She responded with a shrug.
“It’s exactly the same for me. You don’t like to admit it, Selena, but we’re very much two of a kind. We like challenges. We’ll do whatever it takes to achieve our goals. We’re fighters. And our own best interests are our only interests.”
She wasted little time in taking offense at his comparison. Much as she hated to admit it, they were alike. She was a fighter, and she would do whatever it took to save Tony’s life—even take Henry’s.
“So what happens now?” She sat, hands folded in her lap, as if she hadn’t just asked the question that very well might result in her death. In the silence that followed, a clock ticked somewhere, Damon shifted position, and a look of genuine regret came into Henry’s eyes. His mouth thinned, and for a moment he looked so sorrowful that her heart practically stopped beating.
“I know you won’t believe me, but this hurts me more than I can say. I’ve had such grand plans for you, practically from the moment I became aware of your existence. You chafed under the restrictions circumstances put on our relationship, but you truly have been family to me, more than you can ever know. But now—”
The buzz from the telephone behind his desk made Selena start. Calmly, as if he hadn’t been discussing her impending death, Henry picked up the receiver and pressed the INTERCOM button. After speaking for a moment, he hung up and gestured to Damon. “I’m sorry, but I have an unexpected guest. We’ll have to finish this later.”
Before Selena could do more than blink, Damon had taken hold of her arm and was pulling her toward the vault. He pushed her inside, followed, and pulled the door shut behind him.
The room was the size of a small walk-in closet, with no windows and only the one exit, and being in there made the hairs on her nape stand on end. Drawers and shelves lined every inch of wall space except for one square where a small painting hung—a Picasso, stolen a few years earlier from a private collector who died trying to protect his property. On the shelf beneath it was a Fabergé egg and an exquisite necklace of yellow diamonds.
She reverently touched the Picasso’s frame. She’d thought William was driven by the desire for money and power, but that wasn’t entirely true. Part of his need, perhaps the greater part, had to do with possession. He needed to own things—priceless art, rare gems, people. He had to keep these things hidden from everyone else, the way he’d kept her and Damon hidden, but he knew he had them, and that was enough.
In the corner behind her was an armoire, filled with jewelry boxes, presentation cases, and a row of leather-bound journals. Of course Henry would document his activities. It was part of his need, his arrogance. He believed he was safe in committing everything to paper because he was so good that no one would ever suspect him. For twenty years he’d been right.
Her hand trembling, she picked up the journal dated the year he’d acquired her. When she lifted the cover, the book fell open to a photograph attached to one page. It was dated April, and it was her, taken on a street in Ocho Rios where tourists were plentiful and no one paid attention to one shabby little native girl. She’d counted on that invisibility. It had made her very good at what she did. But . . .
She hadn’t met him until November.
She was reaching out to touch the photo, to remove it from the page, when there was a whisper of movement, followed by her worst nightmare as the room plunged into darkness.
Tony sat in Henry’s driveway, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel while waiting for the guard to call the house, then open the gate. For months the guards had automatically let him pass, but that had stopped . . . about the time of Joe’s surprise visit, he realized. Because Joe had seen and heard things Henry needed kept secret?
After what seemed like forever, the gate started its slow swing open. “The staff has the day off, but the front door’s unlocked,” the guard said. “The chief says to come on up and join him in his study.”
“Thanks.” Tony followed the drive to its end on the north side of the house. He took the steps to the long porch two at a time, then let himself in the ornate door.
Henry liked to say that the house had been built to show off the main staircase, instead of the other way around. Twenty feet wide, with risers of marble and banisters of teak, stretching straight and true to the second floor, the staircase was grand. As many times as Tony had been there, it caught his attention every time. This time he hardly noticed it.
The door to the study was closed. Tony knocked, waited for an invitation, then walked in. Henry was seated behind his desk, the World open in front of him. The only other items on the desk were a leather pad and a crystal notepad-and-pen holder. Even the phone was relegated to a table beneath the tall windows. He smiled welcomingly, stood, and shook hands. Everything about him was so familiar. He couldn’t possibly be keeping the kind of secrets Joe had hinted at. He just couldn’t.
“This is a pleasant surprise. Have a seat.” Henry gestured toward the leather chairs, and Tony chose one, catching the faint scent of perfume as the leather yielded beneath his weight. “Did you have any damage from the storms?”
“Not really. Some downed trees, a section of fence.”
“How about your folks?”
“I stopped by there this morning. They’re fine.” Tony took a deep breath, aiming for casual when he went on. “I talked to Lucia while I was there, and she brought up—”
“The assisted-living center.” Henry gave a regretful shake of his head. “I know you hate the idea, Tony, but you’ve got to put aside emotion and look at it rationally. Joe’s not going to get better. It’s not fair of you to ask Anna to shoulder such an enormous burden. I know you wish for some miracle cure, but there is no cure, and the sooner you accept that, the better it will be for Anna.”
Tony wasn’t surprised by Henry’s pitch on Lucia’s behalf. She’d always been his favorite, and he babied her just like the rest of the family did. Hadn’t she gone running to him for support and intervention after Tony’s less-than-happy response to her first retirement-community suggestion? Henry had brought it up the day Joe had taken his joyride, when they’d met at the accident scene. I was leaving a note at your desk when the call came in about Joe he’d said, to explain the message form he’d dropped.
The message he’d returned to his pocket rather than give to Tony. The message that had had Tony’s name across the top.
His skin prickling with apprehension, Tony closed his eyes and focused on the slip of paper. He’d seen it only for an instant, but that had been long enough to know some hand other than Henry’s had written his name there. Henry’s writing was like the man—bold, straightforward. The writing on the form had been a barely legible left-handed scrawl.
Darnell Garry was the only lefty in their squad, and the only one in the office the morning Dwayne Samuels had called—the same morning of Joe’s accident. He couldn’t remember the call, Darnell had said, but if Samuels had left a message, Darnell had left it on the appropriate desk.
Had Henry taken the message from Tony’s desk? Had he known Dwayne had something to tell? He’d had access to the Known Associates lists for Grover Washington and Bucky Spradlin, and to informant information that linked Javier Perkins to Tony. He’d known Tony suspected there were problems with Javier’s story.
He had known about the arrest of the vigilante’s accomplice. Had the ability to find out where the unit transporting the accomplice to the jail was at any given time. Had the ability to pass through a police perimeter without so much as a blink. What officer was going to question the chief of police, for God’s sake? The patrol officer who’d caught the suspicious persons report that had turned out to be Henry had been the butt of jokes for a week. No one wanted to find himself in the same position.
Tony’s chest grew tight. That report had come in from Bryan Hayes’s neighborhood around the time of his murder. And Henry had been there. Other cops had known about the operation last night—Lieutenant Nicholson, the division commander, every officer i
nvolved and his supervisor. Other cops could have passed through the downtown area without drawing questions or attention. Others would have known the patrol unit would most likely pass through that intersection.
But no one else, besides Darnell Garry, had known about the phone call from Dwayne, and Darnell had been at the warehouse with Tony at the time of the shooting. No one else but Frankie had known Tony’s doubts about Javier.
And Lucia hadn’t followed the killer from the warehouse to any other cop’s house.
This was Henry he was talking about, for Christ’s sake. Uncle Henry. Family. Tony had known him all his life. He was a good man, a good cop—had devoted his life to defeating the bad guys. Tough on crime and tougher on criminals. He couldn’t . . . couldn’t . . .
So there was no harm in asking. Henry would deny it, then laugh and say something about Tony remaining a little bit too emotionally detached from his cases. And then Tony could start looking for the real killer.
“I don’t want to argue with you about Dad today,” he said. “Can we talk about something else?”
Though he looked as if he did want to argue, after a moment, Henry nodded. “Do you have anything in particular in mind?”
“Yeah. The vigilante case.”
“Do you have any theories?”
“I do.” Tony took a deep breath, then said flatly, “I think the killer’s a cop.”
Henry’s reaction was underwhelming. There was no surprise, no immediate denial, no anger. He just continued to toy with the pen for a moment before finally returning it to its holder and folding his hands on the desktop. “Based on what?”
Tony spoke slowly, putting his thoughts in order as he went. “Phone calls were made to five of the victims from a pay phone at the Denver Avenue bus station, a couple minutes’ walk from the police station. But when the vigilante called James Tranh, he switched phones.”
“Convenience?”
“Or he knew we had a wiretap order on the bus-station phone.”
Henry wasn’t impressed. “That’s a stretch, Tony.”
“The killer never leaves anything at the scene. No cigarette butts, no gum wrappers, no hair, no fibers, no nothing, and he polices his brass.”
“Anyone who watches television knows to do that.”
“Come on, Henry. You’ve been a cop a hell of a lot longer than me. How many damn-near perfect murders have you seen in that time?”
“Very few,” he conceded. “People make mistakes. But most killings are crimes of passion. People in the grip of rage, jealousy, or vengeance rarely think clearly. Our vigilante is cold-blooded. He plans everything out. He has no emotional investment. He doesn’t make mistakes. Is that all you have?”
Too restless to sit still, Tony stood and walked a slow circuit around the room, pretending interest in all the little things Henry filled his space with so he wouldn’t have to make eye contact. “The vigilante has excellent intelligence—the kind cops would have.”
“Finding drug dealers isn’t exactly difficult, Tony.”
“Not the nickel-and-dime guys, no. But their suppliers, guys like Tranh and Grover Washington—you don’t just pick up the phone and call them, or get in your car and drive by their house. Dwayne Samuels lived out in the middle of nowhere, and he was paranoid about people coming out there. He had an electronic gate, alarms, motion detectors. Probably the only ones who knew how to find him were the guys who worked for him, his family, and the cops.”
He glanced over his shoulder and saw Henry was waiting silently. His expression had begun to turn grim.
“He knew his accomplice had been arrested Saturday night. Knew Potter was in that particular unit and that he would be traveling that particular street to the jail. He knew in time to position himself on that rooftop, and he knew he didn’t have to worry about getting picked up, even though cops were stopping people within minutes.”
“Because he had a badge and a reason for being there.”
Tony nodded, then took another deep breath. His hand was unsteady, so he wrapped his fingers around the cool, hard metal of a statue on a marble-topped table. “He also knew that Dwayne Samuels had some information for me.”
“Samuels . . . victim number eight?”
Another nod. “Dwayne called the station looking for me the day he died. Darnell Garry took the message, but I never got it. Someone took it from my desk while I was out that morning—the morning Dad had his wreck. You were at my desk that morning. You had a message with my name on it in your pocket. Remember?”
In the silence that followed, Tony slowly turned to face Henry. Again, his response was underwhelming. He should have been shocked or angry, should have been quick to offer denials. Instead, he sat there in his leather chair, watching Tony with an oddly regretful look. Just that look was enough to tell him.
Jesus Christ.
“Perhaps you should be looking at Detective Garry.” Too little, too late.
Numbly Tony shook his head. “Darnell was at the warehouse when the guy was killed.”
“I was home.”
“Can you prove it?”
Henry’s smile was faintly amused. “No. More important, you can’t prove I wasn’t.”
For the first time ever, Tony was glad Joe’s mind was going. He loved Henry like a brother! He’d invited him into his home—had given him access to his family, for Christ’s sake! To know how corrupt and twisted he’d become would have broken Joe’s heart.
“I think I can,” Tony said. “How hard do you think it will be to find the patrol or traffic cop who remembers stopping you downtown Saturday night?”
That brought a slight response—the tightening of his jaw. Tony pushed ahead. “On top of that, I have a witness who places the man from the warehouse—the man on the Ducati—here at your house. Damon Long . . . that’s his name, isn’t it? And there’s that visit Dad made here. He was convinced you were an impostor, a drug dealer, making plans with another man. That was Long, too, wasn’t it?”
Rising from the chair, Henry walked to the intercom next to the door, pressed the CALL button, then returned to his seat. “I’ve always thought that if anyone could solve these murders, it would be you. Truthfully, though, I expected you to be dead long before you figured it out. You’re more competent than even I believed, or perhaps Selena is merely less so.”
“Selena—What— How—” The capacity for speech went right out of his head as the door opened and two armed thugs came in. Tony reached for the pistol clipped to his waistband in back, but the shorter of the men grabbed his arm, twisting it up around his shoulder blades. He landed one punch that didn’t faze the bigger guy, and took one in the gut in return that made his legs buckle.
Henry steepled his hands together. “It’s a good thing I had these two gentlemen standing by. I asked them here to deal with another small problem. Unfortunately, that problem just keeps multiplying.” Turning his head, he called loudly, “Damon, come on out. Bring our other guest with you.”
For a moment there was silence, broken only by the breathing from the two goons and the thudding of Tony’s heart. Then, slowly, a door began to open in the wall. Jeez, he’d sat in this room dozens of times and had never known there was a door there. But hell, he’d sat with Henry hundreds of times and had never had a clue about the sick secrets he was hiding.
Now that he’d found out, damned if he intended to take them to his grave.
Henry’s vault was so well constructed that not even the faintest ray of light leaked in around the door, but the voices from the outer room came through quite clearly. Selena stood frozen, barely able to think or breathe for the panic coursing through her. She had to get out of the room, had to breathe fresh air and see the light, had to face the danger.
But when she bolted, Damon grabbed her, his arm like a steel band beneath her breasts, his gun pressing against her and his other hand brutally covering her mouth. He held her so tightly that, for a moment, she was grateful; he was the only thing holding her toget
her. But as she listened to the wariness and disillusionment in Tony’s voice, the arrogance in Henry’s, the panic receded. She was so damned tired of lies, betrayals, and disappointments, and damned if she would meekly take them anymore.
All those months of training kicked in. Montoya had never tolerated weakness in her. If she panicked, she got hurt. If she lost control, she got hurt. He’d pushed her, focused her, controlled her, and taught her to control herself. She closed her eyes, breathed, listened to his voice in her head, taunting, mocking, encouraging. With movements so restrained that she was hardly aware of them herself, she drew the switchblade from her waistband, pressed the button that flicked it open, then sank it to the hilt in Damon’s thigh.
Grinding out curses under his breath, he let go of her with one hand and reached for the knife. She grabbed hold of the wrist that covered her mouth, twisted it back, ducked, and came up free, then hit blindly, instinctively, with a heel-palm strike to his face, driving his nose upward with the force of the blow. Blood spurted, warm and plentiful, over her hand, but she ignored it. Getting a good grip on his hair, she cracked his head against the sharp corner of the cabinet behind him, felt his body buckle, then did it again for good measure.
“Damon,” Henry called through the door. “Come on out. Bring our other guest with you.”
She let go of him, and his body sagged backward, pushing the door open. He sank onto the floor, half in, half out, of the room, and lay motionless. As she wiped his blood on her pants, she debated her next move. Would it be wiser to stroll into the room for an open confrontation, or to make Henry send one of his flunkies after her?
Footsteps sounded outside, taking the choice from her. She pressed back into the shadows where the armoire met the wall. The figure that appeared in the doorway was huge—easily six foot six and three hundred fifty pounds— and he was carrying a big weapon, as well, holding it up to the right of his head. Grasping the open armoire door for balance, she waited until he was no more than a few feet away, then swung her left foot high into the air. It connected with his wrist, earning her a grunt of pain, and sent the pistol flying behind him.
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