Lovelace, Merline

by Dark Side of Dawn

  "Did the sound and light show this morning frighten you."

  "Alex!"

  It was a curse and a cry of fury. She jerked upright in bed, ignoring the pull of stitches in her left breast, and snatched up the receiver.

  "These calls are being recorded. You're going down, you bastard. In flames."

  His laugh echoed eerily, like a tape played at the wrong speed. Devoid of all inflection and tone, the androgynous electronic voice still managed to mock her.

  "No, Joanna. You're going down. You betrayed me. I gave you a taste this morning of what to expect. Soon, very soon, you'll die."

  Violent shudders raced through her, pulling at her stitches. She wanted to scream at him. Slam the receiver down. Push him out of her life once and for all. But she knew she had to get him on tape, had to get him to incriminate himself.

  "Like Katherine?" she whispered.

  What might have been a sigh or a slow, drawn-out hiss drifted through the phone.

  "Like Katherine."

  She knew then that the sophisticated equipment Alex was using to alter his voice would somehow prevent this conversation from being captured on tape. Similarly, she'd bet her last dollar there'd be no way to trace this call.

  A helpless fury brought her off the bed. Ignoring the pain lancing into her hip and her breast, she stalked through the open doorway. She had to get Deke on the other extension. He could testify, back her up in court.

  "Why are you doing this?"

  "I told you. What's mine, I keep."

  "I was never yours! Never!"

  "Good-bye, Joanna."

  "Wait!" she screamed. "Alex, wait!"

  She was standing in the middle of the connecting bedroom, tears of fury and fear streaming down her cheeks, when Deke came pounding out of the shower.

  The next days passed in agonizing tension, mounting frustration, and rage.

  As Jo had guessed, a long whine buzzed through the stretch of tape that should have recorded Alex's call. Armed with another warrant, Ambruzzo searched his residences for electronic devices and his phone records for any calls to the Andrews VOQ.

  Investigating officials could offer no explanation for the shattered glass-block window and shower stall in Deke's apartment except possible structural fault that caused the walls to shift and the window to implode.

  Jo consulted an Air Force JAG and a civilian attorney and requested a restraining order. Alex's attorneys shot the request down, citing lack of any evidence of harassment or threats.

  Adding insult to injury, articles started showing up in various tabloids. As Jo had predicted, they cast her as the woman scorned. One rag even hinted she'd staged the small explosion in her new lover's apartment as a desperate ploy to regain Taylor's attention.

  Cool, aloof, disdaining all comment, Alex somehow managed to come across as the injured party. Maybe because his spokesperson fed carefully tailored comments to the media and Jo refused to engage in what she knew would be a protracted and unwinnable headline war.

  Miserable, ashamed of the fear that curled in her belly, worried for Deke's safety, Jo felt like a tiger at the end of a short chain. Fiercely independent for so long, she hated this caged existence, resented having to hunker down on base, even snapped at Deke for enlisting other squadron members in what he labeled the "Watch Jo Squad." Every time she left the confines of Andrews Air Force Base, she had company.

  But deep in her heart she knew Alex wouldn't give up. A final confrontation between them was inevitable, and not even the Watch Squad could prevent it.

  That truth came home a cold, damp afternoon just a few days before Halloween. Winter had swept in on a wind so chill it cut straight to Jo's bones as she crossed the parking lot in front of the 1st Helo Squadron. Gray clouds hung low in the skies, misting the roof of the hangar behind her and seeding the wet streets for what looked to be the first ice storm of the season.

  She'd touched down early to make her appointment at the base hospital. After the medics removed the last of her stitches, she planned to meet Deke for dinner at the Officers' Club. Then, if the streets glazed as the forecasters predicted, they'd hunker in at the VOQ.

  And talk, Jo decided.

  They had to talk about this uneasy situation. Decide on some course of action. She was damned if she'd continue to live her life in suspended animation, nervous whenever she left the base, jumping every time the phone rang.

  She'd suggested to Ambruzzo that he wire her, that she hunt Alex down and confront him face-to-face. Both the detective and Deke had vetoed that plan as too dangerous, but Jo was ready to override their votes.

  Clamping a hand over her flight cap to anchor it in the whipping wind, she dashed the last few yards to the MG. A muttered curse escaped when she saw how close an oversized SUV had parked to the driver's side of her sports car. Edging between the two vehicles, she fumbled the key into the door lock.

  The wind whistled through the bare tree branches, almost drowning the faint scrape of the other vehicle's side door as it slid open behind her. Jo caught the whisper of sound just a second before something cold pressed into the side of her neck.

  The next instant a vicious power punch slammed through her entire system. Her legs crumpled beneath her. The world went black.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Dazed, Jo struggled to part the mists swirling through her mind. Cold rolled along her skin. Her tongue felt swollen, too large for her dry mouth. She couldn't swallow, couldn't seem to lift her arm to rub the vicious ache in the side of her neck.

  A distant pinging penetrated her foggy thoughts. She tried again to raise her arm, straining, shuddering with the effort. A far corner of her mind recorded an animal-like noise, half whimper, half whine. The realization that she'd uttered that pathetic sound shocked Jo out of her stupor.

  She came awake then, blinking. With painful intensity, she chased the shadows from her vision and her throbbing head.

  Slowly, her senses registered sights, sounds. Glass cases filled with shiny objects. A room without angles. A circular brass railing only inches from her knees. The pinging...

  Tilting her head back on a wobbly neck, Jo followed the sound to a rounded roof high above her. In the periphery of her vision, she made out the muzzle of a cannon pointed upward.

  No, not a cannon. A telescope. A huge brass telescope.

  And the drumming on the domed roof was rain. Or sleet.

  Yes, sleet.

  Bit by bit, awareness seeped into her mind. She was at Chestnut Hill. In the observatory. And the ice storm that had been threatening when she dashed to her MG... when—hours ago?... now pelted down with a vengeance.

  Somehow, fixing those facts in her head gave her the courage she needed to drop her gaze. For long moments, she stared at the tape binding her wrists to the arms of the swivel chair.

  She'd occupied this same seat before, she remembered. A lifetime ago. She'd peered through the brass telescope. Laughed when Alex tried to convince her alien ships had painted contrails across a blue sky.

  Alex.

  Terror stabbed through Jo's chest, so sharp and so cutting she couldn't breathe. Another whimper rose in her throat.

  With everything in her, she forced it down. She was damned if she'd give in to the fear that clawed at her like a living thing. Instead, she turned inward, found the tiny flame of fury that burned at her core and nursed it like a lost, freezing mountain hiker would his last canister of butane heat.

  Slowly, the fear receded. A healthy rage spread through her, bringing with it a life-sustaining warmth. She allowed herself the pleasure of hating, fiercely, unrestrainedly, before she reined in her rampaging emotions.

  Hate wouldn't get her out of this icy observatory alive. Rage wouldn't help her figure out how the hell to cut through the tape on her wrists.

  Forcing herself to concentrate on the immediate task, she studied the bindings. Alex had taken care to remove her leather aviator's jacket before strapping her to the chair. With her one-piece flight
suit zipped to the neck, she couldn't hope to wiggle her hands through the sleeves. That meant she had to break the bonds somehow.

  To her disgust and shivery dismay, the reinforced nylon tape proved tougher than the cargo netting. She tried stretching, flexing, yanking, and even contorting her body to gnaw at the bonds. Alex must have anticipated just such a maneuver. He'd taped her wrists far enough back to make it impossible for Jo to get at even a single strand.

  Panting and sweating now under her flight suit despite the chill of the high-domed observatory, she tried to regroup.

  All right. Okay. Gnawing through the tape was out. Maybe she could cut through it somehow.

  In desperation, she planted both boots flat on the floor and swung the chair from side to side to get up enough momentum for a full spin. Like a carnival ride, the swivel-mounted seat whirled around. On the second turn, Jo aimed a kick at the telescope in the wild hope of knocking out the glass lens at the viewing end. Her boot whapped against the brass and succeeded only in skewing the telescope at a cockeyed, out-of-reach angle.

  "Dammit!"

  Chest heaving, Jo searched frantically for other options. After long, agonizing moments, she was forced to conclude there weren't any... except to wait. For Alex. For word of her disappearance to get back to the squadron. For someone, anyone, to climb the narrow, sloping path to the observatory.

  Slumping down in the chair, she waited.

  Minutes crawled by. Hours. Cold seeped under the collar of her flight suit. Sleet pounded down on the dome over her head.

  Jo had no idea how much time passed before the rattle of a key in a lock acted like a cattle prod. She jerked upright, fury blazing in her heart. Fear snapped her jaw into locked position. She was damned if she'd give Alex the satisfaction of hearing her teeth chatter.

  A blast of winter air swept in, lifting the ends that had worked loose from Jo's French braid.

  "You're awake."

  His voice came from behind her. Deep, cultured, so hateful now that it brought a bitter taste of bile rushing into her throat. She stared straight ahead, refusing to swivel around, refusing to acknowledge his presence by so much as a shudder.

  Footsteps sounded. A measured tread. Sure. Confident Deliberate.

  He moved into her line of vision. He was bundled against the cold in the heavy fisherman's cable-knit sweater Jo had once admired. His hair gleamed black and damp. Those dark-ringed eyes rested on her with such malicious satisfaction that her fingers curved into talons.

  Reaching over the railing, he stroked the aching spot just under her jaw. "Does your neck hurt?"

  She jerked as far away from his touch as the seat would allow. "Do you care?"

  "No, although I regret that I had to stun you. Almost as much as I regret the painful necessity of dragging you down here."

  "You'll regret it even more if you don't let me go."

  His head shook in a gentle reproof that scratched on her nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. "I've told you repeatedly I'll never let you go."

  "You can't love me," she said coldly. "Not if you want to hurt me."

  "Haven't you learned that pain always accompanies love? I've experienced that pain with my mother, then with Katherine." His eyes darkened, fixing on her with an intensity that made her skin crawl. "Now you! You shouldn't have betrayed me by letting another man touch you. Or by talking to the police."

  "I didn't betray you! But you've betrayed yourself this time. They'll know who snatched me. They'll come looking for me."

  "They won't find you, Joanna."

  With a casual carelessness that chilled her to the bone, he strolled to a work table a few feet away. Only then did she see the weapon in his hand. Fitted with both a silencer and what she guessed was an infrared target identifier, it looked deadly enough to bring down a bull moose in full charge. Her stomach curled in on itself as Alex placed the weapon on the table and dragged around a chair.

  "You won't get away with it," she ground out through teeth clenched hard against her fear. "Even with your millions and your army of lawyers and your evil, twisted mind, you can't get away with killing me. Not when they already suspect you of killing Katherine and Martin Russ."

  He smiled then, a twist of his lips that closed Jo's throat. "Let's not forget our friend Stroder."

  Oh, God! He took some kind of perverse pleasure in his personal body count.

  "Why?" she choked out. "You told me about Katherine, but Stroder and Russ?"

  Fastidious as ever, Alex crossed his legs and twitched the crease of his tan slacks. When he returned his gaze to Jo, the absolute absence of remorse in his eyes hit her with the same sickening jolt as the stun gun.

  "Martin kept poking his nose into matters outside his scope as my grandfather's biographer. He interviewed the maids, my drivers, even our family physician. I don't know what made him suspect I fed Katherine the toxin that damaged her heart muscle. But when he contacted Stroder, who'd developed his own theories about my wife's unfortunate demise, I knew I had to eliminate them both."

  The calm admission made Jo's skin crawl. She'd never leave the observatory alive unless she took Alex down first. Just how she'd accomplish that escaped her at the moment.

  "What do we do now?" she asked, hoping, praying, she'd devise some plan of her own before Alex implemented his.

  "We wait." He cocked his head, listening to the rhythm of the sleet on the roof. "This ice storm gave me the perfect excuse to send the staff home so we could make our final farewells in private. Unfortunately, the storm may also delay your lover's arrival."

  "Deke? You called Deke?"

  His mask fell away for a moment. Hate flared briefly in his eyes, hot and venomous.

  "So you admit he's your lover? That you spread your legs for Elliot?"

  "My relationship with Deke has nothing to do with you! It was over between you and me before—"

  He sprang out of the chair, moving so fast Jo barely had time to try to push back against the seat before he backhanded her viciously.

  "Don't lie to me, you whore! You're just like Katherine! Worse. The bitch taunted me with the fact she'd taken a lover, that she intended to walk out of my life just like my mother had, but at least she didn't lie."

  Blood from a cut to the tender inside lining welled in Jo's mouth. She spat it out, feeling a savage satisfaction when she hit his pants leg. If nothing else, she'd leave a little of her DNA on him.

  "I'm not like Katherine, damn you! I was never like Katherine, except in your sick mind! And Deke's too smart to walk into a trap. He won't come alone!"

  "He will if he wants to see you alive once more before he, too, dies."

  Her bravado wilted in the face of a searing, aching regret. She'd known it! She'd sensed all along Alex would try to take his revenge on them both! Why hadn't she listened to her head instead of her heart? Why had she dragged Deke into this dark hole with her?

  She could only pray he wouldn't take whatever bait had been dangled in front of him, that he'd have the sense to call Ambruzzo or the FBI or the Air Force

  Office of Special Investigations instead of playing this game by Alex's rules.

  Two and a half miles from the turn-off to Chestnut Hill, a Blazer coated with dirty slush from the long drive down from D.C. hit a patch of black ice and went into a skid.

  "Shit!"

  Fighting the urge to yank the wheel in the opposite direction, Deke steered into the turn and hit the brakes as gently as his heavy boot and gut-clenching sense of urgency allowed.

  "Come on, dammit! Come on!"

  No amount of coaxing, praying, or cursing could produce the traction needed to halt the spiral. With an unstoppable slide, the Blazer spun onto the shoulder. Dirt crumbled under its weight. A rear tire churned air. The Blazer tipped, slid off the edge, and slammed sideways into a tree with a crunch that rattled Deke's teeth.

  Fighting a helpless fury, he shouldered open the driver's side door and clambered out to survey the damage. A single glance tol
d him there was no way he was going to pry the passenger side door away from the white-barked ash it had wrapped itself around. Which left him one option. Only one.

  He couldn't call for help. Couldn't wait to flag down a passing vehicle, even if one chanced along on this narrow, winding two-lane road. The instructions he'd received in that eerie, electronically masked voice had left no room for interpretation or deviation.

  Deke had to arrive at Chestnut Hill alone, by eight p.m. If he made one call, if one alert went out over police or military nets, Taylor would know... and Jo would die instantly.

  With any other man, Deke might have questioned an outsider's ability to tap into secure nets. But Taylor had already given them a taste of this deadly wizardry and left a gaping hole in the wall of an apartment complex. And Deke wasn't about to take any chances with Jo's life.

  So he'd come alone, as instructed. Unarmed, as instructed, knowing full well he'd have to pass through an array of sophisticated metal detectors before gaining access to wherever Taylor was keeping Jo. He hadn't, however, come unprepared.

  Taylor was going down.

  One way or another, the bastard was going down.

  The digital display on the dash showed the time. Seven-ten. He could still make it. He would make it! Snatching his helmet bag from the crumpled passenger seat, Deke grabbed at a tree branch to haul himself up the slick bank and took off at as fast a lope as he could manage on the icy tarmac.

  He knew exactly where he was, exactly what distance he had yet to cover. Thank God he'd shelled out the extra bucks to have the civilian version of the NavStar positioning system that had guided tanks during Desert Storm installed in the Blazer.

  The dark road curved ahead, lined with trees weighted down by ice. Two-point-six miles to Chestnut Hill. Fifty minutes to cover the distance and find Jo. Deke lengthened his stride, digging in his boot heels with each step to keep from slipping.

  Freezing rain pelted his bare head and bounced off the shoulders of his leather jacket, but his flight suit provided enough insulation against the cold for him to work up a sweat. Within a few paces, his breath puffed out in little clouds and perspiration trickled down his neck.