipped to a local station.

  Colette O’Neill stood before the cameras, her eyes bleak, her face pale and tear-streaked as she pled with the public to help the police.

  During the night, both of her children had gone missing.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Snatched out of their beds.

  The words played over and over in Sloane’s mind until she felt paralyzed with horror for the children. The edges of her vision flickered red, and she reached out to brace herself against the back of a chair. Zack’s arms came around her and the red faded away. Silently, he held her until her thudding heart slowed to match the steady rhythm of his.

  The world’s gone mad.

  “Not if I can help it,” he said.

  Bits of her hair combed against his chin stubble as she leaned back to look at him. “But they’re pointing the finger at you. You, Zack! You have to go to the cops now. The longer you stay underground, the more they’ll think you’re guilty.”

  “I can’t. How can I find Ann—and now these kids—if I’m locked up? They won’t listen to me.”

  “But if you’re in jail when the killer makes another move, they’ll know they have the wrong guy.”

  “Are you really willing to wait for this psycho to fuck with someone else? Think, Sloane. We have to think.” He released her and paced to her bookcase. “I have to think.”

  “Why would he take the O’Neill kids?”

  Zack paused. “Yeah, why? Nothing about this has been random. So there must be a reason.” He swung to face her, and suddenly she realized it, too.

  “He knows we’ve been to see Colette,” she said hoarsely. “He’s using her children as collateral so she cooperates. So she doesn’t reveal his identity.” She wondered how she’d gotten the words past the desert of her throat.

  “Son of a bitch! She’ll be ready to talk now. She has to.” He was like a caged animal.

  “Wait. We don’t know if he’s made contact with her, plus I don’t think she knows what actually happened to Ann.”

  “How can she not? She deposited her at the mouth of that monster!”

  “But the crystal would’ve shown that Colette knows more. Colette kept her mind focused on the festival while she was in the car with Ann. When she pulled up to Patty’s house, the crystal registered relief and excitement, but no specific thoughts like ‘this is what’s going to happen to Ann.’ She wouldn’t have been able to block something that traumatic from her mind. The crystal would’ve received it. Do you know any Pattys?”

  “No. I’m outta here.”

  She stopped him with both hands curling around his wrist. “If you thought it’d be tough to get to Colette before, you’d be a fool to try it now. T
here has to be another way. Go to the cops, please, Zack.”

  “I’m sorry. They’ll turn all their attention on me, and meanwhile the killer will strike again. Can’t do it.”

  “I’m an alibi.”

  “Not for all three days.”

  She dropped his wrist. She hadn’t been with him physically, but she’d been with him psychically for part of the time they were apart. Panic started bubbling in her gut, but she swallowed hard and made herself take a step out onto the ice. “I could…try to see where you were. I could look. I could say I was with you. You know, if…” Just say it! “If you want me to. And you trust me.”

  He took her face between his hands and laid his forehead against hers. “God, that you’d even say that…” He cleared his throat. “I’d never, ever want you to do that for me. Promise me you’ll only ever speak the truth about—and to—me.”

  She nodded and turned away, waiting for the rending of her heart to tell her he’d departed.

  Because he clearly didn’t trust her. She shouldn’t be surprised. She didn’t even trust herself.

  Still, it hurt. God, it hurt.

  “I can try to get back to Ann’s for the metal sculpture that fell on the guy I wrestled,” he suggested. “If I can get the sculpture, maybe it can tell us who he’s working with. I know you can do it.”

  I know you can do it.

  She looked at him and felt something splinter inside her.

  I know you can do it.

  It was what the lead detective had told her an hour before they found Abigail’s body in the snow. Broken and defiled.

  She sank down against the wall as the bottom of her world fell away. She wanted to go to her store and pretend Tori would walk through the showroom door and start grousing about the messiness of the display tables.

  She wanted to hide where no one could find her.

  A wash of bile rose up in her throat. Sick. She was sick. Sick in the head. In spirit. She was a failure. She hadn’t protected her sister, Megan.

  Abigail.

  Tori.

  She couldn’t help Zack either. He had to know the whole, ugly truth. “Abigail Bates was Tim Benjamin’s granddaughter.”

  “What?”

  He moved toward her, but she held her hands out to keep him back. He would leave her now. Hate her. But the words tumbled out anyway. “Abby Bates. The girl who was abducted six years ago in Bismarck? Hers was the only case I ever worked on with the police. I failed. She died before they could find her. She was Benjamin’s granddaughter. The police never told his family who I was, and I’ve never admitted it. And now I’m depending on Benjamin to fund a foundation I’m trying to get off the ground. What a coward, huh? I was going to call it Project Broken Wings. To help families heal after suicide. Benjamin’s daughter, Joan, took her own life when they found Abigail. So that family lost not one, but two people because of my failure.”

  “That’s not your fault. Come on, Sloane!”

  “She was brutalized. Her precious—” She pressed a hand to her mouth for a moment, swallowing convulsively. “I could hear her cries for help. In my head. I heard her. But I…I couldn’t find her in time. Sometimes I still hear her…c-crying.”

  His face blurred as her hot tears overflowed. Her throat worked as she tried to hold back a moan of agony. He moved toward her, but she scrambled up from the floor away from him.

  “Stay back. Please.”

  He stopped, his arm dropping to his side, his eyes shining with…

  Pity?

  He had to know it all. “My older sister, Megan, committed suicide when I was twelve. I knew she was sad—I saw it, felt it—but I didn’t help Mom and Dad look after her like they asked. I should have.” She couldn’t look at him. “And then Tori.” Her mouth was dry. Throat, too. Even her eyes were now a dry wasteland, the emptiness inside her too vast for tears. “So you see? I don’t help. I hurt. People die when I see things about them. I’m just…flawed.”

  He grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to meet his eyes. “That’s bullshit, and you know it! You were just a girl when your sister died, Sloane. No parent should ever heap that kind of responsibility on a child. And what happened with the others…no one could change those outcomes.”

  “My mother could’ve. She makes happy endings all the time. She could have saved Abigail, but I begged the department to let me try. One time. And that one time a child died. And then her mother. I can’t help you. Don’t you see? I just can’t! I’m sorry!”

  She twisted out of his grasp as the floodgates of panic opened. A thick, fiery surge of energy that made her reach for her purse and run out the door before he could tackle her. She stumbled down the hall and three flights of stairs, unseeing.

  The door. Exit. Outside.

  The sun bright. Surreal. She squinted at the nearly empty parking lot. Fingertips across her neck. The breeze? Two men in the unmarked car.

  Police.

  It’s not him, she wanted to scream at them. But they wouldn’t listen, would they? They’d haul him away in handcuffs and ask questions later.

  She couldn’t let that happen. Heavy pressure beat at the backs of her eyeballs.

  This much I can do for you, Zack.

  She ran to her car, fumbling with the automatic opener as she dug her phone out of her purse. Pretend there’s an emergency. Make them follow.

  Her lips moved in a wild pantomime. She looked over her shoulder for show.

  Yes, she was good at putting on a show.

  Fraud. I’m a fraud.

  She slid behind the wheel, revved the engine, and squealed out of the parking lot. Moisture rose up to blur her field of vision. Only one moment before gravity took over, spilling wetness down her cheeks in sheets. Hot tears that scalded. Such a contrast to the endless cold she felt inside.

  When she ran the first stop sign, she scanned the rearview mirror, her fingers tightening on the steering wheel. In this at least she hadn’t failed.

  The police were in hot pursuit.

  Now’s your chance. Run, Zack.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Peering out the shuttered window to the parking lot below, Zack saw her performance for the undercover officers.

  Run, Zack.

  Damn you, you stubborn, impossible woman. He sprinted through her loft, gathering the newspaper clipping, money, invoices, and CD into the zippered pouch, then pulled on John’s battered baseball cap and followed the same escape route she’d used moments before.

  Two blocks away, he slid behind the wheel of the El Camino, pulled his cell from his jeans pocket, and replaced the battery. After booting up, it indicated a message from an unrecognized number. He entered his password and pressed the phone to his ear.

  A woman crying.

  Ann? Ann! He couldn’t understand what she was saying. Sobbing.

  “Damn it!” His fingers curled around the phone. What was she saying? Then, “How c-could you do this to us? You monst—” Her yell caved in upon itself, her body clearly absorbing a physical blow of some sort.

  Zack’s skin prickled as hot fury quickly replaced the chill that had flooded his system. A pause in the message, then a ghostly whisper, “Tiiime’sss almossst up. Boom!”

  And that was it.

  The phone indicated the call had come through three hours earlier. What? He’d checked messages two hours ago. No way could he have missed this one. His hand trembled as he listened to the message twice more. The person could be male or female for all he could tell.

  He pounded the steering wheel, furious because Ann was still missing.

  Giddy because she was still alive as of two or three hours ago.

  Hope could be a terrible thing.

  Time’s almost up. What was that supposed to mean? Time for what? To find her? She’d said, How could you do this to us? So, she obviously knew her captor. Did she mean us, as in her and him, or her and the baby? Whoever was holding her was obviously enjoying this, the rank puss-bucket piece of shit.

 
; And what the hell did boom mean?

  He swallowed hard. Don’t go there. Not now.

  He started the car and pulled onto the street. Should he turn himself in? Give them his phone? The cops had to have ways to track incoming calls like that.

  The phone rang in his hand, and he swerved, nearly offing a pedestrian. When he glanced back at the phone, he didn’t recognize the number. “Ann?”

  “I’ve been trying to reach you for hours, Zack! I do you a huge favor and you don’t have the gooch ass decency to say thank you?”

  “Morgan, I don’t have time for drama.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I gotta go.”

  “Oh sure! Use me and then toss me aside, mother felching douche bag! You’re just like all the others, you selfish—”

  He disconnected, the sudden silence in the car an amplification of his guilt. He powered off the phone and removed the battery again before slipping both into his pocket.

  He couldn’t fix this with Morgan right now. But he would.

  Just as he’d fix it with Sloane.

  After he fixed about a million other things. Ann and her baby were still out there.

  Somewhere.

  He pressed down on the accelerator.

  Zack cursed when the El Camino sputtered and died four blocks north of Divine Shepherd Lutheran campus. He’d known it would be a long shot to find Colette alone, but what else could he do? She knew something. He’d have to get her alone and convince her to tell him.

  And he wanted her to know he didn’t take her kids. Made him sick to think anyone could do such a thing.

  He slipped out the passenger door, the zippered pouch tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He walked as casually as possible over to two cars parked by the curb, pretending to scrape something off the tire walls, all the while scanning the two-block vicinity. A dog was barking behind a west-facing house and someone was baking, the heavy chocolate scent wafting through the air. It was all so…normal.

  Only it wasn’t.

  Sure enough, there was a nondescript white van about a hundred feet from the rectory’s driveway on the opposite side of the road. Cops most likely.