by Fiona Brand
With a touch, she signaled they were moving on. Baby ambled quietly at her side as they moved through the grounds toward the house, taking a circuitous route so Baby could stretch his legs.
Rina was finishing earlier than usual. Normally she worked to a rigid routine, eating the cut lunch the housekeeper, Therese, supplied in a small shady gazebo that adjoined her studio, but after the discussion with Diane she’d felt too restless to keep to routine.
Auric colors.
Of course she had heard of them. Over the past week she had come to the same conclusion herself, because nothing else came close to explaining what she was seeing. But having a trained expert like Diane confirm the phenomenon had been unsettling. She would never in a million years have imagined that she was psychic in any way.
She paused by a rose and bent closer, taking pleasure in the rich perfume. Voices drifted from an open window. She didn’t need to study the intonations to know that Alex was in the library with Slater. As she straightened, the words coca and product jumped out at her.
Her spine tightened as the conversation became clearer, as if the two men had moved closer to the window. Instinct, sharp and visceral, had her stepping quietly back beneath the shady overhang of a rhododendron. Her hand dropped onto Baby’s head, staying him. Another phrase floated out of the window. Something about a shipment.
Cesar pushed to his feet, ignoring Lopez’s warning glance. The second McDonnell, Johnson, Santos and Thompson had left the room, the gloves had come off. Incredibly, Slater now had a gun in his hand. “What are you going to do? Shoot me if I don’t agree?”
Lopez’s gaze was flat. “It can be arranged.”
“The way you arranged for Esther to die?”
“Your wife’s death was regrettable but unavoidable. Sit down.”
“I could go to the police.”
“And arrange for your own indictment? Don’t forget, I have written and taped evidence that you agreed to the partnership. There isn’t a court in this country that wouldn’t convict you.”
“Indictment doesn’t scare me.”
“So long as your daughter is safe.”
Cesar stared into Lopez’s eyes and felt his blood run cold. One of the reasons he had been anxious to visit Lopez had been the now-rare opportunity to check on Rina. Ever since Lopez had moved her to Winton, he had been on edge. When she had been in San Francisco he had been able to keep an eye on her, protect her. Now Lopez had her isolated. “What are you doing to her?”
“She’s my wife.”
Cesar’s stomach tightened. “If you harm her—”
Lopez smiled. “Why would I do that, when she could be so useful to me?”
Thirteen
Adrenaline shoved through Rina’s veins. For a disoriented moment the heat and the scents of the garden, the intermittent sound of the voices, faded as another conversation played, similar, but different. She had been a child, sitting at the dinner table taping with her Walkman.
Alex had been there.
The memory was followed by a stark image: her mother staring at her, one hand gripping hers, the sensation so real she could feel the pressure of Esther’s fingers tight around her own.
Blood. There was blood everywhere.
Rina’s jaw clenched against the instant gag reflex.
Slater’s voice registered, wanting to know if Rina suspected anything. Cesar replied in the negative.
Blind or not, she had the eerie sensation of staring down a long tunnel. The flashes of memory had been real. For a split second the blank wall that had closed off her memory had dissolved. She had heard Alex’s voice. She had looked into Esther’s eyes; she had smelled the blood. She had been there.
Twenty-two years ago her mother hadn’t died in a car accident. She had been murdered. The man Rina had married had ordered her death.
It didn’t make sense. She was supposed to have met Alex Lopez for the first time just over two years ago.
She pressed at her temples, pushing at the ache growing there as she tried to find an explanation for the fact that he had murdered her mother, then, twenty years later, married her.
Cocaine. Product. Shipments.
The motivation for murder was clear enough. Why Cesar and Esther, why she was involved, wasn’t.
The scrape of a chair signaled the meeting was over. Numbly, Rina retreated, placing her feet with care to minimize the sound as she moved into the deep shade of the garden, pulling Baby in close beside her. She waited, listening, until she was certain Alex’s study was empty. Then, just to be sure, got down on her hands and knees and crawled past the window. When she was past, she rose to her feet and walked to the corner of the house, just yards away from the graveled sweep of the drive at the front of the house.
Laying a hand on Baby’s head, and cautioning him to be quiet, she flattened herself against the warm brick of the house, felt for the edge of the building with one hand and peered around.
Her father left first, his colors and the sound of his Cadillac distinctive. Two more men she couldn’t identify, then a third, climbed into a vehicle with Slater. Slater’s colors were easy to pick, a brownish-gray tinged with a murky yellow. Two of the strangers had distinctly yellowish glows, while the third was more defined, gray tinged with dull red.
With a shudder, she retreated a step and crouched beside Baby. There was one last man, talking with Alex on the steps. His voice had a faint but distinctive Southern lilt. Minutes later he left in a truck. A click signaled the front door had finally closed. She hadn’t seen what the man with the Southern accent had looked like, or picked up any more details about what was actually happening, but she no longer cared: she’d heard and seen enough.
Disbelief gripped her. The whole interlude was unreal. What she’d picked up initially had been disjointed. It was possible she had misheard or put the wrong construction on what had been said.
But Alex’s statement—that her mother’s death had been regrettable, but unavoidable—had been clear enough.
The fact that either Alex or Slater had been holding a gun on her father was even clearer.
Stroking Baby’s head, she rose to her feet and started back in the direction of her studio. She needed to think, to decide what to do next. Her knee-jerk reaction was to call the police, but if Alex was what she thought he was, he would have the phones tapped.
A shudder went through her. If he had married her as some kind of insurance to keep Cesar in place in his organization, calling the police from any of the house phones would be dangerous for them both. She would have to use her cell phone.
There was one other option to calling the police. She could go directly to the FBI by calling Taylor Jones.
In the weeks after she had gotten out of hospital, Taylor’s mother, Dana Jones, had moved in with them and taken over as housekeeper. They had only stayed a few months, but in that time Rina and Taylor had become firm friends. The friendship had continued despite the fact that they had both gone in different directions career-wise, Rina into the arts and Taylor into the FBI.
“What are you doing here?”
The light baritone, tinged with the slightest hint of humor, almost stopped her heart. Alex.
Rina turned to face Alex, her expression carefully blank. “Baby was dying of heat in the studio. We decided to go for a stroll.”
She heard the rustle of suit fabric sliding against the sleeve of his shirt as Alex consulted his watch, and “saw” the movement. Unlike most of the auras of the people around her, there was nothing fuzzy or indistinct about Alex’s aura. It was symmetrical, distinct and oddly bisected: one side red, the other black.
“I’ve got a meeting in town this evening. Why don’t you join me for an early dinner instead?”
Forcing a smile, she agreed. Half an hour ago, if Alex had issued an invitation to dine with him, she would have leapt at it, if only to discuss the fact that she wanted a divorce. Now she was under no illusion that leaving would be that easy. Both she and her father wer
e caught in some kind of trap. Added to that, she was almost certain Alex suspected she had overheard the conversation in his study and was testing her.
His hand cupped her elbow. She controlled the urge to wrench away. She didn’t want him touching her; she didn’t want him anywhere near her.
“Therese’s serving gazpacho on the patio. I’ll get her to set an extra place.”
Her stomach rolled. Gazpacho wasn’t blood, but it looked enough like it that she didn’t want to eat it. Normally it was never on the menu.
Her husband’s love of South American dishes registered, along with his ability to speak fluent Spanish. He sounded American and he had a business degree from Harvard. He had told her he had been born in Boston. His family was, apparently, American, but since the wedding they had melted away and hadn’t bothered to visit.
“Watch the steps,” Alex murmured.
Stiffly, she mounted the patio steps, waited for Alex to pull out her chair, then sat down. Baby settled close, lying across her feet and huddling against her legs, despite the heat, as if he had picked up on her fear and was trying to comfort her.
Alex made desultory conversation while Therese fussed around the table. The chink of china and cutlery punctuated the soothing flow of a small waterfall in the courtyard that adjoined the patio.
Therese was South American. So were most of the staff on the property.
The house was beautiful, so Rina had been told, more of a palazzo than a house. It was large and rambling, built for entertaining on a lavish scale, with extensive grounds and a complicated security system. There was a separate housing estate for the staff and security personnel. A helicopter pad, and a river bordered one edge of the property.
Not a house; a fortress.
Therese, aware of Rina’s dislike of gazpacho, served her a salad and a bread roll. With slow, careful movements, Rina broke the bread and placed a piece in her mouth, suppressing her revulsion as Alex started on his soup.
The world she thought she had known so well, and in which she had comfortably existed for most of her life, was a sham. Cesar had always been wealthy. He ran a successful property development company, owned prime real estate and rental properties in a number of cities, casinos in Vegas and Reno, and a string of businesses in cities up and down the West Coast. She had never questioned the basis of his wealth, but she did now.
Her father’s involvement with Alex wasn’t the three years he had claimed when he had introduced him to Rina. The relationship went back more than twenty years.
Rina chewed and swallowed and started on her salad. Tomatoes, sweet red peppers and chunks of feta cheese. The white cheese would be stained pink by the juices.
Her stomach tensed. Think about the sculpture, the smooth whorls of damp clay, free flowing but ordered, disciplined. Controllable.
Her mother had been murdered and Cesar had known about it.
She swallowed, picked up her glass of water and sipped. The betrayal was numbing…incomprehensible. She was certain Cesar had loved Esther. She still believed that he did.
Grief and white-hot anger slammed into her, squeezing her chest and making her eyes burn. She reached for another small fragment of bread, slipped it into her mouth and gritted her teeth against the need to wrap her arms around her middle and rock like a baby.
Therese removed her salad and placed a bowl of homemade ice cream in front of her. Rina’s nostrils flared and her throat closed up again. Strawberry. Not red, exactly, but close enough. With an effort of will, she lifted a tiny spoonful to her mouth and forced herself to swallow.
“Not hungry?”
The light tone in Alex’s voice registered. The anger flashed again. She lifted her head and stared at Alex, grateful for the concealment of the dark glasses. Her husband was clever. He had destroyed her family and fooled her. He had murdered her mother. She didn’t know how to stop him yet, but she would find a way. “Not very. Therese served morning tea while Diane was here, and I had a late lunch.”
She stared at his aura and wondered that she had ever thought that he was charming, or even likable.
For the first time, she allowed herself to ackowledge that the red part of Alex’s aura looked like blood.
Fourteen
Therese cleared the table. Alex’s phone made a beeping sound. He excused himself and walked down the steps of the patio to take the call.
Rina rose to her feet and picked up Baby’s harness. Her first instinct was to leave, to simply walk off the estate and keep walking until she could get help, but leaving when she was blind wasn’t so easy. The estate was on the fringes of Winton, more in the country than in town, so walking out wasn’t a sensible option. Besides, if Alex was suspicious, she wouldn’t get past the security at the front gate.
To get out, she would need someone to drive her, and to avoid suspicion, she would need a legitimate excuse to leave.
She needed help, which meant she had to call someone.
To avoid passing anywhere near Alex, she directed Baby through the house. Taking the back route through the kitchen, she crossed a paved area, strolled past a series of garages and implement sheds and out onto a shady path that meandered down to the river.
Baby stopped, the low hum in his throat gave her an instant of warning.
“Where are you going?”
The voice came from the left, about ten paces away. She hadn’t heard Alex’s step, which meant he was stationary, standing on the lawn, watching her.
She pressed a hand to her heart. “You gave me a fright.”
“Would you like some company?”
Automatically, she stroked the top of Baby’s head, soothing him as she struggled to adjust to Alex’s deceptive casualness. If Baby thought he was a threat, then he was. “You’re welcome to come if you want. We’re just going down to the river so Baby can have a swim.”
His phone beeped. Alex spoke briefly and paused. “Looks like I’ll have to take a rain check on that walk.”
“No problem.”
Minutes later, she and Baby reached the riverbank. Hands shaking, Rina unfastened Baby’s harness, shooed him into the water and sat down. For long minutes she listened. When she was certain she was alone, she slipped her cell phone from her pocket and keyed in Taylor’s short dial.
Rina had several cousins, and an aunt and an uncle on her mother’s side she could call, but Taylor was the only person she could trust for the simple reason that she was an FBI agent. Right now, more than family, she needed help from someone who had taken an oath to uphold the law.
Seconds later, Taylor picked up. Briefly, Rina outlined what had happened.
Taylor asked a few staccato questions, her voice low.
Rina listened while automatically staying attuned to the myriad of noises around her. It occurred to her that the sound of Baby splashing was enough to drown out footsteps if Alex had decided to take that walk after all. “I know the snatches of conversation I heard aren’t exactly hard evidence, but I’ve decided to go to the police.”
There was a brief moment of silence. “Don’t do that. We need to get you out of there. There’s just one hitch. I can’t come and get you. Someone else will have to do it. What we need to do is work out a game plan.”
We. That meant the FBI, not the Winton P.D. “It’s got to be tonight, or tomorrow morning, otherwise I walk out on my own. I think he’s suspicious.”
“Honey, if Alex really was suspicious, you would know about it.”
The flat tone of Taylor’s voice and the distinct lack of surprise about everything Rina had said suddenly registered. “You’re not in Washington, are you? You’re already here. In Winton.”
Within an hour, Rina had made arrangements to leave. She contacted the firm that shipped her work and left a message for them to call first thing in the morning, pack the almost-completed sculpture and express it to Oakland. She collected the file that contained all of her personal papers, tax records and bank accounts from her office and tucked it, along with the
few personal possessions she refused to leave behind, in the knapsack she usually wore when she and Baby went walking.
Her phone buzzed. It was Taylor. She had organized an examination for Rina in San Francisco with a leading neurologist the following day. The flights and the appointment were real, so that if Alex checked on any of it, there wouldn’t be a problem. The arrangements made sense in light of her recent head injury and also necessitated a night away, so she wouldn’t be due back at the house until the evening of the next day. When Rina and Baby climbed into the taxicab Taylor had ordered to arrive at the house in the morning, they would be home free.
It was crucial to Rina’s safety that Alex continued to believe that Rina was unaware of his double life or Esther’s murder, and it gave the FBI the extra twenty-four hours they needed. If, at any point before that rendezvous time, she felt she was in danger all she had to do was dial Taylor’s number and they would get her out.
The fact that the FBI needed twenty-four hours made the back of her neck crawl. If they were running to a schedule, that meant they were planning a bust. It made sense. Taylor was in Winton, undercover; they were surveilling Alex. They had to be close to moving.
The cold reality of her situation hit. If she hadn’t phoned Taylor, wanting out, they would have raided the house while she was in it. She would have been rounded up and arrested along with Alex and Slater. “Did you think I was part of this?”
“I didn’t, no.”
But others had. She was the wife of an organized-crime boss, living off the proceeds of his illegal earnings. No matter what she did or said, she would be viewed as guilty by association. Her fingers tightened on the phone. “Dad needs protection.”
There was a brief silence. “I can’t guarantee that. Honey, Cesar’s involved.”
It was Therese’s evening off. Rina fed Baby, made herself a sandwich, then took her usual walk, letting Baby have a run before returning to the house and turning in for the night. Walking through to the sitting room, she released Baby’s harness, picked up the stereo remote and flicked it on. Instantly the room filled with the strains of a Beethoven sonata. Carrying the remote with her, she circumnavigated the furniture, automatically counting paces as she walked toward her favorite armchair. The evening walk, followed by music, was a soothing evening pattern. Normally the ritual helped her to relax, but there was nothing normal about her present situation. A plan was in place to catch Alex and his organization cold. Arrangements had been made to get her out in just a few hours. According to Taylor, everything was running to schedule.