IF SHE RAN

by Blake Pierce

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Jennifer asked.

  “I don’t like leaving loose ends untied. Also, I thought I’d give you a proper thank-you for filing that complaint to my boss. That made my day a lot more pleasant.”

  “Did you think I was bluffing?” Jennifer asked.

  Kate sat down in the other chair across the table from Jennifer. “Oh, no. I’m beginning to understand that you aren’t the sort of woman that bluffs. You pretty much shoot straight from the hip, don’t you?”

  “So why are you here, Agent Wise? Trying to dig up more dirt? Want to try to pin something else on me in addition to adultery?”

  Kate smiled, a little amused at how easily this evil woman was falling right into her hands. “As a matter of fact, yes. You see…I know you think that you’re very smart and very clever. And for all I know, that is true for certain things. But not when it comes to covering your ass.” She gave Jennifer a moment to respond but when it was clear that she was going to remain quiet, she added: “When the fire alarm sounded this morning, you left your computer in the gym. It was unlocked and I got to it before the password screen could come up. For a woman trying to hide things from people, you should know to delete your browsing history more often.”

  True fear shone in Jennifer’s eyes for the first time but she did her best to hide it. She sat up as rigid as a slab of stone and said, “I won’t say another word without my lawyer.”

  Kate smiled again and leaned in close. “Are you sure about that? Because your browsing history is not the worst of your problems. If you really want your lawyer here, that’s fine. But it might serve your pretty little reputation a bit better if she doesn’t hear what I’m about to say over the next few minutes. Your call.”

  Jennifer sneered at her with such force that Kate would not have been surprised if the woman were to spit in her face. “Say what you need to say then.”

  “I’ll say this: I find it very odd indeed that there are significant bank transfers from your account to some undisclosed and secretive recipient within several days of not only your own husband’s death, but Jack Tucker’s as well. I also find it a little peculiar that you took the time to look into how to make sure you didn’t get caught—looking into dark web software and using bitcoins for your transactions—but decided against it. Why was that, Jennifer? Would doing such things make you feel as if you were actually guilty?”

  “This is ridiculous,” she said. “I did not kill my husband! And I didn’t even know Jack Tucker!”

  “Oh, I’m not accusing you of killing your husband. I don’t think you have it in you.”

  “Then why are you bringing it up?”

  “Well…it all comes down to a man named Zeus Beringer. Did you know him?”

  She hesitated, clearly acting—and doing a decent job of it. “No. Should I?”

  “Well, we’re fairly certain he killed Jack Tucker. It’s hard to tell, though. We can’t question him because he’s dead. Recently dead.”

  “What does he have to do with this?”

  “You know him,” Kate said. “Maybe very well.”

  “No. I told you…I don’t know that name.”

  Ignoring her, Kate went on with her interrogation technique. “Well, maybe you didn’t know him all that well. You don’t have to know someone very well to kill them, do you?”

  “You’re insane!”

  “Four times. With his own gun. The same gun that killed Jack Tucker…and Frank all those years ago.”

  That’s what did it. She tried to hide the reaction of hearing the connection, of hearing her sins so blatantly in her face. The question roaring through her head might as well have been written on her forehead in bright red marker: How do you know that?

  “Here are the facts of the case, Mrs. Nobilini,” Kate said, knowing she had her now. “Stop me when you hear something that isn’t correct. Your husband and Jack Tucker were both killed by the same type of weapon within just a few days of large transactions being made in your bank account. This time around, the transactions did not total quite as much—and perhaps because of that, the man you hired was not pleased. Maybe he wanted more money. Maybe you were going outside of whatever terms you two had agreed to. So to make sure you paid what he wanted, he put a scare in you by showing up at your kids’ school. Does that sound about right?”

  Jennifer said nothing but her tears and trembling gave the answer.

  “I suppose this motivated you to do what you could, to maybe call him off. So you met with him. Maybe then you—”

  “It was my children,” Jennifer said, softly.

  “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”

  “My children! He was after my children and…and I knew that I was over my head. He had come for my children.”

  “Do you want to tell me why he was a piece of this at all? Eight years after you hired him to kill your husband? Why again?”

  “Because…”

  It was a word that was just as good as an admission. She had hired Zeus to kill her husband eight years ago. She was not doing anything to argue against it.

  “Jennifer?”

  “Because I saw it in Missy, too! On two different occasions, I heard her gripe about her husband, how he was boring her to death, how she wanted out of her life. She’d had an affair and felt guilt-ridden over it. And I…I felt sorry for her! I had been there! But I knew how to fix it and…”

  “Did she ever ask you to?” Kate asked.

  “No. But she said she was going to tell her husband. She said she had to. Said the guilt was too much. To love another man while her boring, useless husband was not paying her the attention she deserved…”

  “So you spent at least twenty thousand dollars to release another woman from her marriage? Is that about right?”

  Jennifer slammed her fists down on the table and when she looked at Kate, Kate saw something in her eyes that was more than fury or sadness. There was something there that seemed unhinged—something she had seen sparks of in the eyes of men and women who had worked toward an insanity plea and, more often than not, got it. It wasn’t a complete surprise to Kate; she’d glimpsed the slightest bit of it when she had confronted her about her affair the first time.

  “Yes!” She then let out a roar of a scream that turned into an obscenity. “She was so fucking weak! She would have told her husband and he would have left her and taken the kids. Her life would have been over! She would have never gotten to see her kids and she’d have a reputation…would probably never find anyone else. She would been ruined. So I freed her of it…”

  “So you were friends? Close friends?”

  “Of course, you moron! Why the hell else would I do it? I told her about two mornings ago. I told her what I had done, to free her. She…she snapped on me. But she also wanted to protect me. So we pretended we didn’t know each other well. Great FBI work on your part there, I have to say.”

  Kate let the comment slide off her back, recalling how she’d thought Missy had been lying about whether she had told anyone other than Jasmine Brooks about her affair. She’d told Jennifer, too, Kate thought. Maybe more than she told Jasmine.

  “You hired him for the murder of Jack Tucker,” Kate said. “There was a discrepancy of some kind, he went after your kids, and you killed him. You arranged a meeting with him at the Comfort Inn in the Bronx and you killed him.”

  “With his own gun, too,” she said, rather proudly. “He thought I was going to sleep with him to buy me some time for the rest of the payment. And just as things got heated, I kicked him in the balls, grabbed his gun—I guess he never goes anywhere without it or he was thinking I was going to turn him in or something. And then I k…I killed him.”

  The last three words caused her to weep. Saying it out loud apparently brought it home for her. With her money, she had killed two men. But she had killed Zeus Beringer with her own hands, by her own plans and action.

  Kate slowly got up and headed for the door. She damn near felt sorry
for Jennifer Nobilini. The woman was clearly unhinged but the question that remained was whether she had always been this way or if it had happened after she had arranged for her husband to be killed eight years ago.

  “You understand, right?” Jennifer screamed as Kate reached for the door. “Missy Tucker was weak and was going to waste her life with a man that did not deserve her. I was helping. I was freeing her.”

  “Why don’t you ask her how being a widow feels right now?” Kate asked, a tremor in her own voice “Why don’t you ask her children how they feel to not have a father?”

  “And what about mine?” Jennifer hissed. “I’ll go to prison for this. They’ll not have a mother…no one to look after them.”

  “That’s right,” Kate said. “It’s a damn shame you also made sure they don’t have a father.”

  Kate opened the door and closes it quickly to shut out Jennifer’s wails of sorrow and anger. Kate realized that she was also weeping and quickly wiped a tear away before anyone could see it.

  DeMarco came out of the observation room, a look of respect and shock in her eyes. “Jesus, Kate…that was brutal. And it took less than ten minutes.” She tapped her pocket, making a knocking noise against her phone. “Also, Duran called me back immediately after you went in there. Said he wanted to see it. So I FaceTimed him. He saw the whole thing. I think it’s safe to say your job is safe. That was…that was impressive.”

  “I don’t know about the job part of it,” she said. “But thanks for the compliment. I feel sort of like a bitch for how I just wrecked that poor woman. But hiring someone to kill a husband…it…”

  She had to stop here as visions of Michael and his smiling face came flooding into her head.

  “Kate?”

  “Sorry…I just need a minute.”

  She rushed away from DeMarco, in search of the nearest restroom. And as she went looking, she could still hear Jennifer Nobilini’s cries as her lawyer finally entered the room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  Kate woke up three days later to someone knocking on her front door. She sat up in bed and looked at the clock. When she saw that it was eight in the morning and realized that she had slept for almost nine hours, she felt instantly energized even though her eyes were still heavy with sleep. She got out of bed, shoved her feet into her slippers, and walked through her house to the front door.

  When she opened it and saw Allen on the other side, she was shocked. She had no idea what to say, no idea how to react. They had not spoken since he had told her on the phone that he wasn’t sure he was a good fit for her chaotic life. But now here he was standing on her front porch carrying a box of bagels and a drink coaster with two coffees from her favorite coffee shop just down the street.

  “I figured if I showed up with coffee, you might let me come in,” he said.

  “You were right,” Kate said, plucking one of the coffees out of the carrier. She let him inside and then closed the door behind her. They walked into the kitchen without talking and settled down at the table.

  “I usually don’t question handsome men that bring me coffee,” Kate said, “but what are you doing here?”

  He sighed and picked a bagel from the box. As he opened up a carry-out container of hazelnut cream cheese, she could tell that he was nervous.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I texted Melissa yesterday. I wanted to know if you were done with this latest case you were on and if you were back home yet. And based on the last conversation we had, I didn’t think you’d want me calling or texting you.”

  “It would have been okay.”

  “Well, I wasn’t sure. Anyway, Melissa didn’t text me back. She called me. And she and I had a very good conversation.”

  “Dare I ask what about?”

  He had layered his bagel with cream cheese and now took a bite. He answered as he chewed—a pet peeve of Kate’s but he somehow managed to make it cute.

  “She called me to ask if I thought she was being selfish because she doesn’t like you going back to work. She told me her worries and about the conversations you two have had about it. I told her I thought it was a perfectly normal reaction but that I wasn’t the best person to ask about it. I told her about our phone conversation—about me trying to break things off—and she proceeded to tell me I was an idiot.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like Melissa.”

  “Your daughter…she’s very much like you. She let me know that you were always like this with your job and that it’s not because you don’t care about family and friends but because you’re so passionate about your job—about helping other people.”

  “She didn’t see it that way when she was younger.”

  “I know. She told me all about that.”

  “Is there anything you didn’t talk about?”

  “No. We covered everything. We’re, like, besties now.”

  “Please, Allen. Never say besties again. Ever.”

  He nodded and sipped from his coffee. “But you know, I think she’s right. I’ve seen it in you all over the place—the way you care about people. The way you love your job, your daughter and your granddaughter. In the way you tip way too much at restaurants. And I started to think about how someone with that kind of a heart must be affected by a job like yours. A job you returned to after retirement because you cared so much about it.”

  “Allen, but you were right. I did put my job above others sometimes. I don’t mean to, but it does happen from time to time. Melissa suffered from it when she was younger. And Michael…there are so many things I wished we could have done differently. Spent more time together…but I can’t now. And my job is to blame for that.”

  “I won’t presume to know how your late husband felt about such things,” Allen said. “But if he passed on any of his traits to Melissa, I can pretty much guarantee you that he understood it.”

  “I don’t know how much longer I can do it anyway,” Kate said. “If at all. This last case…it just proved that at my age, I tend to get to personally connected. To the case, to the people I meet, to DeMarco…”

  “And that’s a bad thing?” Allen asked.

  “My director thinks so. And with good cause.”

  She thought about the last conversation she’d had with DeMarco, during the debrief on the afternoon of Jennifer Nobilini’s arrest. She’d commended her for her work but they had left the meeting with her future very much up in the air. And the only thing that had eased that awkwardness was a visit to Cass Nobilini to let her know that her son’s killer had been found and brought to justice. She had left the finer details out, stating that it had been the work of Zeus Beringer. It was not the entire truth, but it had been enough for a mother who could finally find that sense of closure that had eluded her for so long.

  “Well, I’d like to ask that you forget everything I said on the phone,” Allen said, bringing her back into the present. “I was irritated and lonely and…worried about you. Just like your daughter. We both love you and—”

  He realized what he had said and stopped himself with another mouthful of bagel.

  “Don’t dodge it,” Kate said with a smile. “I heard it. You said it.”

  “Shit. I guess I did. But it’s true. I worry about you because I love you. I have for a few weeks now, I think. And I think that’s where my pushing came from. So please…can we pretend it never happened?”

  “Only if you tell me everything you and Melissa talked about.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “Can’t. Besties don’t share each other’s secrets.”

  Kate laughed and tossed her bagel at him. He dodged it, reached out and took her hand, and pulled her forward. When he kissed her, Kate thought that it felt right—more right than it ever had before.

  She supposed she loved him, too. And that was a hard thing for her to admit. Not just because of Michael and her job but because she knew that when she loved, she loved hard. She wasn’t sure if she would be capable of such a thing this late in her life.

  Ar
e you really going to deny yourself the chance, though? she asked herself.

  It was a good question, especially coming off of a case where she had spent most of the time dwelling in the past. When she looked beyond that case, beyond the Nobilinis and the Tuckers, there was more past there—a past where she had cheated her family of memories and affection because of her job.

  If she had learned anything from solving those two murders, it was that the past was always there, always offering memories and lessons that she could use to learn from and to fix present-day hurts.

  And as their kiss deepened, she thought it would certainly be worth trying with Allen. And with Melissa and Michelle, and on and on until she could truly leave her past behind her.

  NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER!

  IF SHE HID

  (A Kate Wise Mystery—Book 4)

  “A masterpiece of thriller and mystery. Blake Pierce did a magnificent job developing characters with a psychological side so well described that we feel inside their minds, follow their fears and cheer for their success. Full of twists, this book will keep you awake until the turn of the last page.”

  --Books and Movie Reviews, Roberto Mattos (re Once Gone)

  IF SHE HID (A Kate Wise Mystery) is book #4 in a new psychological thriller series by bestselling author Blake Pierce, whose #1 bestseller Once Gone (Book #1) (a free download) has received over 1,000 five star reviews.

  Two parents are found dead, and their twin 16 year old daughters are missing. With the case quickly growing cold, the FBI, stumped, must summon their most brilliant agent: retired 55 year old FBI agent Kate Wise.

  Was this a random murder? The work of a serial killer?

  Can they find the girls in time?