Domino

by Chris Barnhart

  Chapter 3

  The house was still and heavy with a terrifying darkness. Clarissa was conscious of every sound, overwhelmed by the thundering of her own heart. She dared not move. The dusty carpet under the bed was rough against her cheek and wet with her tears. She lay on her stomach, one knee pulled up to her chest and the slim gold chain strap of her evening bag wound firmly around her wrist. She clutched the Jaguar keys so tight that they were cutting into her palm. Any moment they would search this room again and find her, huddled and shivering in the little used guest room at the end of the hallway.

  The door had opened a moment before. Someone had given the dark room a brief scan. Clarissa had squeezed her eyes shut, her body rigid with apprehension, waiting for the rough hands that would pull her from the meager hiding place. The door had closed as quickly as it was opened and Clarissa dared a sigh of relief. She could not lay there much longer. She had to move, to get out of the house and off the grounds, away from Morgan.

  She could not push the vision of his fury from her mind and her every nerve recoiled involuntarily at the nightmarish memory. He meant to kill her. She had read it in every line of his face as he stared up at her from the pool deck. How she had managed to move from the bedroom to her hiding place under the guest bed was little more than a dim blur. She had heard Marco and Alex enter the french doors downstairs and she willed her feet forward. That was all her panic-ridden mind would allow her to remember. That and the door opening to the guest room, the awful moment waiting for discovery, then the silence.

  She listened to the muted sounds of the night, breathing in the dust and lint in small audible gasps. Morgan kept at least a half dozen armed guards in and around the estate at all times. They were mostly invisible to the regular household staff or visiting guests, but they were always there, watching from the shadows or continually scanning the monitors in the security office in Marco's cottage. She knew they would be searching the grounds and the thin veil of her reserves began to crumble when she realized that escape would be almost impossible. She barely stifled a sob.

  Clarissa's instincts screamed at her to move and, like a hunted animal, she had no mind but to obey. She slid out from under the bed, wiped the tears that fell freely down her cheeks, eased open the door, and peered into the glaring, lighted hallway. She could hear them moving below, and quickly and soundlessly shut the door. Even as she searched for an escape, she heard footsteps on the stairs and muffled voices. Almost without thinking, she pulled over a small vanity chair and wedged it under the doorknob. The knob began to turn as she backed away.

  "Where is she?" Morgan's level voice sent a renewed chill through her.

  "Not in the master bedroom," Marco replied from the other side of the door. "She could have gotten down the stairs before we got into the house."

  "Search the first floor again," Wolfe instructed. "All the doors are locked. If she's still in the house we have her."

  "Dalton and Santos are searching the front grounds," said Marco. "I've got Markel on the gate and Amato searching the tool sheds, any place that she could hide."

  "Who's on the monitors?"

  "Rogers. He's secured the gates and charged the perimeter. She can't leave the grounds."

  "How did she get back in the house in the first place?" Wolfe snapped.

  "Everything was secured, Mister Wolfe, I don't see how..."

  "That was your job," Wolfe said angrily, "to see that the house was secure tonight. Especially tonight. Find out how she got back in and fix it so it doesn't happen again."

  "Yes, Mister Wolfe," Clarissa heard Marco reply.

  "When you find her, dispose of her body with Byron's. Then get rid of her personal things."

  "Yes, sir."

  With a shaking hand, Clarissa wiped a sweaty lock of blond hair out of her eyes. She felt a prickling of her scalp and an icy contraction of her skin as she heard Marco's quiet footsteps retreat downstairs to follows Morgan's orders. She could not hear Wolfe and that unnerved her. Was he there just beyond the door or had he moved on to continue the search in another room? Clarissa stared for a long moment at the chair under the doorknob. She felt trapped and the small room seemed to close in upon her, yet she could not will her hand to reach out and open the door. She closed her eyes to hold back the tears and Clarissa saw again Morgan's face distorted with evil animosity. Byron's futile pleadings for his life played over and over in her head like a sour discord and she pressed her hands to her ears to shut them out. She wanted to scream.

  The doorknob rattled violently and it jolted her out of her madness. She fought back wild panic, sought another means of escape. A tall window with a french door opened out onto a small wrought iron balcony overlooking the front of the house. Clarissa looked down onto the driveway and the garage just beyond. The full moon cast a dusting of silver on the cobblestones but there were enough shadows along the trees and bushes to the garage if she could somehow get down there from the balcony.

  Clarissa started to pull the bed sheet from the guest bed when his voice stopped her cold.

  "Clarissa!" Morgan's voice was but a whispered hiss on the other side of the door and the knob turned. Dread flooded through her as she watched the chair move slightly under the pressure. Terror held her. She could only stare at the chair under the knob. It would not hold long. Then he would have her, his cold eyes impassive as she begged for her life as Byron Roth had done.

  She blinked back tears and slowly backed away from the door. Her hands trembled as she pulled the bed sheet back with her. When it snapped free of the mattress, Clarissa stumbled back into the vanity table, knocking over a small lamp.

  "Clarissa," Morgan's voice was smooth as poisoned silk. "It's over, darling. Don't think that you can run from me. Open the door."

  The dread seemed to drain from Clarissa as quickly as it had come. It left an emotional emptiness that allowed her to think with crystal clarity as if she were watching the scene in slow motion on television. She had one chance to escape as long as the chair held in place against Morgan's weight. He had not called out to Marco or the other security guards. He wanted her to come to him, defeated and afraid.

  "There is no escape, Clarissa," said Morgan. "No one has ever escaped me. Now, open the door. I have no choice, my love. And you have no options."

  Clarissa wadded the sheet into a ball and pressed it up against the long curved handle of the balcony door to muffle the audible click. She stepped out onto the balcony and tied one corner of the sheet to the wrought iron railing, then threw the bulk of it over the top of the railing.

  "Clarissa, you are only prolonging the inevitable. You will feel nothing, I promise you, if you open this door at once. If you do not obey me, I will have no choice but to turn you over to Marco."

  The sudden jolt of terror shocked her. Marco's very presence around the estate had always frightened her. He was loathsome and crawly as a scorpion. She had heard things, vague insinuations from the house staff, of Marco's appetite for violence and reputation for sudden intense anger. The thought of his hands on her wrenched at her stomach. She had to escape. Death waited on the other side of the door, held at bay by a flimsy chair giving way under the blows from Morgan's shoulder. With no other thought, Clarissa put the Jaguar keys in her purse and slung the strap over her shoulder. She straddled the railing, easing herself down until she could grab the sheet. She clung there for a moment, not wanting to let go of the railing, fearing she would fall.

  The agonizing scrape of the chair, as Morgan forced the door, loosed Clarissa's feet from the balcony and she swung precariously, grasping the sheet in a white knuckled grip.

  "Clarissa!" Morgan shouted.

  She could hear him moving about the guest room, slamming the closet doors. Fear of Wolfe stripped away the fear of falling and the sheet burned her palms as she slid to the ground. She pressed herself tightly into the shrubbery next to the house as the French door above her was flung open and Morgan stepped onto the balcony.

 
The white bed sheet danced gracefully, billowing out with the night breeze, a lonely specter pointing accusingly at Clarissa's tenuous refuge. She closed her eyes but could not will it away. There was nowhere to run that Wolfe could not see her from the balcony. She had only a few desperate moments before they would find her. Wolfe had been right. She could not escape from him. From the argument she had heard by the pool, neither had Avery Roth. How many others besides the Roth brothers had Morgan eliminated to suit his purposes?

  Clarissa knew that there was no way off the grounds on foot. The estate would be secured, the wrought iron grille work atop the eight foot stone wall, as well as the gates, would be electrified, and the infra-red security cameras would tell Alex Rogers her every move. They guards would probe all of the possible hiding places on the grounds before Clarissa could even think of them.

  Her will to resist was beginning to let her down, leaving her defenseless and vulnerable, unable to feel anything but defeat, unable to move. Her fear melted, the terror moved away like a receding storm. She shivered with an inner chill and her legs weakened. She slumped to the grass, nerve-weary and emotionally drained.

  "Mama, I'm sorry," she whispered and tears fell uncontrollably. "You and Andy were right and I was wrong. Damn it, Mama, how could I have been so wrong?" The memory of her mother laying in her own blood on the ground next to the bus bench was lit like a sudden streak of lightning behind Clarissa's tears. Caught in the crossfire of a gang shooting, Myra Hayden's struggles to protect her fragile daughter from the harsh realities of poverty, came to a sudden end. It had left Clarissa exposed and helpless, prey for the thieves of the night. Then there had been Hugo to protect her, and the modeling agency, and finally Morgan. Clarissa felt that debilitating helplessness now as she had felt it at the death of her mother. The vulnerability was terrifying.

  Clarissa was jolted back to reality at Morgan's voice. He had gone back inside and was calling to Marco. His voice drifted away and Clarissa was conscious of the stillness and silence. She sensed rather than saw the movement across the lawn next to the driveway. The security guard she knew as Dalton had come out of the garage and was peering into the shadows on the opposite side of the driveway from where she sat in the shadows. When he moved into the light she saw that the tall black man carried an assault rifle and was poking it into the shrubbery. She watched him for a long moment. There was no urge to get up and run, no fear, no feeling. There was only the man, dressed in black pants and black t-shirt, methodically searching, prodding, and examining each dark crevasse. If he turned slightly more to his left he could not help notice her sitting under the guest room balcony in the shadow of the oak tree.

  Clarissa waited and watched. It would be only a moment now. Dalton would look up, see her, and aim the barrel of the gun at her throat. He would call out to Morgan and the nightmare would be over. She did not move. Only her eyes followed his movements. He moved passed her, his back turned, concentrating on the bushes. He continued slowly on, taking the turn in the driveway as it angled away from the house toward the gates, shoving aside the bushes. She watched until he moved to where Byron Roth's car, still parked in front of the house, blocked her view.

  Clarissa looked back to the garage. Two of the doors were still open exposing the Mercedes and the Jaguar. There was no other movement, no guards that she could see. There was a chance, a slim one. She had to move now before the front door opened, before Morgan found Marco and could tell him about the sheet. She pushed away the mounting panic and took the Jaguar keys from her purse. They felt like a lifeline in her hand, a thin sliver of a chance at freedom. She rose slowly to her feet and picked her way laboriously across the lawn. At the edge of the driveway she stopped, reluctant to step into the pools of silvery moonlight between her and the Jaguar. The only movement was the slow sweep of the security camera mounted on the corner of garage.

  She took a deep breath and stepped onto the cobblestone driveway. She prayed that whoever was watching the security monitors was distracted for the next moment. A foolish, wishful thought. Morgan's security was just too thorough, too tight. She could never hope to get out of this alive, but now that she saw even the slight possibility, it suddenly rasped her soul more to give up her life without trying.

  She crossed the driveway almost with her eyes closed and not daring to take a breath. All of her concentration was on her feet, walking on her toes so as to not make a sound on the cobblestones. She shivered and her flesh crawled between her shoulders in momentary expectation of a rifle barrel in her back. She melted into the welcome darkness inside the garage.

  Clarissa had her hand on the Jag's door handle when instinctively she stopped. She was not sure if it was the opening of the front door of the house, or the faint murmuring of voices that sent her to her knees between the Jaguar and the black Cadillac parked next to it. The voices were barely audible, but she knew it was Morgan and Marco.

  A quick glance over the fender of the car confirmed the new peril and the fragile hold on her will to survive slipped a notch. Morgan stood in the open front doorway talking to both Alex Rogers and Marco. They were too far out of earshot for Clarissa to hear what was being said. Three of the other guards joined the conference at the front door. Clarissa knew that the search for her was to be concentrated at the front of the grounds.

  "Just find her," Wolfe's angry voice suddenly rose above the others.

  Two of the guards broke off to search the wall near the street and the gates. Dalton resumed his search of the trees and shrubbery along the driveway. Marco, carrying a rifle and flash light, probed the shadows under the balcony where Clarissa had sat under the oak tree. To her horror, Alex was walking straight toward the garage. He had shed the gray sport coat he had worn earlier and Clarissa could see the straps of a shoulder holster against his white shirt.

  If she was going to make a move it would have to be now. Slowly, crouched between the two cars, she slipped her hand under the door handle and pulled. The door unlatched silently. It would take one burst of effort to be in the driver's seat, lock all of the doors, start the engine, and make a mad dash for the gates. Clarissa could not move.

  The twinge of panic was sudden and swift. Her hand dropped from the door handle without her knowing why. Then she saw the light, the map light inside the Jag. If she had opened the car door, it have would blazed like a beacon inside the dark garage.

  She dared another quick glimpse over the Jag's fender. Alex was closer, moving slowly, studying the ground and bushes along the drive for any sign of her passing. Like a bloodhound sniffing out a scent, he would stop, listen, and sort out the night sounds for a telltale noise that would give his hidden prey away.

  Clarissa pressed back into the shadows near the front bumper and the back wall. The shelf above her head held spare batteries and car parts. It afforded a deeper blackness in which to wait for the inevitable.

  Escape had been so close, so fleeting. She had waited too long to act. The narrow window of time had slammed shut and she was caught in the jaws of its trap. Alex would find her, bring her to face Morgan, and she would look for the last time into the soul of a demon. She resisted the temptation to stand up and walk out of the garage, to give in to the overwhelming sense of surrender, and not let Morgan know her fear.

  She wondered if she ever really loved him, and her lip quivered at the realization that she did not. She loved only the image she had created in her own mind of the mysterious, sensuous man who had given her everything except himself. He could never give her that. To have Morgan Wolfe meant living a small piece of hell while mocking laughter ate away the dream.

  Clarissa touched lightly the diamond necklace around her throat. It felt heavy like an iron collar to which only Morgan held the key. Yet, she could not tear it off. The dream that had been ingrained in her all her life would not be so easily cast aside. And so the trap tightened.

  "Clarissa," Alex's voice was cool and seductive like a polar wind off a glacier. "Come out. I'll do whatever I can
to help you."

  She ached to let that thought provide the comfort it so enticingly invited. That Alex Rogers could actually protect her from Morgan was pure fantasy. If he tried, Morgan would kill them both.

  "Come out, Clarissa," Alex whispered. "Let's talk." There was a long pause and Clarissa fought down the urge to call to him. He was baiting her, she convinced herself. Did he really know where she was hiding? If he did, he wouldn't have to flush her out with his tempting, soothing voice.

  "J'ai Ose," he whispered. "The perfume you're wearing. It's giving you away like a neon sign."

  Clarissa's stomach tightened and she wedged herself deeper against the Jag's front bumper and the garage wall. Her hand brushed something hard and cold on the concrete floor that chilled like the touch of frost. She recoiled at first, then her heart leapt. She lifted the tire iron slowly and carefully, willing her hands not to shake.

  Alex sniffed the air, his almost computer-like senses separating the odors of rubber, oil, gasoline, and car wax from Clarissa's expensive perfume. He narrowed her position down to the driver's side of the Jaguar near the wall. He could almost pin-point the spot just behind her ear where the perfume had been daubed, although he could not yet see her in the dark. Slowly, he pulled the Magnum from his shoulder holster and stepped into the garage behind the Jag. He had to smile. His training had been exceptional. Clarissa's purse lay next to the front wheel of the black Cadillac.

  "You dropped something, Clarissa," Alex couldn't help grinning. He had her cornered and she was his prize.

  Clarissa saw his hand reach down for the black beaded evening bag she had tossed over near the Cadillac's front tire. With a quickness that surprised her, and with a blind aim, she brought the tire iron down hard across the back of Alex's head. With a slight groan, he slumped to the grease stained floor.

  Marco was only half listening as Wolfe gave orders for the disposal of Byron Roth and Clarissa Hayden, her personal possessions, and Roth's car.