Gentry holstered her own weapon, crossed to pick up Yates’s, then came back to stand beside his body, his gun in her hand.
Pointed at Selena.
Selena was too numbed to be shocked. “You’re dirty, too,” she said wearily.
“I prefer to think of myself as enterprising.”
“It was you behind the murder attempts.” Selena pressed one hand to her rib cage, easing the ache enough to make shallow breaths bearable. “You’re an FBI agent, for God’s sake. That’s supposed to mean something to you.”
“Like being chief of police meant something to William?”
“Who are you selling out to?” she asked, just to stall because she damn sure didn’t care.
“Barnard Taylor. Vernell Munroe. Would it make you feel any better to know that I started out just providing information? I didn’t intend to kill you myself until I found out how incompetent they were.”
“But . . . you put your own life in danger. You were with me on the street in Savannah. You got injured in the car wreck.”
Gentry laughed. “Honey, I’d take a whole bunch of knocks on the head for the money they’re paying.”
“You almost drowned. Robinette and I saved your life.”
“No good deed goes unpunished.” Gentry cocked the pistol. “This is so convenient. Yates came here, intending to kill you. He shot you, you shot him, you both died. How tragic. No one will ever think to look for another explanation.”
“Except for one thing—I’m unarmed.” Furtively Selena closed her fingers over the grip of Charlize’s gun, tucked close to her thigh on the side away from Gentry.
“I’ll take care of that.” Gentry examined the scene, no doubt seeking the best angle to support her cover story, then stepped over Yates’s body. While her attention was diverted, Selena raised the pistol, waited for the agent to look at her, then pulled the trigger.
Gentry slumped to the floor, the pistol landing without a sound on Yates’s body. Gritting her teeth, Selena got to her feet, limped over, claimed the pistol, then looked at Gentry. Blood flowed from the wound, indicating that she was alive. At the moment, Selena didn’t give a damn whether she stayed that way.
Sweat broke out across her forehead as she limped to where Grant lay. She tried to lower herself carefully to the floor, but her strength gave out, and she fell instead, jarring her ribs, whimpering with pain, too done in even to lift her head as, far away, a voice called her name. Tony. He was there. He would take care of her.
As Selena started toward Grant Hamilton, Damon removed the pistol from his waistband and silently moved away from the stairs and into the ballroom. The night wasn’t turning out quite as he’d planned. No guards had answered the alarm when he’d left the guesthouse, and inside the mansion, he’d found Jamieson unconscious but alive in his bed and Gentry gone from her bed. He’d wanted to get some dirt on her, and sure enough, it had been there. She was dirtier than Robinette and Jamieson combined. Selena had the worst judgment—or the worst luck—of anyone he knew.
She fell to the floor next to the old man. She thought she was safe. She wouldn’t know she was about to die. He wouldn’t have the satisfaction of watching the fear rise as he took aim dead center between her eyes and—
“Selena!”
Damon froze. What the fuck was Ceola doing there? Pivoting, he took the stairs three at a time and ducked into a second-floor bedroom as Ceola reached the top of the main staircase. He didn’t slow on the landing, but raced up the next flight. It would take him a minute or so to check Selena, then raise the alarm. The guards would come running, followed soon after by the police, ambulances, the press. The scene would be chaos . . . a good cover for an escape.
He opened the door an inch or so, heard Ceola’s voice upstairs, then slipped out. He was down the back stairs, out the door, and ducked behind the shrubbery by the time the rear-gate guards thudded toward the house. The moment they disappeared inside, he dashed across the parking court to the garage, kicked the side door open, and fumbled around in the dim light until he found a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters.
Sirens were wailing in the distance when he came outside again. He hunkered down in the shadows and watched as the first police car skidded to a stop in the driveway, its headlights illuminating the two guards heading toward the house. Unless they were better staffed than usual, that left only the one guard, and he was occupied with opening the gate for the cop car and the ambulance waiting behind it. Too busy to be inside the shack monitoring Damon’s bracelet.
He sat down, jerked his jeans leg up, and positioned the cutters. The angle was awkward, and the metal bit into his skin. He made the first cut, setting off the silent antitamper alarm he’d been warned about. It took a couple more cuts, then the bracelet fell to the grass.
A steady stream of emergency vehicles was coming onto the grounds, their lights casting multicolored shadows over the house. Damon watched for a moment, but no one was showing any interest in the rear of the property or him. That would change soon enough, when someone realized there’d been no sign of Robinette since things went to hell.
Rising to his feet, he stayed in the shadows as long as he could, then jogged across the open ground to the rear gate. Twenty feet away, he picked up his pace, hit the gate at a hard run, swung himself over the top, and dropped to the other side. He dusted himself off, then headed into the cover along the fence line. Behind the next block of houses was woods, then the jogging trail. From there, he could go anywhere.
He regretted that he hadn’t had time to kill Selena, but at least he’d taken care of that fucker, Robinette. And he was in no hurry. Revenge, William had liked to quote, was a dish best served cold.
As long as he lived, there would be plenty of time to kill Selena.
Awakening from a drug-induced sleep felt like struggling up through layers of thick sludge, their heaviness trying to pull her back down, but Selena was too stubborn to give in. She fought her way to consciousness, forcing her lids open, forcing her eyes to focus.
She was lying in a bed in a room flooded with sunlight. The gown she wore was cotton, not hers, and the sheet that covered her to her waist was coarse, also not hers. An IV was running in the back of her left hand, but other than that, she couldn’t see any signs of the hellacious evening she’d survived.
She could feel them, though. Every breath hurt. Flexing her fingers and toes sent painful shivers through her, and her vision was restricted by the swelling that practically closed her left eye. Even her scalp hurt when she shifted her head a fraction of an inch.
But she was alive.
Her back ached, but when she tried to turn onto her side, a groan escaped her. The sound brought Tony, dozing in a chair pulled next to the bed, instantly awake. His clothes were rumpled, beard stubbled his jaw, and his hair stood on end, but he’d never looked better.
He stood, bent over her, and, seeing that she was awake as well, grinned that endearing grin. “Hey, babe.”
She managed to lift one hand enough to touch his cheek before letting it fall again. “Are you okay?”
After checking her hand for injuries, he gently twined his fingers with hers. “I’m supposed to ask you that, though all I need is one look to know the answer.”
“How do I look?”
“Pretty damn scary,” he teased, then sobered. “Amazingly beautiful. You scared the hell out of me last night. When I got to the ballroom after that gunshot and found you collapsed on the floor, I thought . . .”
His expression said it all. She smiled the best she could, considering that her lip was split. “I don’t die easily. How is Grant?”
“He’s fine. Just has a headache, along with a load of guilt. He says this is all his fault.”
“And Gentry?”
“She’ll be okay. Robinette’s with her now. He’s okay, too. Long tried to break his neck, but he’s too damn stubborn to die. He regained consciousness not long after I got there. He’ll be in here soon as he finds out you’re aw
ake, with more questions than you probably have answers for.”
Selena wasn’t looking forward to trying to take credit for a death that someone else had caused, but there was no way she could sell out Charlize. The woman had saved her life. That deserved some gratitude.
“Long . . .”
Tony’s gaze darkened and a muscle in his cheek twitched. “He got away.”
A chill danced through her as she squeezed his fingers. Tony had been concerned from the beginning—had insisted Long was too dangerous, getting him out of jail too big a risk—and now he’d been proven right. The cold-blooded killer he’d worked so hard to lock up was on the run, and the blame came back to her. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. I know. If only—” Abruptly he bit off the words and clenched his jaw.
“I am sorry, Tony. I never thought—” She trailed off. She had no defense. It hadn’t been necessary for her to think that Long might escape because Tony had told her he would try. She felt sick that she hadn’t listened to him.
He stared into the distance for a moment, his gaze hard, then looked at her and everything about him softened. “It doesn’t matter. As long as you’re all right, nothing else matters. If I’d lost you . . .”
“You wouldn’t have. You’re why I fought so hard. You gave me a reason.”
He started to kiss her, drew back, and studied her with his brow wrinkled into a frown. Finally, he brushed his lips feather light across her cheek where it met her ear. Letting her eyes close, she savored it until an impatient throat-clearing from the foot of the bed made him straighten.
Robinette stood there, looking as formidable as he could in a robe and slippers. “It’s about time you woke up.” The brusque tone he was aiming for was negated by the raspiness of his voice. “Has he filled you in on everything that happened while you were trying to stay alive last night?”
“Some of it,” Tony responded.
“Long tried to kill me. He had more success at escaping. Before Gentry tried to kill you, she left Jamieson unconscious so he wouldn’t hear anything. A search of her quarters revealed a device used to electronically alter voices, along with Barnard Taylor’s and Vernell Munroe’s cell phone numbers. The cell phone provider verified that she made a number of calls to both of them. And a review of Jamieson’s computer records shows that he was diverting money from Davis’s and Yates’s accounts into his own and Damon Long’s.” His face flamed red as he said the last words.
With Tony’s help, Selena settled into a sitting position, the head of the bed raised to support her. He gave her an extra pillow to press against her ribs so breathing wasn’t as painful, then she faced Robinette. “So one of your agents was selling information about my movements, and the other was stealing outright.” And she’d never suspected a thing. She’d thought Jamieson seemed harmless, and she’d liked Gentry. She’d even begun to think of her as a friend.
“We also found records of recent bank transactions, from both Munroe’s and Taylor’s account to hers in the Caymans, on her laptop,” Robinette went on. “A couple hundred grand from each. Who knows how much more was to come when she’d killed you?”
Selena glanced at Tony. “And Kathryn’s hit man was willing to do it for five thousand.”
“Kathryn’s hit man was just getting rid of a minor problem in her life,” Robinette explained. “Gentry was handing over control of a multimillion-dollar business.”
Selena sighed. “She was going to kill me—to make it look like Yates and I took each other out. I had no choice but to shoot her.”
“I figured as much.” His tone was dismissive. “Did you have any idea that Sonny Yates was William’s nephew?”
“I never even knew William had a nephew until a few days ago.”
“Did he happen to tell you how he got involved in the family business?”
She had no answer, but Tony had a theory. “Grant said Henry never accepted Jefferson. He didn’t think adoption made a stranger family, so he ignored the kid. It was a real sore point between Henry and Kathryn, and she made it a sore point for Jefferson. Presumably, working his way into an important role in Henry’s business, with Henry never having a clue who he was, was Jefferson’s way of thumbing his nose at his uncle.”
I have more secrets than the old man could imagine, Yates had said.
“Sonny Yates is the name he was born with,” Tony went on. “But Kathryn didn’t think Sonny had quite the right ring for Southern aristocracy, so she changed it to Jefferson when they adopted him.”
“That’s why we never got any hits on Yates when we ran him through the system,” Robinette mused. “He had the benefit of having two legal names. So . . .” His chilly gaze zeroed in on Selena. “Who shot Yates?”
The first of those questions she didn’t have answers for— at least, not honest ones. “I did.”
He rocked back on his heels. “You know, I’d like to believe that. God knows, it would be justice after the beating he gave you, and you did have gunshot residue on your hand.”
Selena glanced at Tony. Clearly he knew where the agent was going with this. She had an idea herself. “But?”
“But Yates was shot from across the room. In addition to GSR, you had blood splatter and brain matter on you, which proves that you were a hell of a lot closer than forty feet. Now I know you’re a fast runner, but nobody’s that fast. That means you were probably only a few feet from Yates when someone else shot him.”
“Who?” she asked calmly.
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
A stab of pain ended her shrug as soon as it started. “Check with your guards. Who was on the grounds besides the usual crew?”
“Just Yates and Grant Hamilton, and they were both negative for GSR.”
“You didn’t shoot him,” Selena pointed out. “The guards didn’t. Gentry and Jamieson didn’t, and Long was busy trying to kill you. Who does that leave?”
Robinette’s stare gave her that bug-under-a-microscope feeling. “You. But the evidence says you didn’t shoot him, either.”
“I say I did.”
“But you’re lying.”
“I was the only one in the ballroom with Yates,” she said quietly. “He tried to kill me. I shot him.”
“That’s your story.”
“It’s the truth.”
He snorted at that, and Tony came close to doing the same, but stifled it. She didn’t blame either of them. It was hard to tell such an obvious lie; how much harder to pretend to believe it?
For a time Robinette simply looked at her. She resisted the urge to squirm under the weight of his gaze, but looked back, wondering if her calm, serene expression was working with her battered face.
Finally, he broke off the gaze and began rocking on his heels again. “Just so you’ll know, the US Attorney will probably offer Gentry a deal to testify against Taylor and Munroe. And Kathryn Hamilton freaked out so bad when she heard that Yates was dead that they had to admit her to the psych ward. She won’t go to trial for a long time, if ever.”
Do you have any idea how much you’ve cost us? Kathryn had asked the evening before. William lay in a coma. Grant had made it clear he had no further use for her. She faced spending the rest of her life locked up. She was finally having to pay for what she’d done to Selena’s mother. And her son who’d meant the world to her was dead, supposedly at Selena’s hand.
But none of it was Selena’s fault. In the end, the blame for Kathryn’s problems—as well as Selena’s—led back to Kathryn herself. All she’d had to do was let Grant go. She would have gotten over him eventually, would have built a new life for herself. But no, she’d had to hold on. Love, obsession, arrogance, pride . . . Her selfish decision had led to such tragic consequences.
Robinette glanced at his watch. “You sure you wanna stick with the story that you killed Sonny?”
She smiled thinly. “Until you come up with proof of another shooter.”
His disdain was tempered with resignation as he sh
ook his head.
“What’s next?” she asked, more to change the subject than because she cared.
“Next? You get well. You go home.”
She glanced at Tony, half-afraid to believe that “home” actually meant home. “What about the case?”
“Yates is dead. Long is gone. He knows I’m involved somehow with the FBI.” His scowl deepened. “We found a tape in Gentry’s room of a phone call between Long and Yates’s shooter. Did you have any idea that Yates’s hitter was a woman?”
Keeping her expression blank, Selena shook her head. “Though I’m not surprised. William was an equal-opportunity employer.”
“Huh. Anyway, we don’t have a clue what information Gentry gave Taylor and Munroe. She claims it was only your movements, but she could have told them all about us. All in all, it’s time to cut our losses.”
“And?” she prompted. When he looked as if he had no idea what she wanted, she said, “You can’t deport me. I might have entered the country illegally, but only because I was taken from it illegally. I was born here. I belong here.”
He scowled again. Maybe it was the pain affecting her, but it somehow didn’t seem nearly as sincere as usual. “Yeah, yeah, welcome to America.” He started to walk away, then turned and came back. “Thanks for your help.”
He offered his hand, but when she laid hers in it, he didn’t shake it. Instead, he gently squeezed her fingers, released her, then walked out.
When the door closed behind him, Tony lowered the bed rail and sat on the edge of the mattress, cradling her hand in both of his. Gently stroking her hand, he asked, “You want to trust me with who really killed Yates?”
“I trust you with my life.” But even though he waited, she didn’t offer anything else. She couldn’t.
“So . . . you’re a free woman. You get to go home.”
She nodded. For years she’d had no home—just places she stayed before moving on. That had changed when she’d bought her house in Key West. It had become one of the most important things in her life. In the past few weeks, she’d learned a more important lesson—home wasn’t necessarily a place. It could just as easily be a person. Tony was hers.
Deep Cover Page 34
