“Don’t touch it. You look fabulous.”
Taylor put the mirror back into place and smiled at her best friend. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. So, how’s everything?”
They chatted during the fifteen-minute drive, catching up on non-law-enforcement issues. Sam scooted through the light traffic and when they pulled up in front of the Frist valets, Taylor felt as relaxed as she had in days.
They dropped the car, went inside the stunning museum’s outdoor tent. The fête was underway. Black-tie-clad men and elegantly gowned women strolled, drinking champagne and nibbling hor d’ouevres served on silver trays. Sam and Taylor each accepted a flute from a waiter and toasted one another, clinking glasses softly. “Salut,” Taylor said, the word making her miss Baldwin.
They circulated through the room, greeting people they knew, which was most of the crowd. Several of Taylor’s mother’s friends came up and complimented her on her dress, asked how Kitty Jackson was faring these days. A few deigned to ask about Win, her father.
She answered both with equal insouciance—Kitty was fine, she’d met a Swiss banker skiing in Gstaad over the winter and had elected to stay in Europe for the remainder of the spring. Win was in a minimum-security prison in West Virginia, a guest of the federal government.
Most people didn’t know all the facts behind the Win Jackson case. The feds had managed to keep his role in a huge money-laundering and human trafficking ring relatively quiet. Win wouldn’t be testifying against his former boss. The man known eponymously as L’Uomo was in a Brazilian jail at the moment, most likely chained to a wall. Good riddance, Taylor always thought. He was human scum.
Taylor felt like her brittle smile was pasted on. The allure of these events had long ago lost their charm. She’d been a good soldier for a long time, attending the parties and the charity events that made up the bulk of Nashville’s social calendar at the behest of her parents. She’d even gone through a ghastly coming-out season when she was eighteen—a year of heavy drinking and petting that culminated with a curtsey at the white tie debutante ball, Sam and Simon snickering at her side.
She supposed the companionship made it that much easier for her to rebel against her parents’ well-borne intentions for her; Sam hadn’t wanted a Junior League life either. Knowing it was just a matter of time before they’d be out on their own, in Knoxville at college, away from the prying eyes of Nashville’s glitterati, helped them get through the events.
They both gave back to their parents’ world, but in their own ways. Taylor did her best to protect them. Sam uncovered their darkest secrets. It was a fair trade, really. As long as every so often, they paid the piper.
This early spring evening, they did just that. And Nashville society was its always polite self, happy to see both Taylor and Sam playing along for a night, at the very least, and didn’t make too much trouble. Instead, the topic of conversation was the Corinne Wolff murder. Tongues wagged; the Harrises weren’t unknown on the circuit, though they weren’t invited to the best parties either. Corinne ran with the athletic country club set. New money, Taylor heard one Botoxed and plumped woman whisper. The ultimate sin.
The prevailing opinion was a drug addict had broken into the home to steal money for a fix. Taylor didn’t have the heart to tell them that most junkies were at heart gentle souls who would be more likely to steal a purse than beat someone to death, but hey, let them have their fears.
The Nashville press was in attendance; she and Sam posed for countless photos. She knew she’d be razzed at work tomorrow, but didn’t care. She had a nice chat with Amy Hendricks, a Tennessean reporter and former classmate at Father Ryan. All in all, it was a typical Nashville cocktail party, pleasantly benign, bordering on soporific.
After a half an hour of inaneness, the chairwoman of the event, Linda Whaley, came to steal Sam, leaving Taylor cruising the room by herself. She wasn’t alone for long. Within a few minutes, three different men had asked if they could buy her a drink. Though she was gracious and appropriately flirty, she’d started drinking the champagne with her left hand as a hint. The ring wasn’t scaring off any potential suitors. A couple wore wide gold bands themselves. Dogs.
She glanced at her watch. The dinner should start anytime now. On cue, she heard a tinkling. The dinner bell. Tossing off the last of her champagne, she handed the glass to a passing waiter and started for the tables. Linda had told her she’d be seated at the front table with Sam. Great. Just what she wanted, to be at the center of all this attention.
A gentleman done up in full evening kit, white tie gleaming against his black satin lapel, held the door to the dining room open for her. She nodded her thanks and entered the room. She stopped for a moment to get her bearings and a voice spoke softly in her ear, making her jump and clutch at the snap of her bag. Jesus, didn’t people know better than to sneak up on a cop?
“Heya, Tawny.”
She turned and took in the speaker. A heavyset man in his late forties, graying at the temples, loose jowls, buttons on his shirt strained as if it had been seen one too many times at the dry cleaner, or one too many trips to the buffet. Leering at her as if he could lap her up. She had no earthly idea who he was.
“I’m sorry. Have we met?”
The man glanced over his shoulder, leaned in conspiratorially. “Tawny, Tawny, Tawny. My God, I never imagined I’d see you in the flesh. Yet here you are, an angel in red. Or a succubus, I should guess. What do you say you and me split out of here, go have ourselves a little private party?”
Taylor did her best not to laugh at the egregious pickup. “I’m sorry, I haven’t got a clue who you are.” She started to walk away and he grabbed her arm, pulling her back to him, pressing his body against hers in a much too familiar way.
“Hey there, girlie, I’m talking to you.”
Wrong thing to do. Taylor kept her tone measured, her voice low. “Let. Go. Of. Me. Now. Or I will break your arm.”
He unhanded her, and she whirled away. He followed on her heels.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he snarled at her.
Instead of speaking, Taylor just stopped, casually opened her purse and showed him her gun. The man smiled. His bottom teeth were shaped like pegs and stained brown. She repressed a shudder.
“Oh-ho, aren’t you a little tigress. Keeping a concealed weapon, are you? I’ve got some friends who I’m sure would like to know about that. You should probably give me the gun, little lady, you wouldn’t want to hurt yourself.” He started to reach for the weapon. Taylor snapped the purse closed, grabbed the man’s hand and twisted, hard. He was forced to spin away from her and she used that momentum to get him moving back toward the door.
“Hey!” he said, loud enough to get the attention of a passing waiter, who looked on in shock as Taylor maneuvered the boor right back out into the hallway.
She tossed him up against the wall face-first. He landed with a thud, grunting, then turned on her. She had her badge in her hand. His eyes bulged at the gold shield.
“Listen,” he started, but she cut him off.
“No, you listen to me. I don’t have the first clue who you think I am, but let me introduce myself. I’m Lieutenant Taylor Jackson, homicide. Now who the hell are you?”
His little pig eyes got smaller. “Tony Gorman.”
“And why did you call me Tawny?”
She could see him calculating. “It’s your hair,” he said finally. She knew immediately that he was lying. She hissed in his ear.
“You’re a liar, Mr. Gorman. Tell you what. Why don’t you just slink out of here and I won’t arrest you for assaulting an officer. And maybe you’ll think twice the next time you decide to lay your hands on a woman. Some of us bite.”
She heard him call her a bitch under his breath as he walked away. Fat bastard. She rubbed her arm. She was going to have bruises just the size of Gorman’s meaty fingers. Some men just didn’t get it.
Taylor went back into the roo
m, feeling like all eyes were on her. The salad was being served. She sat next to Sam, who gave her a look of concern, but she shook her head. “Later,” she mouthed.
She ate, and made polite conversation with the couple to her left, and drank a fine glass of Bordeaux. She clapped the hardest at the end of Sam’s speech, and was more than relieved to see the evening draw to a close. Her feet hurt. She just wanted to get out of her clothes and into the bed.
She told Sam what happened on the way home. By the time they’d arrived at the house, Taylor was laughing about it and Sam had graced her with a new nickname, Miss Tawny T. She drove off with a wave and Taylor bolted the door behind her. She went into the kitchen, turned on the alarm system and dumped her shoes with a clatter on the hardwood. She’d retrieve them tomorrow. It was eleven-thirty. Too late to bother Baldwin, he was on Eastern time and probably already asleep. She envied his ability to drop off as soon as his head hit the pillow. She poured a glass of Chianti and went upstairs to the office.
She booted up the computer and walked to her bedroom to change. She shed the dress and accoutrements like a chrysalis, feeling better the instant she was naked. She walked back to the computer, set the wine on a coaster and started Googling Tawny.
What’s in a name? Tawny seemed to be a favorite pseudonym for porn stars and wannabe actresses. The Tawny Frogmouth was a bird, a family pet rabbit named Tawny had its own Web site, lots of flora and fauna that got the tawny designation, even a port. Nothing that looked like her, though. She tried Tawny Nashville, got a few live sex operators and a Greek restaurant, but still nothing with ties to her life. Obviously it was a case of mistaken identity.
But Taylor was uncharacteristically unnerved. She’d seen the look in Tony Gorman’s eyes, the twist of lust in his features. This was a man who’d thought of sex when he saw her, and that made her more uncomfortable than anything she’d felt in some time. If she’d been weaker, or another woman entirely, the situation would have gone a different way.
She erased Tawny from the browser and plugged in the name Tony Gorman. Too many hits to count. She tried variations—Anthony Gorman, Tony Gorman Nashville, Anthony Gorman Tennessee, but the results were just too numerous. She was damned tired, and figured she’d have better luck using the police channels to track the bastard.
Taylor closed the Web browser, leaned back in her desk chair. Thought about the quick glimpse into Tony Gorman’s soul. She had been familiar with the concept of desire from a relatively tender age. Her parents, for all their failings, had treated her as an adult from the time she could be expected to make a few of her own decisions, and as a result she’d ended up being rather precocious.
When her body developed, her gangly height and tomboy attitude turning into a lush ripeness at age fifteen or so, she’d found herself the recipient of plenty of unwanted attention. Most came from older men; boys her own age had no idea what to do with her. She’d gone from being a favorite colt to a sleek thoroughbred in the span of weeks, and was somewhat shunned among her male playmates, who had always treated her as just another one of the boys. She’d felt that was unfair and from then on stuck to dating boys older than her.
She’d lost her virginity to a friend of her father’s in a torrid affair when she was seventeen. She was head over heels in lust with the man, a classics professor at Vanderbilt. Dr. James Morley was sexy and urbane and taught her many things about life and love. The relationship was the final nail in the coffin for Morley’s crumbling marriage, but he’d remained friends with both Taylor and his wife. He had a fatal heart attack a few years later, and Taylor had grieved for him.
Over the subsequent years she’d had a few short-term affairs, lovers her age who were frightened by her intensity, older men who wanted to protect her, to keep her. She had a knack for getting involved with men she could never love but who loved her, and that had forced a few nasty breakups.
Baldwin was the first man she’d ever truly loved, loved in a way she’d thought she was incapable of. The giving and receiving of hearts was something she had always scoffed at. It was wonderful and scary at the same time. But if she were honest with herself, Baldwin had some of the same characteristics as her first lover—the cosmopolitan attitude, the intelligence, the striking looks. But Baldwin was different in all the good ways; he was an honest man. No need to worry about infidelity; he’d never tried to hide anything from her. No late-night cruising through his e-mail or wallet would be necessary, she’d simply ask and he would always answer.
And maybe, deep down, knowing he’d always be truthful was the most important part of her feelings, the reason she’d been able to give herself fully to him.
Taylor shook off her emotions, shut off the computer. As the light sputtered out on the screen with a snap, she bade farewell to the ghosts lingering in the room with her. She finished her wine and turned off the light.
Her bed was warm and soft, and she felt sleep tug at her immediately, probably as a result of all the alcohol. Groaning, she got up and took two Advil, sucked down five Dixie cups of water, hoping to alleviate what she assumed would be a killer headache in the morning. She didn’t get hangovers from wine anymore, but could be struck with a migraine if she didn’t prepare her body for the process.
She climbed back in the bed, this time nearly boneless. Images from the evening spun through her head, the ugly twist to the strange man’s mouth, the whirling waiters, the pouty-lipped social mavens with their identical face-lifts and overinjected foreheads. She was asleep within moments.
The ringing phone woke her. It was still dark. Somewhere in her consciousness, she palmed the Glock from under Baldwin’s pillow as she answered the phone.
“What?”
There was nothing. A deep silence filled the room, static and bottomless. She wondered if she were dreaming. Then she heard the breathing.
She slammed the receiver down. It rang again immediately. The backlit caller ID said UNKNOWN NAME UNKNOWN NUMBER in a ghostly green. Of course. She answered it anyway, this time more awake.
“What.” It wasn’t a question.
This time a man’s laugh filled her ear. It wasn’t Tony Gorman, that much she knew. This was a different tone altogether. And then he was gone.
Taylor continued to grip the phone for another minute, listening to the soft bonging of the dead line. She set the phone back on the cradle carefully and sat up, slipping a pillow behind her back. She wouldn’t turn on the light—if the caller was anywhere near, he’d see that and know he’d rattled her. There would be no more sleep tonight. She caressed the Glock, comfortable in the knowledge that she was safe enough. She’d just like to know who was trying to spook her.
Thirteen
Sometimes Baldwin just wanted to kiss the bureaucracy he worked for.
Not that he was a fan of all the measures put in place since 9-11, but the upside was when the FBI, or the CIA, needed to find someone, they could.
It was late. A glance at his watch showed two in the morning. He wondered if Taylor was asleep, or playing pool. This was her witching hour, the time she was most likely to start awake and begin thinking. That woman thought too much. He toyed with the idea of calling, but didn’t want to risk it.
He decided on a cup of coffee instead.
The lights were still burning through the outbuilding where he and Garrett had quietly set up shop. Garrett was on the phone in the office next door with yet another international agency, getting cooperation from all sides in the hunt for their killer.
The short hallway opened into a galley-style kitchen. Two fresh pots of coffee were already made, and he poured himself a cup, sipping it as he went back to his desk.
Baldwin vowed that he would find Aiden, sooner rather than later. The hunter had become the hunted, and Baldwin was the master. Though his eyes were crossing at the multitudes of miniature lines of data, he felt like he was getting closer. Instinct dictated that Aiden would follow a somewhat set pattern for his trip to the United States. The trick was
simply figuring out the start point for his journey. Italy, Germany, and England had already been ruled out. All the South American countries were off the initial lists as well—if Aiden had been in Europe as recently as a month ago, it was possible he’d been called to another continent for a hit they weren’t aware of, but unlikely. He wouldn’t blend in as well as he did in the European nations, didn’t work in that region very often.
Aiden was a rare beast. On the OA radar for six years now, he’d started life as an intense loner who traveled the world on the heels of his diplomat father. At some point they had a massive falling-out, so Aiden rebelled and went into the service. He’d done well in the Army, qualifying as a sniper, but something went south. After only three years on his tour of duty, he was discharged for conduct unbecoming.
Aiden disappeared for a while, then emerged as a freelance assassin. Some of his more unsavory ex-Army buddies got him into the game. He became an assassin of stature, one that could be counted on for a clean hit at long range. Very valuable. But Aiden got bored. He began contracting for the more personal hits. He was used by nasty characters who wanted to send a message when they assassinated someone. And Aiden’s silver garrote was unmistakable.
Yet the professional assassination game still wasn’t enough for him. Aiden liked to go off the reservation. The OA monitored him as best they could, using eyes and ears to let them know when he skipped off plan.
Baldwin knew all this, knew how dangerous Aiden was. Knew that he must be traced, at all cost, or innocent people would die.
Baldwin had compiled a list of known aliases and sent it to the International Air Transport Association. The IATA in turn kindly filtered all of those names through their eTARS database, the names coursing through the Aviation Management Systems Departure Control System, or eDCS, popping up matches that met Baldwin’s parameters. Typical of the overcomplicated governmental structure, it was a fancy way to say they were combing the passenger manifests.
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