Trust No One

by Velvet Vaughn

  Forcing composure she didn’t feel, she pulled away. She knew her nose rivaled Rudolph’s and her face would be splotchy, but she couldn’t muster the energy to care.

  The woman handed her a wad of tissues. "A rough day?"

  The sweet, caring voice almost set her off again. She choked back the lump in her throat and nodded, mopping at her eyes and nose.

  "Come, eat, you will feel much better."

  The woman who could only be Dorian’s mother shuffled Kendall to the table where an assortment of food-filled boxes awaited. She didn’t have the heart to tell the sweet woman that her stomach wouldn’t allow her to eat. Dorian's mother fussed over her, filling her plate with food. She took a tiny bite of the most wonderful moussaka she had ever tasted, praying she could keep it down.

  Both women spun around when the door burst open. Dorian stood in the doorway, a look of exasperation on his face. "Mama, come," he said gently. "She needs rest."

  His mother stood obediently and bent to give her a big hug. "Whatever is troubling you, my Dorian will take care of it," she whispered, smoothing a hand down Kendall’s wet hair. Tears were too close to the surface for her to speak so she just nodded.

  "When you feel better, we will talk, get to know one another," she added.

  "I’d like that," Kendall managed with a husky voice and watery smile.

  "Come, paidi mou, eat. I brought plenty of food, all your favorites." She shepherded him to the chair she recently vacated. He placed two steaming mugs on the table and a stack of clothes on an empty chair. Kendall eyed the jeans longingly.

  "You let me know if you need anything." His mother kissed him on both cheeks.

  "Thanks, Mama, the food smells delicious, as always."

  "Remember what I said," she told Kendall over her shoulder as she walked to the door.

  Kendall finally found her voice. "Thank you, Mrs. Demarchis."

  The woman turned and smiled. "Please, call me Mama. Everyone does." The door closed quietly in her wake.

  "I’m sorry about that," Dorian said sheepishly. "My sister has a big mouth."

  "I enjoyed meeting her," she said. "But I didn’t have the heart to tell her I wasn't hungry."

  Dorian stood and sealed the boxes of food. "I’ll put this away and then you can fill me in on your ordeal."

  Sliding the chair back, she pushed to her feet. "Are those clothes for me?" She pointed to the stack on the chair.

  He nodded. "I’ll put this in the fridge for later while you get dressed."

  #

  Vivian Mathison watched the news report with a smile on her face. The reporter blathered on about Pamela Hofstra and her unborn child, both missing. Yada. Yada. Yada.

  Glancing away from the screen, she checked her reflection in the mirror as she slicked gloss across her collagen-enhanced lips, rubbing them together to dispense the color. Aaron would need her now in his time of need. She would rush right over, offer him comfort and a shoulder to cry on. If everything went according to her plans, she would transition from supportive friend and slide right into the role of doting wife, the role that should have been hers in the first place. Pamela stole Aaron away from her and now Vivi intended to take him back.

  If it hadn’t been for that conniving bitch, Vivi would be standing beside Aaron right now, possibly even pregnant with their child. Instead, after Pamela brainwashed Aaron and forced him to marry her—Vivi was sure that’s how it happened—she'd been publicly humiliated. Aaron had been her fiancé. They were planning the grand wedding with a thousand guests, a concert orchestra and a fifteen-tiered wedding cake. It had been the night before their rehearsal dinner when Aaron failed to show up that she knew something was wrong. His phone call an hour later confirmed it. He met someone and they clicked, he told her. It was fate, kismet, and they were running away to be married.

  The woman was an exotic dancer for Heaven's sake—barely a step away from a hooker.

  Vivi had been horrified. What would people think? Her humiliation quickly turned to anger. If Aaron would do this to her, at least she had the consolation that he would be vilified…leaving his devastated fiancée at the alter and all. But to Vivi’s consternation, that didn’t happen. The fickle media instead focused on a fairy tale love story, the happy couple, the sure path to the White House.

  Vivi had been forgotten, brushed aside like yesterday’s news. She'd been forced to accept a proposal from a lecherous friend of her father. He'd been boorish, boisterous and a drunkard. Thankfully a little trick she picked up on television did the trick…the tannic acid in the tomato soup completely disguised the drug. He was dead of a "heart attack" before the second course.

  She'd forgiven Aaron for his transgression. After all, it was all Pamela’s fault. Aaron was well on his way to Washington. He needed a solid, dependable woman at his side. Pamela had been shallow, selfish. She didn’t deserve Aaron. Vivi's mother had groomed her for this role her entire life. Her daddy had also been a senator. They lived in a mansion in Northbrook and she watched her mother run the household and her father’s life with elegance and a firm hand. She chaired several charity events, played the perfect hostess to countless dinner parties. Why, her daddy had clearly been on his way to Washington, too, if it hadn’t been for the unfortunate prostitute scandal. Then her daddy had to die of poisoning and her momma of an overdose of sleeping pills. It had never been proved, but Vivi was sure her momma had been the one to poison her daddy before taking her own life. Vivi could understand and completely forgive her mother. Her daddy had disgraced himself and his family. He made a mockery of everything her mother had sacrificed for him. How could she show her face in polite society again?

  Yes, Pamela’s disappearance couldn’t have been scripted any better. A maniacal laugh erupted from deep in her belly. It was just a matter of time before word got out that the child Pamela carried wasn’t Aaron’s baby.

  #

  Seeing his mother in the apartment made Dorian totally forget about the clothes he brought for Kendall. He had to tamp down a bolt of lust when he realized she was probably naked under that robe.

  Dammit, what was wrong with him? Was he a sucker for punishment? Couldn’t he learn from past mistakes? All it took was a reminder of his last case and the lust evaporated like a drop of water in the Sahara. He was never getting involved with a woman again. His hand strayed to his shoulder, absently rubbing the wound.

  But when Kendall stepped out of the bathroom in jeans with the hems rolled several times and Daphne’s well-worn black Navy SEALs hoodie with the slogan "The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday," he had to force air in his lungs. It seemed too intimate for her to be wearing the Budweiser—the SEAL term for the trident insignia that meant so much to him. He knew Daph gave her that to wear—her favorite sweatshirt—to irk him. It worked.

  Forcing the thoughts aside, he handed her a mug of coffee and she accepted it greedily. He led her to the small living room and guided her to the couch, commandeering the recliner for himself. She curled up in a corner and tucked her slender legs beneath her body. Though he knew from her driver's license she was thirty, without make-up, she could give Daphne a run for her age. He waited for her to talk at her own pace. She sipped the steaming drink and finally admitted, "I’m not sure where to start."

  "How about the beginning?"

  She nodded thoughtfully but still didn’t speak. He could see her struggle with painful memories and he had the strongest urge to ease them for her. "Tell me what you can and I’ll ask questions as you go along," he prodded.

  "I’ll try to narrow it to the important details." She absently traced a finger around the rim of her mug, sadness tugging her mouth down. "Three of my college roommates and I tried to get together once a year to catch up. We all moved to different parts of the country and this was our way of keeping in touch. I wasn’t able to make the reunion the past few years." A look of stark pain washed over her face and her breath hitched. "I was going to cancel this year, even after Stefani begged me to come."<
br />
  "So you know these friends from school?"

  She nodded, fighting for control again. "We went to Northwestern and then after graduation, we cheered together for the Chicago Cougars."

  Dorian groaned inwardly. He was dealing with a professional cheerleader. He was going to kill Kincaid. Figures she was part of the group famous for featuring the hottest women—the ones who modeled for lingerie ads and graced the pages of revealing magazines. He hated this case already. Her sad voice pulled him back in.

  "We always gather in Chicago since that’s where we originally met. Stefani is the only one who stayed in the city." She took a sip. "I live in New York and had plane issues so I arrived late. I met up with the others in a restaurant in the lobby of the hotel. We enjoyed a long dinner and then headed back to the room to change so we could go dancing."

  "What hotel?"

  She gave him the name and room number. "Stefani had been distant, preoccupied all night. I don’t think the other two really noticed. I didn’t get a chance to talk to her and find out what was bothering her. When we got to the room, she was so jittery, she dropped her cell phone. She looked extremely nervous so I offered to get it for her since it slid under the bed. I crawled under to reach it just as someone knocked on the door. Bridget ordered champagne, so we thought it was room service." She paused for a deep breath, steeling herself for the rest of the story. "The next thing I knew, there were these dull pops and then Stefani fell to the floor in front of me…bleeding..." Her eyes were pained, distant, reliving the heinous crime. "They were all dead, lying in pools of their own blood."

  My God. He could just imagine the carnage. "And you weren’t hit?"

  She shook her head, tears glistening on her long sooty lashes. He had the insane urge to move beside her on the couch and gather her in his arms.

  "I should've been." Her voice broke. She finally looked at him. "Why was I spared?"

  Survivor's guilt. He reached over and grasped her hand. She clung to it gratefully so he moved to sit beside her. He gave her a moment to compose herself and then he asked, "How many shooters?"

  "Two, I think."

  "What happened next?"

  "I heard one of them say to start searching. I could hear them rummaging around and then a hand reached down and started to lift the bedspread. That's when I noticed a really brutal scar around his wrist. Before he spotted me, they heard someone coming and fled. I waited to make sure they were gone before I crawled out and…" she paused, her eyes closed tight. When she spoke again, her voice was husky with tears. "I ran to the bathroom."

  He didn’t doubt that she'd puked her guts up. Hell, he’d been surprised if she hadn’t.

  "When I came out, a room service cart blocked the door. I ran outside to call for help and almost collided with a policeman. I told him my friends were in the room when all of a sudden, he was yanking me outside, insisting I was a suspect."

  "He pulled you away from the crime scene before any backup arrived?"

  She nodded. "He was dragging me to his car when we passed under a streetlight. Then I saw it…the same scar."

  "One of the killers."

  She shivered. "And he had me, too."

  Good Lord, she was lucky she wasn’t dead like her friends. "How did you get away from him?"

  "I Biancaed him."

  "You what-ed him?"

  "I sprayed Bianca in his eyes."

  If he weren’t reeling from what she just told him, he would have applauded her ingenuity.

  "Then I kneed his balls clear into his throat."

  Dorian crossed his legs and winced in male sympathy.

  "I grabbed his gun and took off. I had no idea where to go or what to do. I ended up in a park by the river. Then I realized I still had Stefani’s phone clutched in my hand so I called my roommate Olivia. She called Jake Kincaid. She said if anyone would know what to do, it would be him."

  "So you don’t know Kincaid personally?" Strictly professional question.

  "No. He and my roommate met when she worked a case a few months ago, to catch a serial killer in Vermont."

  "What happened to the gun?" He didn't tell her that he gave her a very thorough pat-down and knew for a fact she carried no weapon.

  "I stuck it in my waistband so people wouldn't see me carrying it around town. When I sat down in the park, it was poking me, so I put it on the ground next to me." She looked away, embarrassed. "I forgot to pick it up when I headed to your apartment." She met his eyes, chagrined. "It has the killer's fingerprints. I lost a valuable piece of evidence."

  "You can't blame yourself after what you went through," he said gently. "This guy sounds like a professional so he probably wore gloves. We'll go back, look for it." Yeah right. Like a gun lying on the ground would last ten seconds in this city.

  She nodded but he could tell she didn't believe it would be there, either. He processed everything she’d told him. It was as bad as Jake implied. "So these guys know who you are since they rummaged through your belongings."

  "No, they don’t."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Remember how I said Stefani was acting nervous all night?" When he nodded, she continued. "She spilled a full glass of Merlot at dinner and it soaked into my purse. I didn’t have much in it, just my license, credit card, car key and the breath spray. The purse was ruined so I tossed it. My cell needed to be charged so I left it in the rental car."

  "Nothing in your suitcase with your name? What about luggage tags?"

  She shook her head. "My plane was late so by the time I arrived at the hotel, the girls were already having dinner. I left it in the rental, too. I thought I would ask Stefani to go with me to get it so we could talk alone. That’s when…" She broke off and cleared her throat.

  "What about the hotel reservation?"

  "In Stefani’s name, and no one knew I was coming except for Bridget, and that was only a couple of hours before I arrived."

  "So we can hope they don’t know who you are, but can’t be sure. What about the cop? Do you think he would recognize you?"

  She shrugged one shoulder. "Maybe, but I don’t think so. He barely looked at me and I had on a baseball cap with my hair pinned up and glasses. I lost the hat somewhere on my way here."

  "Would you recognize him?"

  "I was too shaken to pay much attention, so no, I couldn't pick him out of a line-up. He was wearing a cap, too and sunglasses." She described what she could remember.

  "Did you get his name, badge number?"

  She shook her head sadly.

  He thought for a moment. "So how did they track you to the alley?"

  "I don’t know," she admitted, exasperated. "Someone must've followed me and I didn’t see them. I tried to be so careful."

  "No one saw me bring you in here, so you should be safe."

  She sighed deeply. "I was too busy the last few years to take one weekend off and visit my friends. I don’t even know what was going on in their lives and now…" She stopped with a choked sob.

  He gave into the urge and pulled her against him. She clung to him, her fists clutching his shirt. Her breathing was ragged, but she shed no tears. She was one tough cookie. She was quiet for a long time. Finally she said, "I was going to blow them off again this year, even after Stefani begged me to come." She pulled back to look up at him and damn, he felt his heart skip a beat. Up close, he could see darker strands of blue threaded through her light eyes. He had to force himself to concentrate on her words. "Do you know why I agreed this year? Because I landed a huge interview, a real coup for my resume. That’s why I came. Not to see Kiki or Bridget or Stefani. They were my best friends once, the sisters of my heart. How shallow is that?"

  He pushed her head against his shoulder ignoring the twinge of pain. "People change, lives happen. You were busy. You can’t blame yourself." After a pause, he added, "You know, if the killers have recognized you, you're going to have to cancel the interview."

  "I can’t do that," she protested, pushing
upright. "I feel like so much was lost for this interview…I have to go through with it. It’s not even about my career anymore."

  "Won’t be much of a career if you are dead."

  She had no response to that and relaxed again, feeling way too good for his liking. She fit perfectly against him.

  "Should we call the police? Tell them I was there?"

  He thought about it and then shook his head. "Not yet. If the killer really is a cop, you could walk right into a trap. He may have seen more of you than you realize, or they could've found something linking you to that room. Until we figure out what's going on, who's involved and what they want, it’s best if you lie low."

  She pulled away, her nose rosy. "Are going to help me?" Her voice was hopeful.

  Gazing into her eyes, he knew what he was going to do…hell, there had never been a decision to make. He was such a sucker. "Looks like it," he agreed. Reaching into a drawer in the table next to the sofa, he withdrew a pad of paper. "If you give me the names and descriptions of your friends, I have a few contacts on the force. I’ll head over to the hotel and sniff around, see what I can find out. Also, draw a map of where you left the gun. I'll look for it and return your rental car. If they do know who you are, maybe they'll think you skipped town."

  "I thought of something else." She looked up and handed him the finished map. "There was a busboy at the restaurant. He recognized my friends and got their autographs.

  "Not yours?"

  She shook her head. "He left just as I arrived so he didn't know I was there. I heard one of the waiters call him Joey. You could tell the cops to talk to him to get their names." Kendall handed him the car key. "Thank you," she said softly. "I’m usually much stronger than this but I can’t get the picture of my friends out of my mind."

  "That’s understandable." He ran the back of his hand against her cheek before he realized what he was doing. Clearing his throat, he stood. "While I’m gone, try to get some sleep."