Suspect Lover

by Stephanie Doyle

  “I really don’t like it,” she said.

  Caroline started thinking about escape. There had been no gunshot, so whatever she’d done to Nora, she hadn’t shot her. If she’d surprised her somehow, knocked her out, maybe she was recovering and calling for help. She had to believe that because physically she didn’t match up with Anne. The woman had arms forged like steel. There was only one place where they might fight as equals.

  “I just couldn’t have it. I mean, look at me, Caroline. If Dominic was going to have either one of us, clearly I’m the logical choice.”

  “Clearly,” Caroline muttered, her eyes once again falling to the gun. “So this all began when Dominic married me?”

  “No. Before then. Right after he turned me away. You see, Daddy always taught me never to take no for an answer. That’s how you get what you want in life. But that wasn’t working with Dominic. It made me very angry. So I decided if I couldn’t have him, I would take the one thing he cared about most.”

  “His company.”

  Anne beamed. “Bingo.”

  She was getting close to the end of her story. There was no sound from upstairs. Caroline was going to have to act soon.

  “I started sleeping with Denny. Let me tell you what a chore that was, but it was the only way I could get the information I needed about Dominic. You see, Denny and Dominic knew each other long before Steven came along. I found out all about Dominic’s nefarious past and that’s when I decided how I would get even.”

  “Doesn’t seem fair to Denny.”

  “No, I suppose it wasn’t. And naturally he almost ruined everything by telling Dominic what he was working on. I wanted to have the program in my hand before I did anything. Not that it mattered. Denny had to die because by doing so, his shares in the company reverted to Steven and Dominic. I fixed the books to make it look like Dominic was embezzling money, then had the files saved on his hard drive. Serena was very helpful for the low, low price of one hundred thousand dollars. Turns out her niece back in Mexico was sick, poor thing. The visa for her brother was taking too long, so Serena was going to use the money to hire a coyote to smuggle her brother and niece across the border. I actually considered letting her keep the money, but of course I couldn’t. She knew too much.”

  Caroline wanted to throw up as the woman casually rattled off her reasons for the multiple murders.

  “Dominic goes back to jail, a very fitting revenge. He sells his shares to Steven to save the company. I produce a child that guarantees the company gets passed to us. I really mean to me. And I win. The one thing I didn’t count on was…”

  “Me,” Caroline answered.

  “You. You get pregnant and maybe Dominic doesn’t sell his shares. You have a baby and I have to share the company. I don’t like to share. The plan was to get you out of the way first, but, like I said, Denny ruined all that. If you had gone home and not come back, I could have spared you. I’m not a monster, Caroline. I’ve already gotten everything I want. But then Steven said you were both back, and well, you need to die. Sorry.” Anne shrugged as if she truly were.

  “Steven is down at police headquarters right now. They know Dominic didn’t kill Denny. You’ve lost. You can’t possibly hope to avoid being caught.”

  “Not if Dominic comes home and kills his wife and the FBI agent with her in a fit of rage because he truly is a twisted psychopath. I’ve heard prison can do that to a man. Then he kills himself and we’re back to square one. You’re a mystery writer, Caroline. You know how it’s done. You need evidence. You can’t arrest anyone without it. There is no proof that Steven killed anyone. And there is no proof that I did. Maybe people will have their suspicions, but there won’t be anything they can do about it. We’re going to go upstairs and wait for Dominic to come home and when he does, this is all finally going to play out. Lucky for me Daddy is at this moment taking a woman I set him up with-one who, coincidentally, looks very much like me-out on the town where a number of security cameras are sure to provide me with a solid alibi.” Anne shook the gun in her hand, indicating that Caroline should walk. “Go on. Let’s just get this over with.”

  Yes. Over. Caroline took a deep breath and started to walk as if she were heading back into the house. Then at the last second she turned and threw herself at Anne.

  Caroline had momentum and the element of surprise on her side. Both women plunged deep into the dark water.

  “I have to talk to Steven.” Dominic told Mark. He must have conveyed his panic to the detective because Mark nodded his head once and escorted him back to the interrogation room.

  Steven was still sitting there, looking as if his world had just crumbled around him. He might have seemed exceptionally guilty, too, but Dominic knew he wasn’t.

  “Steven.”

  The man turned around with a jerk and stared at Dominic. “I saw it happen. It was at that stupid Halloween party she threw last year. She wanted you. I could practically smell it on her. Then I saw her lead you down the hall to one of the back bedrooms and I couldn’t make myself follow you because I knew I would lose her.”

  “I’m sorry you saw that. I didn’t know.” Dominic walked over and sat across from him. “Nothing happened.”

  “I know. She was so furious when she rejoined the party. Said it was because the caterer messed up, but I knew. You had turned her down. She doesn’t handle no very well.”

  Dominic closed his eyes. “You know, don’t you?”

  Steven nodded and dropped his head between his hands. He chuckled hysterically for a minute and Dominic rested a hand on his shoulder to calm him. “Don’t you see? This is so like her. She’s so intense. Everything at full speed. Even her anger. Her revenge.”

  “Where is she now?” Mark wanted to know.

  “I left her at home. I told her you were back. That you’d been arrested and I had to come down and see what I could do. She said she would wait by the phone.” Steven’s breath caught in his throat. “She slept with Denny. She slept with him just to make all this happen.”

  “Call her,” Mark prompted. “Tell her you need her to come down here to verify your alibi. Tell her the police suspect you and you need her help.”

  Steven pulled out his cell phone and gripped it tightly in his hand. He looked up at the two men watching him and whispered, “She’s my wife.”

  “She’s a murderer,” Mark told him coldly. “Make the call or we go and pick her up in a squad car.”

  Steven hit a button and held the phone to his ear. “No answer at home.”

  “Try her cell.”

  “She never answers her cell. She said she’d be at home. Maybe she’s not answering.”

  “I’m not taking that chance,” Dominic insisted. He turned to the detective. “I need to go to Caroline. Now.”

  The two men looked at each other. Then immediately bolted into action.

  “You sit tight. I’m going to send a uniform in here to wait with you,” Mark told Steven. Once that was done, Mark led the way out of the station and pointed to his car.

  “I’m driving,” Dominic insisted.

  Mark jingled the keys in his hands. “I’m driving. You’re about half gone with panic.”

  “I swear to God if anything happens to her…” Dominic muttered as he threw himself into the passenger seat and silently urged the detective to move faster.

  “Nora’s with her and she’ll be armed. And even if she weren’t, I think I would still put my money on her.”

  Nora rolled on to her back and groaned. Her head felt as if it were going to explode. For a moment, she wondered if maybe it had. No, that was silly. If it had exploded, she’d be dead. And dead people didn’t groan. Which she did again.

  Think, she told herself. But that hurt.

  All she really wanted to do was close her eyes and try to escape the pain, but there was the niggling anxiety in the back of her mind that wouldn’t let her rest. A feeling of danger and an urgency to move spurred her on.

  Move where
, though? Where was she?

  Dominic’s house. She was at Dominic’s house with Caroline.

  Caroline. Where was Caroline? Had she hit her? No. There was someone else in the house. Oh, God.

  “Caroline.” She knew her voice couldn’t be more than a whisper, but suddenly she realized that the urgency she was feeling was related to Caroline. She had to make contact. She crawled for while along the living room heading for the stairs that would take her down to the next level. Caroline had gone swimming. She should be in the pool.

  That was confirmed by the sound of a very loud splash.

  The water engulfed them both instantly. But because she knew where she was going, Caroline was able to adapt more quickly. She kicked away from the tangle that was Anne and felt something solid brush past her thigh.

  The gun! Anne had dropped it and it was sinking. Caroline kicked her legs powerfully, pushing herself to the bottom of the pool. She brushed her hands over the tiles but with the underwater light turned off, she could see nothing.

  Needing air, she rose to the surface. Only the glint of the moonlight peeking through the passing clouds offered any light inside the glass room. She couldn’t see much, but she could hear Anne breathing.

  “You bitch!”

  Caroline remained motionless as the woman floundered about struggling with her clothes. Instead of bothering to reply Caroline dove again and with fluid strokes moved farther away from her. Once more, she kicked her way to the bottom of the pool, holding her breath as long as possible in her desperate search for the gun. She heard a muted sound and felt a hand close around her ankle. She kicked sharply and dislodged the hand, then kicked again, angling her body to the side to change her direction.

  As she surfaced, the ragged sound of her breathing gave Caroline’s position away. Anne turned dramatically in her direction but she didn’t move as a cloud obscuring the moon plunged the room into darkness.

  Anne chuckled. “Marco,” she sang as if waiting for the answering call, Polo. Caroline shivered.

  Caroline needed that gun. The pool was large and the gun could be anywhere, but the most likely place was not too far from where they had both fallen into the water. Which meant she needed to get behind where Anne was standing.

  “I’m here, Anne.”

  Instantly the woman lunged in her direction. Caroline sank deep and could feel the movement of the water above her. When they surfaced, Anne was on the other side of the pool.

  Without a sound Caroline let herself slide back under the water. Her foot brushed a solid object and she twisted her body around, clasping the weapon in her hand. She kicked off the bottom and charged for the top.

  She heard splashing behind her as she ran along the shallow end of the pool. She knew Anne was closing in on her, reaching for her. If she could just get the advantage of dry ground. Caroline climbed up the stairs, slipping on the slick stones and then turned around and fired the gun once into the air.

  The crack and the jolt of the weapon’s impact sent her sprawling backward and she fell butt-first on the edge of the pool. Quickly she spotted Anne still waist-deep in water and aimed at her.

  “You think you have what it takes to shoot me?” Anne taunted.

  Caroline continued to point the gun, but she could feel her hands shaking. “I don’t want to kill you, Anne. Just give up.”

  “Give up? I don’t think you’ve been listening very well. I. Don’t. Give. Up.” Anne had made her way to the stairs and was emerging out of the water like Poseidon. “You’re going to have to shoot me to stop me. All you have to do is pull the trigger.”

  Shoot her. Just shoot her. Caroline raised the gun, felt her finger curling around the trigger. All she had to do was pull it. Pull the trigger and save Dominic and herself. Her family.

  “What’s the matter?” Anne sneered. “You can’t do it, can you? Coward.”

  Caroline could see the woman was getting ready to jump when a light burst into the room, blinding them both for a second.

  “Maybe she won’t shoot you, but I will.” Nora stood at the edge of the pool with a gun aimed directly at Anne. Blood dripped down her face and Caroline feared she would topple over at any second, but her gun hand didn’t shake.

  Caroline dropped her head in relief, then heard the pounding of feet as Mark and Dominic rushed into the pool room. Dominic was bearing down on her and she felt like a football as she was scooped up into his arms.

  “Ughh!” Anne shouted, slapping her hands on the water with fury. “No, no, no, no! This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. I don’t lose. I don’t ever lose!”

  “This time you do,” Caroline said, her arms wrapped around Dominic’s neck. “Take me away from her. I don’t want to look at her face.”

  Moments later, uniformed officers swarmed the pool room. One kept his gun on the woman, while two entered the water. As they forcibly dragged her out, she kicked, screamed, and splashed the whole way.

  Nora lowered her weapon and holstered it. She walked over to where Mark stood with his hands on his hips and a grim expression on his face. He reached out and swiped a stream of blood off her cheek.

  “What the hell happened to you?”

  “She snuck up on me. She must have been inside the house when we got here. One second I’m watching TV, the next I wake up sprawled out on the floor.”

  “Come here.” He reached out and pulled her close, gently feeling her head for the lump she knew he would easily find.

  “Ouch!” she hissed.

  “We’ve got to have you checked out.”

  In a sudden motion, he bent and lifted her into his arms. She was about to do the proud thing and tell him she could manage on her own, but bereft of all energy, she let herself be carried through the house and outside to the ambulance that had been called to the scene.

  The truth was, it felt kind of nice.

  He sat her on the back of the ambulance and waved over the EMTs.

  “When you get out of the hospital, we’re going to work on your surveillance skills. They suck. An elephant could sneak up on you.”

  “Screw you, Hernandez,” she muttered weakly.

  “Screw me? Eventually, shortcake,” Mark replied smoothly. “Eventually.”

  Epilogue

  “Dearly beloved. We are gathered here today to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony. To create, before God and guests, a family.”

  Mark glanced down at Nora’s butt and smiled. “Psst. Glad you didn’t get stuck with the bow.”

  “Shhh,” she said. “I’m trying to pay attention. That’s my brother up there.”

  “This is the boring the part,” he told her. “It doesn’t get good until the end.”

  This time she jabbed him in the ribs to shut him up. As her official date for this shindig, he supposed he had to take it.

  “Do you, Caroline, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

  “I do.”

  “Ah, gee,” Mark whispered. “She’s crying.”

  “Of course she’s crying. She loves him,” Nora hiccupped into a tissue.

  “And do you, Dominic, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

  “I do.”

  “If he cries I’m outta here.”

  “If you don’t shut up, you’ve got about a zero chance of getting hot wedding sex tonight.” Nora gave him a final glare.

  Mark took the threat seriously and quickly shut up. Although he didn’t see what the big deal was. It wasn’t as if these two hadn’t been married before.

  He got the gist of the event. Caroline loved Dominic. Dominic loved Caroline. And if that bump in the front of Caroline’s wedding dress was any indication, it’s not as if they had waited for wedding number two to get busy.

  But wedding sex was wedding sex, and no man put that at risk. Add to that that this was going to be their first time and they were going to blow the doors and windows off the hotel room. Yep, no reason to rock that boat.

  So he listened as the m
inister said the final words talking about what God had joined that no man could put asunder and so forth and so on. It was definitely a nice thing. Marriage. And in thirty or forty years, he definitely might give it a try.

  Nora sniffed again and again, wiping her nose with the tissue. His eyes were drawn to the faint red mark that he remembered noticing the first time they met and he suddenly realized that he was looking at an old nose piercing. Huh.

  Instantly his mind flashed to what else might have been pierced. Or more importantly, what still might be. Shortcake was always going to be a surprise.

  Thirty or forty years? Maybe ten or twenty.

  STEPHANIE DOYLE

  a dedicated romance reader, began writing her own romantic stories, some funny, some adventurous, but all delivering the quintessential happy ending, at age fifteen. At eighteen she submitted her first story to Harlequin Books and by twenty-six she was published. Now in her thirties, she struggles between the demands of her “day” job, her writing and trying to find a little romance of her own. She lives in South Jersey with her two cats, Alexandria Hamilton and Theodora Roosevelt. She wants to get a dog, but the cats have outvoted her.

  ***

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