Close Call

by Laura Disilverio

  38

  Sydney

  Monday, August 7

  Shortly after noon on Monday, Sydney and Reese pulled into the yard of a house under construction west of Annapolis. Sydney was driving Reese’s Highlander while her sister worked on her tablet. A large sign in the yard proclaimed Van Slyke Custom Builders. A cement mixer trundled out of the rutted dirt driveway and workers crawled over the house like ants with hard hats.

  “We’re looking for Katya Van Slyke?” Sydney poked her head out the window to talk with an overalled man munching a sandwich.

  “O’er dere,” he mumbled around a mouthful. He jerked his head to the left of the house.

  Sydney thanked him and steered the car carefully over the deep gouges in the roadway left by construction equipment.

  “Shit,” Reese exclaimed the third time they lurched into a pothole deep enough to double as a reservoir. “My ride’s going to need an alignment when we get back.”

  “Quit whining. At least your car’s not an arsonist’s wet dream.”

  Reese’s eyebrows soared and she chuckled. “I didn’t know you had it in you, little sister. What would Connie say?”

  “It’s been a rough week,” Sydney groused, putting the Highlander in park and unbuckling. “That’s got to be her.” She pointed toward a figure with a blond braid hanging from beneath its yellow hard hat.

  They climbed out of the SUV and approached a tall woman studying a set of blueprints on the hood of a red F-250.

  “Katya Van Slyke?” Sydney asked as they got closer. Fidel had warned her not to call his wife “Mrs. Montoya.” “It makes her rabid,” he’d said with a rueful note in his voice when he’d told Sydney where to find her. What did that say about their marriage?

  The blonde looked up, showing ice blue eyes under pale brows, but she kept her finger on a spot on the documents. “Yes?” She looked from Sydney to Reese.

  She came across like a middle-aged Viking warrior queen: six feet tall, big-boned, aloof. Sydney could easily imagine her wielding a hammer. “I’m Sydney Ellison and this is my sister, Reese Linn. Your husband said you might have a few minutes to talk to us about—”

  “About this alleged assassin, yes?” Katya said, a thin smile stretching her lips.

  “You don’t think someone tried to kill your husband?”

  She shrugged. “I think Fidel is a politician and he wants very much to win this election tomorrow. He subscribes to the ‘any publicity is good publicity’ theory.”

  “But he hasn’t gone to the media with it, or even the police,” Sydney said.

  “Yet.”

  The single word hung between them.“Don’t you want your husband to win?”

  The woman’s eyes crinkled at the corners and Sydney got the feeling she was laughing at her. “Of course I do. It’s good for business. It would be better if he were a Republican, of course, from a commission standpoint—they’re not as shamefaced about their conspicuous consumption as the Democrats, are they?—but being Congressman Montoya’s wife nets me plenty of jobs.” She extended a hand toward the house going up behind them. “Do you know what my profit on a fifteen-million-dollar home is?”

  “Enough to buy Jimmy a racehorse?” Sydney didn’t know where the idea came from; it jumped out of her mouth.

  “Not even close.” Katya’s face shut down. “If I could, I’d buy Jimmy free of those monsters who have their hooks into him and lock him up in a recovery facility until he lost the urge to buy so much as a lottery ticket. There’s one in Montana with a good reputation. But his father says he’s got to live with the consequences of his decisions. Those men are going to hurt him. Matvei is … ruthless. Blood means nothing to him.”

  Although Katya spoke matter-of-factly, Sydney sensed a mother’s fear for her son in the slight tightening of the cords in her neck. But Sydney found herself looking in vain for any resemblance between mother and son. Did it bother the woman to have left no physical stamp on her offspring?

  “Do you think Utkin could be targeting your husband?” she asked. She stopped short of asking if Jimmy himself could be responsible.

  “No one’s ‘targeting’ Fidel,” Katya said irritably. “So he heard a shot while he was jogging. A target shooter, a poacher, a homeowner scaring away a coyote. They are all more likely than an assassin, yes?”

  “He says the bullet barely missed him.”

  She shrugged, seeming to imply that Montoya might have been exaggerating. “I’ve told him dozens of times he shouldn’t run on the roads. That’s what gyms and tracks are for.”

  The woman’s lack of concern for her husband was unbelievable. Sydney told her about the cell phone switch and the call she’d received. Cold blue eyes locked onto hers.

  “You have a history with politicians, do you not? And my husband has a weakness for attractive women.” She said it the same way she might say, “My husband likes grape jelly.”

  The words stung Sydney like a cloud of mosquitoes. She slapped them away with a chop of her hand. “I am not sleeping with your husband! My fiancé was murdered by the man hired to kill your husband.”

  “So you say.” The look in the blonde’s eyes belied her cool tone.

  “Maybe you’re tired of Fidel’s womanizing,” Sydney suggested, pushed to her limit. “Maybe you hired the killer to get rid of him. If he was dead, you could spend his money to bail out your gambling-addict son before he gets himself beaten to a pulp by your uncle’s goons.”

  “How dare you!” Katya banged her fist on the truck’s hood with a loud clang. Several workers looked over and one took a step toward them, returning to his task when Reese stared him down.

  “How dare you accuse me of sleeping with your sleazebag husband, just because I’m trying to keep him from getting killed and catch the bastard who shot my fiancé!”

  The two women glared at each other over the truck’s hood. Heat from the metal seeped into Sydney’s hands and she realized she’d banged them down in her anger.

  “Get the fuck off my job site,” Katya said, her voice low and menacing. She leaned her torso across the truck and practically growled in Sydney’s face. “And stay away from my family.”

  Sydney spun on her heel. Reese side-stepped with catlike agility before she could walk into her. In silence, they walked side-by-side back to the SUV.

  “You were a big help back there,” Sydney said, clambering into the driver’s seat and jabbing the key into the ignition.

  “Didn’t look to me like you needed any help,” Reese said, with a good humor that annoyed her more. “She has a longer reach, but I think you could’ve taken her. Interesting interview technique, by the way—pissing the subject off. I’ve used it myself. Of course, the object is to make the subject angry enough to say something he didn’t mean to, but not so angry he takes a swing at you. It’s a fine line.” Her tone suggested she could give Sydney a few pointers on needling interview subjects.

  “Do you think she hired someone to kill her husband?” Sydney craned her neck to look over her shoulder as she backed up the SUV.

  “I don’t know, but if I were Fidel Montoya, I’d hide the scissors before I went to sleep tonight,” Reese said.

  Sydney choked on a laugh despite her anger. “They’re quite the dysfunctional family, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah, like the Menendezes were a dysfunctional family.”

  She shot her sister a look as she dodged a mason with trowel and hod. “You think Jimmy hired the hit man? The Menendezes were the sons who killed their parents, right?”

  “Yeah.” Reese pulled the visor down. “I didn’t mean I necessarily think Jimmy’s behind the assassination attempt. He seems pretty ineffectual, but sometimes the weakest-seeming men are the most vicious when they get the chance. They take years of abuse and put-downs and use them to fuel rage like you’ve never seen … ”

  She tr
ailed off, and Sydney said, “You’re thinking about Ruben Panetta, aren’t you?”

  Reese swiveled her head toward her. “You’ve read my books?”

  Sydney cursed herself inwardly. She didn’t want Reese knowing she was interested enough to have followed her career. “I might have glanced at one or two.”

  Reese let it go. “Yeah, I was thinking about Panetta. He had some things in common with Jimmy Montoya. He was young—only twenty-three—when he started killing. He had a domineering father and was bullied in school. I’ll bet Jimmy was bullied some. He just has that ‘kick me’ aura to him. But there are big differences, too. Panetta’s father raped him repeatedly from the time he was five or six, and his mother let it happen. He had a history of bed-wetting and setting fires—all classic signs of a serial killer—and there’s none of that in Jimmy Montoya’s dossier.”

  “It’s apples and oranges, right?” Sydney said, taking an exit ramp so fast that g-forces swayed Reese against the window. A detour forced them through a residential area of Annapolis streets. “Hiring a contract killer to take out your dad with filthy lucre as your motive is a far cry from being a serial killer.”

  “True.” Reese was silent a moment, and then said, “When you talk to killers and victims all the time, you get to thinking that everyone is one or the other. Everyone around a killer is a victim, not just the people he actually kills. Parents, siblings, friends—they’re all victims, too, to one degree or another. Panetta’s sister … I have to remind myself that it’s not true that everyone is a killer or a victim. Some people lead perfectly ordinary lives, hurting each other in ordinary ways, kissing and making up, working, laughing, listening to music, losing their virginity to a high school sweetheart, celebrating quinceañeras.” She gestured to a boisterous group of Latinos spilling out into the front yard they were passing, at their center a laughing teenage girl dressed in a tiered yellow gown and wearing a tiara.

  “You know … ” She spoke toward the window, and Sydney had to strain to hear her. “I spent ten years witnessing war in all of its ugliness, and the last six years chronicling the lives of the sickest, most depraved men—and one woman—in the country. It’s gotten so I can’t get it out of my head anymore.”

  A shaft of concern for her sister pierced Sydney. “Quit. Walk away.”

  Tilting her head back against the seat, Reese said, “And do what? This is what I’m good at.”

  “Take some time to figure it out. Go reno your house and just breathe.”

  “Is that what you did?” Reese asked the question facing straight ahead, not making eye contact.

  Sydney knew what her sister meant. “Not soon enough,” she said after a moment. She braked to let a gaggle of tourists and midshipmen from the Naval Academy cross the street. “Afterward, I hid in Europe. Then I married Dirk, thinking … hell, I couldn’t have been thinking at all when I married Dirk.” Lights from emergency vehicles strobed ahead of them and traffic was at a total standstill, so Sydney put the SUV in park and turned to face her sister’s profile. “Nana Linn rescued me. She swooped down on me in Santa Monica—that’s where we were living while Dirk pursued his ‘acting’ career—and took me home with her to Richmond. She made me get counseling and bullied me to finish my degree. Then, when I’d been with her almost a year, she gave me the keys to the cabin in West Virginia—”

  “The one on Wood Lake, where we went on vacation a couple of times?” Reese looked interested.

  Sydney nodded. “You told me we were swimming in fish pee and I wouldn’t put my head underwater. Dad explained about dilution and threw me in off the dock.”

  “It was peaceful up there,” Reese said, in a wistful voice that hinted she hadn’t known peace in a while.

  “It was,” Sydney agreed. “Also lonely, cold—it was winter—and just what I needed. Nana Linn told me to hike, fish, chop wood, and not think at all. The result was a kind of healing; a strengthening, I guess you’d call it. I came back knowing I wanted to start Winning Ways. Well, not Winning Ways exactly, but something like it, a nonprofit that helped women. Nana Linn hooked me up with folks who knew the ins and outs of fundraising and could pinpoint an area where there was a need. I miss her.” Her thoughts dwelled on the woman with the regal posture and the white hair always swept back in a chignon. She remembered the hands with their swollen knuckles and red nails, manicured weekly; the soft voice that somehow always made itself heard; the acerbic commentary on politics and the decline of Western culture; the surprising strength in the thin arms that would sweep her into a hug with no warning. She blinked back tears.

  An ambulance maneuvered past, siren blaring, and the car in front of them chugged forward a few feet. Exhaust fumes choked the air. Sydney slipped the Highlander into gear and eased it forward.

  “Solitude sounds blissful,” Reese said. “She left you that place, didn’t she?”

  Sydney heard the unasked question. No, not quite a question, or even a hope; more like a dawning awareness of a previously unrecognized need. “I’ll give you the keys when we get home, if we ever do,” she said as the car in front of them slammed on its brakes to avoid hitting a motor scooter weaving through the halted cars. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you want. I haven’t been up there in a long time, so I can’t vouch for the condition of the place. There’s a caretaker, but—”

  “Doesn’t matter.” After a pause, Reese added, “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” The moment felt too heavy, almost meaningful, and it made her squirm. “I’ll bet Earl will like swimming. Just don’t tell him about the fish pee.”

  Reese chuckled. “He’s afraid of water, the wussy, can’t stand to get a bath. But he loves chasing squirrels.”

  “There are plenty of those.”

  In the mysterious way of traffic jams, the dam broke and suddenly they were moving.

  39

  Sydney

  Making the turn onto G Street an hour later, Sydney was apprehensive at seeing a blue sedan drawn up in front of her house, a man’s figure leaning against the passenger door.

  “Who’s that?” Reese asked, sitting up straight.

  “The police,” Sydney said hollowly. Was Detective West going to haul her off to jail? She slowed and found a parking spot halfway down the block.

  “If you’re going to hang with the handsome detective, I’m going to take care of a few things,” Reese said, studying West in the rearview mirror. “You should be safe enough with him. Be back in a half hour.”

  Sydney nodded her agreement. She wasn’t surprised that Reese didn’t want to meet West, as she’d had some ugly run-ins with the police when she was a reporter. She stepped onto the sidewalk and West met her halfway between his car and the Highlander. Even though the sun was sliding toward the horizon, heat trapped by the asphalt and concrete of the city rose around them in almost visible waves. Despite the heat, someone was burning leaves, and the acrid odor made it feel hotter. Sydney tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, suddenly feeling the weight of the day’s events descend on her shoulders.

  “Who’s your friend?” West’s deep-set eyes studied Reese’s lanky frame as she exited the passenger door and crossed in front of the SUV, out of their sight, to climb into the driver’s side. Sydney thought she saw her hand upraised in a wave as she signaled and pulled away from the curb.

  “Someone who takes my safety a bit more seriously than the MPD,” Sydney said tartly. She passed West and opened the low gate to her yard. Indigo bounded over to greet her and she stroked him. He purred.

  “A bodyguard?” West’s brows climbed toward his hairline.

  “My sister, actually. She’s got a gun.” She gave Indy a final pat and stood to unlock the front door. “Do I need to call my lawyer for this conversation?”

  “Nope.” West followed her into the foyer and shut the door, sending home the deadbolt. The cool relief of air conditioning
settled on her skin as she headed for the kitchen and water. The heat and the dust from the construction site had parched her.

  “Nice bike,” West observed as they passed through the living room. “Yours?”

  It was now. “Yes.” She left it at that and beelined for the sink.

  “I saw a report that your car was torched,” he said. He leaned back against the counter as she filled a glass with water and glugged it. “Want to tell me about it?”

  She filled the glass again before replying. “Want some?” When he shook his head, she took another long swallow, then gave him an appraising look. “I poked a hornet’s nest and got stung.”

  “What hornets?”

  After a moment’s hesitation—what would Hilary say?—she told him about visiting the Imminent Revelation compound and her conversation with Aaron Fisher.

  As she spoke, his brows contracted and the muscles in his jaw tensed. “You thought they might have hired a hit man to take out Montoya and you traipsed off to their hide-out alone?” Incredulity rang in his voice.

  “Reese was nearby,” she said defensively.

  He was silent for a long moment, rubbing his eyebrow. When he spoke again, his tone said he’d come to a decision. “You’re serious about this, about what you said. You’re really trying to track down a hit man, aren’t you?”

  “Well, no one else is trying to find Jason’s killer.” She busied herself putting her glass in the sink to hide the tears that sprang to her eyes. “You all think I killed him.”

  “I’m willing to consider other possibilities.”

  Suddenly, he was beside her, a gentle hand turning her so he could study her face. He seemed taller close up; her nose was even with his jaw. She sniffed back her tears and met his gaze defiantly. “Really? Well, you fooled me with that whole arresting me thing.”

  “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”

  “How would you know?” She held his gaze a moment longer, then turned away to push open the back door. She sank to the top step, wrapping her arms around her knees and hugging them to her chest. West joined her. He smelled like soap and limes and body heat as he sank down to the step, his thigh a whisper away from hers.