The Rapids

by Carla Neggers

Rob recognized the white hair. “Raleigh—Christ.” He shot into the small room and grabbed hold of the older man’s shoulders, realized how brittle and nearly weightless he was as he helped lower him to the floor. “What happened? What the hell are you doing down here?”

  Raleigh was trembling badly, sucking in quick breaths as if to ward off pain. “Tom was on to something.” His eyes flickered with something like grim amusement. “All roads lead to Ravenkill.”

  “Are you drunk? Hurt?”

  “Not drunk. Someone…I took a punch of some kind to the kidneys.”

  He was clearly dehydrated, possibly hypoglycemic. Rob placed the back of his hand against the old spy’s forehead; he had a slight fever. “Whose side are you on, Raleigh?”

  “Phil’s side. Char Brooker’s. I failed them both. I put them together. I should have known they’d become targets.” He coughed, moaning in agony, but it just seemed to irritate him. He swore viciously, then took a second to calm himself. “I didn’t pull the trigger, but I’m responsible for their deaths. I used and manipulated them. Now I’m using and manipulating Maggie. It’s a never-ending cycle. She doesn’t know about Char and her father.”

  “They were lovers?”

  “No, not that. On a similar mission.”

  The man needed medical attention. “Hang on.” Rob got one of Raleigh’s arms around his neck and half dragged, half carried him out to the hall. “Let’s get you to a doctor.”

  “Leave me,” he mumbled. “Leave me to die.”

  “Not my style.”

  “Bastard. I deserve it.”

  “That’s not my call. Have you seen Libby Smith? Is she down here?”

  “Her room—” Raleigh coughed, a wet, nasty sound, but there was no sign of blood on his mouth, anywhere. With any luck, he wasn’t suffering from internal bleeding. He pointed toward the wine cellar. “She has a workroom.”

  He couldn’t go on. Drawing his weapon, Rob returned to the dank wine cellar. “Ms. Smith?”

  Behind him, the door slammed shut, and he heard the loud thunk of a lock twisting.

  “Raleigh!”

  But there was no answer, and Rob swore and kicked the door as hard as he could.

  No luck. It didn’t budge.

  He was locked inside.

  Swearing at himself, he swung his hands in the dark and caught the string to a lightbulb, pulling on it. A dull yellow light came on, but didn’t reach the corners.

  But he could see well enough to make out Andrew Franconia flopped against a small barrel on the outer wall, near a closed door to what had to be the adjoining workroom Raleigh had spoken about.

  Rob approached Franconia cautiously, squatting next to him and placing two fingers on his carotid artery. A faint rhythmic beat said he was alive.

  “Mr. Franconia?”

  His eyes opened, barely focusing. “If you’re here to kill me, get it done.”

  “I’m not here to kill anyone.”

  It was true, as far as it went.

  Franconia tried to lick his lips, but he was only semiconscious and in obvious pain. Although his face was unmarred, his hands were shaking, his polo shirt soiled and askew, his pants muddied.

  “Hang on,” Rob said, rising. He checked the office door. Locked. “Libby? Are you in there?”

  But there was no response, and he returned to Franconia, who’d managed to sit up a bit more.

  “Can you talk?” Rob asked. “Tell me what happened.”

  Franconia couldn’t seem to concentrate. “My wife—Star—”

  “Maggie Spencer’s with her. Do you know how long you’ve been in here?”

  “Minutes. I don’t know. There was a man….”

  “White hair? Looks like an old drunk?”

  His eyes flickered. “Yes.”

  “Did he do this to you?”

  A feeble smile. “Christ, I hope not.”

  Rob didn’t blame the guy for wanting his assailant to be tougher-looking and appreciated his humor under stress.

  “I—I was hit from behind,” Andrew went on. “It felt like a baseball bat.”

  Someone had been busy. Star? Libby? Had Raleigh pulled a fast one and faked an injury? But Rob didn’t believe Raleigh had locked him in the wine cellar or taken a baseball bat to Andrew Franconia. Someone had been hiding, waiting for the right moment to pounce.

  Andrew was very pale, shivering now.

  Rob noticed a handful of dusty wine bottles in the racks. “I wonder if the wine in these bottles is any good.”

  His host coughed and moaned, tears of pain more than anguish streaming down his face.

  The man needed a doctor.

  “Well,” Rob said, “wine or no wine, I don’t intend to stay locked up for long.”

  When Maggie reached the kitchen, she found the colander of blueberries in the sink and a radio on, tuned to news on a public station. But there was no Star. The radio hadn’t been on earlier—she must have returned to the kitchen and turned it on, perhaps to settle her nerves, beat back her worries and racing thoughts.

  Where was she now?

  Maggie checked Libby Smith’s first-floor suite, knocking softly on the door. “Libby? It’s Maggie Spencer. Are you in there?”

  But there was no answer. The door was locked.

  It was as if the sprawling house had suddenly spit out all its people. Star and Andrew weren’t around. Libby wasn’t around. There were no other guests. As she returned to the kitchen, Maggie noticed that her footsteps echoed on the wood floor, underscoring the emptiness of the place.

  She decided to check the cellar, wondering if Libby was down there working on the inventory of her antiques. But the stairwell light wasn’t on—not a promising sign.

  As she started to shut the door, Maggie heard a sound from the cellar. Muffled, perhaps just a breeze catching a door.

  Had someone left the outside cellar door open? Gone out that way?

  For all she knew, the inn had ghosts.

  She switched on the light—the Franconias’ renovations didn’t extend to high-wattage bulbs and fancy stairwell lights—and ventured down the steep, old stairs.

  The air was cooler, drier, and with the dehumidifier off, the silence was almost complete.

  “Star? Libby?” Maggie called. “Anyone down here? Rob?”

  No response.

  She’d never been one for strange sounds in dark cellars.

  She paused at the bottom of the steps, listening, but there was still no repeat of whatever she’d heard—or imagined—a few minutes ago.

  It was a large cellar, with old parts and new parts and too many doors and nooks for her to remember the exact route of her informal tour with Libby and Rob. Maggie had been far more interested in the history of the house, how weird it had to be—despite her cheerfulness—for Libby to be relegated to a small suite and odd jobs in her childhood home. That she was pulling together an antiques business was a rationalization. It had to sting to have lost a home that had been in her family for well over a century.

  She’d been in Prague.

  She’d arranged for the Franconias to sell Maggie’s father a vase a few months before he was killed.

  She lived at the same inn Char Brooker had visited a month before her murder—the same inn Raleigh had found information about in Tom’s apartment the day before he was murdered.

  As she turned a corner, Maggie noticed an arc of light up ahead. Daylight, she thought. Then someone had left the outer door open.

  “Anyone down here? Hello? It’s Maggie Spencer.”

  Again there was no answer.

  She continued toward the light, recalling that the outer door was near the old wine cellar. The door to Libby’s storage room was unlocked, slightly ajar. Maggie pushed it open wider and realized a dim light was on inside. She moved past the tumble of pieces Libby had collected, then came to a long antique table neatly stacked with books, files and photo albums. An apple crate on the floor was filled with dust cloths, lemon oil, window cleaner and
miscellaneous supplies.

  One of the albums was opened to old black-and-white photographs, a series taken in front of the fairy fountain—before it had its nose smashed with a wine bottle. All the photos were of a handsome man who had to be Libby’s grandfather. He looked rich, well dressed and content. If he could see his farm now, he’d probably be pleased it was as beautiful as it was, but shocked to find it in the hands of nonfamily members who’d saved it from certain destruction after his son’s years of neglect.

  Next to the album was a little stack of pieces of a color photograph that someone had taken scissors to and hacked into five irregular chunks. Maggie put the pieces together, like a puzzle.

  The photo was of Libby Smith and a glassy-eyed wreck of a man, red-faced and clearly drunk—obviously her father. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen, smiling, her arm around his waist, probably holding him up for their picture.

  They stood in front of the fairy statue, as if to emphasize that the son wasn’t at all like the father.

  Drawing her weapon, Maggie wove through the precariously stacked antiques to a half-open door in the corner of the small, windowless room.

  “Maggie…”

  William Raleigh crawled on his hands and knees out from the cover of ladder-back chairs stacked on top of a low wooden filing cabinet, all of them encrusted with dust and shrouded with cobwebs.

  Maggie dropped down and put her arm around his thin waist. “Raleigh? What the hell is going on? Here, let me help you. Are you hurt?”

  Blood dribbled out of the corners of his mouth.

  Jesus.

  “Libby,” Maggie said. “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. She’s—”

  He slumped, semiconscious.

  “Damn, Raleigh. Don’t die on me. I’ll get you to a doctor.”

  “Her room…It’s all there….”

  As if he were summoning his last shreds of strength, he lifted a hand and pointed to the doorway behind him.

  Was Libby in there?

  “Hang on, okay?” Maggie said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Gun in hand, she ducked through the open door into a suffocatingly tiny room, windowless, a naked bulb providing scant light.

  Libby Smith—or someone—was using this closetlike room as some kind of workspace. There was a second door on the opposite wall—locked. Remembering her tour, Maggie realized it must lead to the adjoining wine cellar.

  A laptop was open, powered up on a worktable. A small desk lamp shone brightly on manila file folders neatly laid in a row. Pictures were tacked to corkboard on the wall above the table. Maggie scanned them quickly, her grip tightening on her Glock.

  One was of Charlene Brooker, serious, confident, in her army captain’s uniform. A Polaroid shot, taken here in Ravenkill.

  There was Raleigh, smoking a cigarette on a European street.

  Vladimir Samkevich in London.

  And her father, smiling, his eyes crinkling in that familiar way. It was winter wherever he was. He wore a parka, was hatless and gloveless, but Maggie didn’t delude herself into thinking he’d been missing her mother in Boca.

  Had there been something between him and Libby Smith?

  Before Libby killed him, Maggie thought, knowing she was right—she had Raleigh’s assassin.

  She quashed any emotional reaction and hit the space bar on the laptop.

  On the screen was a picture of Rob with President John Wesley Poe on the Dunnemores’ dock on the Cumberland River in Night’s Landing, Tennessee. They were holding fishing poles and grinning at the camera, belying any pretense that they weren’t that close. The picture had run in most of the world’s newspapers in the spring.

  Maggie quickly scanned the rest of the claustrophobic room.

  Boxes of ammunition.

  Pistols.

  And bomb-building supplies. Wires, timers, cords, plaster.

  Gunpowder. Lighter fluid. Paint thinner.

  Did Libby Smith plan to kill Rob?

  The president of the United States?

  Below their picture were three more pictures.

  Rob’s parents, Betsy and Stuart Dunnemore. Sarah Dunnemore. Nate Winter.

  Does she plan to kill them all?

  Maggie left everything where it was and returned to the storage room, kneeling next to Raleigh, who was still. “How long have you known Libby’s your assassin?” she asked him.

  He was a little more lucid, but still in obvious pain.

  “An hour, maybe. Less. I’m sorry. I’ve been so stupid.”

  “An antiques dealer who travels the world. Attractive, educated.” Maggie’s voice was tight, controlled. “What a cover.”

  Raleigh tried to pull himself up, but gave up, wincing as he wiped his bloody mouth with the back of his hand. “Janssen hired her to eliminate anyone who could take over his network or who might cut a deal with prosecutors in exchange for information.” He spoke haltingly, but his words were clear. “It’s all in that horror of a room. You have to find her, Maggie. You have to stop her before she kills anyone else.”

  Maggie nodded and helped him into a sitting position. He had no strength left, his arms flopping aimlessly.

  “Did Libby do this to you?”

  “I don’t know why she didn’t—” He swallowed painfully. “Like Tom.”

  Maggie understood what he was trying to say. He didn’t know why Libby hadn’t put a bullet in the back of his head.

  “She must not want you dead from a bullet wound. Where is she now? Do you have any idea?”

  He shook his head.

  Maggie put her arm around his waist and flopped his arm over her shoulder, getting to her feet with him. “She’s operating from her own agenda.”

  “She wants to take over Janssen’s network.”

  “Not satisfied being his paid killer, is she?”

  His eyes closed, his skin grayish now as he sank against her. “Leave me, Magster. I’ll slow you down.”

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  “She’ll kill Brooker. Dunnemore.” His voice was weak, and although he was coherent, he sounded as if he was babbling. “They’re next. Rob’s parents. His sister.”

  “I know. Come on. Let’s just keep moving.”

  Raleigh clutched her sleeve as if he’d suddenly remembered something. “Rob is down here. Libby—I don’t know what she did with him—”

  Hell. “I’ll take care of it.”

  He rallied enough to move with her at a half run; she didn’t have to drag or carry him. When they reached the yard, he collapsed onto the grassy slope down to the cellar door.

  “Go,” he said. “Find her….”

  Maggie nodded and ran back inside, drawing her gun.

  Just past Libby’s storage room, a cracking sound—a hiss—stopped her. What the hell?

  Libby. Her bomb-making ingredients.

  Maggie dived for the floor even as the blast from the homemade bomb sent her sprawling.

  As she hit the concrete floor, she smelled smoke and chemicals. She heard the distinctive sound of a fire spreading.

  “Rob!” she called, scrambling to her feet. “Where are you?”

  Smoke oozed out of the storage room. She couldn’t risk going back the way she’d come.

  She had only one choice. To go up and get out that way.

  Covering her mouth with her shirt, she stayed low, under the smoke, and hoped she remembered the route back to the stairs.

  Nineteen

  Jarred by the explosion, Rob smelled smoke and grabbed Franconia, dragging him to the hall door. “We’re crisps if we don’t get out of here. Don’t move, okay? I’m going to shoot the lock and get us out of here.”

  “My wife—”

  “We’ll find her.”

  Standing to one side of the door, Rob fired twice across his chest, shattering the lock, splintering the wood around it. He helped Franconia to his feet.

  Andrew’s eyes rolled back in his head. “Star thinks I love my work m
ore than her—”

  “Nah. She knows better.”

  He moaned in agony when Rob pulled him into the hall, but at least it shut him up. The cellar was filling up with smoke. He could hear the crackle of flames, lightbulbs breaking with the heat. Staying low, he hoisted Franconia over his shoulder and ran toward the outer door. When they reached fresh air, Rob kept moving, looking for a tree, a bench, a statue—cover was a necessity when a killer was blowing up things and beating the hell out of people.

  Where was Raleigh?

  Maggie?

  Rob dumped Franconia onto the grass in the shade of a red maple.

  It was a damn fine day. A beautiful spot.

  Smoke was pouring out the cellar door.

  Andrew, coughing and spitting, rolling in the grass in agony, finally noticed, finally let it sink in that his place was on fire. “Christ,” he said. “Oh, Christ. Goddamnit. What—” But he coughed again, sobbing in pain.

  Rob knew he had to think. “If Raleigh didn’t lock us in the wine cellar, who the hell did? If he’s a good guy and you’re a good guy and Star’s a good guy and Maggie’s a good guy—” He stared down at Franconia. “I think your pal Libby wants us dead.”

  “I’m dying.”

  “You’re not dying. You just feel like you’re dying.”

  Rob scanned the immediate area and spotted Raleigh prone on the slope about five yards away, and ran to him. “Maggie,” Rob said. “Where is she?”

  But Raleigh couldn’t answer, could barely move, and Rob swore. Libby Smith had already beaten the hell out of two men. If she found them, she’d have two hostages.

  Rob couldn’t leave Raleigh and Franconia for her.

  Maggie was on her own.

  Quashing any panic—any sense of exhilaration—Libby focused on the task at hand.

  She had to get out of the house before she ended up dead herself.

  She was almost there, almost to the porch door.

  Her first-floor suite was on fire. She’d set a second explosive device there. The cellar had to be fully engaged now. Investigators would figure out it was arson—she didn’t have the time, or even the skills, to make the fire look like an accident.

  But she hadn’t used bullets or poison to kill Dunnemore and Raleigh or Andrew if he ended up dead, too. He and Star were stretched thin financially and emotionally—investigators would suspect them first. By the time the authorities got around to her, Libby thought, she’d be gone, working her way down Nick Janssen’s target list, solidifying her own position.