by Debra Webb
Carson took his first deep breath since calling Schaffer to ask for this meeting.
“Let’s do it,” he said, determination rocketing inside him. He might not win but he damned sure wasn’t going down without a fight.
“I can have my people in place within the hour,” Schaffer said, entering a number into her cell phone as she spoke.
Carson pulled his cell from his pocket. “I’ll make the call to Moore.”
Before he could select the attorney’s name from his electronic address book, his cell rang. His uncle Max’s name appeared on the screen. Shit. Not now. He didn’t need this now. But he couldn’t not answer.
The instant he pressed the button to accept the call he could hear his uncle’s frantic shouts. “They’re after me, Carson! Help me! I’m hiding in my shack … but they’re breaking through the door!” Each sentence was punctuated by shattering and crashing.
The connection ended.
Dammit. Dammit.
Maybe he could send a patrol unit over there.
“Is something wrong?”
Carson glanced up at Annette’s question. “It’s my uncle. He’s evidently gone off his meds again. Sounded like he’s tearing the place apart.” Carson stood. “I’ll have to get someone over there. He could hurt himself.” Or someone else, Carson didn’t add.
“I’ll go.”
His gaze collided with Annette’s.
“I can’t help you with Wainwright,” she explained. “There’s nothing I can really do right now except wait.”
“My team is making preparations,” Schaffer said.
“I’m calling Moore now.” Carson focused on his phone, selected the name and number. He still had to do something about his uncle. Annette’s offer was damned generous. “Okay,” he said to her before Moore answered. “You go take care of Max. I’ll do this.”
“You’d better use my car. No one will pay any attention to it,” Schaffer offered to Annette. “A warrant could be issued for you any minute now. You’d be no help to us behind bars.”
Moore answered as Schaffer scrounged up her car keys for Annette. Carson didn’t get a chance to say anything to Annette before she was gone.
He hoped like hell she didn’t get spooked and run.
Right now, everything pretty much depended upon her being able to back him up.
That and their dead witness.
Chapter 38
5:00 AM
Mountain Brook
Annette parked the sedan she’d borrowed from Kim Schaffer along the side of the deserted road. She stared through the darkness. Light glowed from the two windows on the front of shack where Maxwell West resided. His old pickup truck stood to one side of the shack. She didn’t see any sign of Max.
With her cell phone tucked into her pocket, she opened the car door and got out. She listened for several seconds. Too quiet. Where were the rants of a mentally ill man? No sounds of things being tossed around inside his house though half an hour ago he had been in a desperate rage according to Carson.
He could have injured himself. Could be dead.
Fear snaked along the column of her spine.
Walking quickly, she made her way along the gravel drive. Her heels crunched, jarring the silence pressing in around her. She glanced back to the car twice, three times, her fingers wrapped tightly around the cell phone in her pocket.
Annette wasn’t usually so jumpy. But this could very well be a setup. She wasn’t sure Carson had considered that possibility, but she sure as hell had. Even if it weren’t, it was unfamiliar territory.
She understood how to handle her sister’s outbursts, but this was a man with an entirely different problem set. He would be far stronger than Paula.
Once Annette reached the small porch, she moved a bit more stealthily. If he had worn himself down, fallen asleep, she didn’t want to startle him.
At the door she tried the knob. Not locked.
Annette braced herself and slowly, noiselessly turned the knob. The locking mechanism clicked as it moved to the open position. She flinched. Stay calm. Be ready. Then she opened the door.
The room was well lit.
The Spartan furnishings were turned upside down. Items had been ripped from their shelves, cabinets, and drawers. Photographs had been torn into pieces. But no sign of the man who had carried out such destruction.
She listened a few moments more. Nothing.
“Max?”
Silence.
Her nerves jangled.
She squeezed the phone in her pocket tighter.
“Max! Carson sent me to see if you needed any help cleaning up.”
“Shhhh!”
Annette whirled toward the door.
Max West grabbed her, held her close to his body. “Shhh,” he hissed in her ear. “They’ll hear you.”
Her heart thudding against her chest wall, Annette nodded. He must have been hiding behind the door.
“They’re gonna get me this time,” he muttered. “I know it.”
Annette turned her face up to his. That was about the only part of her body she could move at the moment. “What do they want?” Instinct told her to play along. If the man was delusional, arguing wouldn’t work.
He stared down at her, his face a mask of confusion and frustration. “Me, of course!”
She nodded. “We should make a run for it.” The idea gained momentum quickly. “I have a car. Should we go get help?”
Max moved his head from side to side in a slow, resolute manner. “If we go out there, they’ll get us for sure.”
“I understand.” She glanced around the room. “We should find ourselves weapons.” She looked back up at him. “Maybe prepare something to hide behind. Like that couch over there.”
He seemed to consider her suggestion, then shook his head adamantly. “We can’t touch anything. It’s all evil. That’s why I had to fight it.”
“Carson is worried about you.” She didn’t know what else to say. “He wants me to—”
“Where is that boy?” Max demanded, his tone loud and gruff. “He should’ve been home by now. The last time he did this …”
Annette’s insides froze. Was he referring to the night Carson’s family was murdered? Or some other night that had suddenly flashed through his muddled gray matter? “What happened last time?”
Max shook his head hard. “I can’t say.”
Annette lowered her voice to a more soothing tone. “You can tell me anything, Max. I’m Carson’s friend. He trusts me.”
He looked away from her as if he’d heard someone else speaking to him. “She’s not Carson. I can’t tell her,” he said to the voice only he could hear.
“No,” he screamed. “I won’t tell her!”
“It’s okay, Max,” she urged. “You don’t have to tell me anything. Let’s just stay calm and be quiet so they won’t hear us.”
He snapped his mouth shut, surveying the room as if he fully expected to see someone else standing nearby.
“I can’t tell her,” he growled.
His arms tightened around her, and Annette felt the first glimmer of panic.
“Where’s your medicine, Max?” she asked tentatively.
He leaned his mouth close to her ear. “It’s evil. I can’t take it.”
She was going to have to disable him. There appeared no way around it.
“I WILL NOT TELL HER!”
Annette cringed at the words screamed so close to her ear.
When her ears had stopped ringing, she studied the man’s face. Whatever was going through his head, he was scared to death. “Max, can you show me what you’re afraid of?”
If she could distract him from the voice, that might be helpful.
He stared at her a moment, then started ushering her deeper into the shack. Bedroom. The panic bloomed larger. Images and voices from her past whispered in her whirling thoughts.
She forced the memories away. This was Max … not her mother’s boyfriend or one of her foster fa
thers.
The coppery odor of blood yanked her full attention back to the moment a split second before the crimson trailing up the tousled bedcovers registered. As her sluggish brain grappled to wrap around what it all meant, her gaze locked on what was lying in the center of the bed.
Lots of blood. Something big. Brown. Long tail.
A dog.
Her stomach roiled.
The dog had been mutilated. Had bled out in Max’s bed. Judging by the odor it had been there a day or two.
She swallowed back a gag. “Max, is that your dog?” Damn, anyone who would kill a helpless animal had to be seriously twisted.
“It’s my daughter’s dog.”
Before Annette could crane her neck around and see beyond Max’s shoulder, he started to howl and cry. He pushed Annette away and ran to the corner. He huddled there with his knees to his chest, his arms wrapped around his legs.
Annette faced the woman who had spoken.
Patricia Drake.
The gun in her hand was the next thing Annette became aware of. Well now, this was certainly an unexpected development. The senator’s wife definitely wasn’t anyone Annette would have considered a threat.
“I couldn’t tell her!” Max cried. “She’s not Carson!”
Patricia sent a glare in the old man’s direction. “Shut up! I need to think.”
Annette mentally shook off the surprise and evaluated her situation. This woman intended to kill her. The certainty with which she understood that reality made her pulse react.
Annette’s mouth went dry.
Could Patricia Drake be responsible for Dr. Holderfield’s death? For the senator’s? Surely she wouldn’t have killed her own husband.
That was … impossible. The way the two had doted on each other in public. No. The idea was preposterous. An uncharacteristic tremor of fear rattled Annette. But … if she had killed her husband, she damned sure wouldn’t have any qualms about killing Annette.
For the first time in over a decade Annette had no idea how to fix a situation.
She was screwed.
“Carson’s dear uncle Max has a message for his nephew,” Patricia explained in a haughty voice. “He was in his sister’s house that night. He committed the murders. Carson needs to hear that so this nuisance can be put to rest once and for all. That’s the way it should’ve been handled from the beginning.” Patricia inclined her head and glowered at Annette. “But Carson isn’t here. Where is he?”
There had to be a way to turn this around. “He’s with the FBI.” Annette looked the other woman straight in the eyes and went for broke. “He’s telling them his suspicions about you and your son. We found Dane. He told us everything.”
Patricia laughed. “Don’t be foolish, you ridiculous whore. Carson has no idea what really happened to his parents. Dane would never tell. Never. He loves his sister too much. Besides, I don’t think Dane has been talking to anyone.”
“You,” Annette argued, fury bursting inside her at what those cruel words undoubtedly meant, “should have gone to the police about Dane years ago. Why did you let Carson live in hell all those years?” What kind of person could do that to another human being?
The front door flew open. Annette hoped it would be help. But her hope was short-lived.
“Mother! What’re you doing?”
Elizabeth.
No way could Annette hope to win against the two of them.
Patricia pointed a disapproving look at her daughter. “Stay out of this, Elizabeth. I have everything under control.”
Elizabeth ignored her mother, unleashed her fury on Annette. “You’re a fool. You should have left town while you had the chance.” Then she wheeled on her mother once more. “Answer me, Mother. What are you doing?”
Annette considered her chances of survival if she took a dive at Elizabeth right now. Too risky. Patricia Drake would shoot her for sure.
“I told you,” Patricia snarled, “I have this under control. All will be exactly as it should be very soon.”
Elizabeth’s face puckered into an expression of disgust. “What is that smell?”
“I used the dog to scare him,” her mother explained impatiently. “Max is going to confess to Carson. That story makes far more sense than that ridiculous Stokes scheme. It should have been done this way years ago. Wainwright’s an idiot.”
Patricia killed the dog? What a sick bitch. Hearing Wainwright’s name was no surprise. Annette had known Wainwright was in this up to his eyeballs. The bastard. She hoped he got his. If she were lucky maybe she would live to see it.
“Why did you do that?” Elizabeth demanded, her voice small and high-pitched, like a child whining over a lost toy. “You do it every time! The dog was mine! You had no right!”
Patricia scoffed. “Don’t be foolish. He was too large. Too much trouble. You didn’t need him. Besides, he was nothing but a distraction. You need to be focused on work. On Carson.”
“You never do anything right,” Elizabeth snapped. “Never, never, never! Every time Father got us a dog you found something wrong with it. Wanted it out of the way. I think you were just jealous, Mother. Jealous of how much Dane and I loved those dogs.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Elizabeth,” Patricia patronized. “It was for the best. I know what’s best for you.”
This just got more and more twisted. Annette had to make a move. “What about Carson?” She directed her appeal to Elizabeth. “Hasn’t he been hurt enough? Does your mother have to drag his uncle into this nightmare, too?”
The princess of Birmingham morphed instantly from helpless little girl to psychotic bitch. “Don’t pretend you know Carson. He only fucked you because he couldn’t have me.”
Okay, so Elizabeth wasn’t a potential ally. “Or maybe,” Annette tossed back, “it was because I was helping him find the truth.”
“Liar.” Elizabeth snatched the gun from her mother’s hand and moved in a step closer to Annette. “You don’t know the truth any more than he does.”
Annette wasn’t sure whether Elizabeth was less of a threat than her mother or not. Might as well take a stab at throwing her off balance. “Were you going to kill Carson when he came here? The way you did your father?”
“How dare you even suggest such a thing!” Elizabeth leveled the barrel of the weapon on Annette. “I loved my father. And no one’s going to hurt Carson. We’re going to be married. Father would have come around in time. He loved Carson. My father was only worried that Carson would cause trouble with all this digging into the past.”
“That’s why we have to do this now,” Patricia urged. She looked from her daughter to the gun in her hand and back. “We can’t take any more risks.”
Annette had to keep them distracted and divided until she had a plan. “Maybe your mother killed your father for you.”
Patricia Drake’s chin jutted out. “He went too far.”
Elizabeth watched her mother as she spoke. Her lips quivered. “He did,” she agreed, her voice low, grim. “But he didn’t have to die. You could have talked to him. You always kill everything!”
“He wasn’t listening.” Patricia’s cold expression melted as she peered lovingly at her daughter, brushing a strand of dark hair from her cheek. “I couldn’t let him hurt you all over again. He wanted Carson dead.”
When Elizabeth would have argued, Patricia implored, “I heard your father give the order, Elizabeth. I had no choice. He had to be stopped.”
Annette shuddered. A part of her had wondered if Wainwright and Drake would really go to that extreme. Killing her was one thing, but Carson? For all intents and purposes he was one of them. Now she knew. If she didn’t get out of here alive to warn him … it could still happen.
Say something! Anything! “The way you stopped Lana Kimble when you were afraid Randolph might choose her over you,” Annette insinuated. More conjecture, but it was worth a try.
Patricia’s face darkened with renewed rage, but there was no mistaking the flick
er of surprise in her eyes. “I didn’t kill her. She fell. It was an accident. We were arguing. Besides, Randolph never really loved that pathetic little slut. It was me he needed. She would have ruined him.”
Jesus. Annette had guessed right. “So you were just protecting the man you loved?”
“Of course,” Patricia insisted. “He would never have achieved all that he has without me. I’ve always made sure my family was protected.”
No shit. Like a bear protecting her cubs. Annette fought the quaking that had started in her limbs. She needed more time. Think! The prescription bottle in Dane’s room. It had belonged to his mother. “The way you protected Dane?”
“He wouldn’t stop causing trouble!” Patricia’s voice grew higher and thinner as she spoke. “I told him to stop, but he refused. Trading the rings for drugs was the last straw. He left me no choice.”
Elizabeth stared at Patricia. “What did you do, Mother?”
Patricia glanced around the room as if buying time while she came up with an excuse. “I … I gave him something to help him sleep, dear. That’s all. Maybe he’ll do better after he’s had some rest.”
“Doesn’t matter now,” Annette blurted, hoping to keep the tension mounting between mother and daughter. Both glared at her. “Like I said,” Annette improvised, “Dane told us everything. I know what you did.”
“Dane’s an idiot,” Elizabeth contended. “Drugs have ruined him. But he would never do anything to hurt me.”
What now? Annette had just one genuine ace up her sleeve. “Dane is dead, Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth’s mouth went slack. Her eyes widened for a moment before the fury resurrected. “I don’t believe you.”
“He took those tranquilizers your mother gave him, rented himself a hotel room, and checked out.” Annette needed Elizabeth confused, emotional. Anything but determined.
“You’re lying.”
Annette shrugged. “Call the Holiday Inn Express in Fultondale. Ask them to check room two fourteen. Your brother’s there, he’s dead.” She glanced at the older woman. “Why don’t you ask your mother exactly what she did?”
The weapon in Elizabeth’s hand shook. “I don’t believe you.” She jerked out her cell phone, entered a number, and waited for an answer.