“He was talking about trying out for football, not the school dance.”
“Yeah, well, any school participation would make him happy, and the last thing I want to do is make him happy.”
“This little feud between you and Jackson is going to end badly someday. You know that, right?”
“I do. But hopefully for him, not me.”
Billy smiled, snatching the Cheetos out of Durango’s hand. “Well, I think I will go to the school dance. I’m twelve years old. I deserve a night out!”
Durango laughed even as he punched Billy in the shoulder and stole the Cheetos back.
“Get out of my room, fool!”
* * *
Durango watched from an upstairs window as Jackson walked Billy out to the limo. He was dressed in a tux Jackson had bought from his own tailor, complete with dove tails. He looked like a penguin, but Durango had refrained from telling him so.
He went back to his room and settled behind his desk, flipping on the hobby light that shone on his half-finished F4U Corsair, but he didn’t really feel like working on it. He snapped the light back off and threw himself on his bed. Not a minute later, the door opened, and Jackson stuck his head inside.
“You sure you don’t want to go to the dance? I’m sure Billy would be more than happy to have the driver turn back to pick you up.”
“Positive.”
“Durango, you can’t spend your entire life avoiding things just because you don’t like the attention it brings you.”
Durango ignored him, but he thought about those words for a long time after Jackson gave up and left. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the attention. Durango was a typical twelve-year-old boy. He loved attention. What he didn’t like was playing into his father’s wants and needs. Why should he make Jackson proud of him when he didn’t even like him? It was Durango’s desire in life to make his father’s existence as miserable as possible. Going to a school dance, trying out for football, he’d be willing to give it all up if that made Jackson less than pleased.
He waited until Jackson left for whatever meeting or date he had and slipped downstairs, helping himself to a slice of the cherry pie the cook had left in the fridge. He was about to shove a huge bite into his mouth when the phone rang.
“Durango, thank God you answered!”
“Billy?”
“Is Jackson around?”
“He went out. You can probably call him on his car phone, though.”
“No! Jackson’s the last person I want to talk to.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
Durango listened, not sure what to think of what he was hearing. His first instinct was to call Lucia, his father’s assistant who was really just a glorified nanny to him and Billy. She would know what to do. But Billy insisted that he couldn’t do that.
“The car’s going to bring us to the house. You have to help me get her inside.”
“What does the driver think is happening?”
“He thinks we got into some booze at the dance.”
He was waiting outside when the limo pulled up again. It was dark, and he’d purposely turned off the outside security lights to keep it that way. He ran down to the passenger door and yanked it open, going pale when he saw Jody Simpson passed out in the back seat. Billy was already picking up her legs, gesturing for Durango to go for her arms. Frightened beyond words, he grabbed her wrists and lifted her, surprised at how light she was.
“Do you need help?” the chauffeur called.
“We’re good. You can go.”
The man watched until they were through the front door, then shrugged and drove away. Durango led them into the living room, carefully setting the limp girl on the couch.
“What happened?”
“I told you. She just passed out.”
“But what did you do?”
“She kissed me and I . . . I don’t know what happened! One minute she was fine, the next she was out cold.”
Durango stared at the girl. She was eleven, slightly younger than them, but in the same class. She was super smart, always blurting out answers in class. Her father was some sort of banker, one of those guys who told rich people what to do with all their money. He was pretty sure her father worked for Jackson sometimes because they seemed to know each other.
Not good.
She was wearing a pretty purple dress with a flared skirt. The top dipped down a little between what would one day be her breasts. Right now, they were just little mosquito bites, but for a boy like Durango, that was exciting, too. He knelt beside her, forcing his eyes away from those little lumps to her face. On the way up, he noticed a couple of red marks on her throat. He touched one with his finger.
“What’s this?”
“How should I know?” Billy asked.
Durango frowned because the one mark looked like a fingermark. Like someone had pressed too hard against her throat with his hands. He was about to point that out to Billy when she suddenly gasped and sat up.
“Where am I?”
“At my house.” Durango took her arms lightly in his. “You’re fine.”
She tilted her head slightly, looking quizzically at him. But then Billy moved and drew her attention to him. She suddenly screamed, jerking away from them both, backing toward the doors leading out to the back garden. She was gone in an instant, disappeared into the dark.
“What was that?”
Billy shrugged. “At least she’s okay.”
“But what happened?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t really care. I’m just glad she’s gone.”
Durango glanced at his brother. “But what if she tells her parents.”
“She wouldn’t do that because Jackson’s an important man. No one wants to get on his bad side.”
“But Billy—”
“Chill out, Durango. Haven’t you figured it out by now? We’re invincible.”
And he was right. Nothing ever came of it. In fact, Durango forgot all about it.
Until now.
Chapter 15
Los Angeles, California
Jackson Chamberlain’s Home
“Where are you from?”
Gracie dug her fork into the crunchy vegetables that made up the salad that had just been placed in front of her. “A small town in Indiana.”
“Your dad a farmer?”
There was no judgment in Jackson’s voice. It was just a question. She looked up at him, smiling slightly. “A pastor.”
“Yeah? What denomination?”
“Baptist.”
He nodded, his eyes moving slowly over her face. “And you were the girl who went to all the high school parties and dated every bad boy you could find, right?”
“A cliché straight out of some eighties movie.”
He chuckled. “Your parents must have done something right if you grew up to be an FBI agent.”
She rolled her shoulders. “They insisted I go to college, and I was on that campus, maybe a year, before they approached me. I scored high on my SATs, especially the math section. They said they needed computer analysts.”
“Is that what you did?”
“For a while. But one of my instructors at Quantico presented us with that coed’s murder in San Francisco, and I became obsessed.”
“They let you just take it over?”
“No. It took me several years to investigate, to come up with evidence that all the cases were connected. Even then they wouldn’t listen, not at first.”
“Is that why they didn’t take over in Chicago.”
“Partly. By the time I had them convinced, Durango had arrested a suspect. And then he was arrested, and everything snowballed.”
He nodded, stabbing his own fork into his salad. “They thought he was guilty.”
“They were convinced he was. And when he was acquitted, my boss told me point blank that he believed he would kill again. That’s why he allowed me to go in undercover.”
“Allowed?”
“It was my idea. But not to watch Durango. To watch the people around him.”
Jackson’s expression changed, subtly, but it changed. He was more guarded now, cautious. “You believe it’s someone close to him.”
“I do. But then nearly three years passed. My bosses were about to take me out of there—they were tired of waiting for nothing. They wanted to reassign me, put me back in the computer division. But then Kyle died.”
“Bad luck for Durango, but good for your investigation.”
Gracie shrugged, dropping her fork and pushing the food away. “I liked Kyle. I was sad to see it happen, but not incredibly surprised.”
“Why?”
“Because I think whoever’s doing this is trying to get Durango’s attention. Why else would he kill Sarah? Why else would he go after people close to Durango?”
“To set him up.”
“Or to draw him in.”
“You think the killer wants Durango’s attention?”
She nodded slowly as she studied Jackson’s face. “I think that was the whole reason for the murders in Chicago. Years passed between the last killing in Dallas and the killings in Chicago. That’s a long time for a serial killer to go without taking a victim.”
“Maybe he was locked up.”
“Maybe.” She studied his face, the hope she saw in the deep lines around his eyes. “And maybe he was out of the country. It’s difficult to find information from foreign police forces over computers. Some countries aren’t quite as advanced as others.”
Jackson pushed away his plate, too. He reached over and grabbed the bottle of wine Randall had left there. He poured them both a healthy slug, downing his before it could even settle in the glass.
“You trust the people you work with. Durango says you’ve worked with the same crew for years.”
“I have. Some come and go, and there’s always the interns and union guys who only stick around for one or two projects. But the core group, yeah, I trust them.”
“If you had to guess who was doing this, who would have such an interest in your son, who would you say?”
He shook his head. “None of my people are capable of this thing.”
“Someone must be.”
His eyes had been cast down, on the table. But he looked up at her then, his eyes moving slowly over her face. “You said there were no killings between Dallas and Chicago?”
“None that I could find.”
He nodded, pouring himself more wine before gulping half the glass down. “I’m a fucking shitty father.”
Gracie tilted her head slightly, waiting for him to continue.
“In four years—nearly five—I had five wives. He ever tell you that?”
“He might have mentioned it.”
Jackson studied her face again. “He likes you. I can see it when he looks at you.”
Gracie blushed, trying to hide the heat behind her own wine glass as she took a sip. He continued to watch her for a long moment, but then his eyes fell back down to the table.
“After his mother died, I collected women like someone else might collect stamps. Some men turn to booze, others to drugs. I turned to wives, starting with his nanny, which was probably the dumbest thing I’d ever done.” He shook his head, a wry smile on his lips. “They were all beautiful, all young. All too good for me.” Another gulp of wine. “I thought I could fill the hole Macy’s passing placed in my soul. I was too stupid to see that I couldn’t fill that hole with other women. I couldn’t fill it with anything.”
He dragged his fingers through his hair. “And then I met Bridgette. I thought, okay, this is the one. She has a kid, she knows what it’s like. She’ll be a good mother, a good wife. She’ll fill that hole for Durango and me both.”
He shook his head, his eyes filled with ghosts of the past. “I was in New York, trying to get my head straight after the last wife. She was a waitress at this club I went to quite often, a pretty blond with the clearest blue eyes. At first, it was just a little fun, you know. A few dates, some wining and dining up in my hotel suite. But then she told me her story, and it was like I’d met another broken soul, someone else who understood what it was like, you know?” He laughed a harsh, unamused laugh. “I should have known better.”
“This is Billy’s mom?”
He nodded. “Yeah, poor kid.”
The bottle of wine was emptied of its last few drops. Jackson played with his glass, no longer gulping down the bit of oblivion the expensive vintage offered. Instead, he ran his fingers over the rim and stared into the past.
“She grew up in Ohio, the daughter of a teacher and his wife. Perfect middle-class family, only her father and her uncle were sadistic little bastards who liked to play games with innocent girls. The things she described to me that they’d done . . . It was horrifying. The stuff of nightmares. She wasn’t even sure which had fathered Billy but knew the moment the baby began moving in her belly that she had to get out of there. What if it was a girl? What if they did those things to her, too?” He shook his head. “That was the most she ever thought of that kid. I sometimes wondered if things would have been different if he was a girl.”
Gracie crossed her arms over her chest, watching him with a cross between sympathy and disgust. A story like that and his first thought was to marry the woman? Maybe therapy would have been a better option. For both of them.
“I married her, thinking it could be a new start for us all. And it was great, at first. She loved my money more than me, but I’d been there before. It didn’t really bother me anymore. But then the jealousy began, the fights. She would follow me whenever I left the house, confront me in front of business partners, potential investors, even the daughter of a senator once. And then we would fight, and she would get violent, attack me with anything she could find, her fingernails, objects off shelves, a book she happened to be reading. It was crazy, but the passion was overwhelming.” He glanced at Gracie, a touch of shame in his eyes. “It was exciting.”
He got off on it. Gracie shuddered slightly.
“I told you, I’m not a good person, Ms. Gracie.”
“How long were you married to her?”
“Three years, give or take a few months. Longest relationship I’ve had with the exception of Macy.” He sat back, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “I wasn’t the only one she was violent with. The way she treated Billy . . .” He dragged his hands over his head and sighed. “I should have done something, but I figured he was her kid, she had a right to do whatever she wanted. I didn’t want her interfering with me and Durango, I couldn’t interfere with her and Billy. But the bruises . . . I did say something to her, and she stopped leaving marks where I could see them. But now that I look back on it, I don’t think the abuse stopped.”
Gracie shifted, suddenly feeling a little more empathy for Durango and his silent anger toward his father.
“You think I’m a terrible person.”
“I think you’re selfish.”
He nodded, smiling that wry smile again. “I am that.”
“He was a little boy with no one else to protect him.”
“I know. And I hate myself for the way I responded back then. But I was an ambitious fool back then. If I could go back, there are so many things I’d do differently.”
“What could be more important than that?”
He tilted his head. “I wouldn’t have laughed at my wife when she said she wanted to die.”
The words hung heavy between the two of them. Gracie dropped her hands into her lap, her nails digging into the soft flesh between thumb and index finger.
“I’m sure he told you everything he heard that night. This little five-year-old boy who barely understood half of what happened. But he knew enough to hate me almost as much as I hate myself.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I was drunk.” He sighed. “I’m always drunk. But . . . I was drunk, and I was angry. I didn’t want anyone telling me what to do, especially this l
ittle woman whose respect and affection I wanted more than anything else in the world, but I knew I was fucking up. I knew every time I cheated on her what I was doing to her, but I couldn’t help myself. I justified it with all these lies I told myself, convincing myself that it was what everyone in Hollywood did, that it was the only way I was going to get ahead. I was wrong, but I was too stupid to see it back then. Then she called me out on it, and I hated myself that much more. So I lashed out at her because . . .” He stopped, his eyes reddened with emotion. “Because I was everything she said I was.”
He leaned forward, his eyes locking with Gracie’s. “I did do everything Durango says I did. I mocked her. I told her to go ahead and do it. But then I carried her into the bathroom, stuck my own fingers down her throat and begged her not to leave me. And then I lay in bed with her, held her close and told her how desperately I loved her. I thought . . . I thought it was going to be okay. I didn’t know she’d gotten up in the night and taken another handful of those damn pills. Didn’t even know she had another bottle of them stashed away.” Tears spilled from his eyes. “I didn’t know how goddamned determined she was!”
Gracie touched his hand. “I’m sorry.”
“It was my fault. I should have taken her to the hospital that night. If I had, everything would be so different now.”
“You couldn’t have known. Suicidal people are notorious for hiding their true intentions. Any psychiatrist will tell you that.”
“But I should have known. She was my wife. My soul mate!”
She shook her head. “You can’t make a person stay when they have their mind set on leaving.”
He lowered his head, tears dripping onto the table as he sobbed soundlessly. She stood and rubbed his shoulder, suddenly aware of how truly broken he really was. She wondered what he would say if he knew that his own son had contemplated suicide just a few days ago. But, again, she didn’t have to wonder. She knew it would have been the last insult, the last blow. He wouldn’t have survived that news.
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