by Karen Rose
“I never wanted that, Sue. I never told them you killed Alec.”
“Erik, Miranda. His name is Erik. No, you never told them I killed the kid, but you arranged for him to disappear just the same. It looked like I did kill him. I was just lucky the DA was inept. I got stuck with reckless endangerment. Did you know that?”
There was raw fury in her voice. And people talking in the background. Lots of people. Then the blast of a car horn.
“No, I didn’t know that. I’m sorry, Sue. I did what I thought was right all those years ago. Sue, Alec is sick. He needs medicine. Please bring him home. I swear I won’t say a word if you just bring him home. I’ll give you whatever you want. The five million. I swear.” Her voice faltered, broke. “Please just let him come home.”
Sue chuckled. “I did bring him home. Now you’ll have to come home, too, if you want to see him again. This is what you’re going to do. Got a pen and paper?”
Ethan took out his pen and motioned Reagan to hand him his notebook. Nodded at Randi who drew a shaky breath. “Yes, I do.”
“Then write this down. You’re to come to Chicago, with your husband. Take American flight 672 out of National into O’Hare. Rent a car. Then go to the Excelsior Hotel. Your room is reserved already. Do not go to another hotel and do not try to get another room or you’ll get another finger and this one will be much smaller. Understand?”
Trembling, Randi nodded. “Yes. Is Alec alive? Please, Sue, is he alive?”
“Yeah, he is. But he won’t be if you don’t do every little thing I say. Oh, and check your e-mail. You were so good about the practice deposit in my account, now we’re ready for the real thing. Check-in time at the hotel tomorrow is three o’clock.”
The phone clicked and she was gone. Randi sat for a moment, completely drained, then steeled her spine. “Can we check my e-mail from here?”
Ethan was already tapping keys. “We have a new one.” His eyes tracked back and forth as he read, then he blanched. “Five million by Friday at five P.M. or she starts sending us Alec in pieces.”
“Will you let us trace that e-mail?” Clay asked tightly. “It will save you some time.”
Reagan gave a short nod. “Do it.”
Chicago, Wednesday, August 4, 10:15 P.M.
Donnie Marsden had put on a little weight, Sue thought as she watched him make his way across the movie theater parking lot. She gave Donnie a little smile when he bent down to look in the open passenger side window of her most recently acquired automobile.
“Suze.” He looked annoyed. “You weren’t where you said you’d be.”
“Once burned, Donnie.” She wasn’t about to be a sitting duck in case he’d told someone where she’d be. “Get in. It’s time to talk some details.”
“Not yet. You promised no traps, but you killed Leroy Vickers.”
Sue smiled. They’d found the van then, with Vickers’s body inside. “Did I?”
Donnie frowned. “Don’t play games with me, Sue. You killed Leroy. You might kill me.”
“You didn’t testify against me, Donnie. Neither did the others. They’re safe. Get in the damn car.”
After another minute’s hesitation, he climbed in and pulled the door shut, then froze, his eyes focusing on the nine mil she had cradled in her lap. “Why the piece?”
“Insurance, Donnie. It’s not that I don’t trust you, I just don’t trust anybody.” She reached beneath her seat and brought out an empty shoe box. “Empty your pockets into the box. One false move and you’re dead.”
Pale and grumbling, Donnie complied. Three prescription bottles went in first, followed by his knife, a P-11, and a well-used straw, cut to just the right length. Sue frowned. “You stay clean through the weekend, you understand?”
Donnie shot her a glare. “It’s for testing the merchandise.”
“Okay, fine, whatever you say. Just no testing anybody’s merchandise until Saturday. Then you can blow your nose full of holes. Lift your pants’ legs.” He scowled and pulled a Beretta from an ankle holster and dropped it in the box. “Damn, Donnie, you’re a regular walking arsenal.” She slid the box under her seat and started the car. “I get nervous just sitting. Relax. I need you too much to set you up.”
Donnie’s scowl deepened when she pulled out of the parking lot, leaving the partying teenagers behind. “Where are we going?”
“Down memory lane, my friend. Don’t worry.”
“So what the fuck’s this all about, Suze? And at this point, it better be damn good.”
Sue just smiled. “Or what?” She let the challenge pass unanswered. “Friday night, nine o’clock. One of the boys needs to go pick our bird up.”
“From where?”
“Excelsior Hotel. Room 2021. Here’s a passkey.” She pulled the key card from her pocket and handed it to him. “Whoever picks up should wear a bellhop uniform.”
“Where’d you get this?”
“Never mind. Which of the boys do you plan to send?”
Donnie slid the key card in his pocket. “Gregory. He’s worked hotels before. He should still have a uniform, or know where to steal one. Who’s the bird, Suze?”
Time for the unveiling. “Do you remember that apartment I had on Central?”
“Yeah.” He gave a slow grin. “That bed saw some good times, didn’t it, Suze?”
“I’m surprised you remember any of them,” Sue replied dryly. Donnie used to “test the merchandise” in the old days, too. Sue was certain there were entire blocks of the early nineties that Donnie could not recall. But he’d been a hell of a businessman when he was sober. They’d cleared nearly a hundred thousand dollars that first year, enough to make a girl think she was in love. By the end of the second year, they had another seventy-five. Of course, all the cash was converted into new material, which had been seized at the time of their unfortunate incarceration.
Donnie winked. “Sex I remember. The other details from that period are a bit fuzzy.”
Unfortunately Sue remembered all the details. Donnie, for all his boyish charm, was a rough customer. More than once he’d left her bruised and bleeding, especially when he was high. But he’d run the show at the time, so she’d pretended to enjoy the ride. How the mighty are fallen, she thought. I run the show now. But she hoped Donnie was still rough. Or that he at least knew somebody who was. She had debts to pay and the interest had become quite considerable.
“Do you remember a girl named Miranda?”
He frowned. “Name doesn’t sound familiar.”
“She used to bring us beer,” Sue said flatly and Donnie grinned again.
“Sex and beer I remember.” He thought a moment. “Miranda. Wasn’t she the one whose baby you used to run the junk?”
Like she’d thought, whole blocks of the early nineties were tofu in the stir-fry of Donnie’s brain. “Something like that,” she murmured, then said nothing more as she took the car onto the highway. She knew he didn’t really remember the seven months she’d gone away after that first lucrative year. Busted for petty theft by a neighborhood beat cop, the DA’d tacked on a charge of possession when a cavity search turned up her private stash. But she hadn’t squealed, even with the promise of probation if she revealed the source. She’d kept Donnie’s secret then and he hadn’t even been sober enough to appreciate it.
Then two weeks into her sentence she’d found out she was pregnant. Horror stories about prison abortions abounded and out of fear she carried the damn kid to term, which as bad luck would have it was a month after she’d been released. Huge and waddling like a duck, she knew Donnie would have no use for her, so she’d turned to the only person she’d thought was stupid enough to help her. How wrong she’d been.
Miranda Cook—now rich bitch Randi Vaughn. Not so stupid after all. Just incredibly unlucky because now I have her exactly where I want her.
Donnie shook his head. “You’re saying the beer girl turned us in? That mousy thing?”
Some mental engines took a little longer to warm up than o
thers. “That mousy thing stole ten Gs from me and hit 911 on her way out of town with the damn kid.”
“Which is why they never turned the kid up.”
“You get the Kewpie doll,” Sue said sarcastically.
“Well,” Donnie mused, settling back into his seat. “This paints a whole different picture of revenge. Our birdie being a female, that is.”
“I was hoping it would.”
“So, Suze, what’s in this for you? You go to all the trouble to track this chickie down, then let us have all the fun?” He narrowed his eyes. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch. You just have the ability to wreak a different kind of damage than I can.”
Donnie’s mouth curved. “I see your point.”
Sue exited the highway, doubled back the direction she’d come. “I wonder if you do.”
He turned to stare out the window. When he looked back, she caught a glimpse of his face from the corner of her eye and knew that he did. Exactly.
“What’s your story?” she asked quietly.
“Big guys, showing the new guy who’s boss. Hell, I thought I was tough. I didn’t know what tough was. Spent a week in the infirmary. Only happened once. After that, I learned.”
Yeah, one learned many things inside. “I can relate.”
“You, too?”
“Multiply it by a coupla’ hundred and I’d say you’d be close.”
“Shit.” He turned back to stare out the window. “Guys?”
“Mostly. There’s one less left in the world though.”
“Good for you, Suze. I didn’t have the nerve. I just wanted to forget it and go on.”
She cleared her throat. “At any rate, Miranda will be arriving in Chicago tomorrow.”
“Then why not tomorrow?” He was revving now. She could hear it in his voice. “Why do we have to wait till Friday?”
“Because she’s got something else I want. When I get it, you’ll get her.”
The rest of the drive was completed in silence until she pulled into the drop-off lane of the El station closest to the mall where he’d left his car. “This is where I say good night,” Sue said. “I’m not going near the mall again. You can take the El or a cab back. I’ll call you Friday morning with the final location for our little party Friday night.” She took the box out from beneath her seat and handed it to him. “No hard feelings on the search?”
“No. I guess I understand.” He replaced his weapons, then grabbed the three pharmacy bottles from the shoe box. “I understand a lot better than you think.”
She realized he was holding one of the bottles so that she could read the label. And when she did, she knew Donnie had one more reason to kill Randi Vaughn. “How long have you had it?” she asked him quietly.
“Diagnosed five years ago. Big guys, big-time AIDS. I got quite a score to settle with our little bird, Suze. Quite a score.”
Chapter Eighteen
Chicago, Wednesday, August 4, 11:30 P.M.
Three pairs of eyes looked up when Dana emerged from Ethan’s bathroom in a cloud of steam. Her eyes widened and instinctively she pulled her robe in a little tighter.
“We’re showing Sheriff Moore our surveillance shots,” Clay said, gesturing to the coffee table piled with paper. “There’s coffee in the pot and Chinese takeout in the little fridge.”
Sheriff Moore smiled kindly. “I put a pair of my sweats on the bed in there for you.”
From his seat behind the small desk, Ethan just looked away. He was still angry with her for offering to take Evie’s place. Let him be angry, she thought. But still, it hurt.
Dana decided to deal with Sheriff Moore first. “Where are my clothes?”
“Mitchell sent an officer by to pick them up. You had Miss Stone’s blood on your skirt. They thought they might need it as evidence.”
Dana jerked a nod. That she’d had blood on her skirt was no real surprise. Her hands had been covered in Sandy’s blood. She looked down at her hands now. They were clean, her fingertips pruny from the long bath Mia had pushed her to take.
But she had blood on her hands just the same. Evie’s most certainly. Alec’s to a certain degree. She lifted her eyes to find Moore and Clay exchanging worried frowns.
“I’m all right,” she said. “I’m just . . .” What? Just what? “I’ll just be a minute.”
Clay’s voice rolled through the room. “Dana, if you need to rest, please do.”
Dana paused in the doorway. “No. I’ve had enough time alone, thank you. I need to help or I’ll go insane.”
Moore’s sweatpants were just a little too short in the leg and the Boston PD sweatshirt was tight through the shoulders, but it was better than wearing nothing more than the hotel’s terry robe when everyone else was dressed. Sheriff Moore pushed a cup of coffee in her hand when she reappeared a minute later.
“We were about to send divers in there,” she murmured with a smile.
Dana’s cheeks heated. “I’m sorry. I fell asleep in the bathtub.” She looked at the clock on the television with surprise. “Wow. I didn’t realize I’d been so long.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Moore chided. “You needed the rest.”
Dana’s eyes flicked to Ethan who steadfastly refused to look up. “You should sleep, too, Ethan. You’ve been going twenty-four hours.”
“I’ll sleep when we’re done,” he said tightly. “You go to bed. We’ll finish here soon.”
It was a blatant dismissal and seemed to catch everyone by surprise. Dana ignored him and sat down. “Did Mia and Abe find the place she used to send the last e-mail?”
“Yeah, but the place is closed,” Clay said. “They’re trying to locate the owner.”
“To see if she used another woman’s credit card,” Dana said grimly. “Which would mean another dead woman. Have we had any more calls?”
Clay shook his head. “No. But they were able to trace the call to a pay phone near the Camden Road movie theaters.”
“She was at the mall,” Dana murmured, thinking of the place. “That’s why there was so much background noise. That mall’s near the neighborhood where Randi grew up.”
“That’s what Mitchell said.” Sheriff Moore leaned back against the sofa cushions. “She also said they drove by Randi’s old neighborhood. Sue’s aunt and uncle are dead, their house burned to the ground.”
Dana frowned. “Sue?”
“No,” Clay said. “The Lewises’ house burned down just before dawn on Thursday morning. Sue was just getting on the Morgantown bus then and Bryce was in jail in Maryland. It had to have been somebody else. We’re thinking this Lorenzano character.”
“He’s been in Wight’s Landing,” Moore added. “After I found out about his visits to Bryce Lewis in jail, I had my deputies flash his picture around. The bouncer at the local bar remembers him making time with our resident bad girl bartender. Pattie’s not talking.”
Dana sipped at her coffee, tried to stay focused. “Sue might have planned to stay with her aunt and uncle when she got back to Chicago with Alec, whether they wanted her to or not. Finding their house burned down would have put quite a kink in her plans.”
Clay looked up, impressed. “Could very well be.”
Dana lifted a shoulder. “If she knew Tammy from prison, that’s how she ended up at Hanover House. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out why. It would only make sense if there was absolutely no other place to hide. It was so much trouble, finding us, getting herself bruised. Even for Sue this seems like a lot of trouble just to pay back some social workers. But if her first plan was the Lewises’ and if she was afraid enough of Lorenzano . . . It might have been reason enough.”
“Was she tentative about going out in public?” Moore asked.
“They all are at first. But our goal is independence, so I insisted Sue look for a job, like I do with all new residents. She said she was afraid her husband would find her. But they’re all afraid of that, too.” Dana sighed. “Most of them have good re
ason to fear.” She stood up, suddenly nervous all over again, and paced the floor. “I teach them to manage their fear, to tell themselves every day that they have nothing to fear. Chant it in their minds when they have panic attacks.”
“Does it work?” Moore asked, her smile still kind.
“Sometimes.” Dana stopped pacing. “Except when I bring killers into the house.”
Ethan looked up. Finally. “You didn’t know, Dana.” He looked her square in the eyes, his gaze full of challenge. “But now you do. What you did before, all those women you welcomed into your shelter before, you did with calculated risk. The men who battered them were more dangerous than the women. Now you know differently. You know the danger. You know what Sue Conway will do.”
Tears rose in her throat. “I know she’ll kill Evie and Alec if I do nothing.”
Ethan shook his head. “You know better, Dana,” he said quietly. “She has no earthly reason to let Alec and Evie go. They’ve seen her. If she’s caught, they can identify her. She won’t let them go, no matter what you do. Something, nothing, it won’t matter.”
Moore stood up, met Dana’s eyes. “He’s right, Dana. I’ve worked with too many abductions in my career. You never give the abductor any power.”
“We have to stay focused on finding Conway alive so she can lead us to Alec and Evie,” Clay added. “We can’t do that if we’re wondering what you’re going to do. If she’s going to have yet another hostage because you gave yourself up.”
“We need you with us,” Moore stated. “You’ve spent time with her. We need you to help us understand how she thinks. Evie and Alec need you here, helping us.”
They were right. She’d already come to the same conclusion during her time in the tub, questioning herself, second-guessing her judgment. Always second-guessing. But this group was totally confident in their judgment. She found herself envying them even as their solidarity touched something deep inside her. They cared. Genuinely.
“You all practiced this,” Dana said unsteadily, looking from Moore to Clay. Then to Ethan, who just sat there, his green eyes turbulent, his lips firmly pursed, and she wondered what he wasn’t allowing himself to say.