The FBI Thrillers Collection: Vol 11-15

by Catherine Coulter

  She grabbed her car keys and decided to see for herself. She drove past the Schiffer Hartwin corporate headquarters outside Stone Bridge, past the local police station with its American flag flying outside in a nicely planted flowerbed. She admitted she'd hoped to see a sign of Bowie, but she only saw two uniformed officers walking purposefully toward their patrol car. She knew Police Chief Amos had to be hating every minute the feds were there.

  She turned her beautiful Hummer right on Munson Avenue, just five minutes from the interstate. In her rearview mirror she could see a car she recognized turn right some twenty feet behind her.

  It was the same car that had been with her since she'd left her apartment.

  She couldn't make out the license plate. Her grandfather hadn't believed in coincidences, nor had her father. Genetically, she wasn't predisposed to, either.

  Time to test it out. She pressed her foot down on the gas and took a quick right onto Marple Drive, her tires screeching.

  The car turned a moment later, its tires screeching as well, even accelerated, gaining on her now.

  Coincidence would have been nice. This wasn't good.

  She tried to make out who was driving and how many were in the car but she couldn't tell because the windshield was darkly tinted, and who did that? No one on the up-and-up, that's for sure. It was time to do a U-turn, though her Hummer H3 didn't like them very much, and drive as fast as she could back to the police station.

  No, not yet. She had to find out who was after her. She speeded up again, turned a sharp left and another sharp left, and came out again on Munson Avenue. She was only a half-mile from the police station, so she slowed down, hoping the car would close with her, when she heard a sound like a gas stove lighting and saw a glimpse of flames from the corner of her eye outside the left rear door. She unclipped her seat belt, hit the brake hard, flung the door open, and threw herself out of the car. She hit hard on her shoulder against the asphalt, and rolled just as the explosion ripped through the roof of her Hummer, burst out the side windows and the windshield, sending shards of glass flying out everywhere and waves of boiling air and shooting flames into the sky. She curled into a ball, covered her head with her arms, and prayed. The noise deafened her, made her ears ring, and the smell made her gag as she curled tighter. She tried to suck in air, but the explosion had eaten it all up. She felt something strike her back, and shook it off. She saw it was part of a car seat, burning brightly beside her. She didn't know how badly it had burned her, but she didn't hurt, didn't even feel it yet.

  She staggered to her feet and ran behind an oak tree at the edge of someone's front yard, and watched the lighter debris raining down. The road behind her Hummer was empty, her pursuer gone. But her car was a torch, and she felt the air boil hotter now than it had just a moment before. How was that possible? She was watching a nightmare, but it was real and it was happening here, right in front of her, in a nice middle-class neighborhood with no one around, thank God.

  Her beloved baby, her Hummer H3, that she'd proudly owned for three years since she bought it from a gentleman from Cabot, Vermont, who made cheese and whose fiancée had hated it. It was light blue and so beautiful all the guys envied it, and now it sat in the middle of the street, only its frame intact, a flaming, stinking, smoldering mess.

  Someone had meant for her to be in it.

  She heard a woman scream.

  Then a guy was yelling, "Go inside, kids. You heard me, Get inside. Jennifer, Todd, get inside now!"

  She looked at the still burning jagged piece of car seat that had struck her back, felt the sharp impact again, but it still didn't hurt. But the moment Erin heard sirens in the distance, a pain in her back detonated just like her car had and burned her all the way through to her backbone. Air whooshed out of her as she fell to her knees, and bent over on her hands and knees, sucking in big gulping breaths to keep from yelling.

  Someone leaned over her, she could see his shadow. "Miss, are you all right?"

  Her brain was mired in a wasteland of pain, throbbing hot pain.

  "No, she's not, Rick. Call an ambulance. How'd she blow up her car?"

  "It isn't a car, it's one of those big-ass Hummers. It exploded right in front of my house. Jeez, it smells bad."

  "What's she doing driving a Hummer?"

  "Call freaking 911!"

  Their voices washed over her, not really touching her. She was focused on the vicious pain in her back.

  34

  STONE BRIDGE MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

  Dr. Henry Arch said, "I hope you're not vain, Ms. . . . ?"

  A long pause, then Erin said, "I don't remember if I'm vain or not."

  "You might end up with a bit of a scar on your upper back, near your right shoulder, Ms. . . . ?"

  Erin was lying flat on her stomach, drifting along in a cloud of morphine. She grinned up at him. "The way I'm beginning to feel, I really don't think I care."

  She heard a man's voice outside the cubicle. It was Bowie arguing with a woman. She'd lose, Erin would bet her currently fairly healthy bank account on it. Then he was there, beside her, and Dr. Arch said, "You her husband?"

  "No, I'm FBI Agent Bowie Richards. She's my daughter's ballet teacher."

  "I had no idea teaching kids how to demi-plié was so hazardous. You wouldn't think parents would get that pissed at her."

  Bowie looked down at her back and swallowed. The burn looked really bad-fiery red, oozing and angry. Thank the good Lord it wasn't all that big. He drew a deep breath and asked, "How serious is it?"

  Dr. Arch said, "If she's a back sleeper, she'll have to find another way for a couple of days. Almost all of the burn is second degree, but I'll admit, it looks like misery. Fortunately, the jacket she was wearing protected her from a truly critical burn. There aren't many deep spots, and all of it should heal without a graft. What's her name? Her purse wasn't with her when she was brought in."

  "Erin Pulaski."

  "I'm an Irish-Polish-American."

  "Me, I'm a Russian Swede." Dr. Arch was laughing as he lightly touched his gloved fingertips to her back.

  She reared up. "It doesn't hurt much but I think I'd be yelling without the morphine."

  "Sorry," Dr. Arch said.

  She felt Bowie's hand on her shoulder, lightly pushing her down. He leaned next to her face. "You hang in there, kiddo. I'm here and I'm not leaving."

  "What happened, Bowie? I sort of left the planet when the paramedics picked me up."

  "The paramedics got there fast and brought you in, that's all. Since there were half a dozen 911 calls, the whole police station knew about it real fast. I didn't realize it was you until I heard one of the patrol officers talk about 'Erin's poor Hummer' still burning on the street. Are you together enough to tell me what happened?"

  Erin didn't want to remember, she didn't want to think about anything, except maybe humming a nice chorus of "Forever Young" with the morphine playing a smooth bass. She closed her eyes and saw herself hurtling out of the Hummer door, and crashing against the curb. "Am I hurt anywhere else?"

  Dr. Arch said, "I haven't had time to check you as thoroughly as I'd like. I'll do that again as soon as we get your back taken care of, but from what I can see, so far you've just got a few bruises and scrapes. You won't even need any sutures."

  Her mind was fuzzing over. It felt bizarre and comforting at the same time. She said, "I don't suppose you caught the creeps who did this?"

  "Not yet," Bowie said. "Talk, Erin."

  ". . . I remembered my dad telling me a car on fire was a rolling bomb and believe me, I didn't even pause a nanosecond, I just slammed on the brake and threw myself out the driver's side door. My baby, Bowie, my Hummer exploded maybe three seconds later."

  There, it was said. Erin wasn't aware that tears were streaming down her dirty face until she
felt Bowie's fingers wiping them away.

  "I'm sorry. You'll be okay, you heard Dr. Arch. Damn me for an idiot, I never seriously thought you'd be in danger because we let you get connected to the investigation-"

  "I'm fine, Bowie. It's not me, it's my Hummer, she's gone. Someone blew her up. She cruised all over town like a rock star, taking bows at every red light. I'd come out of the dry cleaner's to find guys draped all over her, but she was mine."

  "You survived, Ms. Pulaski," Dr. Arch said as he dabbed ointment on her back. "Suck it up."

  "You're a dolt, sir. You never saw my Hummer, never rode in her. All the guys in Stone Bridge were jealous of her, Bowie included, he just pretended he wasn't."

  "Yeah, yeah, poor me," Dr. Arch said as he did this and that to her back, better not to know, she thought. "Here I am stuck with a plain old three-year-old Ferrari F430, a boring bright racing red, U.S. specs put it zero to sixty in three point six seconds, and I've been too chicken to let it loose on the highway. My son, now, he's chomping at the bit. I told him he had maybe twenty more years to get himself prepared. Hold still now, I'm going to give you some more morphine."

  Bowie said, "You're alive, Erin. You'll replace the Hummer. I'll help you find one. Please don't tell me you're really crying for that car."

  "Okay, I won't." Erin closed her eyes again, and felt, all of a sudden, that she was floating some six feet above herself, nearly up to those removable tiles in the ceiling, and it was so lovely and calm up there next to the light fixture, where nothing bad could happen to her.

  Dr. Arch said thoughtfully, "Come to think of it, if my Ferrari exploded to smithereens, I might shed a couple buckets of tears myself. I take it all back, Ms. Pulaski, you go right ahead and weep." He was working on her shoulder now but she felt only a whisper touch against her skin. She vaguely heard him say to Bowie, "Would you look at that bruise. Well, it's no big deal in the great scheme of things. I don't think anything's broken, but we'll check her out with an X-ray. Say, if someone tried to blow her up, you're a federal cop, why don't you protect her from now on?"

  "That's my plan," Bowie said. She felt blessed warmth when he took her hand, but his fingers against her skin brought her right down from above and she didn't know if it was worth it.

  35

  Erin usually hated lying on her stomach, but with the lovely morphine, she could have been standing on her head and not felt uncomfortable at all. "It was a light brown sedan, a Mitsubishi, I think, not very old. It looked like one of those rental cars-nondescript, butt-plain. I've always wondered why they even make cars like that. I mean, who'd want to buy one? I couldn't make out the license, they'd dirtied it up."

  She'd have some pain for the next couple of days, Dr. Arch had told Bowie, but nothing a bit of Vicodin wouldn't handle. Her hair was still mostly in its thick French braid and they'd washed her face and all the rest of her he could see. She was lying on her stomach, her head to the side, looking like she didn't have a care in the world.

  He lightly smoothed back a hank of hair that had fallen across her face and tucked it back into the braid. "That's good, Erin. The tinted windows give us something to work with."

  She peered up at him with sudden interest. "It occurs to me that you look sort of cute, Bowie-all sorts of worried and mad."

  "What? Oh, well, thank you, but that's the morphine talking."

  "Nope, it's me."

  He said, "Well, I am worried and mad."

  "You wanna know something else?"

  "Ah, maybe."

  "You've got a really nice smile, nearly as nice as your butt."

  "What? My-oh, well, thank you, but again, Erin, that's the morphine talking."

  "Hmm. You mean I won't like your finer points when the morphine is no more?"

  "I, ah, well, I don't know."

  "I might, you know. What are you going to do if I still like those gorgeous white teeth of yours and those big feet?"

  "I'll smile at you a whole lot with my bare feet up on the coffee table."

  "That was really smooth, Bowie," she said, and closed her eyes. "You're a great dad. Georgie does nothing but brag about you. I keep telling her you're just a plain old garden-variety sort of dad, but she won't have it. That's quite an honor."

  "Yes, it is, and nice to hear." He waited just a moment, to see if anything else outrageous would come out of her mouth, but she was still again. "Now, Erin, don't go under again just yet. Try to remember, did you see who was in that car?"

  "Nope. Hey, wait a minute. Even though the windshield was darker than usual, I remember I didn't see anyone in the passenger seat, yes, I'm sure of it. There was one guy driving but I didn't see him well at all. Rental cars don't have dark windshields, do they?"

  "I doubt it, but we'll soon see." When he punched off his cell a minute later, he said to her, "Agent Cliff will check it out. Okay, now, it's time-"

  "Georgie told me you liked Krissy but she wasn't a keeper. Georgie said she didn't think there would be any keepers for you since you really loved her mommy and then she died and your heart broke in two. Is that true?"

  "What? Georgie said that?" He was beginning to believe Georgie didn't keep any thought from Erin.

  She could see he didn't want to answer her, sensed a deep, longtime resistance, but then he said, "No, it isn't true."

  "I think morphine is the greatest stuff. I can say anything I want and it doesn't seem to matter and you can't get mad at me because I'm down and out."

  He laughed.

  "Georgie's got talent. Any dancers on your side? Was her mom a dancer?"

  "No, Twinkle Toes is all on her own, genetically speaking."

  Sherlock came running into the room. "Erin! I heard your Hummer exploded. The nurse told me you'd be all right, but I want to hear it from you."

  "I'm okay, Sherlock, really. I'll be down for a while. It's a burn on my back, but you know, I'm a fast healer, so say a couple of days and I'll be good to go again. Don't worry."

  "She's also loopy from the morphine so don't take it seriously when she tells you your hair is glorious."

  "Of course I'll take it seriously." She patted Erin's arm. "Dillon said you loved your Hummer more than he loves his Porsche. Let me tell you that's not possible."

  "I loved my Hummer a whole bunch," Erin said, and squeezed her eyes closed. Sherlock studied her too-pale face, her eyes trying for bright but clouding over from the drugs, and slowly nodded. "I'll make it a tie then, okay? Now, tell me what happened. Don't leave anything out."

  Sherlock never said a word until after Erin had stopped talking and closed her eyes. She looked limp and exhausted. "Thanks to Mom, who nagged at me for a solid three months, I got good health insurance last year. I've got good insurance on my Hummer too."

  Bowie said, "Thank God for mothers. Tell me your company and I'll handle it, both your medical and your car."

  Erin sighed. "Bowie said he'd help me find a new Hummer, but even if it's pale blue, it just won't be the same thing."

  "Dillon's Porsche got blown up a while back, just like your Hummer. He's got a new one, looks exactly the same, but sometimes I see him looking at it, all sorts of wistful, and I wonder if he's thinking about his old baby. When I asked him about it, he said time heals all wounds."

  "I sure hope he's right," Erin said.

  Sherlock stood back while Bowie stepped close, pen and notebook in hand, to take down all the insurance information Erin remembered. As she looked at Erin's vague drugged eyes, she realized the suspicions she'd had were inescapable, all the seemingly random points connecting right up. Had Bowie made any connections from everything Erin had let drop?

  She smiled at him when he left the room to deal with hospital administration.

  "You've got the neatest hair, Sherlock. Bowie's right, it's glorious. The color is like the Olymp
ic flame."

  "Thank you."

  Erin grinned. "All those curls, I'll bet Dillon thinks you're edible."

  "Edible? Hmm, now that sounds interesting. Erin, as much as I like hearing Ms. Morphine pay me compliments, it's time we talked." Sherlock pulled a chair close to the bed and said very quietly not three inches from Erin's nose, "I know you're right in the middle of this, Erin. The fact that someone tried to kill you today clinches it. It's time for the truth. I don't want to give whoever is behind this another chance to kill you."

  Erin felt the velvet fist behind the words. She whispered, "You can't know-can you?"

  Sherlock said matter-of-factly, "You've dropped lots of things since we've met. You also tend to speak before you think. With you, if one really listens, everything is right up front."

  Erin shut her eyes. "It's true, I have the biggest mouth. I always have. My dad would say my big mouth was fine by him, I couldn't get away with anything."

  "Does Georgie beat you at poker since everything you're thinking troops right across your face?"

  "Haven't tried poker with her yet. You know, I lied once to a boyfriend in college, and you know what he did? The jerk laughed at me. It was so depressing."

  Sherlock waited.

  Erin felt fatigue wash over her, both fatigue and an overwhelming sense of failure. "I can't tell you, Sherlock, since he's a client. It's confidential. I'll have to speak to him first, see what he says."

  "Since you were nearly murdered, it seems to me this client's answer should be obvious unless he's in this mess up to his eyeballs, unless he knows who's behind the attempt on your life, or unless he's the one who tried to kill you."

  "He's a very nice man, but it's all very complicated. I'm in so bloody deep. I'll probably go to jail."

  Sherlock lightly stroked her fingers over Erin's pale cheek. "Don't be dramatic, it'll be okay. Believe me, nothing's simpler than the truth. Spit it out. We'll deal with it, trust me."