by Obsession
From something else the thugs had said, she had gathered that they had seen the picture of her that had appeared last week in The Washington Post, the one that had caused her oceans of trouble even before this particular nightmare had begun, the one she hadn’t even been aware had been taken until it had shown up in the paper. In it, she was dressed in a slinky white Dior evening gown and weighted down with what was practicallya king’s ransom’s worth of eye-popping jewels, on her way to a dinner party at the home of one of Washington’s top lobbyists. Apparently, the thug rumor networkhad it that those unbelievably valuable jewels, as well as other items of comparable worth, were kept in that mythical hidden safe in her town house.
As if.
The jewelry she’d been wearing in the picture wasn’t even hers. It had been loaned to her for the occasion. Besides her ring and earrings, the only baubles she owned were the few little bits and pieces of nothing in the leather jewelry case on her dresser. Until late last fall, she had been living strictly on the salary of a federal government employee, which, if that needed translating, wasn’t much. Certainly not anywhere near enough to enable her to acquire the kind of bling they thought she had.
That was what she had tried to tell them. Unfortunately,they refused to believe her even though it was the absolute, gospel truth.
While the thug who now had his fist in her hair had done his best to pound information she didn’t have out of her, the other had gone on a rampage through her home. She had been beaten up to the sound of muffled thumps and thuds and crashes as the other man had torn the town house apart, flinging books from the shelves, snatching paintings from the walls, upending furniture, flipping over the expensive Oriental carpets that covered the highly polished hardwood floors. If her next-door neighbor, a doctor whose name escaped her mind at present, had been home, he might have heard something. But when she and Lisa had gotten home, the windows of his town house had been dark, and she knew that he was frequently away for the weekend. As for the junior congresswoman who lived in the town house on her other side, she was definitely back home in Minnesota until the end of August. There was a possibilitythat the lawyer couple who lived in the last of the row of four town houses might be at home—if they’d gone somewhere, they hadn’t told her, but then again, why would they?—but even if they were there, it didn’t seem to be doing anyone any good: So far, there had been no ringing telephone as a curious neighbor called to ask what was up with the middle-of-the-night commotion.Likewise, there had been no wailing sirens, no banging on the front door, no shouts to open up. As far as neighborly intervention was concerned, there was, in a word, nothing. If the doctor or the lawyers were indeedat home, they were clearly as oblivious to what was happening as the night-dark Potomac, which flowed sleepily past just across the cobbled street.
According to the clock on the black-fronted microwave,which was built into one of the exposed brick walls that were a feature of the recently redone kitchen, the time was one-oh-seven a.m. It was Saturday, July 29. Washington—at least, official Washington—was all but closed down for the summer. That meant that Old Town was thin of company just at present. Katharine’s street, home to a number of the less important factotums of government, was at least half-empty. Her town house— the lovely historic one that had been totally remodeled, the one that came with a supposedly state-of-the-art securitysystem, the one that was so pricey because it was in a good section of town, the one that up until about twenty minutes ago she had considered profoundly safe—was, on this steamy summer’s night, as isolated as a cabin in the middle of a forest.
In other words, she and Lisa—poor, innocent Lisa, who had simply picked the wrong weekend to visit a friend—were on their own.
“Katharine. I don’t want to hurt you or your friend.” His tone was almost gentle. His eyes were not.
She took a shaky breath. Her voice, when it emerged, was stronger than before. “Then don’t.”
He blinked, slowly, like a sleepy turtle. Then, with deliberatemovements that she couldn’t miss, he reached into his pocket and drew out a knife. A silver knife, slim and innocuous-looking, about six inches long. No sharp edges visible, but she knew what it was at a glance: a switchblade.
Horror filled her. Her throat tightened as her gaze stayed glued to the knife. He had only to push a button….
“You’re leaving me no choice, Katharine, so this is on your own head. If you don’t tell me where that safe is, I’m going to start carving that pretty face of yours up like a jack-o’-lantern.”
Fearing what would happen next, Katharine’s body tensed. Her mouth went dry. Her heart knocked against her rib cage. But there was only one answer she could give: the same one she’d been giving all along.
She shook her head in despair, indicating wordlessly what she then said aloud, “There … is … no … safe. Please, please believe that. Like I keep telling you, you’re making a mistake.”
There was a heartbeat’s worth of dead silence.
“Stupid bitch,” he said, and the very absence of emotionin his voice made it all the more terrifying.
“I’m telling the truth.” Desperation made her voice shake. “I really am. This is just an ordinary rented town house. Why would there be a hidden safe?”
She heard the tiny click of the knife a fraction of a second before she saw the blade spring free of its casing. Light from the recessed fixtures overhead caused its honed edge to glint with wicked menace. It was, she could see, surgically sharp. Eyes glued to it, she drew in a deep, ragged breath.
“Using that won’t help,” she said. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
He leaned closer. His face was just inches above hers now, so close that she could see that his eyes were bloodshot and smell the faint scent of garlic on his breath. Then he smiled. A small, evil, terrifying smile. Suddenlylight-headed, she was conscious of a strange rushingsound and realized that what she was hearing was her own blood roaring like a waterfall in her ears.
“There’s a hidden safe here because your boyfriend put it here,” he said.
2
Her boyfriend. Edward Barnes. A fit, distinguished-looking,soon-to-be-divorced forty-seven-year-old, who was in Amsterdam until Tuesday. They’d been seeingeach other for the past thirteen months. He’d been her boss for the last four years. And—oh, yeah—he’d been the DDO—Deputy Director of Operations—of the CIA for two of those, taking her, his executive assistant,right up through the ranks with him, until now, when to all intents and purposes she, Katharine Marie Lawrence, former notorious party girl, was one of the most powerful people in the CIA.
Because she had Ed’s ear. And now that his wife of twenty years, Sharon, had moved out of their Embassy Row mansion in the wake of that damned Washington Post photo, she had pretty much most of the rest of him, too.
Given that Ed owned the town house in which she lived—rent-free, a perk of their relationship—a hidden safe suddenly seemed no longer completely beyond the realm of possibility.
Katharine’s blood ran cold at the thought.
“I don’t know anything about that. I just live here.”
“Yeah.” Sarcasm dripped from the syllable.
Almost gently, he pressed the blade to her cheek. As she felt the cold metal against her face, Katharine’s breathingsuspended. Her heart lurched. For a frozen instant horror paralyzed her. Then she realized that what she was feeling was just the smallest degree of pressure, no sting, no pain at all, and it hit her: only the dull edge touched her skin. He wasn’t cutting her—yet.
“Please,” she said. Her throat was so tight, it was difficultto get even that much out. Her heart thudded. Her stomach knotted. She could feel Lisa watching, see the frightened glint of her wide eyes. Her friend’s horror was almost palpable. Then, despairingly because she knew it was useless, Katharine added, “Don’t do this. Please don’t.”
“Where’s the safe?”
Why wouldn’t he believe her? What else could she say? Sticking with the t
ruth—that she didn’t know, that as far as she was aware there wasn’t one—would get her hurt. Panic twisted through her insides like a coiling snake. Could she lie? she wondered desperately. But if she lied—if, say, she pretended to know the location of the supposed safe, just picked a site off the top of her head and said it was there—he would go look, and in just a matter of minutes, he would discover that she was lying. The thought of what he might do to her then made her dizzy.
But could it be worse than what he was getting ready to do to her now?
“Katharine?” His voice was so soft it was barely above a whisper. A silky, almost caressing whisper. He turned the knife over, resting the honed edge in the hollowbeneath her cheekbone. Her breathing quickened. A scream bubbled up in her throat.
She dared not let it loose; he would cut her for sure then.
Fear tasted sour as vinegar in her mouth, but she forced the words through.
“If there was a safe, and I knew about it, don’t you think I’d tell you?”
“Depends on how smart you are. For my money, you’re not very smart. After all, you’re fucking Ed Barnes.”
Terror made it difficult to think, she discovered. Whatevershe said, whatever she did, the end result was going to be the same. He—they—were not going to just go away. They were going to keep torturing her and Lisa until they either found what they were looking for or were finally convinced that it didn’t exist, by which time both women would probably be dead. Since it was Saturday,it was unlikely that anyone would even miss them until Monday, when Katharine didn’t show up for work. When she didn’t answer the inevitable phone calls that would be placed to her home, someone from the Agency would be dispatched to check on her. That someone would show up at her door and not be able to get in and would sooner or later call the police, and eventually her corpse and Lisa’s would be found right here on her grubby kitchen floor.
No. I’m not going to let that happen.
Determination stiffened her spine, had her gritting her teeth. She refused to just lie there and die.
There had to be a way out. She had to try.
Please, God, please …
Wetting her lips, she glanced up at him. “Look, I have money in the bank. Lots of money.” His eyes darkened. He frowned. Oh, no. Already knowing he was going to refuse, she rushed on desperately. “Over a hundred thousand dollars. I’ll give it to you. All of it. My ATM card’s in my purse. We can—”
“Yo, found it!” The exultant cry cut her off in mid-spiel.It came from, she judged, the small den that, with the living room/dining room combination, kitchen, entry hall, and half-bath, made up the town house’s first floor. It, uttered in such a gleeful tone by the second bad guy, could only mean one thing: the hidden safe.
Apparently it did indeed exist, because he’d found it.
Who knew? was her first lightning-fast reaction, followedalmost immediately by a devout Thank God.
Even as the thoughts formed in her mind, the knife fell away from her face. One second it was there, the next it was not.
She let out a deep, relieved breath.
“You’re a lucky girl, Katharine.”
Lucky or not, Katharine knew that this wasn’t salvation.At best, it was only a brief reprieve. Her heart knocked against her ribs as her eyes locked with his for what seemed like an excruciatingly long moment. They were utterly cold; there was no pity for her there in those murky hazel depths. The hand that was still twisted in her hair shifted its grip.
He smiled at her.
Then, deliberately, with no warning at all, he slammed her head down. Her nose and forehead smashed into the tile with all the force of his arm behind it. The blow was so intense that she saw stars.
“Uh.” The pained cry came from her own throat, she realized fuzzily. Blood spurted from her nose; she could feel the warm, wet gush of it even through the whirlpool of dizziness sucking her down.
Letting go of her hair, he straightened to his full height.
“Be right back,” he said, and left the kitchen with a dozen quick footsteps that echoed faintly as he crossed the hard floor. When he reached the dining-room carpet,the sounds disappeared, muffled by thickly padded wool.
Except for the sound of it, Katharine barely registeredhis leaving through the haze of shock and pain. Eyes closed, drawing ragged breaths in through her mouth, she lay as he had left her, stunned, while blood continued to pour from her nose. Maybe she lost consciousness,maybe not, but for a brief period she was aware of little beyond the gray cloud that fogged her senses and her own struggle to breathe through the gore.
“Katharine.” It was the merest breath of sound. Something touched her, something warm that jostled her left shoulder and leg. When she didn’t respond, the touch came again, harder this time. There was somethingabout it that felt urgent.
Not without a struggle, Katharine opened her eyes. Blood was in her mouth, salty and thick and warm, and the taste and oily sensation made her shudder. She lifted her head and spat it out. The kitchen swam in front of her, and she was immediately conscious of the crimson pool on the floor where her face had rested. Her nose … was it broken? It was still bleeding, she thought, but not as much now.
It hurt. Oh, God, it hurt.
“Katharine.”
Her eyes had already begun to lose their focus again. Instinctively, she turned her head in the direction of that husky whisper. A flash of yellow snagged her peripheral vision, urging her on. Even as a new wave of dizziness washed over her and the rest of the kitchen went all blurry once more, her head completed that difficult quarter-turn and her eyes widened with surprise. Lisa was impossible to mistake. Her friend now lay next to her, turned on her side facing away, her yellow-nylon-sheathedback scant inches from Katharine’s damaged face. It took a second—Katharine was still fuzzy—but then she realized that Lisa had rolled, scooted, wriggled, or by some other method propelled herself across the kitchen floor to her side.
Their eyes met over Lisa’s shoulder.
“Get my hands free.”
Lisa’s slim, tanned hands, her fingertips unnaturally pale now from having been so tightly bound for so long, wiggled vigorously below the wide band of gray duct tape that was wrapped tightly around both wrists. Katharine frowned a little, blinking uncomprehendingly down at them. Then Lisa scooted another inch or so backward, thrusting her bound hands forcefully toward Katharine’s face.
“My hands,” Lisa hissed.
All of a sudden, it hit Katharine: Lisa was talking. Not easily, not well, but talking. The tape covering her mouth had come loose. How? Katharine considered, then realized that it didn’t matter. The rectangular patch of industrial gray strips was still there, still glued to her upper lips and cheeks, but she was able to move her lower lip enough to form intelligible words.
“Use your teeth.” It was an urgent whisper.
Katharine blinked again.
“Use my teeth?” she repeated, befuddled.
“Shh. Yes.”
Katharine had forgotten to whisper. She realized that as soon as the words left her mouth, even before Lisa’s face contorted viciously and her heels smacked warninglyinto the side of her thigh. Even as Katharine winced, reflexively jerking her leg back out of the way, Lisa glared at her.
“To get the tape off. Use your teeth.”
This time Katharine remembered to whisper. “Oh. Okay.”
But she still couldn’t quite wrap her mind around what she needed to do. Her nose hurt so, like a tuning fork quivering with an agonizing sensation aimed directlyat the pain centers in her brain. Her head throbbed, her ears rang, and every time she moved her head even the slightest bit, a new wave of dizziness assaultedher. Lisa wanted her to get the tape off with her teeth? That didn’t quite compute, but Katharine obedientlyducked her head in the direction of Lisa’s hands. Big mistake. Pain exploded behind her eyes. Reality began to recede again. The ringing in her ears turned into an almost soothing buzzing sound. Suddenly the kitchen seemed to be shimme
ring around her like a miragein the desert. There was nothing solid left in the world… .
“Katharine.”
Except Lisa. Lisa, whose bound hands were bouncing up and down in the small of her back with unmistakable urgency. Lisa, whose bound heels were kicking her hard in the thigh. Lisa, who was directing a killer glare her way.
Lisa, who was doing her best to drag her back from the threatening mists of unconsciousness, even as Katharine longed to succumb.
“Katharine. You’ve got to do this, understand? Tear the duct tape around my wrists with your teeth.”
The fierceness of the whisper penetrated the fog that was clouding Katharine’s mind, sapping her muscles of their strength, turning her limbs to lead. Lisa’s words finallyregistered, and Katharine deliberately widened her eyes and took a deep breath and fought for clarity. Then, before she could otherwise move or reply or do anything else at all, a loud thud from the direction of the den, followed by a string of vicious male curses, made her heart leap.
“You dropped it!” The roar rose accusingly over the cursing.
“Well, shit, it was heavy!”
Lisa, who’d been in the act of kicking her again, froze with her heels scant inches from Katharine’s thigh.
Katharine froze, too.
Fear shoved out the last of the fog as realization burst on her like a bomb: They didn’t have much time. The bad guys were still there, just a room away. They could be coming back for her and Lisa at any moment.
She really didn’t want to be here for that.
“Do it.” Lisa completed the kick.
Katharine still felt as if half her brain had turned into cotton candy, but now that she remembered what had happened and that both their lives were at stake, the other half of her brain, along with the rest of her, was definitely with the program.