Seeing the flint in her eyes, and remembering how little she and Angela liked each other, he took that for nothing more than spite. "Go on."
"There's nothing else. After they left, I told Roger I was going to bed. I came down the next morning and found him on the floor in the living room, surrounded by broken glass and reeking of wine." She shook her head. "Unfortunately, he'd been opening a bottle of really nice white Burgundy he'd brought back from France last year. What a waste."
Wyatt leaned forward in his chair, dropping his elbows onto his knees. "Can you back up a little, to before the dinner? What had you noticed that week?"
"Roger had been gone a lot and his mood vacillated between foul and violent. He wasn't happy when I reminded him we had dinner plans. Considering he was the one who invited his obnoxious sister and her weak little husband over, I wasn't going to let him bow out."
"They were close?"
Judith merely stared.
Good God. "Even at that point?"
"She was absolutely insane for him and had been for years."
Wyatt suddenly had a suspicion, and while it didn't make things much better, it made them a little less degenerate. "Wait a minute, we're not talking about Angela and Ben-she told me they live in Richmond."
Judith's eyes flared in surprise and a soft, humorless laugh emerged from her mouth. "Oh, goodness, you thought I meant… Well, I wouldn't be surprised to learn some of the things that went on in the house they grew up in after their mother died. But I was referring to his stepsister, Cece. She and her husband live a few doors down from us."
"Philip's sister."
"Yes."
"The one Roger seduced when she was a teenager."
"Exactly."
"No offense, Dr. Underwood, but this is like an episode of some high-melodrama soap opera about the lives of the rich and shameless."
"Think I could sell the movie rights?"
He'd bet she'd like to do just that. Earn as much money as possible and get as far away from her in-laws as she could. Though he didn't know her well, he sensed Judith Underwood was desperate to wash the stench of Roger Underwood and his family off her forever.
Almost conversationally, he asked the question that had been most on his mind. "So did you kill him?"
The query didn't shock her; she merely shook her head and took another sip of her wine. "No, Agent Black-stone, I did not," she eventually replied. "I believed, and I still believe, that his own evil eventually broke him. How long can a corrupt heart keep beating?"
Too long, as far as Wyatt was concerned.
"Evil or not, I did cry a real tear or two at his funeral." A crocodile smile made a mockery of any tears she might have shed. "But that night, I went home, got good and drunk, danced naked around my living room in sheer joy, then had sex with my gardener."
Wyatt reached for the recorder, pocketed it, and stood. "Thank you for your time."
She stood as well. "I suppose I shouldn't have said that last part. Does this mean you're no longer interested in lunch?"
He extended a hand and answered truthfully. "If I weren't already involved with someone else"-and completely in love with her-"l suspect I might like to have lunch with you, Dr. Underwood."
She nodded her appreciation, shook his hand, then turned to lead him toward the door. Before he reached it, though, Wyatt stopped, glancing at the huge Underwood family portrait. "I'm curious. Which one is Cece?"
Judith stepped close, leaning toward the framed picture. Then she tapped one long, perfectly manicured nail on the glass frame, pointing toward a woman standing a few feet from Roger Underwood.
Wyatt stared. And stared. He couldn't move, just letting it all sink in, all the puzzle pieces move around, twist, turn, then come back together to form a picture in his mind.
"Even here you can see she's making goo-goo eyes at him, despite the fact that she's standing right beside her own husband, and I'm there on Roger's arm. I think the woman would have cut her own heart out of her body to save Roger's when his went bad."
His stepsister would have died for him. And yes, indeed, she was making goo-goo eyes in the photograph, wearing her emotions on her face so obviously anyone could see them.
She might be brilliant, but the woman with the severe hairstyle was not good at masking her own feelings. Not even behind those trendy silver eyeglasses.
"Good-bye, Doctor, and thank you again," he said as he turned and opened the door, now knowing exactly where he was headed.
Wyatt no longer had any interest in going down the hall to try to talk to Dr. Angela Kean. He wanted to pay a visit to Cece-the woman who had gotten Jesse Boyd out of jail to draw Lily out of hiding. The woman whose job made her the perfect person for Roger Underwood to call for help in a legal emergency. The woman who was madly in love with her stepbrother, would die for him. Might even kill for him. Claire Vincent.
Chapter 17
Lily refused to run.
Jackie had pushed and prodded, ordered, and tried to strong-arm her into at least hiding, but in the end, she had been the one to walk over to the front door and answer it after Anspaugh had nearly pounded it down. The look of shock on the man's face when he saw and recognized her would live in Lily's memory for a long time. But probably not as long as the flash of sheer furious hunger she'd seen there before he could disguise it.
Anspaugh had always desired her. Now, though, his desire had been overshadowed by anger. Wyatt hadn't been exaggerating. Anspaugh didn't just resent her for ruining his career. He hated her. Probably because he'd once so wanted her and she'd chosen to fake her own death and let him swing in the wind.
Never mind the fact that his ineptitude was what had caused her to nearly die in the first place.
"You can't just take her," Jackie snapped, not for the first time, as Anspaugh insisted Lily accompany him to headquarters. "If you're going to arrest her, do it, and I'll have a lawyer waiting for you by the time you arrive downtown."
Hearing the anger in Jackie's voice, Lily reached over and touched her friend's arm. "It's all right. We knew this would happen, and it needs to. I've got to clear my name. I'm innocent and I want to get that established so I can move on and make sure Jesse gets put back in jail where he belongs."
Anspaugh sneered. "Yeah, right, save it for the judge."
Maintaining her dignity, Lily eyed him without flinching. "I need to go upstairs and change," she said, gesturing toward her shorts and bare feet.
"Fine, let's go," he said, grabbing her arm.
"Whoa, whoa, big boy," said Jackie. "I'll escort her up and keep an eye on her."
"Whadda you take me for? You're her damn accomplice."
"I'm an FBI agent with more than a dozen years on the job," Jackie snarled. "I was in the field while you were still trying to pass high school algebra for the third time, boy^ and don't you forget it."
Anspaugh signaled to another agent, one of the three men who had accompanied him. All were loyal Anspaugh flunkies, from what Lily remembered. "Keep Agent Stokes here. As of now, she's a suspect in aiding and abetting a criminal."
"What the hell?" Jackie jerked away as the other agent grabbed her arm. "You touch me again, you're gonna be pulling back a stump."
"Jackie, don't," Lily insisted, sensing the situation was getting ugly. This wasn't professional, wasn't courteous.
Anspaugh was out for blood. Hers. He didn't seem to be thinking clearly and she couldn't be entirely sure he wouldn't do something crazy if he sensed they weren't cooperating. "It's fine. I'll go downtown, clear this up. It'll be fine."
"Yeah, you might want to worry a little less about her and a little more about yourself," Anspaugh told Jackie. "In case you haven't realized it, you're an accessory after the fact, just like your buddy Blackstone." He smiled in utter malice. "Where is he, by the way? I really can't wait to put the cuffs on him and take him in."
"He's not here," Lily said, hanging on to her temper by its very thin edge. "And I can dress myself." She tried to
brush past him to head for the stairs.
He wouldn't let her, grabbing her upper arm and squeezing tight, then pushing her forward. "Let's go."
Keep your cool, keep your cool, an inner voice reminded her. It sounded a lot like the sarge's. Not that she was thinking along those lines, doing anything physical. She couldn't deny, however, that the idea she might be put in a position of having to defend herself had crossed her mind. Anspaugh's mood was strange, his voice thick with barely suppressed anger. And again, she suspected it had more to do with the fact that she'd once rejected him than anything else.
Or maybe the fact that she'd rejected him, and then turned to Wyatt Blackstone to be her savior. And her lover.
He crowded her as they walked up the steps, breathing his hot, heavy breaths on her neck, squeezing her arm hard enough to leave bruises. At the top of the stairs, she pointed toward the guest room. "My things are in here."
He escorted her in. Lily turned, waiting for him to leave, but he merely crossed his arms and smirked, shutting the door behind him.
She didn't get truly worried until he twisted the lock.
Lily hid her concern. If he thought she was the same timid girl he'd known, the man was sorely mistaken. Lifting her chin, not about to let him shame her, she peeled off her lightweight cotton shirt, and unzipped the shorts, pushing them off her hips. She still wore a plain white bra, and modest cotton underwear, but he reacted as though she'd stripped down to nothing. His bloodshot eyes devoured her and his mouth parted as he licked his thick lips.
Scumbag.
"You know, of course, that this is all going to go away. Proving my innocence is going to be incredibly simple once the entire Cyber Division gets involved. They'll take the computer equipment I used, confirm I was nowhere near where the unsub's messages originated from, and finally get to work looking for a real suspect." She reached for her jeans and stepped into them, knowing he was trying to peek down the top of her bra.
"Oh, yeah? Then why haven't you just come in? Why'd you have to fake your death, make everybody think something happened to you?"
Anger sparked. She dropped the jeans again, turning to show him the vicious scar on her upper thigh. "Want to hear how many surgeries it took to repair the muscles in my leg? How long it took me to walk again?" Then she yanked her hair back to display her ear. "How about this? Want to talk about how lucky I am that I didn't lose my hearing? How about the week I spent being tortured by the psychopath you said you had under control in that house?"
His face paled. For the first time since he'd arrived, he began to look uncertain.
Lily cursed herself for trying to explain a thing to the Neanderthal. She quickly pulled the jeans on, then grabbed a sweater from the top of the dresser and donned that as well. Shoving her feet into a pair of tennis shoes, she said, "I'm ready. Let's go do this. I'm sure they're going to be really interested to hear that you called an all clear on the site and told me and Kowalski to leave the van without ever even checking to see if the man you'd caught had an accomplice outside."
The man's face reddened again and he lurched toward her. "It wasn't my fault."
"I didn't say it was," she replied, "but you sure didn't help the situation."
"Goddamn it, Lil, I never wanted anything to happen to you!" He grabbed both her arms this time, squeezing, shaking a little. "Why wasn't it me? Why didn't you come to me for help afterward?"
He looked and sounded a little out of control. Lily realized Tom Anspaugh wasn't just angry; he was perhaps even a bit unbalanced, at the mercy of the emotions that had churned within him since that night.
She stepped carefully. "Take your hands off me, Anspaugh."
Funny. The thing that completely removed the last of the agent's self-control was her calling him by his last name. Spittle flew from his lips and his grip became punishing as he snarled, "It's Tom, you fucking high-toned bitch."
"Let me go, Agent, or I'll scream."
"Go ahead. You think my men are gonna help you?"
"Jackie-"
"Is in custody." He stuck one hand in her short hair, twisting it around his thick fingers, twisting and pulling. "You break my heart, you ruin my life, you oughta at least have the courtesy to call me by my first name. Just once. Or is it not good enough to come out of your perfect little mouth?"
While he'd been growing angrier, she'd pulled her anger in. Let it simmer. Let it build. Used it, just like Sarge had taught her.
Anspaugh pushed her toward the bed until her legs were backed against it. Her knees threatened to bend, putting her on her ass with him above her. It would be no more than a few steps beyond that for him to rip her jeans off, spread her legs, and rape her.
"I bet you say 'Wyatt' easily enough, don't you? You been saying it in his ear when he's screwing you? Managing to whisper it even when your mouth's full of his cock?"
He made his move. Pushed harder, trying to force her to sit. Lily had been prepared for it and when he reached down, trying to grab her crotch, she encircled his wrist in one hand and smashed his elbow in the wrong direction with the other.
He grunted.
Lily was no longer thinking, no longer coherent; she merely reacted. Having the upper hand, she punched him in the solar plexus, then kneed him hard in the groin. When he staggered back, she spun to the right and kicked up and high with her left leg, and the agent went flying. As he hit the wall and began to slide down it, Lily was conscious of two things: the voices of people calling up from downstairs, and the look of murderous rage in Tom Anspaugh's eyes.
If he got up again before someone came through that door, he would hurt her, badly, then make up any excuse he cared to. If he didn't, and one of his goons burst in and saw him on the floor, they'd take her out, anyway.
"One option," she muttered.
She didn't give it a second thought. Grabbing the purse she had thankfully left on the dresser, which contained a fake ID and plenty of cash, she darted to the window, jumped out, crashed to the lawn one story below, and ran for her life.
"Ms. Vincent? I gotta talk to you!"
The lawyer, who'd apparently lost Jesse's number after she'd gotten him out of jail the other day, sounded really mad to be interrupted from whatever Saturday morning stuff she was doing, probably in her perfect house with her perfect family. "What is it?"
"I need to get in touch with the person who hired you!" Still unable to believe what he'd just witnessed from the front window, he added, "Right this minute."
"Why? What's happening?"
He didn't know that he could trust her. But she was his lawyer, right? Lawyer-client privilege and all that shit?
There was no time to hesitate. "It's Lily Fletcher. She's alive and she just got away from the FBI. I saw the whole thing-she jumped out a window and took off down the street."
"Damn it," the woman snapped, sounding angry. Which was when the truth sank in.
Nobody else had hired Claire Vincent. She'd hired herself. "It's you?"
"Where did she go?"
"She ran a few blocks, then jumped into a cab."
"Tell me you followed."
Incredibly pleased with himself, Jesse said, "Damn straight I did. I'm in a cab not far behind her. Bitch better not go far, though. I don't want to waste my money paying no big fare."
"I'll pay all your expenses," the lawyer said, sounding hard, bitter, and desperate.
Whatever Fletcher had done to Jesse, she seemed to have done more of it to Ms. Vincent.
He suddenly understood. "Jeez, she's after you, too, right? For defending me, getting me off?"
The lawyer hesitated a second, then finally said, "Yes, Jesse. I'm afraid both our lives are in danger. You must stick close to her."
He leaned down in the backseat, craning to peer through the front windshield at the vehicle a couple of car lengths ahead of them. His driver was some foreign dude who hadn't asked why he was being asked to follow another cab, not once he'd seen the wad of bills Jesse had flashed at him.
>
"We're on the GW Parkway. Looks like she might be headed for Reagan Airport."
"You follow her, tell me exactly where she goes, and I'll see to it that you are paid back for any expenses. If you have to hop on a plane, call me right back and I'll pay for the ticket."
"Well, I dunno…"
"I do know. This has to be done." She hesitated, then said, "Look, I'm in the city myself. If it looks like she's definitely going to Reagan, you call me and I'll come out there. You need to see which flight she gets on."
"What are we gonna do, follow her?"
"If we have to. We can't be on the same flight, so just watch where she's going, and if we have to, we'll go over to Dulles or BWI to get the first one after that."
"This is getting a little crazy…"
"Crazier than waiting around for her to come after us both and kill us? Listen, Jesse, it's kill or be killed now. We're in this together."
"I ain't goin' back to prison."
"I promise you, if you help me take care of her, so we're both safe, you will never have to worry about money for the rest of your days."
He didn't know much about lawyers, about how much money they made. But he suspected it was a lot. Enough to get him far away from this stinking state, anyway. Far from his mother's angry, disgusted eyes. Far enough to start a whole new life.
"Okay, Ms. Vincent, you got a deal."
She was headed for the beach house. Wyatt had no doubt of that. Lily was being hunted, tracked, and in her mind, there was only one safe place in the entire world-the place of Wyatt's darkest nightmares, the place where he'd taken her to recover from her darkest nightmare.
The fact that the Jeep was missing from the long-term parking lot at the Portland airport confirmed it.
"Damn it," he said as he drove his rental car toward the Maine coast. "It's not safe."
Crandall knew Wyatt had been traveling to Maine recently. It wouldn't take long for the deputy director's goon squad to find out Wyatt owned property there. They'd be on her doorstep before Lily managed to gain one moment of peace.
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