Storm Warning

by Dinah McCall

  None of them had anything to say. It wasn’t good enough for Ginny.

  “I’m giving you people two days to dig through his life, and if nothing comes up you can use, I’m out of here.”

  Sully jumped to his feet. “What the hell do you mean, out of here?”

  She stood, her hands on her hips, her eyes blazing. “I’m sick and tired of being the victim. I’m tired of hiding. I’m tired of being a target. The way I see it, I come out of the closet, whoever’s out there comes calling, and it’s up to you guys to keep me breathing. How’s that for a plan?”

  “It sucks,” Sully snapped.

  “So does this,” Ginny countered.

  “It’s not a good idea,” Franklin Chee said.

  “Chee’s right,” Dan added.

  “I didn’t say it was a good one, but it’s what’s going to happen.”

  Then her voice shook, and they realized how much it was costing her to put on a brave face. After that, they were putty in her hands.

  “So, guys…are you going to be my pillows if I fall?”

  Sully looked at her and then sighed. “You know I’m there.”

  “Webster and I are getting tired of all this heat. We’ll be packed and waiting when you’re ready to leave.”

  Dan sat down with a thump and then dug at a spot on the floor with the toe of his shoe.

  “I’ll put Holloway on point. He’s like a bird dog anyway, always sniffing the air for trouble, and I’ll bring up the rear. I’ve got a couple of extra guys we can pull in if need be. But don’t start packing just yet. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe he’s laid a paper trail so wide and long that you’ll never have to show your face.”

  “Thank you,” Ginny said.

  Chee nodded and left to inform the other men what had occurred, while Dan took out his cell phone and moved into another room to make some calls.

  “Are you mad at me?” Ginny asked.

  Sully shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

  “No.”

  “Well, something’s wrong, and I need you to be on my side.”

  “I’m on your side. I’m also trying to get up the guts to tell you something, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t a good time.”

  “The only guarantee we have in life is now.”

  “I know that,” Sully said.

  “It’s your call,” she said, and started to leave the room.

  “Okay.”

  She stopped and then turned. “Okay, what?”

  “I’m going to tell you.”

  She put her hands on her hips and restrained the urge to tap her toe in nervous frustration. Waiting was not one of her strong points.

  Sully took a deep breath, aware that what he was going to say would change everything between them. Whether it was for better or for worse had yet to be seen.

  “Sully…”

  “I’m getting there, damn it,” he muttered.

  “There’s nothing you can possibly say that is worse than what’s already happened.”

  “I’m not saying it’s worse,” he said.

  She threw up her hands in a gesture of defeat.

  “Then what, for God’s sake?”

  “I’m in love with you. Don’t give a damn that you can’t cook. Don’t care that you’re argumentative as all get-out. Don’t even mind that you take up more than half the bed. And I don’t want to lose you when this is over.”

  Ginny was speechless. All this time she’d known that their chemistry was just about perfect, and she had known and accepted that her feelings for him were stronger than his for her. But this blew every theory she had of Sullivan Dean. She started to grin.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  He swiped a sweaty hand across his face and wished he had a stiff drink.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “You’re in love with me? As in, take thee Ginny to be my—”

  “Virginia. I like that name, and you’re going to have to answer to it, at least when we get married.”

  Her smile widened. “Married.”

  “Yeah. Would you?”

  “Yeah. If you asked.”

  He started to smile and then strode across the room and swung her off her feet.

  “Baby, I’m desperate here. I’ve got a brother I like and a mother who doesn’t remember her own name, but I have a steady job, benefits and a fairly good retirement plan.” He nuzzled the side of her neck with his lips and then nipped the lobe of her left ear, knowing it made her ache in all the right places. “So, if I asked you real nice, would you marry me and make babies with me and scratch the itch I can’t reach on my back?”

  Ginny laughed out loud just as Dan came back into the room.

  “Did I miss something?” he said, grinning at the scene he’d obviously interrupted.

  “Nothing that mattered,” Ginny said, as Sully set her back on her feet. “But if you miss our wedding, we are not naming any of our children after you.”

  “The hell you say,” he crowed, and then clapped his hands. “This calls for a celebration. Hey, Sully, have you popped the top on that champagne yet?”

  “No, but—”

  “Fantastic! I’ll go get some glasses.” He bolted out of the room before Sully could stop him.

  Ginny turned, looking up at Sully with all her emotions there for him to see.

  “I will love you forever,” she said softly.

  “Thank you, baby.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” Ginny said. “You have yet to taste one of my pies.”

  Emile sat at Lucy’s bedside, trying to find his perfect little wife in the ragged old woman on the bed. Her hair was in tangles, her eyes red-rimmed and constantly brimming with tears; even when she slept, tears still seeped from under her eyelids. He’d been here at the hospital for almost twenty-four hours and had been unable to get a response from her. She just kept muttering something about tapes, which was an odd subject to focus on considering they had yet to put their son in his grave.

  Emile leaned his forehead against the mattress, so weary in body and spirit he didn’t think he could go on. Mr. Important, that was him. Taking care of everybody’s health and business but his own family’s—putting his ego and his glory above their care.

  Lucy rolled her head from side to side on the pillow and began plucking at the sheets with her fingernails, as if she were trying to pick something up. He covered her hand with his own and gave it a pat.

  “Lucy, dear, it’s Emile. I’m here. You don’t have to bear the burden alone.”

  “…strong and focused…under the bed…Mother’s good boy…”

  Emile covered his face with his hands.

  “Dr. Karnoff?”

  Emile looked up. Lucy’s doctor had come in.

  “Dr. Rader?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry to meet you under these conditions, but I have long been an admirer of your work.”

  Emile bowed his head slightly. It seemed so unimportant now.

  “It’s a shame that your techniques do not work on mental trauma,” Rader said. “I can only imagine how frustrating this is for you…being able to help so many and yet helpless in this type of situation.”

  Emile’s expression gave away nothing of what he was feeling, although he could easily have choked the air out of the doctor’s mouth for rattling on so blithely about such a tragedy.

  “When can I take Lucy home?” Emile said.

  “Well, you see how she is. She can’t take care of herself at this point and—”

  “She needs to come home. I will hire nurses around the clock if need be.”

  “Have you been home yourself? I was told it’s in a terrible condition.”

  Emile’s argument froze on his lips. He hadn’t considered that aspect. In his mind, he’d pictured the rooms as they always were, clean and smelling of lemon-scented oils, with fresh flowers from Lucy’s garden in every room.

  “We have a woman who comes in to clean. If given time, there is nothing that cannot be
overcome. Will you release her to me?”

  Dr. Rader nodded. “In this situation, I bow to your superior wisdom regarding your wife’s care. You know her best. Maybe familiar surroundings will bring her out of this shock.”

  That and no more mind-altering drugs. But Emile didn’t voice his opinion of that. Instead, he extended his hand.

  “I thank you for taking care of my Lucy.”

  “Certainly, and again, my sincerest condolences on the loss of your son.”

  “I will go home now,” Emile said, “but I’ll be back tomorrow to check her out.”

  “I’ll leave the orders,” Rader said, and left to finish his rounds.

  Emile turned to his wife once more, and then leaned down and kissed her gently on the side of her face.

  “I’m going to leave now, dear. But I’ll be back tomorrow and take you home.”

  “…under the bed…under the bed…”

  He sighed and then patted her hand. “Yes, I’ll look under the bed.”

  To his surprise, she seemed to settle, and as he took a cab home, he reminded himself to look under the bed, just in case.

  The cab ride seemed endless, but the closer he got to their home, the more tense he felt. What if the doctor was right? What if the house was in shambles?

  “First things first,” he muttered.

  “Did you say something, mister?” the cabdriver asked.

  “Just talking to myself.”

  Five minutes later, they pulled into the driveway. Emile tossed some money on the front seat of the cab as he got out.

  “I’ll get my own luggage,” he said.

  “Have a nice day,” the cabdriver said, and drove away.

  Emile stood outside the front door for a good five minutes, unable to bring himself to go in. It was the next-door neighbor’s curiosity that drove him inside. He wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone.

  He got as far as the entryway, carefully locking the door behind him, then stood without moving, afraid to advance—afraid of what he might find.

  The house felt empty, as if all the life had gone out when Lucy was taken away. Even the grandfather clock was silent. He moved then, opening the case and resetting the hands before giving the pendulums a delicate swing. Immediately the familiar tick, tick, ticking gave impetus for him to proceed.

  There was a black mark on the floor, probably from the heel of someone’s shoe. He could only imagine how many people had been within these walls right after everything had happened. In a way, he felt violated, like a man who had caught his wife cheating—as if that which was his had suddenly been had by all.

  As he moved toward the stairs, it occurred to him that he didn’t know where his son had died. He just assumed it had been in his room, because he was rarely anywhere else. But when he glanced into the dining room and saw the stains on the floor and the chalk outline of where the body had been, he stumbled. Catching himself before he fell, he staggered to the doorway and then braced himself against the wall.

  “Phillip. My poor, poor Phillip. What torment you must have been in.”

  He turned away quickly and almost ran up the stairs, thinking of their bedroom as a refuge from the horror of the sight. But when he gained the top of the stairs, he realized that the chaos must have begun up here. Broken furniture was out in the hall, and a clump of dead flowers lay in the midst of broken glass and spilled water. He moved like a man in a trance toward the open doorway of Phillip’s room.

  Even though he’d expected destruction, he never could have imagined anything on this level. He stood for a moment, trying to imagine the fury that could drive a man to these ends, but he couldn’t wrap his mind around that kind of emotion. Too weary to contemplate the amount of time and money it was going to take to make everything right, he turned to leave when something under the bed caught his eye.

  In that instant, he remembered his promise to Lucy. She had kept talking about something under the bed. Maybe this was what she meant. Picking his way through the chaos, he reached the bed, then got down on his knees. With a little effort, he pulled the thing out and then grunted with disappointment. It was only a tape recorder. Nothing of consequence.

  He pulled himself up and then tossed it onto the bed. As he did, the little lid popped open, revealing the tape within. He stared, telling himself that his eyes were surely deceiving him, but the dark black lettering on the pristine white label was impossible to miss.

  Subliminal Messaging—1980—Studies at Yarmouth Lab.

  He yanked it out of the recorder and turned it over in his hand. He hadn’t been mistaken. It was one of his tapes. How had it gotten in here? It was part of a failed study that had tried to prove that the fear of dying was the trigger that might unleash the human body to fight its own diseases.

  It hadn’t gone anywhere, and Emile had been frustrated and surprised by the anger it had brought out in patients who were struggling with depression. He started across the hall to his room when something occurred to him. How had Lucy known the tape was there? Surely it wasn’t something she’d seen during Phillip’s breakdown. He stopped, looking down at the tape once again. What if she’d given it to Phillip, thinking to help his depression and instead furnished the metaphorical bullet that ended his life?

  “Please, God, not this,” Emile whispered, and then fell down on his bed, prostrate under the weight of his guilt and despair.

  It was ten minutes after one in the morning when Dan came out of his room on the run. Sully heard him and rolled out of bed. Something was going down. He just didn’t know what. He grabbed a pair of gym shorts and started down the hall. He found Dan in the kitchen, making himself a snack.

  “What’s wrong?” Sully said, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

  “Sorry, did my phone wake you?”

  “No, you did, when you lumbered down the hall like a cross-eyed moose.”

  Dan grinned. “I’m celebrating,” he said.

  “You drank the last glass of champagne.”

  “Bologna’s fine,” he said, as he smeared mayonnaise on some bread.

  “Talk to me,” Sully said. “What’s worth bologna in the middle of the night?”

  “Phone records, but not from Karnoff’s house. From a cell phone registered in his name. He’s not as smart as he thought.”

  Sully gawked. “Are you saying they match up?”

  “Every damned one of them, including a call to Ginny’s number at her apartment. Probably one of those hang-ups on her answering machine.”

  Sully dropped into the nearest chair.

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Neither could I, but the records don’t lie. We’ve got enough to get a search warrant. I’m going to enjoy taking Karnoff’s world apart.”

  “Did you make me one?”

  They turned. Ginny was standing in the door wearing nothing more than Sully’s T-shirt and a smile.

  “Didn’t mean to wake you,” Sully said, and pulled her down onto his lap. “But since you’re up, you can hear the good news. We got lucky, honey. Karnoff’s cell phone records match calls to every one of the numbers connected to the dead women.”

  “Oh my God! I can’t believe he would be that stupid.”

  “Maybe he’s not in touch with the real world,” Dan said. “He’s what I would call a nerd, even if he is a genius. Maybe his progress with digital technology isn’t up to par with his healing techniques? Who knows? Anyway, I’ll be leaving in a couple of hours and will be in Connecticut first thing in the morning. I want to serve this search warrant personally.”

  “Let me go with you.”

  Sully tightened his hold on her. “No way.”

  “How can he hurt me?” she asked. “There will be officers all over the place, right? And if he’s got a shred of humanity left in him, maybe he’ll remove the curse he left in my brain before they hang him from the nearest tree.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Dan said. “Maybe later I can work out a visit to him.”

/>   “I don’t want to see the man after he’s in prison. His only bargaining chip for leniency might be doing this good deed for the victim who got away.”

  Both Sully and Dan knew she was on to something with the mention of bargaining power. But neither wanted to be the one who okayed something that might blow up in their faces.

  Frustrated, she made Sully look at her. “Do you want the mother of your children to take a flying leap off some bridge one day because the wrong song came on the radio?”

  The color bled from his face. “You play hardball all the way, don’t you, babe?”

  “It’s my life, Sully. Allow me the dignity of living it.”

  Within the hour, they were packed and gone.

  18

  The FBI helicopter landed outside of Bainbridge, Connecticut, just after 10:00 a.m., having made a stop in D.C. beforehand. Their plans had been delayed after learning what had happened within the Karnoff household, but only slightly. Dan had been warned by his surveillance team that the Karnoff home was in turmoil, that a cleaning crew had been on the scene since daybreak, and that Karnoff himself had left for the hospital, ostensibly to retrieve his wife, sometime after 9:00 a.m, so there was no one home to receive the search warrant.

  After the anticipation of facing down the man who’d wreaked such havoc on so many lives, it was an anticlimax for Ginny. Now they sat in a van across the street, waiting for the man to return. Ginny couldn’t help but think about the woman who was coming home from the hospital. She’d just lost her son, and now she was going to lose her husband, as well.

  Sully and Dan were head to head in the front seat of the van, quietly discussing the pros and cons of the impending search, while the Chee brothers sat in silence behind Ginny, waiting patiently for events to unfold. She leaned back in her seat and then closed her eyes, suddenly weary all the way to her soul. Two months ago she’d been going through her life without a care in the world, and now, to be in this place, about to confront a killer, was almost more than she could handle. She wanted this to be over.

  When she sighed, Sully turned around and looked at her.

  “Are you okay? You can still back out of this confrontation thing.”

  She shook her head.