And the door swung open, hitting the back wall with a thud.
I jumped and twisted, nearly stumbling forward.
The doorway stood dark, but a figure took a step toward the moonlight. The scent of perfume and cigarette smoke trickled in.
Another step, and I spotted brown slippers, thick calves and the hem of a skirt.
"What do you want?" I asked, squinting to make out a face in the darkness.
She took another step, and my breath hitched, making my chest burn.
"You annoying twit," she said.
Bathed in a whitish glow, Veronica Waterston pointed a gun at me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
_____
I gripped my shoe so tightly the buckle dug into my palm. I ignored the pain and focused on the lunatic in front of me.
The wife.
As I stared at the barrel of her gun catching the moonlight, pieces fell into places with sudden clarity. I'd spent so much time looking at the fake Mrs. Waterston, that I'd never considered the real one.
"You couldn’t just be as dumb as you look, could you?" Veronica’s tone was raspy, deep, with an undertone of anger bubbling just beneath the surface.
I paused. The key ingredient to staying alive in a hostage situation, at least according to television, was to keep the person with the gun talking instead of shooting.
"I look dumb?" I asked, clearly not caring what she thought, but hoping to stall her.
She grinned, showing off a row of stained teeth. "A model who wears inappropriate shoes to work, and is a bleached blonde."
Hey! I took offense to that. My hair color was all my own, thank you very much.
"So, that's why you chose me. You thought the dumb blonde would be easy to frame?"
She waved me off. "Don't flatter yourself. You were a random name in the P.I. section of Yelp. A means to an end."
"The end being killing your husband," I said slowly, watching her reaction.
But if she felt anything, she hid it well. Her face remained relaxed and impassive, as if she were discussing a ladies' luncheon instead of her husband's murder. "I'd had enough. I was finished with him."
"Enough what?" I asked, trying to keep her talking, as I scanned the area behind her. She'd left the door open. A means of escape. If I could catch her off guard, there was a chance I could slip past her to freedom.
Her eyes narrowed. "You know very well, enough what."
"Women?" I asked, hazarding a very educated guess.
She grinned again, a flat thing that held no actual humor. "Well, he certainly wasn't giving a lesson on court proceedings to the bimbo on the video, now was he?"
No, he wasn't. And the fact that she knew that, meant she had seen the video.
"Alexa White," I said.
The wife nodded, the gun bobbing up and down in her hand as well. "Just the latest in a long line of bimbos over the years."
"How did you get the video?" I asked, genuinely curious this time.
"It's what I'd call a fortunate accident," she informed me. "His niece, Dakota, was putting a strain on our finances. Always calling, looking for money. I told my husband not to give in to her outrageous demands, but he spoiled her. Even to the point of turning a blind eye to her less than legal activities."
"Such as?"
"I suspected she was using drugs."
Good guess.
"But my husband wouldn't believe it," she continued. "So I had someone set up cameras around her apartment. I figured if I caught her in the act, my husband couldn't ignore her shortcomings any longer, and he'd cut off her money supply."
"But you didn't catch Dakota," I prompted, remembering the floral sheets in the judge's homemade porn.
Her mouth drew into a tight line, her eyes darkening. Here was the emotion I'd been expecting earlier. Betrayal, hurt, and pure anger.
"No. I caught him using Dakota's apartment as his personal love nest. How dare he betray me! How dare he humiliate me like that. It was one thing to suspect what he was really doing all of those late nights he spent on 'committees,'" she said, doing air-quotes with her fingers. Which, incidentally took the gun off of me for a second. I paused, feeling a chance for escape in my future. The more she talked about her late cheating husband, the less she focused on her current captive.
"But it was another thing entirely," she went on, "to watch it myself."
"You must have been so angry," I said.
"Damned right I was angry!" she shouted, bubbles of spittle forming at the corners of her mouth, making her resemble a rabid dog.
"So you had to do something."
"Exactly. I couldn't let him get away with that. Not with rubbing it in my face like that."
"Why not just divorce him?" I asked. "You had solid evidence."
She laughed, her eyes blazing. "I was humiliated enough. I was not going to give him the satisfaction of publicly humiliating me again by raking my name through his sleazy affairs. Playing out a public divorce in the press was out of the question."
"So you decided to kill him."
She didn't answer, her eyes just looking past me, into some moment I couldn't see. Possibly the one where she'd shot the life out of her husband.
I took a small step to the left, my eye on the open door. But the movement snapped Veronica back to reality, the gun going straighter in her hand.
"And that's where I came in," I said, trying to steer back to friendly conversation as I eyed her trigger finger. It was scary tense.
She nodded. "Yes. I needed to make sure I had a perfect scapegoat."
"But why me?"
"You make a living off of adulterers like my husband," she said, very matter-of-factly. "I found that ironically satisfying."
I didn't point out that I made my living catching cheating men to benefit women like her.
"So you hired Donna to impersonate you? Why go through the trouble?" But even as I asked the question, I knew the answer. Deniability.
"While she was at your office, I was at a luncheon for the Rose Society committee. In case she botched it, I’d have no idea why that fool was impersonating me."
How clever.
"How did you convince her?" I asked, moving to the left just another inch.
"It wasn't hard," she bragged. "I found the letters she'd written to my husband, urging him to overturn his ruling in her husband's case, at first. Later they blamed him for the man's death. She hated my husband as much as I did, and I'd dare say she loved money almost as much. She was happy to play a role for me without asking too many questions."
"So, you had her hire me, giving yourself an alibi and planting evidence against me."
Those yellow teeth made an appearance again as a smile stretched across her wrinkled cheeks. "You have to admit, it was rather clever of me. I had Donna wear oiled gloves during your first meeting, remember? When you shook her hand, your fingerprints were transferred onto them. Then it was a simple job of applying them to the murder weapon. Coupled with the surveillance video, it was a perfect setup."
I had to agree; it was ideal.
"So why kill Donna?" I asked,
She gave me a hard look. "You think years of being a criminal court justice's wife has taught me nothing? I had to tie up lose ends."
"So you stole your niece's pills?"
"Stole? She lied to us to pay for those. She stole that money from me."
An interesting take on it, but I let it go.
"You thought of everything," I said, throwing a compliment her way instead.
She nodded. "Yes. I did." Then a frown creased her forehead. "But you had to get in the way. You couldn’t just play along like the little puppet you were. No. First, you find Donna, then you finally get arrested and do what? Escape." She threw the word out with disgust.
"Guess I’m not so blonde now after all, huh?" I couldn't help pointing out.
Which, in hindsight might not have been the smartest move.
Her eyes narrowed. "Oh, we’ll see about that,"
she promised, taking a step closer to me, closing any distance I'd put between us, gun pointed right at her target.
The gun still remained steady. I’d no doubt that if she killed her husband and an innocent actress in cold blood, shooting me would be easy.
My throat felt like I drank a cup of sand. I swallowed hard, but it didn't do much good.
"How will you explain my body?" I asked, almost choking on the word "body" as a self-reference.
She grinned. "Actually, this is the best of all plans, and it fell right into my lap. You lied your way into my home, which several witnesses saw. You were snooping around my late husband's personal belongings, likely looking for the sex video he made with you."
"He never made a-" I started, then realized it didn't matter. Who were the police going to believe? The grieving widow who did, indeed, have a sex video of her husband and another woman, or my prone corpse?
"I walked in and caught you, you attacked me, and I shot you in self-defense."
Damn. She was right. That story was great.
"Now, let's take a walk back to my husband's den where this tragic accident all takes place," she suggested.
As much as I was yearning to walk through that door behind her, I knew if I did it with her, I was a dead woman. I was out of time, out of options, and acting on pure instinct.
"No," I protested.
Veronica paused, her eyebrows drawing together in a frown again. "Excuse me, but you're not in a position to argue."
"You’re overlooking something," I told her, feeling adrenalin surge in my belly.
She raised the gun to eye level. "What’s that?"
I stepped to the left then the right, in jerking movements. "You’re directly in the light."
I lifted my arm and chucked the shoe in my hand, pulling a muscle in my shoulder from the force.
It spun through the air, creating a whoosh sound. The heel whacked her in the forehead then clanked on the floor.
She yelped. One hand flew to her face.
And I took off.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
_____
I charged past Veronica and ran through the door. Darkness surrounded me, and I realized I was now in the section of the basement I waited in this afternoon. I’d never seen the door to a separate room.
My ankle hit the stairs, and I fell to my hands and knees. I scrambled to my feet and scampered to the top landing. Veronica’s footsteps were heavy behind me. Her breathing was fast and uneven. Bet she regretted those cigarettes now.
I hit the main hallway and spied the front door. I could run for it, but I knew there was precious little to hide behind outside. And with Veronica hot on my tail, I was no match for the speed of her bullets. Even in the dark, I didn't want to take my chances that her aim was that bad.
Instead, I lunged for the alarm system beside the door. I hit the emergency button, praying someone on the other end would summon the police. Then I ran upstairs, taking two steps at a time, in search of a hiding place to wait out their arrival.
Panic soared as I heard Veronica hit the hallway behind me. I climbed higher in a lopsided stride with one shoe off, one on. I ran past bedroom after bedroom, choosing the master at the end of the hallway. It was located in the back right corner of the house, and I sighed in relief as I stepped inside. There were plenty of places to hide. The shower, under the four-poster bed, the walk-in closets.
I noticed the balcony and opened the French doors. There was only two feet of space, and no way down. Below lay the pool. A long ways down.
Leaving the doors ajar, I turned to the bathroom. I searched the cabinets for a weapon but found nothing more toxic than hemorrhoid cream and hot rollers.
I pulled my arms out of Maya's jacket, hot and suffocating in my escape, and tossed it aside. It hit the floor with a tinny, metallic sound.
I grabbed it and rifled through the pockets. The pairing knife I'd picked up earlier. I said a silent thank you to the gods of thorough snooping.
The bedroom door opened. Veronica wheezed in the doorway, a shrill whistling sound. She clearly wasn’t used to running after people.
I slipped behind the bathroom door, knife clutched in hand. The closet doors opened, hangers rattled. She went onto the balcony then hesitated outside the bathroom before the door squeaked open another inch.
I flattened myself against the wall, feeling the knife shake in my hand. I glanced through the space between the hinges, terrified I'd see her beady eyes staring back.
I saw Veronica’s arm extend, her hand peek around the doorframe, gun pointed ahead of her. One more step and she'd be inside, staring me down.
I reacted on instinct, brought up the knife and slashed the back of her hand.
Blood oozed from the cut. Drops splattered on the floor, and the gun fell. A half-yell-half-groan came from deep within her chest, and she quickly drew her arm back.
I kicked the gun before she could reach down for it, then pushed on the door, hoping to knock her out of the way and give myself a moment to grab the better weapon.
She must’ve regained her footing fast, though, because she pushed back. For an older woman, she was stronger than I thought.
The door slammed me into the wall. The knife fell from my hand and clanked to the floor.
I wiggled onto my hands and knees, aiming for the gun. But before I could grab it, Veronica rammed into me. I skidded across the travertine tile and slammed into a claw foot tub.
She moved fast, too fast, and slipped, grabbing onto the edge of the sink. That calm, reassured presence she'd had in the basement was gone. Her pupils were dilated, her complexion splotchy. She bent toward the gun.
I sprang up and ran to it.
We both arrived at the same time, but her fingers wrapped around the pearl-covered handle first.
No, I screamed in my head.
I wouldn’t say my life passed before my eyes as I watched her raise the gun to meet me. No images of Mom, Derek, my girls or even Danny. Instead, I thought of Donna. Her lifeless expression. The way Veronica had used her then cast her aside when she was no longer needed.
This lunatic didn’t care that Donna had a life, was grieving for a man she loved. How could she when she thought so little of her own husband’s life? Yes, he cheated. So have plenty of other men. You get divorced, take the bastard for everything he owns. You didn’t elaborately plan his murder.
And there was no way I was going to let her get away with that.
Without thinking, I reacted. I grabbed Veronica’s wrist with both my hands, pushing the gun away from me. She struggled back, the both of us pulling and pushing, trying to get the other to let go. Our arms ended above our heads, the gun pointed at the ceiling. Unfortunately she was only an inch shorter than me, so neither of us had the upper hand.
But I had one additional weapon she did not.
I lifted my one still-shoed foot and slammed the heel onto her slipper.
She screamed, her fingers slipping.
I yanked the gun free and stepped back. My chest heaved with uneven breaths as I pointed the barrel at her.
But like a frickin’ bull, she charged toward me.
I raised the gun, pretended she was a paper target, and pulled the trigger.
The shot rang out. Deafening.
Veronica’s eyes widened. She clutched her lower abdomen as bright red blood seeped through her fingers.
My stomach retched, as I blinked in disbelief that almost matched hers. I hadn't aimed to kill. I hadn't aimed at all, just fired out of pure instinct and self preservation.
She staggered, the back of her knees hitting the edge of the tub. Her feet slipped out from beneath her, and she fell backward, landing in the tub.
The irony of how the end of her reign of terror resembled Donna’s demise didn’t escape me.
I rubbed my face with my free hand, stunned, somehow unable to move. I'm not sure how long I stood like that, in a state of semi-shock. I vaguely registered sirens in the distance, the f
ront door opening, and feet pounding up the stairs.
"Jamie?" I heard as the footsteps approached the doorway.
I turned and found Aiden standing there, two uniformed cops beside him, guns drawn. But Aiden's features were soft, concerned, eyes roving my person for wounds.
"I'm sorry," I squeaked out. "But, this time I really did shoot someone, Aiden."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
_____
Two days later, I stood outside the Bond Agency, staring at the letters embossed on the door. I traced them with my finger, not ready to go inside and face what waited for me.
After an ambulance had taken Veronica away (who, incidentally was not dead, but definitely severely wounded), and the police had questioned me, I was taken to the hospital, where I spent the night due to my concussion. The next day I was released, and after a quick message to all that I was alive and fine, I turned off my phone, took a bubble bath until the bubbles were gone and water was cold, and snuggled in my bed. Where I'd stayed for the next twenty-four hours.
Now, however, it was back to work, back to making this business operate in the black, and back to restoring what little reputation we might have left.
I took a deep breath and pulled open the door.
"Surprise!"
Caleigh, Maya, Sam, Levine, and, most surprisingly of all, Danny raised cups of Starbucks coffee and cheered.
I blinked, taking in the scene. The lobby was decorated in red and white streamers and matching balloons, imprinted with the word "Congratulations". A round bakery cake with white frosting, yellow and green flowers, and a couple of candles sat beside a stack of paper plates on Maya's desk. Hung on the far wall, facing the front door, was a handmade sign. Written with a black Sharpie, it read: Congrats Super Boss.
Four smiling faces stared back at me, expecting a reaction. One face stared back at me with a sheepish, downcast look as if he'd been dragged here against his will. I chose to ignore Danny, and focused on my girls instead.
"Wow, this is... wow," I repeated myself, closing the door behind me.
Maya handed me a grande, nonfat Caramel Macchiato. "Here you go, boss. Your usual. We thought about buying champagne but figured you’d enjoy this more."
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