“You said you stabbed him in the leg with a pencil,” McCabe said. Maddie nodded. He continued. “So what happened to the pencil? Did you take it with you when you ran?”
Maddie frowned, trying to remember. Concentrating took a surprising amount of effort. Reliving the events of the previous night—to say nothing of enduring this more recent trauma—had left her feeling drained and disoriented.
“No, I ... after I stabbed him I let go. Maybe it was still in his leg. Maybe it fell. I don’t know.”
He nodded. “Okay. What about a description? Even if you didn’t see him, you must have gotten some impressions about what he looked like. Was he taller than you, for example?”
Maddie wet her lips. “He was taller than me. I was barefoot so he was—maybe six feet or a little less. And ... and he seemed husky—broad, you know? Not fat but strong.” Memory washed over her and she shuddered again. “Very, very strong.”
“Anything else? Had he been drinking, for example? Could you smell liquor on his breath?”
“I smelled ... onions.”
“Onions. There you go, there’s something we can work with. There are a couple of fast-food places near the hotel. Maybe one of the workers will remember a guy who ordered extra onions.” He was studying her. “You married?”
She met his gaze, surprised at the question. “No.”
“What about exes? Any disgruntled exes?”
Now she saw where he was going. “No.”
“Do you have any enemies that you know of? Anybody who really doesn’t like you or who might want to do you harm?”
Maddie could almost feel the color leeching from her face. “No. No. There’s nobody like that. Nobody.”
He was probing too close to the bone—and she was too shaken. He could threaten all he liked, but she’d had enough.
“Okay, that’s it. You got way more than your five minutes. And now I’ve really got to go.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s almost five till ten.”
“Fair enough.” McCabe straightened away from the rail. “I’ll walk you to the elevator.”
No. But she didn’t say it aloud. She didn’t want to make it more obvious than she already had how very eager she was to get away from him. If she could just keep her cool for another couple minutes, he would be history—just one more unpleasant chapter in her life. And a very small unpleasant chapter, at that. She turned, but she was still so rattled that she was clumsy. The corner of her briefcase hit the table and knocked it over. Table, crockery, coffee, and pastries went flying.
“Oh, dear!” Thanks to the sound-deadening properties of the carpet, it was more of a rattle than a crash, but as Maddie stared down in dismay at the mess she was suddenly conscious of being the cynosure of dozens of pairs of eyes. Even as she watched, the mud-colored puddle that was her leftover coffee was being soaked up by thirsty dark-blue carpet fibers. Her cup—identifiable because it rested at the apex of the puddle—lay on its side beside the overturned table. His had rolled closer to the rail. The plate that had held the pastries was right side up, but the pastries themselves were scattered everywhere.
Instinctively, Maddie crouched to clean up the mess. She righted her cup, then reached for the pastries. Scooping one up, she returned it to its plate, then picked up another. This one had sticky yellow custard oozing out the sides that got all over her fingers.
“I’ll do that, ma’am.” The same waiter who had brought the coffee squatted beside her, dropping a handful of gold cloth napkins beside the shrinking puddle. Grabbing one, murmuring an apology for her clumsiness, Maddie stood and wiped her fingers while the waiter blotted the mess. A quick glance at her watch made her heart lurch. In three minutes she would be late. She dropped the napkin on the table the waiter had just flipped upright again, added a couple dollars for his trouble, and grabbed her briefcase.
“It’s been fun,” she said to McCabe, and without waiting for any response, she headed for the elevator.
To her annoyance, he fell into step beside her.
“Any other details come to mind about the guy who attacked you? Length of hair? Beard?”
“I ... don’t think he had a beard.” Terrifying memories of being slammed against a wall replayed themselves in her head. She seemed to remember her hand brushing a smooth jaw. “I don’t know about his hair.”
“What was he wearing? Long sleeves? Short sleeves? Shorts? Tennis shoes? Sandals? Try to remember as much as you can.” McCabe spoke from behind her now as she punched the elevator button with considerably more force than the action called for.
“Long sleeves, long pants—” She was going all shivery again, and, especially at such a critical moment, this she did not need. Stepping back into the center of the hall, she rounded on him. “You said if I answered your questions you’d go away.”
“The thing is, I’m not done asking questions yet.”
“Well, Mr. Special Agent, here’s a newsflash: I’m done answering them.”
His eyes moved over her face, turned thoughtful. “You know, most people can’t wait to tell us their story. Where we usually run into problems is getting them to shut up.”
An icy finger of warning slid down her spine.
“It’s two minutes until ten,” she snapped, taking desperate refuge in the truth. “At ten, I’m scheduled to be at a meeting that means the world to me. I can’t be late, and I can’t screw this up. The account’s worth a lot of money, and my company needs it. Really needs it. Without it, Creative Partners might not survive the year.”
Their gazes met and held. The elevator dinged.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said, stepping back.
Though he almost certainly hadn’t intended it as such, to Maddie that was as dire a threat as any she’d ever heard.
The elevator was packed. Under normal circumstances, she would have waited for the next one. But she was out of time, so she wedged herself in at the front of the car without looking at McCabe again.
“Fifty, please,” she said to the woman nearest the buttons. She could feel McCabe’s eyes on her. Unable to help herself, she glanced at him as the elevator doors started to slide shut. He was frowning, watching her—and then the elevator doors closed and cut off her view.
But she could still see him in her mind’s eye, arms crossed over his chest, feet planted apart, his eyes narrowed, his expression—thoughtful. Or—oh, God—had it been suspicious?
Of course not, she scolded herself. She was imagining things, a victim of her own guilty knowledge. He had no reason, none whatsoever, to suspect that she was anything other than what she appeared to be: an innocent crime victim.
But telling herself that didn’t help. As the elevator carried her upward, her knees were about as solid as Jell-O. Her pulse raced. Her stomach tanked.
Imagination or not, she could practically hear the hounds baying at her heels.
SIX
Where’ve you been?” Jon greeted her with a frantic whisper as she stepped off the elevator. He was there right in front of the elevator banks in the hall on the fiftieth floor, and he looked vastly relieved to see her. “Susan already came out to take us into the meeting. I told her you were in the ladies’ room. She’ll be back any second.”
Just like that, she was thrown into deep water again. Like the survivor she was, she swam. Clamping down on emotions that threatened to swamp her, lifting her chin and straightening her spine, Maddie concentrated on drawing back inside the cool shell that kept others from seeing more of her than she cared for them to see. The elevator had stopped—and stopped, and stopped—until at last she, the only person left, had made it all the way to the top.
When the doors opened, it was three minutes past ten.
“The FBI wanted to ask me some questions about last night,” she said, also whispering. “The guy at the elevator downstairs—he was FBI.”
“I know.” His reply was impatient. “God, do you think I wouldn’t have turned this place upside down if I’d thought some strang
er had grabbed you? I got off as quickly as I could and called security. They checked with the guard at the front desk, who told them about those guys being from the FBI.” Jon paused for an instant, then added, as an obvious afterthought, “How did the FBI get into this, anyway?”
“I have no idea.”
Time for a subject change. Maddie was almost relieved when a bright voice behind them asked, “All ready now?”
“Susan,” Jon said, cranking the charm up to full wattage as he turned from Maddie to beam at Susan Allen. “This is Madeline Fitzgerald, Creative Partners’s owner and CEO. And my boss.”
“So nice to finally meet you, Ms. Allen.” Shaking hands, Maddie likewise turned on as much charm as she could muster. A quick look told Maddie that Mrs. Brehmer’s assistant, whom she had spoken to on the phone numerous times but had never before met, was a tall, thin, flat-chested woman with a long face and narrow, not particularly attractive, features. She wore her mouse-brown hair straight and earlobe-length, with a too-short fringe of bangs, and if she had on any makeup other than a touch of pale pink lipstick, Maddie couldn’t tell. Her skirted suit was a severe black that did nothing for either her figure or her sallow complexion. Her pale blue eyes, seen through rimless glasses, looked Maddie over anxiously.
“Susan, please. I’m so glad you wore a skirt,” Susan said under her breath as she gestured at them to follow her. “I meant to warn you and I forgot. Mrs. B hates to see a woman wearing pants. She probably would have canceled the meeting as soon as she saw you.”
On that reassuring note, they reached a sleek metal door, which Susan opened.
“Here they are,” she announced to the people within, and stepped aside for Maddie, with Jon behind her, to enter.
Five people were seated around the long table in the center of the conference room. As Maddie walked in, five pairs of eyes immediately focused on her. Glancing around nervously, Maddie realized with a sinking feeling that nobody was smiling. Plastering a big smile on her own face, she had one coherent thought as she extended her hand and headed for the grim-faced woman at the head of the table: She now knew just exactly how Daniel must have felt when he got thrown into the lion’s den.
SAM GOT off the elevator in the lobby to find Wynne, still chewing his gum, sprawled in a chair waiting for him.
“She give you any trouble?” Wynne asked, standing up as Sam joined him.
“Nah.”
“I didn’t think she would. She seemed kind of antsy, though.”
“Yeah.”
“ ’Course, I might be, too, if somebody had just attacked me in my hotel room a few hours before.”
“Maybe.” Sam gave Wynne the abridged version of what Madeline Fitzgerald had told him. As he spoke, the two of them headed toward the wall of tinted glass that marked the entrance to the building. The line at the security desk was nearly as long as it had been when they’d rushed inside earlier, but its length was no longer a problem. At least, not for them. Not that it had been before, either. They’d felt no compunction whatsoever about bypassing it.
“So what d’you think?” Wynne asked finally.
“I think he made a mistake. I think she just might be the break we’ve been looking for.” Sam pushed through the revolving door, walking into swampy heat that felt as though it had increased tenfold during the brief period he had been inside. The sun was now a big, hazy yellow fireball hanging just above the jagged city skyline. It seemed to pulsate with energy, broiling the pavement, glaring off the roofs of passing cars, turning the windows fronting the street into shiny, black walls of one-way glass.
“You don’t think she was the intended target?” Wynne caught up to him again, and they headed toward the parked Saturn, paying scant attention to the mix of tourist- and business-types that crowded the sidewalk around them. The shuffle of dozens of moving bodies was almost drowned out by the cacophony of traffic sounds. Whiffs of something sweet and doughy—a quick glance identified a mobile beignet stand on the nearest corner; the sizzle of dough being dropped into hot grease added to the ambient noise—overlay the combination of coffee, sugar, and humidity that made up The Big Easy’s distinctive smell.
“One thing’s for sure: They both weren’t.”
Reaching the car, Sam saw the Day-Glo orange slip of paper tucked beneath his windshield wiper and groaned. The Bureau was tightening up on expenses as part of its big push to make itself leaner and meaner in this era of the extremely expensive war on terrorism, and Smolski had interpreted that to mean that miscellaneous expenses like parking tickets were basically the problem of the agent who incurred them. A quick glance at the parking meter showed the red flag up.
Shit.
“Didn’t you feed the meter?” he asked Wynne in a tone of purest disgust, plucking the ticket from its berth as he walked around the front of the car.
“Didn’t you?” Wynne countered. They exchanged measuring looks over the Saturn’s roof, then opened the doors and got in. The car was white with black vinyl upholstery, which meant that the interior was hot as an oven. Sam immediately pulled his 9mm free of his waistband and placed it on top of the console between the seats. Without a jacket, a shoulder holster was no good; without a shoulder holster, the most convenient place to carry a weapon was nestled into the small of his back. Wynne followed suit, then flipped a section of newspaper that was in the car for just that purpose over their mini-arsenal while Sam turned the ignition on. As hot, stale air blasted from the air-conditioning vents, he and Wynne both choked and hit the buttons that lowered their windows.
“So, you planning to turn that in on expenses?” Wynne asked. The strong scent of grape Dubble Bubble was slowly weakening as the suffocating air inside the car was displaced by the sweltering air outside.
Sam glanced down at the ticket in his hand and snorted expressively. Then he crumpled it up and tossed it out the window.
“Never saw it.”
“Good call,” Wynne said. The air coming out of the vents was actually cooler than the air outside now, so they both rolled up their windows.
Sam dug around in his pocket for his cell phone. “Keep your eye open for the Fitzgerald woman. I don’t think she’ll be out this soon, but you never know.”
Wynne nodded and settled back in his seat, his eyes on the building they’d just left, as Sam punched buttons.
“Hey, handsome,” Gardner said.
“Way to answer the phone,” Sam groused. “Real professional. Listen, I need a quick background check on this other Madeline Fitzgerald. She owns an advertising agency in St. Louis. Name’s Creative Partners.”
“Creative Partners.” Gardner sounded like she was writing it down. “Okay, I’ll check her out.”
“And I want to make sure that somebody took an evidence kit over to the hotel room she was attacked in, did a test for blood on the rug, fingerprints, hairs, that kind of thing. Also, check on the whereabouts of a pencil. Possibly bloody.”
“A possibly bloody pencil?”
“She claims she stabbed the UNSUB in the leg with it. For all I know, New Orleans PD has it. Or maybe it’s still just lying around in the room. Wherever it is, I want it found, and if there’s blood on it, I want the DNA test results back quick.”
“Yes, oh, master.”
Sam ignored that. “What about the security cameras in the hotel? They get anything?”
“Unfortunately, they’re the kind that tape over themselves every thirty minutes. Apparently nobody got to them in time.”
“Way to run an investigation.” Sam puffed out air. “You turn up anything on the dead one?”
“Just what I told you before: longtime resident of Natchitoches, forty-six years old, grown daughter, saleswoman for Davidson-Wells, a pharmaceutical firm, been with the company for four years, in New Orleans for just the one night on business, messy divorce finalized three months ago. Liked to gamble. Regular at the horse tracks, casinos. Oh, yeah, there is one more thing: Her husband’s served time for aggravated assault.”
“So how’s his alibi for last night holding up?”
“So far it’s holding.”
“We got a time of death?”
“Same as before: between ten p.m., when she was last seen, and three a.m., when the body was found.”
“Is that the best they can do?” On TV, forensic specialists managed to nail the time of death almost to the minute. In real life, at least in his real life, nothing was ever that simple. Or that exact.
“ ’Fraid so.”
“Let me know when you get something on the other one.”
“You got it,” Gardner said. Then, as Sam pulled the phone from his ear, about to break the connection, he was almost sure he heard her add, “Sweet cheeks.”
Wynne, clearly having heard the same thing, grinned at him as Sam stared at the phone for a beat before recollecting himself and clicking it closed.
“Woman wants it bad,” Wynne said. “When you planning to put her out of her misery?”
Sam shook his head. “Not anytime soon.”
“Hey, you haven’t had a girlfriend since Lauren dumped you last year. Why not give Gardner a whirl?”
“Lauren didn’t dump me”—actually, she had, after six months of increasingly acrimonious complaints about the amount of time Sam spent on the Job—“and anyway, I got a rule about sleeping with women I work with. Why start something when you know going in that it’s gonna end up being nothing but bad news?”
“Because Gardner’s built like a brick shithouse.”
“Yeah, and she’s got the personality of a pit bull.”
Wynne’s grin widened. “Who cares?”
“So you give her a whirl.”
“It’s not me she wants to hook up with. It’s you.” Wynne gave him an exaggerated leer. “Sweet cheeks.”
“All right, give it a rest, would you?” Sam wasn’t in the mood for Wynne’s teasing. He was so tired that his eyes felt grainy, and his stomach was leaving him in no doubt that it didn’t appreciate the breakfast he’d commandeered on the fly. “Can we get back to work here?”
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