Sidney Sheldon's Reckless

by Tilly Bagshawe

She left, slamming the door behind her.

  For a moment, neither Tracy nor Cameron said anything. Then Cameron pulled Tracy into his arms.

  “I’m sorry about that. You OK?”

  “I’m fine,” Tracy lied. “Just surprised. I thought you said that you and Marcus’s mother had a good relationship.”

  Cameron let go of her and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “We do,” he said.

  Tracy’s eyebrows shot up.

  “When she’s well,” Cameron explained. “You mustn’t judge Charlotte too harshly. It’s no wonder she’s mentally unstable. She’s been through hell, as you know.”

  “Yes,” said Tracy. She did know. And the truth was, she wasn’t judging Charlotte harshly. The woman had seemed perfectly sane to her. Angry, certainly, and emotional. But not crazy.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her like that.” Cameron shook his head sadly.

  “Like what?”

  “Well, you saw her. Delusional. Lashing out with these insane conspiracy theories.”

  “So she’s not being evicted?” Tracy asked calmly.

  Cameron looked wounded. “Evicted? What? No! Of course not. I would never let that happen. Financially Charlotte has more than she could ever need, and she always will.”

  He stood up, walked over to the wardrobe and pulled out a jacket. Savile Row tailored, classically cut, it fit him perfectly. Walking back to Tracy, he kissed her on the top of the head.

  “Don’t let it worry you, angel. You have enough on your plate. I’ll call Dr. Williams first thing tomorrow, see if I can get him to reach out to her. I’ll also talk to the trustees, just to check she hasn’t been wiring all her alimony checks to Scientology or something. She’ll be OK. I promise. Let’s have dinner and try to forget the whole thing.”

  “Ok. I’ll put some makeup on.”

  She slipped into the bathroom and locked the door behind her, gazing intently at her reflection in the mirror.

  Everything Cameron had said made sense.

  Grief could make people delusional. And the CIA files had described Charlotte Crewe’s divorce settlement as financially generous, including the deeds to their Park Avenue apartment and a large monthly allowance.

  If he’s honoring those terms, Tracy thought.

  But then, why wouldn’t he be? Wasn’t it more likely that a grieving mother was still struggling with paranoia, than that a man as rich as Cameron would nickel-and-dime an ex-wife he clearly still cared for?

  Of course it was.

  I’m being silly, Tracy told herself.

  By the time she’d finished fixing her makeup, she almost believed it.

  LUCY GREY SMILED WARMLY at the young woman perched nervously on her couch.

  “It’s been a long time, Kate. How are you?”

  “Fine.” The young woman didn’t smile back. Instead she carefully smoothed out a crease in her skirt and stared out of the window.

  Dr. Lucy Grey had been a therapist for more than twenty years, and she had counseled hundreds of patients. But few of them made as much of an impression on her as Kate.

  It was always the failures that Lucy remembered.

  The young widow had first started coming to therapy five years ago, right after her husband died. She’d attended sessions regularly for more than a year before gradually drifting away, although she’d come back intermittently since. And yet Lucy was ashamed to say she’d made no real headway with her in all that time. She still knew next to nothing about Kate’s daily life. About her job, her social world, her friendships. Lucy did know about Kate’s grief. About the longing for her dead husband that consumed her, like a fireball burning gas. But that was all she knew, all that existed between the two of them. It was almost as if Kate Evans was her grief. And that shouldn’t be the case. Not after five years.

  Having smoothed out her skirt to her satisfaction, Kate now flicked a barely visible piece of lint off her cashmere sweater. As usual she was immaculately groomed, her long legs perfectly waxed and her mane of dark hair gleaming like an oil slick as it spilled over her shoulders.

  That was another thing that bothered Dr. Lucy Grey about Kate Evans. How careful the young widow was. How cautious, how controlled, her every movement and utterance measured to the last degree. Somehow it made things less real between them. Less honest. More insulated.

  It made Lucy feel as if she were in a play, playing the role of therapist. Which was extremely disconcerting.

  “Why are you here?” she asked gently.

  Kate looked up at her with tortured eyes. “Have you ever done something, started something, for the right reasons, that ended up having consequences beyond your control? Terrible consequences?”

  Lucy looked at her steadily. “I’ve done things that didn’t turn out as I’d expected. As I’d hoped.”

  “But nobody died. Did they? Because of your mistakes?”

  “No, Kate. Nobody died. Do you want to tell me what this is about?”

  She shook her head. She did want to tell Dr. Grey. Desperately. To tell someone, anyway. To unburden herself. But how could she? If only Daniel were here!

  Then again, if Daniel were here, none of this would have happened.

  Since Hunter Drexel’s call she’d barely slept. He wanted to see her, to meet. She couldn’t do it! Just the thought brought her out in hives.

  As Althea she’d been powerful, protected, invincible. But Hunter Drexel knew the truth. He’d called her Kate. Just the sound of his voice had undone everything, shattered the illusion like Dorothy pulling back the Wizard of Oz’s curtain.

  But it wasn’t just Hunter who haunted her. Images of the teenagers from Neuilly, their young bodies riddled with bullets, flooded her head day and night. Henry Cranston’s death was different. Unnecessary, yes, and excessive. But it was hard to shed too many tears for such a loathsome man. But those children!

  Had she started all this violence, this horror, by orchestrating Captain Daley’s death?

  Had she opened Pandora’s Box?

  She’d been so sure of that at the time, so certain. After what Bob Daley did it had felt right. Just. Necessary. But now she’d started to doubt even that decision. It was as if she’d lost the ability to tell right from wrong. What had seemed so clear, so black-and-white, now looked murky and gray.

  Was that what it was like for you, Tracy? On the run from the law for all those years? On the run from us? Did you always feel like one of the good guys—like Robin Hood—or did you ever doubt? Wake up in the night and think to yourself, “What have I become? I’m just a liar and a thief.”

  Tracy Whitney had changed, of course. Gone straight. Settled down.

  But could you ever really escape your past? The dark side of your nature?

  “Kate?”

  Dr. Lucy Grey’s voice broke her reverie. She wondered how long she’d been sitting there, lost in thought.

  “Please let me help you. Tell me what’s happened. You obviously came here today for a reason.”

  Kate Evans stood up.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”

  She was about to leave when a sudden, searing pain shot through her head, as if she’d been struck by lightning. With a terrible moan she sank back onto the couch, pressing both hands against her skull.

  “What just happened?” Lucy rushed over to her patient. “Are you OK?”

  Kate moaned again, a terrible, animal sound, full of anguish.

  “I’ll call an ambulance.”

  “No! Please.” Panic flashed in the young widow’s eyes. “It will pass. It’s those children. In France. Their bodies, shot to pieces . . . I can’t stop seeing them!”

  Lucy’s ears pricked up. This was a clue. This was something.

  She was talking about the Camp Paris shootings, at Neuilly. They’d been all over the news.

  Kate’s husband, Daniel, had been killed in Iraq, on some mission for the CIA. Probably shot. Had the latest Group 99 atrocity b
rought back painful memories? Perhaps the haunting images on television reminded Kate of Daniel’s death? Or the children that the two of them would never have.

  “You’ve been dreaming about the Neuilly School shootings?”

  Leaning forward suddenly, Kate grasped the therapist’s hands. “Dreaming, yes. But it happened. I made it happen.”

  Lucy said, “It may seem that way to you, Kate. But you didn’t cause this. You don’t have that power. No one does.”

  “But that’s just it. I do!” Kate wailed. “Daniel’s gone. Those kids are gone. Gone, gone, gone. Dead and gone. Never coming back.”

  “That’s right,” Lucy said calmly. “They are never coming back. But you’re not responsible. For their deaths, or your husband’s.”

  Kate slumped back again, clutching her head and moaning, as if she were in labor. It was distressing to watch. But Dr. Grey felt on firmer ground now. She’d seen these episodes countless times in her career. Psychotic breaks, brought on by stress, or grief, or a single, traumatic event.

  She would call her psychiatrist friend, Bill Winter.

  Bill would get Kate on the right meds. After that it was just a question of rest.

  “You lay here for a while.” She covered her client in a blanket as you would a sleeping child. “I’m going to make a call.”

  AN HOUR LATER, DR. Lucy Grey watched as a heavily sedated Kate Evans was driven away in an ambulance.

  “You did the right thing to call me,” Bill Winter assured her. “Two weeks of sleep and she’ll be a new person.”

  “I hope so,” Lucy said. “I really do. She’s been through so much. And I don’t feel I’ve helped her. Not really.”

  “I’m sure you have.” Bill got into his car. “By the way, does she work? Will her insurance cover an in-patient stay?”

  “Oh yes.” Dr. Lucy Grey smiled. “That’s one thing she doesn’t have to worry about. Kate’s husband, Daniel, was a CIA lifer. He died in Iraq on some special op, but the agency still pays all her bills. She’s covered for life, I believe.”

  CHAPTER 19

  HUNTER DREXEL ADMIRED HIS reflection in the mirror.

  He’d been nervous about the blond hair. That it would look like an obvious dye job. But actually it worked. Cropped short, and paired with newly dyed blond eyebrows, it transformed his appearance. He looked younger, tougher, cleaner cut. He looked like a soldier.

  Which, in a way, he was. A warrior for truth.

  Laughing at his own pretensions, he pulled on a fake Rolex watch and began fastening his cuff links.

  His current rooms were a step down from what he’d been used to. After Neuilly, the entire city was swarming with police, searching for the three escaped gunmen. Hunter had immediately left the expensive hotel where he’d been staying on Avenue Montaigne and moved here, to a much more low key pension close to the Bois de Boulogne.

  It was from here that he’d called Kate. A triumphant moment and a turning point in the story he was writing. Of course he still had to speak to her face-to-face. But he’d made huge strides in Paris, and would soon be ready to go to print. Then, at last, he could come out of the shadows and face the world, friends and enemies alike.

  Soon.

  Right now his priority was to get out of France. He really should have left the day after Neuilly, but he’d been tempted into staying by one last poker game.

  Pascal Cauchin would be there tonight. Pascal had bought and single-handedly destroyed thousands of acres of ancient Chilean forest, pumping water deep into the ground to extract hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of shale gas. Not only had he effectively robbed the Chileans, swindling them out of their land at a knockdown price, but he’d devastated the local ecosystem for hundreds of miles around. Cauchin was right up there with Henry Cranston as one of fracking’s least responsible, most obnoxious kingpins.

  Not like the positively saintly Cameron Crewe.

  The thought of getting to look Cauchin in the eye across a card table, whilst concealing his own identity and successfully relieving Pascal of thousands of dollars in winnings was more temptation than Hunter Drexel could resist. He would play tonight as Lex Brightman, New York theater impresario and amateur poker enthusiast.

  One last game. Then I’m out of here.

  JEFF STEVENS SAT AT a corner table at Café Charles, near Notre Dame Cathedral, opposite Frank Dorrien.

  “Do you have any idea how English you look?” Jeff asked the general, glancing at Frank’s off-duty uniform of brogues, dark green corduroy trousers, Turnbull & Asser striped shirt and MCC tie. “Not exactly the gray man in the crowd, are you?”

  “What would you prefer?” Frank quipped. “A Breton shirt, beret and a string of onions around my neck?”

  Despite their profound, even seismic differences as people, Jeff and Frank had developed a productive working relationship. As Jamie MacIntosh had succinctly put it, “Frank can be a bit abrasive. But if you want to help Tracy Whitney, suck it up.”

  Jeff had taken this to heart. Even though “a bit abrasive” turned out to be something akin to wearing a pair of sandpaper underpants. He could handle Frank.

  “How was Hawaii?”

  Jeff scowled. “Awful.”

  “Any useful intelligence?”

  “Not really. Tracy’s tight with Cameron Crewe of Crewe Oil. But we knew that already. It looks as if the two of them are working together, cutting Walton and Buck out of the loop.”

  “Hmm.” Frank considered this. “That may be to our advantage. The less the CIA knows, the better.”

  “Spoken like a true ally,” said Jeff.

  Tracy working closely with Cameron definitely wasn’t to Jeff’s advantage. He didn’t trust Crewe as far as he could spit.

  Frank said, “And now Tracy’s here in Paris?”

  Jeff nodded, sipping his coffee. It was ridiculously strong, like tar, but it helped with the jet lag. “At the Georges V.”

  “Alone?”

  Jeff winced. “So far.”

  “Have she and Crewe been in contact?”

  Jeff shook his head. “No.”

  Shadowing Tracy had been no fun. In fact it had been the dictionary definition of no fun. Nor was Jeff convinced that his presence was protecting Tracy from anything, or anyone. Not so far anyway. He was starting to feel like the worst kind of Peeping Tom. Bugging her hotel room and tapping her phone had both been relatively easy. But he dreaded having to hear her be intimate with Cameron Crewe over the phone, and he’d stopped short of installing cameras in her suite.

  “Stay close to her,” Frank Dorrien instructed. “Hunter Drexel’s still in the city. We think he’s going to make a move soon. We’re close, Jeff. But we can’t let Tracy get to him first, maybe scare him off again. Or worse.”

  Jeff frowned. “What do you mean ‘worse’?”

  Frank pushed a classified file across the table.

  Jeff read it in silence. Then he read it again.

  Finally he looked up at Frank, an expression of pure horror on his face.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course we’re not sure,” Frank snapped. “That’s why we need to bring him in. But I think it’s safe to say that Hunter Drexel is not who the world believes him to be. If Tracy were to try to corner him alone . . .”

  He didn’t have to finish the sentence.

  Jeff drained his coffee. “Don’t worry. I won’t let her out of my sight.”

  TRACY LOOKED AT HER watch, an exquisite, delicate 1920s antique with a white gold strap and diamond-studded face.

  6:15 P.M. Exactly two hours to go.

  Putting on a pair of diamond drop earrings to match the watch, Tracy winked at her reflection, ashamed of how much she was enjoying herself. She liked being Mary Jo. Tracy had always enjoyed creating new and different characters. Together she and Jeff had been the masters of it for more than a decade. But now, since Nick’s death, stepping out of her own tortured existence and into someone else’s was more than just a game. It
was an escape. Tracy hadn’t realized till now quite how much she needed one.

  Her old contacts in Paris had been a gold mine of information when it came to the city’s high-stakes poker scene. Which was a good thing, as so far Cameron’s had come up with precisely nothing. It was almost as if Cameron didn’t want Tracy to find Hunter Drexel. He probably thinks he’s protecting me, Tracy thought. But perhaps it was better this way anyway? She’d grown used to working on her own. Working with Cameron might put a strain on . . . whatever it was that was happening between them. Tracy still couldn’t quite bring herself to call it a relationship. That sounded far too permanent. But it was something, and she wasn’t ready to break it, not yet.

  If I find Hunter—when I find him—I’ll bring Cameron in then.

  As soon as Tracy heard the name Pascal Cauchin—her dear old friend, the master forger and long-term Paris resident Harry Blackstone, had mentioned Cauchin’s monthly poker parties—her hopes soared. Cauchin was huge in the fracking world, right up there with men like Cameron and Henry Cranston. It was inconceivable that Hunter Drexel hadn’t heard of him. The fact that he also hosted private poker nights at his penthouse apartment in Montmartre with a secret and closely guarded guest list was almost too good to be true. It would be reckless in the extreme for Hunter Drexel to show up at one of Cauchin’s games. But as Sally Faiers had told Tracy, Hunter was reckless. Taking big risks was his oxygen, his adrenaline, his raison d’être.

  It had once been Tracy’s too.

  I know you, Hunter, she thought, adjusting her earrings. I know how you operate.

  I’m going to find you. And when I do, you’re going to lead me to Althea. You’re going to help me lay my son to rest.

  ALEXIS ARGYROS WAS AROUSED.

  The violently pornographic rape fantasy playing out on his computer screen helped a little. But Alexis had become so used to images of sexual depravity, they were no longer enough on their own.

  What really turned him on was power. The power to inflict pain, to create fear. The power to end life.

  Hunter Drexel believed that knowledge was power. Knowledge and truth.

  Alexis knew differently. Who cared what you knew when pieces of your brain were flying out of your skull and being splattered across the walls?