Someone was trying to kill her.
Come on, Royce. You're overtired. Wally has come by, the way he has every night. Blaming himself for her split with Mitch, Wally had spent more time with her lately.
But hadn't Wally said he'd be attending a Press Club meeting tonight? Or was it tomorrow night? Her mind had been so obsessed with Mitch, she hadn't really listened.
With a sense of foreboding she approached the door and flicked on the porch light. Nothing. She'd momentarily forgotten that the light had been broken during the police raid. The memory of that blitz brought a groundswell of anger, and she yanked open the door.
"Hello, Royce."
First she saw the gun aimed directly at her heart, then she saw the knife—just like in her dream—the moonlight glinting off the silver blade.
CHAPTER 31
Mitch looked at Gian Viscotti across the narrow table in the detention room where lawyers spoke with their clients, but his mind was on Royce. Since Paul had let him off a short time earlier, Mitch hadn't been able to think of anything else but Royce. Not long ago he'd sat in this very room—with Royce. Concentrate, he told himself. Hard work was the only way to forget her.
"I don't understand why they're denying me bail," Gian said, all vestiges of his Italian accent gone, replaced by a Texas twang.
"There's no automatic bail for treason or murder," he said wearily. "Judges rarely set bail for anyone accused of murder. In your case it looks as if they're going to charge you with Linda Allen's murder too. That's two murder counts. You can forget bail entirely."
Gian ran his manicured fingers through his thick hair and Mitch saw they were trembling. No wonder. Jail was a real shocker—even for a killer. He almost felt sorry for the kid, then he remembered how brave Royce had been. She hadn't fallen apart, but Mitch had enough experience to know he'd have a basket case on his hands by the time Gian's trial rolled around.
"Since I got your cell changed," Mitch said, "are things better?"
"Yeah. Thanks." Gian shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "I don't shower every day. Sorry if I'm—"
"Good idea," Mitch said, but he wondered if the kid had any idea how tough things would be at a state prison. Being accosted in the shower would be the least of his problems. "Let's discuss the evidence, so I can start on your case."
"Evidence? Somebody planted that gun. I would never kill—"
"Wait," Mitch cut him off. "Just give me the facts. I don't want you tying my hands with some bullshit story."
By the time he'd listened to Gian's tale, a new twist on the American gigolo, Mitch was exhausted. And he had the disturbing feeling that Gian—slick hustler that he was—hadn't murdered Caroline. He climbed in his Viper and headed toward his home, telling himself with Jenny there the house wouldn't be so lonely. He wouldn't miss Royce.
"To hell with her," he cursed out loud. Why had she insisted on investigating him? While he'd been busting his butt for her, she'd been sneaking around behind his back. Okay, okay, she had written a brilliant article that had saved his reputation. But it had been printed too late to do his mother one damn bit of good.
The car in front of him was going so slow that he slammed his palm down on the horn, his frustration with Royce getting the better of his temper. The telephone rang just as he floored the Viper and swerved around the poky car.
"Durant here," he said, and heard the familiar click of static. He'd been meaning to get the damn phone repaired, but hadn't had a spare second.
"It's Howard Schultz, Mitch. Can you hear me?"
"Yes, but this phone may cut out any second. If it does, I'll call you"—he paused for another volley of irritating static—"when I get home."
"I just wanted to tell you that you're going to be appointed to replace Judge Willner."
"Great." He tried to sound enthusiastic, but frankly, he didn't give a damn about being a judge any longer. Nothing seemed to matter. It was as if an alien being had taken over his body—most of it, anyway. Part of him still regretted what had happened with Royce, but he'd be damned if he'd let her become the focal point of his thoughts.
"It'll be—" Another burst of static, then nothing.
Mitch rattled the receiver. Silence. He dropped the phone back into the cradle as he came to a stop at a traffic light. Finally, he'd achieved his dream. He was going to be a judge.
Legal nirvana it wasn't, but he was sick of the parade of criminals he'd defended over the years. He was ready for a new challenge. Hey, he had no illusions. Same legal bullshit seen from the other side of the bench.
The phone rang again and Mitch picked it up, gunning his engine and shooting into the intersection just before the light turned green.
"Val?" It was Royce's voice. The hair across his neck bristled. He'd changed his home phone and left orders at the office not to accept Royce's calls, but he hadn't changed the car phone, expecting to replace it. What the hell was she up to? Don't tell me that she dialed this number by mistake.
"Royce, stop bothering me. Dammit—"
"I just wanted to tell you that I won't be able to go with you and David tonight to the late show. I'm really tired, but I'll call you tomorrow."
She said something else, but another round of static butchered her words. "Royce what the hell are you talking about? You know David isn't—"
"When you see Mitch, tell him I loved him. I honestly loved him. I—"
Suddenly the line went dead, but the dial tone was clear. What the hell? The phone hadn't cut her off. She'd hung up without finishing her sentence. Son of a bitch.
The whole conversation was weird. Why would she call and make up such a half-assed story? Didn't make sense. So what else is new? Royce was always a little offbeat. Once he'd found that charming.
He sat at the stoplight for so long he could have read War and Peace, trying not to notice that with a left turn, he'd be at Royce's house in minutes. Why would he go there? She wasn't in trouble. Naaah. Royce was just trying to get his attention. Damn straight. That's all it was.
Kicking himself, he turned left, accelerating way past the speed limit. He was in front of Royce's house in minutes. The house was dark except for dim light leaking out from drawn blinds in the attic. He parked, telling himself he was a class A sucker. No one answered the bell, then he remembered it had been disconnected during the police search. He knocked but no one came.
He started to leave, but turned back to study the new door.
It was remarkably like the one Royce had described after her nightmare. Why would she buy a door that was bound to trigger unpleasant memories? Didn't make sense. The ominous feeling he'd had since her telephone call intensified.
What if her call had been a plea for help?
Christ! Maybe he was imagining things. If he were dead honest with himself, he'd admit he loved her. No matter how he tried to convince himself, his feelings hadn't changed. And Paul's words kept nagging at him. Some part of him— okay, his weak side—wanted an excuse to forgive her.
He raced around to the back and was surprised to find the door unlocked. He quietly entered, some inner voice cautioning him not to call out her name.
Flicking on the light, he saw the stacks of boxes, but nothing to cause alarm. He tiptoed into the hall, where the telephone sat on a stand in the alcove. A drop of something dark marred the ivory-colored receiver. He touched it with his finger and brought it up to the light filtering in from the kitchen.
Blood.
Royce's blood.
The truth hit him with the impact of a blow to the solar plexus. His gut instinct hadn't been wrong. The killer wasn't in jail.
Gian had been framed, just like Royce. Mitch didn't have to ask who. The answer didn't even startle him. He should have seen it all along.
Son of a bitch, he'd been an arrogant fool.
In a maelstrom of debilitating panic he realized just how much he loved Royce. Hadn't the five years they'd been apart taught him anything? He'd missed her so much, but not the way he did now
that he really knew her. How could he live with himself if something happened to Royce?
He grabbed the receiver, set to call the police, but the line was dead. A muffled noise drifted down from upstairs. Mitch's hand froze in midair as he identified the sound.
A man's laugh. Royce must still be alive. Thank you, God.
In an instant Mitch evaluated his options. If he went for help she might not be alive when he returned. He couldn't risk it.
He crept up the stairs as quickly and quietly as he could. As he neared the second floor, the voice became louder, the tone almost conversational. A husky masculine baritone and Royce's. softer voice. Attagirl. Keep him talking.
The last flight of stairs to the attic was narrower than the main staircase. Mitch tiptoed up and halted at the top, hidden by the half-open door. Through the crack between the hinges and the doorjamb Mitch peered into the small room. Royce was lying on the daybed with her hands tied to the bedposts and sitting beside her, his back to Mitch, was Brent Farenholt.
Sonofabitch! Why didn't he have a gun? He wouldn't even feel guilty about shooting the bastard in the back. You're so stupid. You totally underestimated Brent.
While Mitch mentally accused himself of being an arrogant imbecile, he stuck one finger through the crack and wiggled it. His eye to the opening, he saw Royce catch the movement and quickly look away.
Tears filled Royce's eyes. Thank heaven, Mitch had understood her cryptic plea. She'd been surprised Brent had allowed her to make the phone call. She'd gambled on Brent believing her hastily concocted story about going out with Val and her brother. She'd dialed Mitch's car phone-—for once luck was with her—and he'd answered, instantly suspicious when she'd pretended he was Val.
Royce quickly found out why Brent hadn't wanted Val to come looking for her. Sadistically, Brent wanted her to die slowly—like Caroline. To suffer over a number of hours while he enjoyed the sight.
Already he'd cut her—minor cuts—but in time she'd bleed to death. Even now she felt weak and her clothes were sticky with her own, still warm, blood. She knew she didn't have that long to live unless her wounds were treated.
"Caroline never cried, you know," Brent said, mistaking Royce's tears of relief at seeing Mitch for fear.
Royce was emboldened now. Having Mitch so close gave her hope, although she knew he didn't have a weapon or he would have charged into the room.
"She tried to trick me by playing dead, but it didn't work." Brent chuckled, the disarming laugh she knew so well. The laugh that put everyone at ease. "She made a grab for the phone, but I stepped on her arm and held her down until God himself couldn't save her."
Why hadn't she detected the evil side to this man? Royce reminded herself that many psychopaths seemed amazingly sane. Even when he'd slit her veins, he'd had the detached manner of a surgeon performing a delicate operation. The only time he'd lost his temper and revealed his psychopathic side was when she'd said she loved Mitch. Brent had jammed down on the phone, cutting her off. In a second he'd slashed a small vein on her arm and she'd begun to bleed.
Royce blinked back the tears, thinking she needed to be able to see clearly if she were going to help Mitch. Brent had tied her, but carelessly. One wrist was very loose.
With a Glock semi-automatic in his hand he was cocky about her making hasty moves. She knew he didn't intend to shoot her, he'd keep using the knife, slowly opening more veins until her lifeblood drained into the mattress beneath her.
"A gun and a knife," Royce said, desperate to let Mitch know what he was up against. "If you want me to bleed to death, why the gun?"
Holding the flat blade of the knife under her chin Brent said, "I might change my mind and shoot you. You really pissed me off, you know. I liked you. I was searching for someone to frame, but you were so cute, I almost let you go-"
"What changed your mind?"
"A kiss in the dark."
Royce remembered the kiss with startling clarity. A kiss in the dark. Brent had been outside the door when she'd kissed Mitch with such passion. That night her life had changed forever, but she didn't know it until now.
"I came upstairs looking for you. There you were—engaged to me—but in Mitchell Durant's arms, kissing him like a two-bit hooker on Mission Street. Did you know how many times my father threw Mitch in my face? Shit! Did you think I was going to let him walk off with my fiancee too?"
"Your father would have been glad to get rid of me," Royce said, conscious of the need to keep him talking while Mitch took action.
"True. He thought you were cheap with your flamboyant clothes and those big tits. Personally, I liked the tits." He chuckled and playfully lowered the knife, skimming across her chest to the shadowy valley between her breasts.
He turned the knife on its side and ran the cold blade down her cleavage. Then, with a flick of the razor-sharp knife point, he severed the thread on the top button of her blouse. One by one he cut the others free. The fabric parted, revealing the lacy cups of her demibra.
Outside the door Mitch groaned low in his throat, hardly able to contain the urge to catapult into the room and kill the son of a bitch. But with one shot Royce would be dead. He needed to distract Brent. But how?
Mitch remembered the condom he always kept in his wallet. It had been there for so long now, it was probably useless for its intended task, but it would suit his purpose. Slowly he inched his wallet out of his hip pocket, aware that any sound could alert Brent. But Brent wasn't on guard. He continued to talk.
"Caroline wasn't perfect, you know," Brent said. "She was a little flat chested, but I loved her."
"If you loved her, how could you kill her?"
There was a moment of silence. Mitch stopped peeling the foil off the condom in case the noise tipped Brent before he was ready to strike. He couldn't see what Brent was doing but he could see that Royce's blouse was hanging off one shoulder and her breasts were now bare.
Come on, Mitch said to himself, someone say something so I can unwrap this damn thing. Royce must have read his mind.
"I don't want to die until I know the whole story. Isn't it only fair that you tell me?"
"Ever since I can remember, I was in love with Caroline. Before they were killed in the accident, her parents were my parents' closest friends. They'd come over and Caroline and I would sneak away. Usually we'd play doctor." Brent shrugged, the one-shouldered gesture that she'd once found so charming.
He seems so normal. Even now. Royce's stomach clenched. He spoke logically, appearing for all the world to be a rational man, not a sadistic killer. But there had to have been signs. Her mind sifted through their months together for clues.
There had been some. His relationship with his family had been abnormal. With startling clarity she remembered how he'd behaved the night of the auction. He'd turned on her because he'd never really loved her. He'd been pretending. If she'd correctly analyzed the situation then, she would have understood that Brent's entire life centered on pretending. A charade.
"You know, the doctor game was Caroline's idea." Brent smirked. "Even when we were teenagers we'd still play. I'd touch her breasts like this." He put the knife in the same hand as the gun and palmed Royce's breast with his free hand, cradling its weight and brushing his thumb over the nipple.
Royce wanted to spit in his eye, but she didn't dare. Help was too close, life too precious.
"Caroline always took off her panties for me."
He used the ultrasharp knife on the cotton skirt she wore and sliced it off her before Royce could blink. It was a deadly hunting knife, she realized, the kind used to skin animals.
"I'd touch her here." Brent edged his fingers into the nest of curls between her thighs. "She couldn't get enough of it."
Royce vowed that if she got her hand on that knife, she'd go for his jugular. "So, why didn't you marry Caroline?"
Brent's hand froze. He studied her a moment, his eyes scanning her bare breasts, scouring her naked tummy and stopping where his hand reste
d so intimately against her.
"I wanted to marry Caroline, believe me. I asked her dozens of times."
Royce remembered what the phony count had told Paul. . Caroline had been in love with someone else. Suddenly, everything made sense as she recalled little details she'd never put together before now. "But Caroline refused to marry you, didn't she? She was in love with your father."
Brent's skin turned an ugly mottled red and his eyes had the most wounded expression she'd ever seen. Honest to God, he thought of himself as the long-suffering victim. He took his hand off her crotch and grabbed the knife again.
For one terrifying second she thought she'd stepped over some invisible line and he was going to kill her. But he merely traced the tip of the blade along a blue vein on her breast.
Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, the deadly knife moved, seeking the perfect spot. Gently, as if she were a baby and exceedingly fragile, he pricked the vein. The cut was the size of a pinhead, but blood trickled down over her nipple.
Oh, Mitch, please hurry.
The crimson blood so stark against the white smoothness of Royce's breast almost sent Mitch barreling into the room to kill the bastard with his bare hands. But the logical part of his brain that had saved him countless times came to his rescue again. If he stormed in there, they'd both die.
No. Royce deserves to live. Trust me, Brent is the one who's going to die.
Mitch forced his fingers to slowly withdraw the fistful of change in his pocket. He shoved the coins into the condom, his fingers trembling with rage and fear. He wasn't afraid for his own life.
No. He'd conquered that kind of fear during the years of his youth when he'd lived on the streets at the mercy of anyone bigger and stronger. He'd survived. But now he was more afraid than he'd ever been back then when he didn't dare go to sleep at night for fear some one would slit his throat for a slice of stale bread. Or his holey tennis shoes.
"You know, Royce, you were always too smart for your own good." Brent's voice came from the other room. "You're right. Caroline loved my father... and he loved her. Know how I found out?"
Sawyer, Meryl Page 37