Untouchable

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “I’ve got everyone on this,” Anson said, “including Octavia, Virginia and Charlotte.”

  Jack didn’t say anything. If Anson’s lady love and Cabot’s and Max’s wives were now involved in the investigation, there was nothing else that could be done.

  “What is it you have to do before you can focus on the new information you’ve got?” Anson said.

  “I’m going to have a talk with the receptionist, Gail Bloom.”

  “The woman you were supposed to meet tonight? The one you rescued?”

  “Yes. I saw the medics turn her loose a short time ago. She’ll be home by now.”

  “Think she was supposed to survive the fire?”

  “No, I think she was supposed to be used and then discarded. Collateral damage.”

  “In other words, you saved her life.”

  “If I know Zane, she won’t be alive for long. I need to talk to her before he gets to her.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  “What are you doing here?” Gail asked.

  Her voice on the apartment building security system phone was breathless with panic.

  “I want to ask you a few questions,” Jack said.

  “Not tonight. Please. I’m exhausted. The medics said I needed rest.”

  “I think you owe me a few answers, considering the fact that I saved your life tonight.”

  There was a short pause.

  “Look, I really can’t deal with this right now. I’ll contact you tomorrow.”

  “They’ve got Winter,” Jack said. “You helped them grab her. How much did they pay you?”

  “Nobody paid me anything.” Gail’s voice was almost a squeak now. “I was just trying to help Winter. What is going on here?”

  “I don’t have time for games, Gail. Winter has been kidnapped, and if this scenario plays out the way I think it will, you’ll be dead within twenty-four hours.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What it comes down to is this: if I’m going to have a meaningful conversation with you, it will have to be tonight, before they come for you.”

  “What do you mean, I’ll be dead within twenty-four hours?” Gail’s voice rose to a hysterical pitch. “Are you threatening me?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “You just said you blamed me for . . . for whatever happened to Winter tonight.”

  “I don’t blame you nearly as much as I blame myself. But we can argue about that some other time, assuming you live long enough.”

  “You are threatening me. I’m going to call the police.”

  “Right now all I care about is finding Winter before they kill her. Like I said, I don’t have a lot of time, because there’s a ninety-nine-point-five percent chance that you’ll be dead soon.”

  “Stop saying that,” Gail shrieked.

  “The only reason I’m not going with a hundred percent is because I have a policy against making one hundred percent predictions about an event until it’s in the rearview mirror. There is always some room for uncertainty, at least until the victim is declared dead. When they find your body, I’ll go with a one hundred percent prediction.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “You’re not the first person to mention that possibility.”

  There was a long pause before Gail spoke again.

  “They told me they were undercover detectives,” she said. “They said they were investigating you.”

  “They? How many people are we talking about?”

  “Two. A man and a woman.” Gail sighed. “You’d better come upstairs. Two-twelve.”

  The door buzzed. Jack opened it before Gail could change her mind. Ignoring the elevator, he took the stairs two at a time. When he got to 212 he rapped sharply.

  Gail opened the door and reluctantly stepped back. He moved in quickly and closed the door. Gail wrapped her arms around her midsection as though to protect herself.

  “Tell me what you think is going on here,” she said.

  She no longer sounded panicked, but anxiety shimmered in every word. He was dealing with a badly frightened woman, Jack thought. He needed to give her a little space. But he also needed answers. He willed himself to exert patience.

  “Let’s start with one hard fact,” he said. “I’m sure it’s clear to you now that the two people who told you that they were undercover detectives were lying.”

  “Yes. I just don’t understand any of this.”

  “I’m ninety-eight percent sure that those two people are working for the man I’m chasing.”

  Gail stiffened. “Are you a cop?”

  “I’m affiliated with a private investigation agency,” he said. Technically that was true. He was working with Cutler, Sutter & Salinas. “Here’s what I know about my target. He has a habit of getting rid of people who learn too much about him, people he doesn’t need anymore. You are now one of those expendable people, Gail. He can’t afford to let you live.”

  “I don’t know anything,” Gail said. She was trembling.

  “You know more than you think. For one thing, you can describe the fake undercover detectives.”

  “Oh, shit.” There was a long pause. “Did they really take Winter? Why?”

  “The man I’m after wants her as a hostage. He’ll kill her when he doesn’t need her anymore.”

  “Winter trusts you,” Gail said finally.

  It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes.”

  “You saved me tonight. I guess I should trust you, too. Right now you’re sure a better bet than those two bastards who set me up. Tell me what this is all about. I am really, really scared.”

  “You’ve got good reason to be scared,” Jack said. “The man I’m hunting is responsible for several murders that happened a little more than twenty-two years ago. There is a very high probability that he is also responsible for at least two more murders that occurred recently. He’s been living out of the country for a couple of decades, but now he’s back.”

  “Oh, shit. Oh, shit.” Gail hugged herself tighter and rocked back and forth a little. “How is Winter involved?”

  “The man who is responsible for kidnapping her is very, very good at manipulating people. He may have planned to grab me tonight, but that didn’t work out for him. He got Winter instead. He’ll use her to try to control me. And it will work because I’ll do whatever he tells me to do if it means buying time for her.”

  Gail eyed him for a long moment, and then she seemed to fold in on herself.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” she said.

  “Start by telling me what those two fake detectives told you that convinced you to make that call to Winter.”

  “They contacted me the day before you and Winter showed up at the spa. They said they were running a sting operation and that you were the target. They said you were a con artist. They claimed that Winter had recently come into a nice inheritance and that you were trying to get your hands on her money. They told me that Winter was going to lose everything if I didn’t help them arrest you. They showed me ID.” Gail made a face. “It looked real. I called them after you left. Told them you would be at the self-storage facility that afternoon. I thought they would arrest you there.”

  “What names did they give you?”

  “The man said his name was Knight. Detective Knight. I’m not sure of the woman’s name. Sloan, I think. That’s all I know, okay?”

  “Describe Knight and the woman who was with him.”

  Gail shrugged. “Both in their thirties. Knight was good-looking in a slick sort of way. Dark hair. The woman was very attractive, too. She was a blonde. Both moved well, and they were both in good shape. I could tell that they work out.”

  “Accents?”

  Gail thought for a beat and then shook her head. “Nothin
g that sounded unusual.”

  “How did they get into the spa tonight?”

  “They came in as guests earlier this evening but they didn’t leave when everyone else did. They stayed out of sight in the pool room. I closed up as usual so I was the last one in the building. I didn’t leave.”

  “At what point did it dawn on you that you’d been conned and that you might die tonight?”

  “When that bitch shoved me into the Women’s Retreat and pushed something heavy against the door so that I couldn’t get out.” Gail paused. “What was it, anyway? You must have had to shove it out of the way to get the door open.”

  “A cabinet.”

  “Oh, yeah, the big one in the hallway,” Gail said. “Well, by then I realized I was in way over my head. I was terrified. The woman warned me not to make any noise. I got the feeling that she would shoot me if I did. I wondered if I had landed in the middle of a drug gang war. A short time later there was a small explosion. Then I smelled smoke coming through the air-conditioning vents. That’s when I started screaming.”

  “Tell me everything you heard them say.”

  “They didn’t do a lot of talking,” Gail said. “They were just very efficient about everything. Businesslike.”

  “Think hard, Gail. What were they driving?”

  “Driving? Oh, yeah. A white van.”

  “Logo on the side?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Figures,” Jack said.

  “What?”

  “White vans are very useful when it comes to kidnapping people.”

  Gail shuddered. “That’s what the serial killers always use on TV.”

  “Except this isn’t TV. They thought you were either going to die in the fire or soon afterward, so they may have gotten careless. Did they say anything about where they were headed or where they had come from?”

  “No.” Gail frowned. “Wait. I think the man said something about traffic. The woman told him not to worry about it. She said there wouldn’t be a problem on I-Five at that hour of the night.”

  “North or south?”

  “What?”

  “Interstate Five runs north and south on the West Coast. Do you think the fake cops were headed south? L.A. or San Diego, maybe?”

  Gail looked startled by the question and then she shook her head. “No. The woman said that if there was a problem it would be around Portland and Seattle because there would probably be commuter traffic by the time they got there. And then she told Knight to stop fussing. She said he sounded like a little old man.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Well, there was one weird thing but I don’t see how it could matter.”

  “What?”

  “I got the feeling that they were having some sort of argument. You know, working together because they had a job to do but bickering with each other. He kept telling her it was a lousy plan and she kept saying it was brilliant. This is going to sound strange, but they sounded like a couple on the brink of a divorce.”

  “Anything else, Gail? Think hard, because Winter’s life depends on it.”

  “No.” Gail burst into tears. “I’m sorry.”

  It wasn’t nearly enough but it was more than he’d had fifteen minutes ago, Jack thought.

  “The authorities are probably going to investigate the fire at the spa as an arson-for-hire job,” he said. “They’ll take a hard look at the owner, Raleigh Forrester, first. But sooner or later they’ll circle back to you and they’ll have questions. A lot of questions.”

  “I am so scared. I don’t know what to do.”

  “If I were you I’d leave town. Now. Go somewhere and stay there until this is finished. Pack a bag. I’ll wait until you get into your car but that’s all the time you get from me. I have other priorities.”

  “Shit.” Gail straightened her shoulders and rushed toward the bedroom. “I should have known they were fake cops.”

  “What was your big clue?”

  “The clothes. How many cops do you know who wear Armani?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  She floated down an endless corridor on a tide of visions. Occasionally she was aware of being jostled from side to side by the undercurrents of the dreams. Whenever she tried to reach out to steady herself, she discovered that she could not move her hands. Sometimes she tried to surface, to shout for help, but she could not do anything more than make a small croak of sound. She wondered if she was trapped in the terrifying state of sleep paralysis.

  It’s just a dream, she thought.

  But she knew she was lying to herself.

  There was a steady rumble in the background. It sounded like a vehicle traveling fast on pavement.

  Sometimes there were voices.

  “She’s waking up,” a woman said. “Pull over when you get a chance. I’ll give her another injection.”

  “Be careful with that crap.” A man this time. “She’s smaller than the other two. An overdose might put her into a coma.”

  “It’s not my fault that she’s waking up.”

  The dreamer went very still and willed herself back into the dream, hoping to feign sleep. Hoping that there would be no more injections.

  The woman spoke again. “We’re going to have to do something about the receptionist. She wasn’t supposed to make it out of the building.”

  “She doesn’t know anything that could hurt us.”

  “She’s a loose end.”

  “No shit. Don’t blame me. I told you and Tazewell that it was a bad idea to use her in the first place.”

  “Shut up and drive.”

  “You’re fucking him, aren’t you?” the man said after a while.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re fucking the client. Tazewell.”

  “No, I am not fucking the client.”

  “You want to fuck him,” the man said.

  “That’s not true.”

  “Shit,” the man said again. “I had a bad feeling about this job right from the start.”

  “This job,” the woman said evenly, “is our chance to get out of this fucking business before we get old and slow and dead. Damn it, I’m going to give her another injection.”

  The dreamer felt another sting. The tide of visions swept over her again. She knew that Jack was somewhere on the distant shore, searching for her. She wanted to call to him but she could not make a sound.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Jack pulled into the empty parking garage of a closed mall and shut down the car engine. He opened the console, took out the chunk of obsidian and held it in one hand while he centered himself. He had a lot to work with now. He just had to step back far enough to be able to analyze the currents.

  He took a breath, let it out with control and prepared to visit Ice Town.

  . . . He opens the gates of ice and walks into the frozen city. The obsidian in his hand is warm and somehow comforting. It’s a talisman he will use to find Winter.

  He moves through the maze of streets and alleys until he finds himself in the frozen garden in the center of the town. From there he can observe all that goes on around him.

  Zane’s footprints burn in the ice of a nearby alley. The alley is in deep shadow but it is no longer uncharted territory. It has a name: Tazewell.

  Out of all the hedge funds on the West Coast, what made you go after Tazewell Global? I know why you targeted Jessica Pitt. She had insider information about the fund. But how did you discover that? And how did you learn that she wanted revenge on her ex?

  He starts walking toward Tazewell Alley but just as he is about to enter it another set of footsteps catches his attention. Jessica Pitt.

  He changes course and follows the dead woman’s prints into a narrow lane. At the end of the lane there is a vehicle engulfed in frozen flame
s. Jessica Pitt is behind the wheel. She looks at him with dead eyes.

  “What makes you think that he found me?” she asks.

  “Good question,” the dreamer says.

  And just like that he knows it is the right question, the one he should have been asking all along.

  He looks around and, sure enough, there is a name written in letters of frozen fire. He says the name aloud.

  “Winter.”

  Jack surfaced from the waking dream and grabbed his phone.

  Anson answered immediately. “What have you got?” he said.

  “Jessica Pitt is the key to this thing,” Jack said. “I’ve been assuming Zane used her to get inside Grayson Tazewell’s hedge fund business. I’m pretty sure that much is true. But I’ve been coming at this from the wrong direction.”

  “What do you mean?” Anson asked.

  “I assumed that Zane targeted Jessica Pitt from the outset, that he wanted to find a way into Tazewell’s empire and she had the bad luck to be convenient. But that still leaves the question of why he chose Tazewell in the first place. If he just wanted a hedge fund as a cover, why not invent one from scratch online? That’s well within his skill set. Why infiltrate an existing fund? That had to be a hell of a lot more complicated, not to mention risky, because he wouldn’t be able to control all the moving parts.”

  “Where are you going with this?” Anson asked.

  “What if Zane didn’t find Jessica Pitt?” Jack said. “What if Jessica Pitt found Quinton Zane?”

  There was a short, charged pause on the other end of the connection.

  “Slow down,” Anson said. “You and Max and Cabot have been looking for Zane for years. Recently Xavier’s been hunting for him, too. The four of you are all pretty damn good when it comes to locating people. What makes you think Pitt could have found Zane when you all couldn’t?”

  “Maybe Jessica Pitt had information that we didn’t have,” Jack said. “Very personal information that she got while she was married to Grayson Tazewell.”