Domino

by Chris Barnhart

  The call went directly to voice mail.

  "Wayne, this is Clarissa Hayden," she said to the machine. "I'm a friend of Hugo's and I need to get in touch with him about the new salon right away. I need to get the number down there. Could you call the convent of St. Hector's School, five-five-five, sixteen hundred and leave the number with someone here? Thanks."

  "Your friend coming?" the nun wanted to know as she walked Clarissa to the front door.

  "I couldn't reach him. But thanks for letting me try. I left a voice mail.”

  "Looks like we're in for another storm," the nun said as a breeze blew in the open door and the sun had gone behind a bank of darkening clouds. "Would you like an umbrella?"

  "Can you spare one?"

  The nun opened a closet by the door that revealed a cardboard box full of umbrellas. She handed Clarissa a red one.

  "We have plenty. Kids leave them in school all the time and never claim them. At the end of the year we bring them up here and give them out where they're needed."

  "Thank you. I could use one more favor. I left a message for someone to call me here with a phone number. If I check back with you later, could you give me the number?"

  "Of course. Can I call you somewhere?"

  Clarissa hesitated, wanting to lie, but the sweet-faced nun demanded the truth. And the truth hurt. She had to go back. It was the safest place, the only place that she could think of where no one would find her. She told herself it would be for only one more night. Then Hugo would come for her. "I'm at the Hempstead Hotel."

  The nun's expression never changed. She just continued her pleasant smile. "I'll call the desk and leave a message with old Dusty. He'll see that you get it."

  "Thanks again."

  "Just go down to the back gate. Mister Reynolds, our security guard, will let you out," the nun instructed as she waved good-bye.

  The path wound back down the hill. From this vantage point, Clarissa could see the back of the school building where the fire had done the most damage. The worse damage was where Clarissa remembered the cafeteria to be, on the ground floor. The fire must have started there and spread up to the classrooms and the gymnasium on the second floor. New construction materials had been piled up behind the building and a white sedan with the logo of Stanton Security Service was parked next to the construction trailer.

  Clarissa walked slowly toward the gate, her thoughts preoccupied with the telephone call to the Wolfe estate. Something had happened to Virginia, Clarissa was convinced. What if the secretary had told Morgan where she was hiding? What if they were waiting for her now at the Hempstead Hotel? Her pace slowed, reluctant to approach the locked gate, afraid to leave the relative safety of the school grounds. Maybe, if she went back to the convent, the nuns would let her stay the night there and wait for Hugo.

  The nagging thought persisted and she tensed with the anxiety of the prospects. Where was Virginia or Alex Rogers? It was Monday morning. They both should have been at the estate. Morgan had that business meeting in Washington and....Clarissa smiled. Of course. The meeting. How stupid to be so frightened. Morgan had to be in Washington D.C. on Tuesday. Alex would be with him and Virginia was probably driving them to the airport.

  Clarissa sighed with relief. She had been under such stress the last couple of days that she wasn't thinking clearly. She chided herself for getting all worried over nothing. Morgan and Alex were out of town. Virginia was at the airport. Dalton was probably recruited to answer the phones while she was out. Everything was perfectly normal. In fact, better than normal. That things were business as usual at the estate, was proof that they had forgotten all about her. They had given up their search.

  She could rest easy and wait for Hugo. She was certain that Wayne would give the hairdresser the message and that she would be out of the Hempstead hell hole by morning. Besides, it didn't look so bleak as it had on Friday night. She had met Doc Rowland, the kindest, gentlest old man in the world, a young photographer fan, and even the crotchety old Dusty wasn't so fearsome as he had once seemed. He had promised Virginia that he would protect her if Marco came around looking for her.

  "Mister Reynolds?" Clarissa called out. "Mister Reynolds, could you open the gate, please."

  She had waited patiently at the gate for several minutes but no security guard had showed up as promised. Calling out didn't seem to bring him to the gate either. Maybe he was in the school building. Clarissa decided to go looking for him. The chain link fence surrounding the school grounds was eight feet high with a roll of razor wire at the top.

  As she walked back toward the school building she suddenly had the odd sensation that she was totally and utterly alone. The silence was as heavy as the darkening clouds overhead. She felt as if the whole neighborhood around the school had been abandoned in the wake of some awesome disaster. The overbearing stillness before the coming storm and the dirty tan brick of the burned building fed this unreal sensation until it began to grow into a panic.

  Clarissa ran up the school steps and pulled on the heavy double doors. They were unlocked. She stepped into the gloomy hallway.

  "Mister Reynolds?" she called softly and his name echoed away into the gathering darkness.

  The school office was deserted, the phone dead. Clarissa poked her head into what was the nurse's office and the vice-principal's office. The walls were ashen with soot and desks and floors were buckled with water damage. The tiles squeaked under her feet. Then she heard it. Footsteps. Above her on the second floor. Clarissa grinned and ran for the stairs.

  "Mister Reynolds!" she called.

  CHAPTER 9

  Marco pulled on a pair of black leather gloves and watched from the second floor window as Clarissa headed toward the front door of the school building. It would only be a matter of minutes now and then the seething anger and hatred that had festered in him since Friday night would be satisfied. All thoughts of toying with the bitch were gone. So were the macabre fantasies he had nurtured since Morgan had first brought Clarissa to the Wolfe estate. All Marco wanted now was her dead. In small pieces. Bagged and disposed of quickly and cleanly.

  Marco smiled as he thought of the assassin, McKinnon, waiting at the Hempstead, wondering what happened to the intended victim. A victim that would never show. So, the asshole would be out a quarter of a million dollars. Morgan would be furious and demand the down payment back. McKinnon's reputation would forever be tarnished. A career over once word spread. Too bad.

  Marco's grin vanished as Clarissa called out for the security guard. It was time. She was walking into his trap as easy as a baby crawling to its mother.

  "Mister Reynolds?" Clarissa called again as she reached the second floor hallway. "Are you up here? Sister Ruth Cecilia said you would unlock the gate for me. Hello? Mister Reynolds?"

  She was uncertain which direction to take. The hallway to the left was dark. All of the classroom doors were closed. At the opposite end, where the fire had left only a skeleton of charred roof beams, gray daylight threw long black shadows along the walls and tile floor. Then came the hammering sound. A hollow, metallic banging, as if someone were pounding on the pipes. It came from the burned wing of the building and Clarissa headed toward that sound.

  Clarissa checked every classroom, closet, and restroom along the corridor. There was no security guard and even the pounding noise had stopped. At the end of the hallway she peered into the gymnasium. It had been badly gutted from the fire. Almost half of the floor lay down in the blackened cafeteria on the floor below, leaving a gaping dark hole. The ceiling and roof were gone. The acrid tinge of smoke still lingered heavily in the air. Gray clouds crowded the sky overhead and the breeze had turned cold and bone chilling.

  Clarissa pulled the wool shirt close about her. If the security guard could not be found it would mean taking the old route she used to sometimes "cut" classes. That was walking back up the hill to the convent, turn off the path behind the nun's garage, crawl into the vine-covered drainage ditch, and under th
e fence. The thought made her smile. Cuts, scrapes, spiders, snakes, mud, nun's coming and going from the convent. Yet, it never was a problem for her or Barry Nobbs, It was a challenge, a daring adventure to make the break. They were never caught. They never told a soul about the special route. It had been their secret.

  "Well, I'm taller than I was then," Clarissa mused aloud. "But I guess that's my only way out."

  With a last look at the devastation in the gym, she turned to retrace her steps to the stairwell. Her breath caught in her throat. The sight of him startled her, but only for a second.

  "Mister Reynolds," she said. "Thank God. I've been looking all over for you. I need to get out of the front gate. Sister Ruth Cecelia said you had the key."

  The guard stood in the doorway. His face was in shadow but Clarissa could see the starched white shirt with the security company's logo on the sleeve, the police style hat, and the hammer in the guard's hands.

  "I didn't think anyone was up here," Clarissa went on as she approached the guard. "Then I heard you hammering...."

  For the first time she looked at the tool. It was no hammer. It was an axe. The guard took a step toward her, his face moving into the gray light. Clarissa opened her mouth to scream but no sound would come from her paralyzed throat.

  How had he found her? Her mind raced. She turned to run but there was nowhere to go. Marco grinned but it was no grin of lust or smug triumph. It was the purest hatred Clarissa had ever seen. She stared in morbid fascination as the axe raised higher and higher above Marco's head.

  With blind instinct, Clarissa ducked the blow and ran along the rim of the hole to the opposite wall. As Marco whirled and raised the axe again, the floor under Clarissa's feet gave way. Jagged boards scraped her stomach and chest as she fell. The wool shirt caught on the protruding wood, slowed the fall, and Clarissa grabbed the edge of the hole. Her legs kicked empty air, her arms began to ache and tire almost immediately. She couldn't hand on for more than a minute before she plunged down into the cafeteria.

  She didn't have the strength to pull herself back up into the gym and she didn't have the courage to just let go. When she looked up, Marco's evil grin loomed like a coiled snake above her.

  "Perfect," he said. "You did good, Clarissa. Real good."

  He knelt down and raised the axe, aiming for her fingers. Clarissa pulled her hand away a split second before the axe chopped through the board where her fingers had held on. She groped for another hand hold but the axe fell again and again wherever she tried to get a grip. Marco laughed, momentarily enjoying the game.

  Then her foot touched something that moved. She kicked out again. A light fixture on the cafeteria ceiling swung back and hit her foot. If she could just get her leg around it. She gave it a hard kick. The axe fell. She was almost a second too late. The blade took a small chunk of flesh from her thumb and the hot flash of pain made her scream.

  The light fixture swung back and she hooked her right leg around it. The axe fell. Marco swore. Clarissa let go of the edge of the hole and swung on the fixture. For only a second. The fixture tore free from the ceiling and Clarissa plunged toward the burned cafeteria wreckage. Then the electrical wire reached its limit and the fall was checked five feet from the floor.

  Clarissa slipped from the fixture and crawled with blind terror over the debris. She had to reach the outside. Somehow. Before Marco came down the stairs. She had only a few precious seconds. Marco would peer into the dark hole, trying to determine if she was hurt or dead. Then he would come down to make sure, or finish his gruesome job. She had to make it to the front door of the school, out into the daylight, where the nuns in the convent could see her from up on the hill or motorists see her from the street and hear her screams, and call the police.

  Her jeans tore on the edge of a melted metal table and she cut and scraped her hands as she clamored toward the door leading into the hallway. Despite the pain, she ran. The lower floor corridor was empty. The front door was just ahead but so was the stairwell. Clarissa slowed. She heard the running footsteps on the floor above, then on the stairs. And something else. Laughter. Feminine laughter.

  Three nuns burst through the front door, chattering and laughing. They stopped as one and stared at Clarissa.

  "Miss Hayden?" Sister Ruth Cecilia asked. "What are you doing in here? This isn't a safe place."

  The nun carried a pot of coffee. The others carried a plate of sandwiches, fresh fruit, and a basket filled with cookies.

  "Who is this, Sister?" an older nun asked.

  "Get out of here," Clarissa tried to scream but it came as a harsh whisper. She glanced up the dark stairwell. "All, of you, get out of here."

  "Calm down, Miss Hayden," Sister Ruth Cecilia said. "Why don't you go outside with Sister William Joseph. We'll be right out as soon as we deliver Mister Reynolds' lunch."

  "Please," Clarissa pleaded. "He'll kill us all."

  Sister William Joseph shoved the cookies at the third nun and put her arm around Clarissa's shaking shoulders.

  "It'll be alright, dear," her voice was placating and sugary. "Why don't you come outside with me?"

  "No! All of you, outside. Quick. Before he comes. Please!"

  Clarissa shook off the nun's arm. Sister Ruth Cecilia and the plump Sister Margaret Ann took the food into the principal's office. To Clarissa's horror, Sister William Joseph walked to the stairwell.

  "You wait right there," the nun told her. "Mister Reynolds? Mister Reynolds? We've brought you your lunch. It's starting to rain outside and we didn't want you to have to go out in it. Gonna be a bad storm. Mister Reynolds?"

  Clarissa had to stop her. The security guard was never going to eat that lunch or any other meal. The fact that Marco wore his clothes was evidence enough that the guard was dead. The nun would be too, if she climbed those stairs.

  "Sister!" Clarissa cried, then fought for calm, trying to not to sound panicked. "The guard is over by the bleachers next to the football field. I thought I saw him from the window."

  "Oh, well, then he'll find his lunch eventually," the nun smiled. "Sisters, just leave it. He's outside."

  The two nuns reappeared.

  "We'd better hurry, sisters," Sister Margaret Ann said. "We've only got twenty minutes to make that teacher's meeting."

  "Can we drop you somewhere?" Sister William Joseph asked Clarissa. "Our car is right outside."

  "She's staying as the Hempstead Hotel," Sister Ruth Cecilia told them.

  "Oh, that's on our way," Sister Margaret Ann smiled. "No problem."

  Clarissa couldn't draw a full breath until she was in the back seat of the maroon Chevy Tahoe and out the gates of St. Hector's and back into the safety of the Hempstead Hotel.

  McKinnon checked the clip in the hand gun and slipped it into the large leather black purse on the car seat next to her. A half a block away from her parked rental car, the sooty red brick Hempstead Hotel stood stark and cheerless against the gray sky. The assassin picked up the car phone and punched up an area code and number. She said nothing as she listened, then punched in a bank account number. Listening for only a moment, she nodded in satisfaction and replace the receiver. The drop had been picked up in Tempe and deposited into the account at the Commercial Bank of Arizona in Scottsdale.

  As a streak of lightning ripped open the western sky, a woman, bearing a resemblance to the description of the victim, got out of an SUV and ran into the Hempstead Hotel. McKinnon pulled a glossy color photograph of Clarissa out of a manila envelope. It was a match. Time to go to work.

  Clarissa sat on the bed, shivering. She had her knees pulled up to her chest, listening to the thunder and the rain. Listening for any footsteps in the hallway, uncertain whether or not Marco had seen her leave the school and followed her back to the Hempstead.

  The steel desk chair was wedged firmly under the door knob and, despite the gnawing hunger, she was not about to venture outside her room until she was certain that Doc Rowland had returned from visiting his friend. Th
e drunk and the boy with the camera had unnerved her. Marco had taken her terror to new heights. She cursed Dusty for his insensitivity to her pleadings. She hated Morgan, Marco, Virginia, and even Hugo for not being there when she needed him. She hated herself for letting herself be so stupidly used and taken advantage of. She blamed her mother for that, for keeping her so sheltered, making her fragile and weak.

  In the quiet solitude of the gray afternoon she had allowed the thoughts of the past few days to become detached images, devoid of emotion and the ever present fear. She looked back on her relationship with Morgan Wolfe and found that after living with him for almost two years, she hardly knew the man. There had been only the preoccupation with the dream of it all. She had fallen in love with Morgan's success, his charm and sensuality, and the pampered lifestyle he offered. He had never loved her, he had possessed her.

  Everyone had possessed and indulged her. Myra had kept her from the crushing poverty of their meager existence and fed her fantasies of opulence and wealth. Andrew had tried to keep her from a modeling career by insisting she live with him and Annika in the Middle East after Myra's death. The modeling agencies had realized her potential as a top model and they trained and groomed her, shaped her into their own image of beauty. Morgan Wolfe had completed her isolation. Every whim was satisfied, every material comfort and delight was provided. She had only to belong to him wholly and exclusively.

  That had been her life, belonging to others, never to herself. There had always been someone to do or think for her, someone to catch her as she stumbled through life. Every time she tried to take charge of her life, she discovered she was no match for hard realities of the world. For the first time since she had run away at fifteen, Clarissa was alone and susceptible. There was no one to tell her what to do, how to survive, how to stay alive. All of the protection and the immunity to life's struggles had left her so impotent and frail that getting the money to make one phone call was an almost overwhelming achievement. Damn, she had even let Morgan manage and invest the money she had made modeling. Well, that was probably long gone.