by Tara Janzen
“Let’s get through this, then,” he said.
Kid nodded. They both knew what they had to do.
“I’m going in alone for a sneak and peek,” Hawkins told him. “If I get into trouble, you’re the one I expect to rescue my ass.”
Kid nodded again, and Hawkins moved out.
SO did you kill Ted, Stuart?” Katya asked. “You’re an Army Ranger. You probably know your way around a gun, especially one stolen off the Marine base at Quantico.”
“You’re trying to dig your own grave here, Katya,” Albert warned. “The fingerprints on that gun belong to your boyfriend, Christian Hawkins. You’ll have to ask him why he decided to murder Ted. The way we figure, he’s coming after all of us who were there in the alley on prom night, and I can guarantee you, we’re not going to let him gun us down one by one in whatever vigilante fervor he’s gotten himself worked into. He’s in jail now, and he’s going to stay there. Christian Hawkins is not getting off this time. There’ll be no pardon, no getting out. Case closed.”
Katya ignored him, concentrating instead on Stuart, the weakest link in the three-man chain, though Philip seemed to have already crumbled. “What about Debbie Gold, Stuart? Did you kill her, too?”
“I don’t know any Debbie Gold,” the ex-Ranger said confidently, as if that alone absolved him from the crime.
“How about the Jane Doe hooker that summer? The one they found floating in the South Platte River?”
“Oh, no,” Stuart said, backing up a step. “You’re not pinning that on me. Birdy,”—he turned toward Albert—“you’re supposed to fix this. That’s why I’ve been doing all this stuff for you all these years, so’s you could fix this. She was still breathing when I got off her, and she was dead when I put her in the river, I swear, or I never would have done it. Isn’t that the story, Birdy?”
“Will you shut up!” Albert snapped at Stuart, then turned on Kat, his face clouded with fury. “I was hoping not to have to kill you, Katya, but you’re not leaving me much choice.”
Well, she sure as hell hadn’t meant to force him into killing her, and as a matter of fact, she was pretty sure she hadn’t.
“No, Birdy,” Philip said, coming farther into the room. “The killing has got to end. Murdering Ted, that was just too much.”
“I didn’t kill Ted,” Albert said, his voice dangerously low. “Stuart killed Ted.”
“Only because you told me to kill him. A clean shot, that’s what you said, and that’s what you got.”
“A clean shot?” Philip repeated, his voice sounding weak. “I gave you a clean shot once.”
“Shut up, Philip.” Albert was almost screaming now.
“Don’t make it any worse on yourself than it already is, Albert,” she said with more confidence than she felt. “We have an eyewitness who is willing to testify about the Debbie Gold murder. He saw all of you, what you did, how you did it, and where you threw her into the river.” And didn’t she just sound oh-so-cool, like she wasn’t terrified down to the tips of her toes.
The longer she talked, the closer she was working her way toward the solarium door. If she could just get through it, she could lock them in the house, while she made a run through the backyard.
The locks on the solarium door worked both ways for a reason: in case someone wanted to do a little skinny-dipping in the pool without being interrupted. Everyone knew Big Jon did his laps naked every morning, and it had been bandied about the neighborhood more than once over the years that Big Jon really wasn’t all that big.
“And this guy has—what?” Albert asked, his charming smile turning into a sneer. “Just been hanging around for thirteen years, waiting for some big break in the case, before he spilled his guts?” He didn’t look in the least convinced. “I don’t think so, Katya. There’s no eyewitness, though I have to give you a couple of points for trying.”
“Ray Carper,” she said, edging behind a wing chair. “He says you killed Jonathan, too.”
Stuart was actively stalking her across the billiards room now, his predatory instincts having been ignited by her cautious retreat. When she decided to go for it, she really was going to have to make her move fast. If Stuart got one of his meaty paws on her, he was going to break her clean in half.
“Ray who?” Albert asked.
“Carper,” she repeated. “Ray Carper. He’s the eyewitness, and he’s in a room at a downtown hotel right now. You’ve got the nude photos; I’ve got Ray Carper. I’d say you’d be better off dealing with me rather than killing me. Think about it, Albert. If I end up dead at a luncheon put on by Big Jon Traynor, how long do you think my mother is going to let you continue to exist? I can guarantee you, she will go down in a ball of flames to avenge my death, and she’ll take Big Jon, his family, his business, and everybody who’s ever said a kind word about him down. It will be scorched-earth policy all the way, and when Ray Carper spills his guts, you and Stuart and Philip, and whoever else was involved in Jonathan’s and Debbie Gold’s murders are going to be destroyed, no matter what it takes. She will not consider nuances of guilt. She will wipe you all off the face of the earth. She will have you excommunicated, deported, discharged, and disbarred, and then she’ll start getting mean.” Kat had stopped moving, but she couldn’t stop talking, and the more she talked, the more something awful and wonderful and disturbing started taking hold of her inside. “My mother will gut you with her bare hands, Albert. She’s terrible that way. You know she is. She will not rest, not for one second of any day, until you have been annihilated.”
And it was true, Kat realized, painfully, terribly true. Her mother would do all of those things, if Albert and Stuart killed her.
And Albert knew it. She could tell by the look in his eyes, which were nearly as disconcerted as hers felt.
“You’ll wish you were dead long before she ships you to hell. It’ll be your worst nightmare, Albert, worse than your worst nightmare.”
He was thinking about it. She could tell. He was weighing the whole big mess and trying to think his way clear of it, and keeping his eye on Philip, who had gone strangely silent.
Well, there was no way clear of it.
“No. She won’t go that far,” he said, but didn’t sound too sure about it. “Not even close. She stuck you in the Brown Palace for your last few months of high school, because she couldn’t be bothered to stay in town or maintain a home for you, and she shipped you off to the loony bin in Paris after the trial. Tim told us when he came back. He told us all about the Bettencourt School for Girls. That it was a nuthouse, a very expensive nuthouse. I actually felt bad for you, Katya.”
Albert was wrong about her mother, and maybe, so help her God, maybe she’d been wrong, too, because she knew in her heart that her mother would do her worst to anyone who hurt her daughter. Look what she’d done to Christian. What she was still trying to do to Christian. Marilyn was hell-bent on destroying him, because her mother loved her. Loved her with a passion Kat had never truly understood, and Marilyn believed Christian had hurt her.
All those terrible, awful things her mother had done to her all her life had come from love. It was so weird, but it was true. Kat knew it now deep in her heart. All the harassment, the embarrassing intrusions, the damn bodyguards, Alex, even the horrendously horrifying Bettencourt School—all from love. Brilliant, ambitious, fiercely competitive Harvard Law School alumna Marilyn Dekker, who appreciated nothing more than the nice solid accounting of a person’s checkbook and status, had somehow been saddled with a child whose head never came out of the clouds, someone who failed at things, someone who didn’t take being on top, being the best, nearly seriously enough to get anywhere in the world. Even worse, Kat had gotten somewhere in the world, in her world, but her world was so far outside Marilyn’s, her mother didn’t even recognize her success.
It all suddenly struck Kat as so sad, she knew she was going to cry, right there in front of three guys who she most definitely was not going to let get away with murder, hers or anyone else’s.<
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“This is bullshit, Albert,” Stuart said, backing off. “You’re getting everything all screwed up again, just like you did with Jonathan.”
“Shut up,” Albert ground out between his teeth.
“No, man, I’m not gonna shut up,” Stuart barked back. “You said that Hawkins dude was going to take the fall for Jonathan, and two years later you get him out, man, with that dumb confession you bought off some LoDo wino named Manny the Mooch. Jesus, Albert, you’re always telling everybody how smart you are, but that was the dumbest thing I ever saw.”
“He was getting out anyway, you idiot. Somebody was tearing the case wide open. Manny was how I got the case closed again, and I did it to cover your ass, too, Stuart, and yours, Philip. If the two of you had half a brain between you, you would understand.”
“I’ve got more than enough brains to know who’s the real idiot here, Albert, and it isn’t me. I didn’t kill Jonathan, you did, and that was real dumb, ’cuz no matter how freaked out he was by the bitch floating up in the river, he never would have squealed.”
“No.” Philip finally spoke up again. “Birdy didn’t kill Jonathan. That was me. I shot him.”
Katya couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It literally made her head reel.
“You didn’t shoot anybody, Philip,” Albert sneered. “You didn’t have the balls. I had to actually put the gun in your hand and help you squeeze the trigger. If you hadn’t been so drunk, you would have known he was already dead from the heroin I’d shot him up with.”
“But . . . but—” Philip sputtered.
“But I’ve blackmailed you for over half a million dollars for a crime you didn’t even commit? Is that what you’re trying to get out, Philip, old boy? Well, don’t bother.” Albert said, drawing a gun out from under his suit jacket. “You’ve all just become horrible liabilities I can no longer afford.”
A strangled sound drew every gaze in the room to the door leading from the hall.
Oh, my God, Katya thought.
“You killed my son?” It was Big Jon, standing in the doorway, his face ashen, his hand over his heart. He was leaning on the jamb. “Birdy?”
Albert didn’t hesitate. He swung the gun until it pointed straight at Big Jon Traynor.
HAWKINS heard the shot, then another, and everything inside him froze solid for one thousandth of a second, before he took off down the hall, running, his gun drawn.
“Jesus Christ, Albert!” somebody roared from inside the last room. A commotion started on the floor above, a lot of running feet.
As he turned the corner, Hawkins saw two men slumped on the floor in the last doorway. One was a big guy with a full head of white hair. The man lying over him was much thinner and had red hair. Hawkins didn’t stop for a second, just stepped over the two bodies and entered the room low, with every cell in his body focused on his first shot—but there was no one inside. Then he saw a high-and-tight buzz cut peaking up from behind a billiards table.
“You’re fucking nuts, Albert!” Stuart Davis yelled again.
Hawkins could see where a round had cut across the felt on the table. Albert was a lousy shot, and unless he’d managed a two-for-one, probably only one of the men behind him was hurt.
He heard a groan coming from the doorway and started to turn, but then came the wail.
“Katya!” A woman cried out amidst all the running feet pounding down the stairs and getting closer. “Where’s Katya?”
God, it was Marilyn Dekker, and she’d just delivered some very bad news. Katya wasn’t with the rest of the lunch crowd.
He went for the ex-Ranger.
“Freeze, fucker,” he said, jamming the Glock up against the back of Stuart’s neck, right on the old brain stem. “Where’s Katya Dekker?”
Stuart was smart enough to know what the word “freeze” meant. He went total mannequin. Hardly a breath escaped him, until he said, “Albert took her through the solarium.”
Hawkins gave fleeting consideration to flex-cuffing the guy, but his instincts were screaming at him to find Kat. So he ran through the door into the pool area, and had just caught sight of her being dragged out the door on the other end, into the backyard, when he got hit by a locomotive.
His head bounced off the pool deck, and he slid into the water with two hundred pounds of ex-Ranger rhino on his back and the world going black.
KID breathed softly through the chaos of the shot and the confusion, people running around inside the house, their shadows dancing across the curtains, their shouts carrying into the yard. Out of the corner of his eye, he’d seen Hawkins get hit and go into the water—but that would have to wait. There was only one thing to do now.
Only . . . one . . . thing—and he was breathing his way into it. Settling his cheek against the stock, quieting his muscles, quieting his heartbeat, and lining up his shot.
He was only going to get one, and like every shot he took, it had to be perfect, a cold zero. His target had a struggling woman in his arms and a gun to her head.
It was the only truth Kid knew. It was the only one that mattered, and 2.5 pounds of pressure on the trigger later, the man’s life left him in a vapor trail of pink blood and disintegrated flesh. A millisecond later, the shot sounded in the air.
But the man was already gone, his body crumpling to the ground, a clean hole right between his eyes.
KAT stood frozen in shock, unsure of what had happened. Albert had been dragging her along, swearing a blue streak at her, and then he’d suddenly been silent. His arms had loosened from around her.
She looked to the ground, saw him, but wasn’t sure what she was seeing. Blood was pouring out of the back of his head, but it took a moment to register.
Then it hit her. Albert had been shot. He was dead. He’d shot Big Jon or Philip, she wasn’t sure which, then turned to shoot Stuart, and now he was dead.
She looked up and saw a man with a rifle coming out of the bushes and trees at the far back of the yard, and for a second she feared she was next to be killed. But he ran on by her, going all out, his legs pumping, his face stark with some emotion she couldn’t name. He didn’t even glance at Albert, and yet she knew he was the one who had killed her would-be kidnapper.
When the man dropped his rifle on the ground, tore through the solarium door, and dove into the water, she started moving again, and much to her surprise, she moved toward him, slowly breaking into a run herself, until a sense of panic overtook her and forced her legs to move faster.
Even when she finally reached the solarium and saw the fierce struggle going on in the water, the blood, the thrashing bodies, she still wasn’t sure what had driven her so hard to be there, until she noticed another body drifting toward the bottom of the pool.
Oh, God. Her heart stopped beating, but she didn’t hesitate. She dove in, stroking hard for the bottom. Someone grabbed her foot and jerked her around. She kicked, hard, and felt her heel connect with something solid. Then she was free, and within moments she had her arms under Christian and was dragging him toward the surface.
He started coughing up water as soon as they broke into the air, and with a superhuman effort, she got him to the shallow end of the pool.
The fight in the water came to a sudden stop, with someone out in the middle of the pool yowling in pain. She looked, and it was Stuart, floating oddly, doing half a sidestroke toward the edge of the pool.
The man with the rifle broke free of the water and swam after Stuart, catching him at the pool deck. With a mighty heave, he helped the ex-Ranger get out of the water, but it cost Stuart dearly. He landed on the arm that was sticking out at an odd angle, and with a guttural groan, he passed out cold.
The younger man strong-armed himself out and jogged to the shallow end to help her get Christian out of the water. Christian had coughed all his water up, and was taking in deep gulps of air, but he wasn’t moving much. He had a bloody gash on his forehead.
The three of them sat there for a moment, Katya cradling Christian�
��s head in her lap, all of them catching their breath. The sound of a lot of people running and talking and yelling kept getting closer.
“Is he alive?” she finally asked, tilting her head toward Stuart, who hadn’t moved.
“Yeah,” the younger man said. He had dark hair and dark eyes. His face looked drawn and tired, and she wondered if he was okay. “I had to break his arm to slow him down, but he’ll live.”
She didn’t know how. Stuart looked twice his size. Stuart’s arms were twice this guy’s size.
“You killed Albert.” It might have been a stupid thing to say, but it was all she could think.
“Yeah,” he agreed, again without much emotion. “I killed him.”
“Kat,” came a tired voice from her lap. “Kat, are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
“No,” she said, turning her attention to Christian, meeting his gaze, and for a moment, the rest of the world drifted away, and it was just her and Christian—then all chaos descended. Half a dozen people poured into the solarium—Marilyn Dekker and Lily Beth Traynor, Marilyn’s security guys, a couple of other men who had their guns drawn. Outside, a massive exodus was taking place across the side yard leading to the driveway.
That was the sensible thing to do when a person heard shots, Katya thought—run away. But her mother had run to her.
“Katya!” Marilyn cried, then fell on her knees beside them and embraced them both.
CHAPTER
26
IT WASN’T ENOUGH, Nikki thought. It was never going to be enough. She’d taken twenty-eight rolls of film of Kid over the last ten days, and it wasn’t going to be enough.
She stood next to him under the hot summer sun, watching his brother’s coffin being lowered into the ground. His father, Stavros, a large man with craggy features, was on Kid’s other side, his face a canvas of devastation. Kid’s mother, Jennifer, a pretty blond woman, was between her ex-husband and Kid’s oldest brother, Damian, sobbing, an endless stream of tears running down her face.