Hideaway

by Roberts, Nora

  She had to see it through. No matter how frightening it all seemed now, she would see it through. Closing her eyes, she thought of Grant.

  The image of the love, the pride, the gratitude she’d see on his face when she told him steadied and strengthened her.

  She was someone to write books about now, she reminded herself. And it was time for the next chapter.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Inside the trunk, Jessica switched off the light as she felt the car turn, stop at the first gate, then start to climb. She breathed carefully as it slowed, again, and saw the second gate in her mind.

  Nine o’clock. She’d chosen Lynn Arlow’s half day purposefully. It gave her four hours to make her way to the cottage, to kill Caitlyn Sullivan, to set the stage. Then she’d make her way back to the car, slip inside the trunk.

  By the time anyone found the body, she’d be back in Monterey. Maybe even on her way back to San Francisco. On her way back to Grant.

  Plenty of time. More than enough time.

  When she finally felt the car stop, when she heard the engine cut off, the driver’s door slam, she waited.

  One full minute, then one more.

  Now, she told herself. Do it now.

  She gripped the interior release, pulled. Relief sweat drenched her face when she heard the soft pop of the trunk. Slowly, carefully, she eased the lid of the trunk up an inch. She heard the sounds—lawn mower? Weed whacker? The groundskeepers.

  She just had to avoid them.

  She eased the trunk up another inch, saw the back of a building. A garage, she decided after several sweaty minutes. She strained her ears for the sound of voices or footsteps, but heard nothing other than the distant sound of someone cutting grass.

  Holding her breath, she scrambled out of the trunk, carefully eased the lid down before she crouched beside the car.

  Between Arlow’s car and another. Staff parking, she realized. And there was the groundskeepers’ truck. There was the garage, the big tree.

  Of course, of course, the staff parked in the back.

  Staying low, she crossed a stretch of lawn not yet mown. She’d practiced moving fast and low in her apartment, but there were so many windows in the house, so much glass.

  Her heart thudded as she dashed to a tree, green and leafy with summer, to shrubs wildly blooming. She’d studied every photo of the house she’d found on the internet. An architectural feat, they called it, with all its levels and layers, its famed bridge, its commanding views.

  But it looked so much bigger in real life, sprawled in so many directions, and with all those sheer glass eyes. She didn’t dare cross any of the patios or terraces.

  It occurred to her she should’ve dressed like staff instead of in cat burglar black.

  Work pants, a T-shirt, a cap so she’d look like one of the groundskeepers if anyone glanced outside.

  Spotting the worker on the lawn mower, another with an edger, she dropped, heart thumping, thumping, onto a bricked path behind a rise of lilies. Overhead she heard a door open. Someone came out singing.

  Lynn Arlow. If she looked down, she would see. But she didn’t look down, only watered the pots of flowers and greenery on the terrace, singing all the while. Then went back inside.

  Jessica took it as a sign, and ran.

  She saw the bridge, but no one on it. The lawn mower engine became just an echo as she ran full out for the cover of the orchard.

  Oranges and lemons and limes, bold colors, strong scents. Among them, she dropped to her knees to catch her breath. She checked her watch. It had taken her fully twenty minutes to get this far.

  She had to be faster; she had to be braver.

  Moving through the trees, she oriented herself. The hills rose to her left, the sea spread to her right. The cottage sat to the right and below. But before the cottage, the pool, more open ground.

  She heard voices again, had to slow, move carefully.

  Through the trees, she saw the pool below, the sunlight on its water. And the people sitting at a table, under a bright red umbrella.

  The Sullivans. The old man, the father, the grandmother. And Cate. All of them, in their fluffy white robes, having breakfast, smiling, laughing while her Grant suffered in prison.

  Maybe they should all die, she considered. Maybe they were all just as guilty as Charlotte Dupont. She couldn’t get past them. No, one of them would surely see her if she moved out of the trees, started down toward the cottage.

  Why should they sit there, enjoying the morning together with their coffee and omelets and fresh fruit when Grant had to endure the slop disguised as breakfast in San Quentin?

  She imagined shooting them all where they sat, and found it didn’t turn her stomach. Not at all. In fact, she found the idea, the images of it, immensely satisfying.

  But it wouldn’t help Grant.

  She sat under the lemons and oranges and limes to wait.

  “Two o’clock.” Lily wagged her fork at Cate. “That gives you plenty of time to work before you indulge me.”

  “Who’s indulging who?” Cate countered. “You’re the one who commissioned wedding dress designs.”

  “And who can’t wait to look at them with you. You’ve given me a good idea of what you want, but if nothing else, the sketches will give you a springboard for the most important wardrobe of your life.”

  Lily glanced at both men. “The two of you are excused.”

  “Good.” Hugh lifted the coffeepot, and at Lily’s warning eye, limited it to half a cup. “I have a script I want you to read, Aidan.”

  Cate put a hand to her ear. “Is that the sound of retirement shattering again?”

  “Could be. Man doesn’t live on water aerobics alone. Thank God.”

  He started to offer Cate more coffee, but she shook her head. “No more for me. I’ve got a couple of commercials to do this morning, and a video game character to study before I get to play with wedding dress designs.”

  “What do you say to dinner on the terrace tonight?”

  She smiled at Hugh as she rose. “I say I’m in, and I’ll let Dillon know.” Circling around, she hugged Aidan from behind. “After all, I only have a couple more days before my dad’s off and running again.”

  “Not far. And not for long.”

  “Two o’clock,” Lily reminded her.

  Holding up two fingers, Cate started toward her cottage.

  “It’s good to see our girl happy.” Leaning back, Hugh sighed. “Through and through happy.”

  “It is.” Aidan looked after her. “I’ll be happier when this investigation’s over. I’ve stretched things so I could stay a little longer. I can stretch them again.”

  “One minute I convince myself Conrad Buster’s death has nothing to do with Cate, with us.” Hugh pushed his coffee aside. “The next I’m convinced it has everything to do with her.”

  “She’s a smart, sensible woman.” Lily laid a hand over Hugh’s. “We’re smart, sensible people. We’ll do what we always do, and look after each other.”

  “Spoiling the mood.” Aidan pushed the coffee back toward his father. “It should be about wedding talk and scripts. Just what’s this one about?”

  Willing, Hugh picked up his coffee again. “Well, I’ll tell you.”

  They lingered another half an hour before strolling back to the house.

  Then nothing and no one stood between Jessica and the cottage. Excitement built as she covered the ground—but she covered it carefully. She had to avoid the sea-facing side and that impressive glass wall. So straight in the front door. Unless someone looked out from high in the main house, in just the right direction, at just the right moment, she was home free.

  After one glance back, she walked to the front door. She took out the gun, turned the knob.

  Nice she left it unlocked, Jessica thought. But why not? Secure estate, security cameras, staff all over. She took one big breath, leaped in.

  Despite knowing about it, the sight of the Pacific rollin
g through that wall stunned her. Ordering her pulse to level—and being ignored—she crossed the empty living room, the open kitchen, trying to move with her gun the way they did in movies.

  Competently, but carefully, sweeping from side to side.

  She glanced at the stairs, but heard nothing. Absolutely nothing but the sound of the sea.

  She saw the door, closed, with a sign on it that read: RECORDING IN PROGRESS

  Angling toward it, she kept an eye on the stairs, just in case. Unlike the front door, this one was locked. Frustrated, Jessica stepped back, considered shooting the lock—they did that in the movies, too.

  But she wasn’t sure if it would work, and if it didn’t, it might give Cate time to call for help.

  Trembling a little, she checked the time. She’d eaten up more than an hour, might need that much time to get back to the car. That meant she still had plenty of time to do what she’d come to do.

  Once again she waited, and as she waited scanned the cottage to decide just how to set Caitlyn Sullivan’s final scene.

  Cate completed two thirty-second spots. Edited them.

  A productive hour, she thought as she sent them. She intended to have fun with the video game work and thought she had the character voice nailed down. But she wanted one more read-through, one more rehearsal. She decided half a Coke would set her right up, give her a little pump before the read-through.

  And unlocked her studio door.

  She didn’t see the woman or the gun until she’d taken two full steps out.

  “Stop right there.”

  Instinct had Cate throwing up her hands.

  “I want you to walk right to the center of the room. Slow.”

  Two steps back, she thought. Could she make it? Then what? She didn’t have a phone inside the studio. Out the window? Maybe, maybe.

  “I can shoot you where you stand. I’d rather not.”

  The voice shook, but Cate couldn’t tell, not yet, if it was nerves or excitement.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Grant Sparks’s fiancée, and I’m here to pay back the woman who ruined his life.”

  Nerves, Cate decided. And some pride. “That wouldn’t be me, since I was ten when they kidnapped me.”

  “Not you. You’re the same as you were then. Useful. I’m going to kill you, and Charlotte Dupont’s going to get the blame. She’ll finally pay. Now walk over here.”

  “You want Charlotte to pay?” Cate smiled. A Sullivan knew how to sell dialogue, even on the fly. “Me, too. The bitch had me kidnapped, her own daughter! She’s used me all my life. How the hell is killing me making her pay? She doesn’t care about me and never has.”

  “They’ll think she did it.”

  “Really?” Defiantly, Cate rolled her eyes. “They’re going to think Charlotte Dupont figured out how to get through the security, came in here, and shot me? Why the hell would they think that? If you do this, they’ll just look at Sparks again.”

  “No, they won’t.”

  “Of course they will. She’s got the best lawyers money can buy. She’s spent years crying about how she wants to be my mommy again. And you want to give her an excuse to wail over her dead daughter? Sparks will take the fall.”

  “He won’t!”

  But Cate heard the doubt this time.

  Take the spoon, she thought, and pry the nails out of the window locks. Take the steps.

  “When you’re dead I’m going to write her name on the floor with your blood.”

  “Please, that’s just pitiful, and it’ll never work. You know what will? A live witness.” She wiggled a finger at her own head. “Telling the police some man broke in here, tried to kill me, and told me Charlotte hired him. Me, the poor, innocent daughter of the manipulative bitch. God, why didn’t I ever think of this before? We can ruin her. Finally.”

  “You need to walk over here!”

  “You need to listen to me.” Risky, yes risky to put that much authority and anger in her tone, but she needed to dominate to survive.

  Make a rope out of the sheets.

  “You need me alive if you want this to work. Oh, put the gun down. A pro wouldn’t shoot me.” Cate waved a hand at the gun. “Somebody could hear. I may need you to hit me, leave some bruises. Or . . . How could we make it look like an accident? I mean that the hired killer tried to make it look like one? That’s the way she’d want it. But I get away, and he has to run off, and he’s told me she hired him.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Why?” Fury erupted on Cate’s face.

  Climb down, climb down. Get out of that locked room.

  “I was ten. And what did she do when she got out, after spending less time in prison than I’d been alive when she had me drugged and locked in a room? She used me again, and again and again. She terrorized me so I had to give up my career. Does she pay? No, never. Instead she marries one of the richest men . . .”

  It wasn’t easy to put admiration on her face when her heart raced. “Was that you? Holy shit, did you poison her meal ticket to try to pin it on her?”

  “It should’ve worked!”

  “Oh yeah, but she always slips through. Fucking snake. It took guts to do that. You must really love him.”

  “I’d do anything for Grant. He’s the only one who’s ever loved me. The only one who’s ever seen me.”

  “I know how that feels. She used him just like she used me. He must be disappointed killing Buster didn’t blow back on her.”

  “He is, but he’s so brave.”

  “Did he tell you to come here and shoot me?”

  “I’m doing it for him. He doesn’t know. I can’t stand seeing him so tired and worn out. We were so sure she’d pay. But none of it’s gone right.”

  Time to run for the woods.

  “Because there was no one alive to pin it on her. They’d believe me. Why wouldn’t they? They’d believe me, and she’d finally get what she deserves. Now stop pointing that gun at me so we can think this through, work it out. I want a drink. Do you want a drink?”

  Jessica lowered the gun. “I could just wound you.”

  “I’ll take a punch, but I’d rather not get shot.”

  Keep running, keep running until you see the light.

  “Let me just . . .”

  Through the glass she saw the dogs, and Dillon with a market bag. Her pounding heart simply stopped.

  “Wait! I’ve got it.” Quickly, deliberately, she moved to the right so Jessica turned her back to the glass wall. “Simple, that’s best. Simple, straightforward. I don’t have to know how he got in or out. I’m hysterical. Say he tried to push me down the stairs, so it would look like I fell. He’s wearing a mask so I don’t see his face.”

  She couldn’t run now, because the light was coming to her. So she had to take the wheel, make the turn.

  “Oh, a clown mask, like that bastard Denby wore. You know, I think he worked with my mother to set Sparks up.”

  “He did!” Tears of gratitude sprang to Jessica’s eyes. “Grant told me everything. He made a terrible mistake, but—”

  “Yes, he did,” Cate said as the door opened.

  She lunged forward as the dogs ran in, as Jessica swung toward the noise, the movement.

  Frantic, she grabbed Jessica’s gun hand, yanked it up. The gun fired at the ceiling as Jessica struck out.

  She took a punch after all, but kept both hands locked around Jessica’s wrist.

  Her hands, the wrist, both so slippery. She thought of falling, falling, falling, and gripped tighter.

  Let out a scream, one of her best bloodcurdlings.

  Then a hand, hard, strong, closed over hers, wrenched the gun away.

  She went down in a heap, Jessica on top of her, wailing, flailing, then screaming as the dogs growled and snapped. Snarling herself, Cate tried a punch of her own, felt her knuckles sing as it connected.

  She sucked in air, let it out in a stream of curses in every language she knew. Reared back t
o punch again, but hit air as Dillon dragged Jessica to her feet.

  He shoved her into a chair. “Sit where I put you. Guard,” he ordered the dogs, who sat growling while Jessica wept.

  “Are you hurt, Cate?”

  “No. No.”

  “You need to call Michaela now,” he told her without taking his eyes off Jessica. “Can you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s not fair.” Jessica wept into her hands. “She has to pay.”

  “She doesn’t mean me,” Cate said as she picked up her phone off the counter. “She means my mother.”

  “I don’t care who she means. Lady, you put a mark on my woman’s face, and I broke about a dozen eggs dropping that bag. I’ve never hit a woman in my life, but if you don’t shut up, you’re going to be the first.”

  Ignoring him, she raged at Cate. “I should’ve shot you! I should never have listened to you! You’re a liar.”

  “No.” The smile Cate sent her was fierce. “I’m an actor.”

  Instead of looking at wedding dress designs that afternoon, Cate sat with Dillon’s hand over hers in the gathering room of the house her great-grandparents had built.

  Her father paced. She wasn’t sure she could have kept still if Dillon hadn’t held her hand. Like an anchor right now, keeping her grounded.

  Julia and Maggie sat together on one of the small sofas. Hugh sat in Rosemary’s favorite chair, with Lily in the chair beside his.

  Consuela, eyes red from weeping, came in with a fresh ice bag. “You put this on your face now.”

  Cate obeyed. Just a bruise, she thought. Not even much of one. But she could still hear that single gunshot. She could still imagine how much worse it could’ve been.

  As if she’d had the same thought, Lily popped up. “I don’t care how early it is, I’m having a martini. Anybody else?”

  Maggie raised a hand.

  “I’ll mix them.” Hugh rose, went to the bar on the far side of the room. “You think you’ve made a safe space,” he said quietly. “You do everything you can to make a safe space.”

  Rising, Cate went to him. “She has to be crazy, Grandpa. And she got lucky to get as far as she did today. But I’m fine. Dillon’s fine. And Michaela’s got her in custody. Michaela and Red.”