Next To Die

by Marliss Melton

  The agent’s phone bumped her over to voice mail, and Penny left a concise but shaken message, requesting Hannah to call her back.

  She hung up and waited, suddenly conscious of how dark and quiet her house was. What if she wasn’t alone? She strained her ears and listened. A muted sound seemed to come from upstairs.

  Fear had her snatching the phone up a second time. She tapped out Joe’s number, refusing to ask herself why she was calling him, of all people.

  “Montgomery.”

  Just the sound of his voice sent warmth rushing through her. “Hi, this is Penny. I know you’re busy, but can you come over for a sec?”

  His leather sofa creaked. “What’s wrong?” he asked, obviously picking up on her fright.

  “I want you to hear something on my message machine.”

  “Be right there.”

  She dashed to the porch to wait for him, too rattled to put away her groceries.

  Joe found Penny standing on her front porch, trying not to wring her hands. Her enormous eyes hit him like a punch in the gut. “What happened?” he asked again.

  “Come inside. I want you to hear this.” Casting a wary glance up her staircase, she led the way to the kitchen, where groceries had yet to be put away. She ignored them, pushing a button on her wall phone.

  Joe listened to heavy breathing and then a panic-stricken message, while Penny wrapped her arms around herself.

  “He admitted to killing my father,” she marveled, when the message came to an end. “That’s all the proof we need.” She was trying to sound cool, like the call hadn’t rattled her, but she didn’t fool him.

  “This is the guy who’s been harassing you,” Joe guessed, forbearing to mention that the caller hadn’t admitted to killing anyone.

  “My father’s former colleague,” she confirmed, “the one who sold the ricin to terrorists, we think.”

  “And then murdered your father,” he added, for clarification.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you said the FBI was working on this.”

  “They are. I just called the agent in charge of the case and left a message. Hopefully she’ll call me right back.”

  “I’m sure she will.” Her wide-eyed vulnerability made her look especially feminine, as did her civilian clothing—soft, faded jeans and a stretchy pink sweater that highlighted her perfect little breasts.

  “I’m glad Ophelia wasn’t home to take this call,” Penny said breathlessly. “She would have totally freaked out. But hey, now we have we have his recorded confession. That should help speed up his arrest.”

  Her quick chatter betrayed agitation. On instinct, Joe stepped forward and offered her a reassuring squeeze. “He’ll be out of the picture in no time,” he comforted.

  He didn’t mean the hug to be personal, but it unsettled her enough to blurt, “So how was your trip?”

  “Good,” he said, letting his arms fall. “I’m glad I went.” He could actually breathe again. Yes, some awful things happened that night, but he didn’t need to blame himself entirely.

  “Thanks for carving the pumpkins,” she told him, with a wry little smile that drew his gaze to her full mouth.

  “No problem.” A current of awareness passed between them. “You, uh, you want me to have a look around?” Joe offered. “Make sure nobody’s lurking upstairs?”

  “Would you?” She sounded relieved.

  “Sure.”

  He poked his head around the first floor, then took the stairs two at a time as Penny trailed behind. He peered into closets and under beds, taking silent but approving note of the understated traditional decor. Her bedroom was tidy and neat, filled with a light, rosy fragrance. The room Ophelia used was a wreck.

  “All clear,” he said, having assured himself that she was home alone.

  They paused at the top of the staircase, next to their merging shadows. “Thank you,” Penny said, gripping the banister.

  “You want to come to my place till the feds get here?” he offered. She was obviously still shaken.

  “Oh. No, thank you. You already have a guest,” she added with a fluttering gesture.

  “Cindy was leaving when you called.”

  “Oh, well . . . I should wait for the agent to call me back,” she explained.

  “Right,” he agreed. “So you’re going to be all right, then?”

  “Sure,” she said, pinning on a bright smile.

  “Okay.” He started down the stairs. The last impression he wanted to give was that he was coming on to her.

  “Thank you,” she called, seeing him off.

  “’Night,” he called back.

  On his way to his house, he heard Penny’s phone ring.

  Under the glow of her desk lamp, Special Agent Hannah Lindstrom flipped through Eric Tomlinson’s folder one more time. She had to be overlooking something. If Tomlinson had sold the ricin to terrorists, then why was there no trail?

  She flicked a glance at her silent phone, willing it to ring. Last night, the police had left Miss Price’s home armed with evidence of harassment, if not an implicit statement of guilt, and promising to arrest Tomlinson the next day. Hannah had waited since then to hear that they’d made more headway questioning him than the FBI had.

  The man would not confess to selling the ricin.

  Nor was there any proof to suggest that he’d murdered his partner: no accounts, foreign or domestic, in his name, holding mysterious sums of money; no history of an e-mail account from which the printed e-mail had been sent, not even on microfiche.

  To make matters worse, the original investigation of the ricin theft had been headed up by an old-school detective who’d scoffed at forensics. Hannah could only guess that the man had had his palm greased for slapping a lid on the case. She’d never reviewed a sloppier investigation.

  The jangling of her phone cut through her bleak thoughts. She flashed out a hand to answer it. “Special Agent Lindstrom.”

  “Sweetheart.”

  Her stomach tightened with mixed guilt and pleasure. “Oh, hi, honey.”

  “I thought you’d be home by seven.”

  “Oh, yeah, you know this case is hot.” What a lie that was. As cases went, this one wasn’t even lukewarm. The police had grounds for arresting Tomlinson—on a harassment charge—but the FBI still did not.

  “I know what you’re doing, baby,” Luther chided.

  She loved it when he called her baby. It made her melt.

  “You don’t have to hide from me,” he added. “If you’re not ready, you’re not ready.”

  She wanted to be ready. No man in the world would make a better father than Luther. She could picture him down on the floor wrestling with a brown-haired toddler. It was herself as a mother that she couldn’t quite see. But the fact that Luther so completely understood that made her want to please him all the more.

  She slapped Eric’s file shut. “I’ll be home in ten minutes,” she promised, feeling breathless and scared and excited all at the same time.

  “I love you, sweetheart.”

  Sweetheart did the same thing that baby did. She hung up the phone knowing she was doing the right thing.

  Snapping off her desk light, she grabbed her purse and hurried for the exit. “’Bye, Emilio,” she called, waving to the janitor as she disappeared.

  Back in her office cubicle, the telephone rang again. On the fourth ring her voice mail picked up.

  The caller left a muted message. “This is Sergeant McCaully with the State Police. Uh, getting back to you regarding Eric Tomlinson, we still do not have the suspect in custody at this time. We do have a warrant, but he’s flying low. He’s in the NCIC, so if we get a hit, we’ll pick him up and hold him. Just thought I’d let you know.”

  Eric huddled in his car on a dirt road that dead-ended behind him, surrounded by trees and falling leaves. With what felt like a block of ice in his chest, he reached for the gun in his glove compartment, checked his arsenal, and left it on the seat beside him.
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  The Price sisters lived just a block away. He’d been watching them, waiting for the right moment to confront them. At the same time, he could sense the enemy closing in. The vultures were circling.

  Danny’s daughters hadn’t heeded his warning. They’d gone and gotten the cops involved. Stupid, stupid girls. Because of them, he was forced to take more drastic measures.

  Chapter Eight

  Ophelia applied her eyeliner with dramatic strokes. She scowled as she considered the likelihood of an unprofitable evening ahead of her.

  Penny was right. Waitressing was not a career—at least not in this tourist town. She couldn’t live like this forever, with cash to burn one month, empty pockets the next.

  The worst thing was subletting her apartment to a couple of friends because she couldn’t afford to pay the rent herself. She trusted them to care for her cherished stuff, but it felt just awful to leave everything behind, like a traveling gypsy.

  Assessing the results of her heavy hand with a frown, she realized she looked just like a gypsy. With a grimace, she reached for a tissue to wipe it off. But then the doorbell rang.

  She was home alone.

  Penny wasn’t due in until six o’clock, two hours from now.

  Peering out of the powder room, Lia eyed the front door. The visitor was a man. She could tell as much by his silhouette, visible through the oval window with a pink-washed sky behind him.

  What if it was Eric? The police were on the prowl for him, but they hadn’t found him yet.

  It didn’t look like Eric. The caller was of average height, while Eric was tall and spindly.

  Wetting her glossed lips, Lia tiptoed to the door for a better view. The man had turned away. All that she could see was a broad back and short black hair. There was something vaguely familiar about him. It definitely wasn’t Eric.

  She pulled the door open.

  The stranger turned, and she gasped her dismay. It was Al Pacino’s young look-alike, the driver of the Honda Civic, only he was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, which made him look even younger. She went to slam the door in his face, but he was faster than she was, jamming a foot between the door and the threshold.

  “Go away,” she said, pushing with all her might. The door didn’t budge.

  His gaze fastened with amazement on her orange Hooters T-shirt, paired with tiny black shorts. “You’re a Hooters girl?” he demanded with his Philadelphia accent.

  It was none of his business. “Get lost or I’ll call the cops,” she told him coldly.

  “Oh, I don’t think so. You didn’t want cops to come last time, remember?” he said. He cracked a cocky smile, displaying strong white teeth.

  “Look,” she said, alarmed that he’d gone to such lengths to find her, “I don’t want you here. What part of get lost don’t you get?”

  “You owe me a debt,” he stated simply.

  “And I offered to repay that debt. With a check,” she reminded him. “I don’t date younger guys, got it?”

  “A bad check ain’t gonna fix my car,” he pointed out, gesturing broadly.

  She glanced at the Honda Civic parked at the curb. “Your car’s already fixed,” she snapped. He obviously didn’t need her money. The chain dangling from his neck looked like eighteen-karat gold.

  “You still owe me,” he said with a glimmer in his chocolate eyes, like he was laughing at her.

  “Look, I don’t have time for this. I’m going to be late for work.”

  “So I’ll go with you.”

  “The hell you will!”

  “Is there a problem?” cut in a third voice.

  It seemed to come from the bushes, but then the next-door neighbor cruised around the corner of the house. He must have been in his backyard, about to slip into his hot tub, because all he was wearing was a towel, and—holy crap—no wonder Penny was half in love with the guy!

  Little Al turned to face the newcomer. The size and stature of the man didn’t have the effect Lia expected, other than to eradicate his smile. He cut a bland look at her. “Who is this?” he asked with a jerk of his chin.

  “I said, is there some problem here?” Joe repeated. His tone was so cold that even Lia shivered.

  “Um, sort of,” she admitted. “This boy won’t leave me alone. Now I’m going to be late for work.”

  “Sounds like you’d better take a hike,” Joe said to Little Al.

  But the young man stood his ground. “Isn’t he a little old for you?” he asked Lia with just a hint of disgust.

  “Not really.” She tossed her head.

  Joe ascended the porch steps. His body language indicated that this was all going to stop right now. “Is this the person who’s been harassing you?” he asked.

  Instead of turning tail, Little Al widened his stance. Hands fisted loosely at his sides, he gave every indication that he was prepared to duke it out.

  Lia couldn’t watch this. “Hold on a sec,” she cried, leaping between the pair. “This isn’t Eric, obviously; he’s too young,” she said to the SEAL, “so you don’t have to kill him. He’s just some kid who’s mad because I back-ended his car and crushed a taillight. This guy”—she turned to Young Al while pointing at her neighbor—“is a Navy SEAL. You do not want to mess with him. Now leave me alone.”

  Young Al seemed to blanch and snapped to rigid attention. “PO2 Vinny DeInnocentis, Team Twelve, at your service, sir!” he barked. “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t realize.”

  What?

  The menace went right out of the neighbor’s face. He took in Lia’s open-mouthed astonishment and smiled. “Joe Montgomery, lieutenant commander,” he countered, extending a hand. “Nice to meet you, Vinny. I live next door.”

  The two men sidestepped Ophelia and pumped hands.

  Just like that, they were buddies. They both looked at her, as if considering a mutual problem. “She owes me a dinner,” Vinny explained.

  The name fit him even better than Little Al. “I am not taking you out to dinner,” she snapped, still reeling at how the tables had turned. They were both Navy SEALs? What were the odds of that?

  “Deal’s a deal,” Vinny insisted. He pulled a ring out of his pocket. “She even gave me this ring as a token of her honor.”

  Commander Montgomery frowned his disapproval. “Does your sister know about this?”

  Ophelia snatched the ring out of Vinny’s fingers and jammed it onto her right hand. “I’m twenty-four friggin’ years old. I don’t have to tell my sister everything,” she ground out.

  “Then act your age,” he suggested mildly. “You said you’d take him out to dinner.”

  “Fine,” Lia said, throwing up her hands. “We’re going to Hooters. I’ll pay for your dinner there.”

  The commander looked inquiringly at Vinny. The boy SEAL shrugged. “That’ll work,” he said easily, but his eyes brimmed with mischief.

  “See you around, PO2,” called Joe. With a nod at Lia, he pattered barefoot down the steps and across the lawn.

  “You’ll have to follow me,” Lia said to Vinny. “And try not to get me into any more trouble than I’m already in for being late.”

  He didn’t say a word to that.

  Between the boxing match on the wide-screen TV and the action in the restaurant behind him, Vinny didn’t suffer a dull moment. He jump-started his five-course meal with an appetizer: raw oysters on the half shell.

  As Ophelia sashayed past him with her tray, he worked the mollusk from the shell, balanced it for a delicate moment on the tip of his tongue, relished the silky meat, and then swallowed it with ecstasy.

  She pretended to be unimpressed.

  An hour crept by, and his appetite stirred enough to request an entrée. Torn between a Philly cheesesteak and snow crab legs, he ordered both, chuckling at the look of dismay on her face as she realized how much their “date” was going to cost her.

  “Are you really going to eat all of that?” she snapped, breaking to a halt beside his stool.

  He picked up
an empty crab claw, working it open and closed. “Don’t worry, cara mia. I can still eat you for dessert.”

  “Grow up,” she scoffed, leaving him in a cloud of spicy-sweet perfume.

  Her words didn’t faze him. Vinny was used to being teased about his age. In SEAL/BUDS training, he’d been dubbed Mowgli, after the wild child from Jungle Book. It had taken him only two years to prove that he was any SEAL’s match, and his code name became “the Godfather,” thanks to his resemblance to Al Pacino.

  As man of the house growing up, he’d assumed responsibility early on. Only the toughest survived on the east side of Philly, with gangs and drugs on every corner. From the day his father’d up and left them, to the day of SEAL graduation, there wasn’t an obstacle that Vinny hadn’t tackled head-on. Winning over Ophelia couldn’t be that hard.

  The Philly cheesesteak made its appearance. He ate half before setting it aside and ordering key lime pie. The next time Ophelia passed him, he swirled whipped cream on his finger. “You want a lick?” he asked with a straight face.

  “No,” she said flatly, but her lips twitched.

  She was glancing his way when her foot caught the leg of a chair and her tray went flying, upsetting several half-empty glasses. Soda splattered the wall. Ice chips sprinkled the carpet.

  “Shit!” Her gaze flew with dismay toward the office at the entrance to the kitchen, and sure enough, the manager poked her head out.

  “Is that you, Lia?” the woman demanded, her lips pursed into a red knot.

  “Sorry,” Ophelia said. “I’ll clean it up.”

  “You have customers waiting for refills,” the manager snapped. “I’ll get this.” She snatched away the towel that Ophelia had grabbed. “I swear to God, if you don’t learn how to carry a tray, I’m going to have to let you go.”

  Observing the interchange, Vinny waited for Lia, as everyone called her, to tell the woman to pack sand. Instead, she nodded to the barkeeper’s helper to pour more drinks and said, “It won’t happen again.”

  With grudging admiration, Vinny made a point to catch her eye. “Hey,” he called out, “she’s just jealous ’cause she can’t fit her fat ass into those shorts you’re wearing.” He made sure his words were loud enough to be overheard.