by Linda Barlow
She looked up at Christian. She could feel her heart racing. “What are you trying to suggest with this?”
“Merely that if I were you, I’d want to know as much as possible about the man to whom I was entrusting my life.”
After Christian left, April sat still and silent at her desk. She was alarmed at how quickly her imagination spun out a wild tale of suspicion and treachery. Halfheartedly, she told herself that she’d spent too many years working in a shop that specialized in murder mysteries.
Her imaginings went like this: Blackthorn was secretly an enemy of Rina’s. He had pretended to be her friend, got himself hired to guard her, and then himself engaged the killer of the Anaheim convention center. He had allowed him into the seminar room and, knowing full well the identity of the real shooter, he had tackled April and thereby created the diversion that had assured the assassin’s escape.
His reasons for all this? Revenge. He blamed Rina de Sevigny—and Power Perspectives—for his beloved wife’s death.
“They must be stopped, by any means possible.”
He had believed that Rina’s death would cripple the organization. Mission accomplished.
But then April had come along. And although she didn’t share her mother’s fervor for these methods, she was a good manager, both of people and of finances, and so far she’d done a creditable job of keeping the company together. Power Perspectives was still in business, and seizing your own power was still all the rage, despite its founder’s death.
So he’d decided to kill her as well.
After all, she was a danger to him. She’d persisted in digging into the mystery of her mother’s death. She’d even suggested that an examination of Rina’s relationships with her clients held the key, and one of Rina’s clients had been Jessie Blackthorn.
Stop it, April.
She hugged herself, trying to interrupt the wild spiraling of her thoughts. Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t suspect everybody you come in contact with!
No, she told herself, if she was going to suspect anyone in this, let it be Christian. He’d probably shown this material to her purely to sow more confusion, wreak more havoc, and direct suspicion away from himself.
She took a deep breath. The thing to do, of course, was turn the material directly over to Rob, and let him handle it.
Irresistibly, her eyes were drawn back to the words he had written to the small-town newspaper. “Someone very dear to me is dead… collectively responsible for killing thousands of credulous clients every year… any means possible… they must be stopped.”
In a state of grief, a man might be capable of making some pretty wild accusations.
But these sentiments were very strongly expressed.
Rob, Rob. She flashed back to the way he had loved her, the way he had held her in his arms. The silver necklace he’d given her, which she frequently wore against her skin. He was a wonderful lover. But—how well did she know him, really?
What are the prerequisites for trust?
“May I ask you something, Kate?” she said a little later on the telephone. She had called Christian’s home to speak to Kate. Armand had picked up the phone. He’d explained that he was staying there for a few days with his son and his granddaughter. “After everything that’s happened, I need to be close to them,” he’d said.
“Sure,” said Kate.
“You once told me that you didn’t like Rob Blackthorn and that you thought he might be the murderer. I want to know why you said that. What made you think it? Do you know anything particular about Mr. Blackthorn that you haven’t told the police?”
“Not really,” Kate said.
“But—”
“Once he came to the apartment when I was there. To see Gran. He didn’t know I was there, spending the night. They had a fight. I heard him yelling at her. It was awful.”
“When was this, Kate?”
“I don’t remember exactly. A while ago.”
“Did you hear what they were arguing about?”
“I didn’t pay much attention. Grown-ups are always arguing about something. I just remember it because it was loud and angry and I was afraid somebody was going to get hurt.”
“And it was at the apartment? My current apartment, you mean? Are you sure about that?”
“Positive.”
Nice place.
Haven’t you ever been here before?
No. My company was hired to guard Rina during her trip to the West Coast, not before.
Why had he lied?
“Mr. Clemente, this is April Harrington. I believe you know who I am.”
“Yes, indeed I do, Ms. Harrington,” the FBI chief said over the telephone.
“I need to ask you a question. It’s about the investigation. Actually, it’s about Mr. Blackthorn.”
“Blackthorn is no longer associated with this department,” Clemente said.
“But he was associated with you at one time? He was an FBI agent?”
“Why do you ask?” Clemente said in the tone of a true civil servant—distant and unhelpful.
Because I’m sleeping with him and I need to know if he’s a murderer!
“He has led me to believe that he was formerly an employee of the FBI.”
“That is true. He was. He resigned a couple of years ago.”
“Why?”
“Why don’t you ask him yourself, Ms. Harrington.” There was something in his tone that suggested to her that he knew about her relationship with Rob.
“I understand that it had something to do with his wife’s illness and death?”
“He took it hard, yes. This made him a less than effective agent.”
“Did he actually resign or was he asked to leave?”
There was a pause on the other end. Then once again, Clemente said, “I think that’s something you’d better ask him yourself.”
The hesitation and reluctance told it all, she thought. She hung up the phone wondering if Rob had been forced out of the FBI.
April couldn’t eat any supper that night. Her stomach was queasy. She told himself over and over that she was being silly… that because of all the stress she’d been under, she’d lost faith in her own judgment.
How could she trust a man whom she couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t touch?
Rob shouldn’t have left her alone!
Gerald Morrow had not given up, even though his orders had been to back off. Despite the danger from possible police surveillance, he was still staking out the Target’s apartment.
The client, however, had not been pleased over the fuck-up. The client, in fact, had gone ballistic.
No surprise. He’d expected it. He’d blown it, lost his weapon, nearly lost his eyes, for chrissake. He’d spent a week bathing them several times a day and had been terrified that his vision was permanently affected. Couldn’t even go to a doctor. The cops would be on the lookout for anybody with an eye injury.
Fortunately, in the last couple of days, his vision had cleared.
The bitch hadn’t been strong enough to do any lasting damage. She was good, but not good enough.
Everything was different now. The client had ceased to be important—this was between the Target and himself. He was paying his own way now. He didn’t give a shit if he never heard from the client again. He was working for himself.
He had given himself a contract to kill.
And it wouldn’t be over until April Harrington’s lovely body was nothing but a lifeless husk.
Chapter Thirty-three
Jonas usually arrived at around 8 P.M.to take over for Carla, and April was determined to question him, as gingerly as possible. Both Jonas and Carla had known Rob longer than she had, and she was sure they wouldn’t be working for him if they didn’t trust and believe in him. She’d been reluctant to speak directly about her doubts to Carla, since she and Rob seemed to be so close, but Jonas was young, and maybe she could glean something from him about Rob without making him too suspicio
us as to why she was asking.
When Jonas knocked, she opened the door eagerly, hoping that a conversation with him would set her mind at rest.
When she saw who was standing on the threshold, she took an automatic step backward. “Rob!”
“Hey, how many times have I told you not to open the door before checking to see who’s out there?”
“It’s you!”
“Yes, and it could just as easily have been the killer, back for another try.” He pushed past her into the apartment, carefully closing and locking the door behind him.
“Where’s Jonas?”
“I gave him the night off.”
They looked at each other. April swallowed hard. She felt as if she were choking on her own heart.
“I thought you’d be pleased,” he said after a moment.
She smiled tentatively. “I am. I’m just surprised. You told me—”
He moved closer and took her into his arms. “I know what I told you. I’ve been trying to stay away, but it’s been hard.”
As soon as he touched her, April felt her body respond to his. His mouth brushed her gently, then with more insistence. The tension inside her seemed to melt.
This is ridiculous, she thought. It’s all been ridiculous, all this suspicion. I would know, surely, if there were any danger from this man. Wouldn’t I know?
Had Rina known? Someone had arranged to have her murdered. Someone she knew. She’d taken what precautions she could, but they had not been enough.
He touched her throat. “You’re wearing the necklace,” he said. His voice was husky. “It looks good.”
“I love it,” she said, but she couldn’t make her gaze hold his.
“Have you learned anything new?” she asked as he followed her into the kitchen, where she started a pot of coffee.
“A couple things, yeah. We found the woman whom Christian claimed to be with on the night of his wife’s accident. Augusta—the first name—is pretty unusual, and he said he’d met her in the courthouse. As it turned out, she wasn’t that hard to find.”
“She’s real, then?”
“She’s real all right. She works as a legal clerk in the same courthouse where the divorce and custody case was decided. She remembered Christian de Sevigny and was able to confirm the assignation. He was with her all night, she says. Had too much to drink, in fact, and passed out, but not before impressing her well enough with his erotic abilities for her to remember him instantly. Did I have his phone number? she wondered. She’d love to see him again.”
“So Christian’s in the clear?”
“Regarding his former wife’s death, yeah, I guess so. Augusta’s got no reason to lie—she says she never heard from Christian again. And the idea that it might not have been an accident was just speculation, anyhow.”
April shook her head. For Kate’s sake she didn’t want Christian to be a killer. But at the moment, she wanted anybody other than Blackthorn…
“Charlie Ripley, on the other hand, has moved up on the list,” he said. “I had a long talk with Isobelle. Seems she ended it with Ripley because she’d become suspicious after the attack on you and Kate. He kept saying he’d do anything for her, and seemed to be taking a rather proprietary view of Power Perspectives. His obsession started to spook her. She began to wonder what if there were matters that he’d already taken into his own hands.”
“Killed Rina, you mean, for Isobelle’s sake? Then, when Isobelle didn’t inherit the company, he’d decided to get me out of the way as well?”
“That’s about it. She has no proof, and I think she’s feeling a little guilty about being so suspicious of her former lover.” He shrugged. “Charlie did lie, though, it seems about receiving a call from Rina’s editor about the missing manuscript. He denies it, but I’ve talked to Rina’s editors and her agent and none of them had ever heard of the project. If no one called, this would suggest that Charlie has some interest of his own in the location of the manuscript.”
“I presume you’ve looked into the possibility that Charlie was at any time my mother’s lover?”
He nodded. “We’ve come up with zilch on that. But sure, it’s possible. It’s also possible that Isobelle is the killer and that she’s trying to direct our attention elsewhere. There’s been a lot of that going on.”
This seemed like the perfect moment to bring up the matter of her own suspicions, and to show him the note and clipping she had received. But she hesitated, and Rob plunged on:
“The FBI has concluded a thorough analysis of the general financial picture of the entire De Sevigny operation. Clemente filled me in, then Armand and I had a talk about it. Things are not rosy, financially. The corporation has lost a lot of money over the past few years. He and his son are wrestling with various proposals for downsizing. Power Perspectives, on the other hand, has been an enormous money-maker. But it’s separately organized and there’s no way to funnel profits from Rina’s company into De Sevigny Enterprises as a whole.”
“So there was no reason for Armand to kill his wife and take her money?”
“No. We’ve been looking for that from the start, of course. When rich folks die mysteriously, it’s amazing how often the motive turns out to hang somehow upon their wealth. Clemente has been high on the husband as the doer all along, but he’s pretty much given up on that now. Rina’s company was carefully organized to be separate from the rest of the family’s resources, and there’s simply no way that Armand could have benefited financially from her death.”
“Isn’t that, in itself, a little odd? I mean, usually when a husband or wife dies, the surviving partner is financially impacted.”
“Rina was an independent woman,” he said slowly.
“My point exactly. They ran their own separate businesses, they lived in separate apartments. Why did they stay married at all?”
“Why does anybody stay married? They just get used to each other, or they’re too lazy or too scared to make a change. I don’t know. As I say, we’ve run down the adultery thing. Nothing that we can find on either side.”
“I can’t see him killing her,” she said.
“That’s the trouble. We can’t seem to see anybody killing her.”
I must be too imaginative, April thought. At one time or another, she’d managed to see everyone killing her, even Rob himself.
She served him a cup of coffee. “Are you staying?” she asked.
He smiled. “The killer’s still out there.” He brushed his fingers lightly over her breasts. “I’d say your body still requires some serious guarding.”
“I can see why you like your job so much—the benefits aren’t bad, are they?”
“The benefits are terrific.”
Making love that night was, for the first time, a little scary. He seemed to be in a strange mood, and April herself was jumpy. At one point, she asked him, trying to sound as casual as possible, why he had lied to her about having been in her apartment before. Looking embarrassed, he answered that as he recalled the conversation, her place had just been broken into, invaded. He’d been conscious of how that must feel to her, and he hadn’t wanted her to feel as if everyone in the world had already trooped through her apartment.
April wasn’t sure she bought this explanation. But lying open and vulnerable in his arms, she dared contemplate no other.
April and Rob were both asleep when the phone rang at 5:30 in the morning. April reached out wildly toward the bedside table, grabbing for the phone. Her hands knocked something off the table—she heard it clatter on the floor as she flailed around trying to find the phone. Her heart was beating unevenly. She hated being awakened by the phone.
She found it and put it groggily to her ear. “Hello?”
“I’m sorry to call at such an hour,” said a familiar voice with a French accent. “Were you sleeping?”
“Armand?”
”Oui, c’est moi. I need to talk to you.”
She didn’t think Armand had ever called her bef
ore. Certainly not at this time of night. “Is it Kate? Is something wrong?”
“No, no, Kate’s fine. Actually it’s about Robert Blackthorn. Christian showed me those newspaper clippings. Is he still bodyguarding you?”
“Um, yes.”
“Is he there right now?”
“That’s right,” she said in as neutral a voice as she could manage. Rob was stirring. Well, maybe half-asleep. He had opened his eyes briefly when she’d made all the racket reaching for the phone, and now he looked as if he was trying to rouse himself.
“Can you go in another room? Make some excuse? It’s important.”
She put her palm over the receiver. “It’s my friend Maggie, from Boston. She’s depressed. I’ve got to talk to her for a few minutes, okay?”
Blackthorn made a grumpy sound and rolled over.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take the phone in the other room.”
Thank God for portable telephones, she thought as she exited the bedroom. Rob wasn’t moving. She hoped he was back out.
“Okay,” she said to Armand. “I’ve got a couple of minutes of relative privacy. Go ahead.”
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m worried. He was in charge of Rina’s security at Anaheim. It never occurred to me to think that perhaps he engineered things so that the killer could get to my wife.”
“I don’t believe he did,” April said quietly.
“Of course you don’t. He is your lover. You cannot believe evil of him.” Armand’s voice was gentle, philosophical. “It is very difficult to imagine that someone we love could be capable of deceiving and betraying us. But it happens. All too often, we are hurt by those we love.”
She said nothing. She could still feel the imprint of Rob’s warm and knowing hands on her body.
“April, I found something. That’s why I’m calling. I found a computer diskette that my wife must have been using shortly before her death.”
The blood rushed to her ears. He’d found it? The diskette existed, after all?
“Kate and I had a little chat,” he continued. “After her accident she confessed to me that the night before she encountered the killer, while she was staying overnight at my home, she searched among my things for this diskette. She did not find it. But I thought of some hiding places that she would not have known about. And just over an hour ago, I found the diskette and examined it on the computer downstairs in my library.”
