“You said…you told me…”
“Letting you go—that was never in the cards.”
“But…what…?”
The question died in a sudden haze fogging her mind. She felt warm and strange, and though she knew it was the drug taking effect, she didn’t care.
Swann withdrew the needle and carefully put it into his pocket. “You think I’m all about the money, but that’s only part of it. The least important part.” He shifted into drive and got the Hyundai moving again. “I don’t want just money out of you, little girl. I want…well, I want all kinds of things.”
She sat back in her seat, her eyes half shut, her mind frozen. Dimly, she was aware that Swann was smiling.
“You and I are going to be together for the long haul. For a lifetime, sugarplum.”
KATE reached the Jaguar as sirens were drawing near. She only hoped she could get the car going again. The key was still in the ignition, but the motor was off. She cranked the ignition.
Finally, the engine turned over. She nursed the gas and eased the car off the apron of pavement in front of the warehouse, onto the street. The car was making some questionable noises under the hood, but it was running, and that was all she cared about.
She flipped a U-turn on Seventh and headed west. Swann had said he would call at four a.m. to arrange the ransom drop. After the events of the past ten minutes, the call might be delayed or it might not come at all—but if it did, she would be ready. And this time she would insist on hearing Chelsea’s voice.
Regret stabbed her, and she briefly shut her eyes.
She’d had her. She’d embraced the girl. Huddled with her in the apartment. Had almost felt her beating heart.
And now Chelsea was lost to her again.
The memory of how the girl had clung to her, unwilling to run to the imagined safety of the street, came back to her and hit her hard.
I forced her into that street, she thought, and Swann anticipated it. If she dies, I sent her to her death.
“I’ll get you back,” Kate breathed. “I swear I will.”
Now there was work to do. She got out her phone, speed-dialing Di Milo. Before he answered, her phone started beeping. Low battery. Damn, she’d forgotten to charge it.
“Vince, you at the location yet?” She spoke fast, cramming in as much conversation as possible while the battery lasted.
“I’m at the coffeehouse. Counterman told me you were here and left in a hurry.”
“I went after Swann, but it didn’t work out. He was inside the abandoned church before he took off. There’s got to be a way in, probably around back. Find it. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
Di Milo started to answer, then went silent. The battery had failed.
“At least nothing else can go wrong,” she muttered.
But she was pretty sure that wasn’t true.
——
It took her ten minutes to reach the church, coaxing the wounded Jag down every block. She found Di Milo’s beat-up Buick Skylark parked in the coffeehouse lot. By now he must be inside the church, having made a thorough inspection of the premises.
A squeal of tires made her turn. A bright-yellow Mazda RX-8 whipped into the lot and slant-parked across three spaces. Skip Slater climbed out from behind the wheel.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, unaccountably peeved.
“Making a delivery.” He nodded toward the passenger side of the car, where Grange was stepping out. His bald head was bandaged.
“Vic. You’re supposed to be in the ER.”
“I left.”
“They let you go?”
“Sure. I’m fine.”
“He’s not fine,” Skip said. “He left AMA—against medical advice. Your guy Alan sent me to pick him up. Like I’m an errand boy.”
Kate frowned. “Alan was supposed to send a couple of bodyguards to look after you at the hospital.”
“He did. I told them to get lost. I don’t need babysitters.”
“No, just a chauffeur,” Skip groused.
Kate ignored him. “Why come here?” she asked Grange.
He shrugged. “Chelsea’s my responsibility. I lost her. I’ll help get her back.”
“No one’s blaming you. Besides, you don’t even like her. Didn’t you call her a spoiled little skank?”
“She’s that, all right. But…I don’t want her getting hurt.”
“Neither do I,” Kate said, wondering if it was already too late.
A perimeter fence sealed off the church from intruders. Exploring it with her flashlight, she picked out a gap under the fence that showed signs of trespass—long smears in the dirt left by crawling bodies and bits of cloth caught on the sharp edges of the bottom of the fence.
“They got in this way,” she said. “By now, Di Milo’s in there, too.” She turned to Grange. “You’d better stay outside and stand post. Just in case Swann comes back.”
Looking past Grange, down the alley that led to the back of the church, she saw a flicker of movement.
Di Milo? He might have heard their arrival. But he would show himself plainly. He wouldn’t sink back into the shadows. Hiding. Watching…
Him.
He’d been tailing her all night, and now somehow he was here.
Impulsively, she broke into a run. She had been stalked by this son of a bitch for too long. She hadn’t saved Chelsea. She hadn’t stopped Swann. But she could catch this man and put him away.
The alley intersected with another one running east along the rear of the café. That was where he’d gone. She followed, fumbling the Glock out of her pocket, hoping she had a chance to use it.
He was a dozen yards ahead, sprinting hard. Behind her, footsteps. Grange, pursuing also.
At the end of the alley stood a chain-link fence, screening it from the street. She had time to think; she’d cornered the bastard. And then he jumped onto the fence and climbed.
She wanted to shoot him, but he was still too far away.
He reached the top of the fence and swung over, dropping down heavily. She hoped he’d shattered an ankle, incapacitated himself, but no such luck. He took off running again, up the sidewalk.
By the time she reached the fence he was gone.
Only now did she realize the risk she’d taken. If he hadn’t panicked, if he’d turned and taken aim, he might have cut her down in the middle of the alley.
She still didn’t care. She wanted him. She wanted something to go right tonight.
Then Grange was beside her. “Who the hell was that?”
“Somebody who was watching us.”
“You see his face?”
“No.”
“Might have been nothing. A vagrant, maybe.”
“He wasn’t a vagrant.”
“You think it was Swann?”
“No. Not Swann.”
She headed back to the church, saying nothing more.
Skip was waiting there, unsure what had happened. “False alarm,” Kate said smoothly, then lay flat and wriggled through the gap under the fence. She dusted herself off and moved toward the church, looking for a way into the building itself.
A crunch of footsteps behind her made her turn. Skip had followed.
“You don’t have to accompany me, Mr. Slater.”
He showed her an insouciant grin. “I have a taste for adventure.”
It was easier to let him shadow her than to argue about it.
“Do you spell your last name with a c-k, or just a k?” he asked as they retreated along the rear of the building.
“C-k.”
“I’m just wondering because Malik, without the c, is the name of an angel.”
“I’m no angel.”
“Well, actually, Malik is more of a demon. In Islamic tradition he supervises hell.”
“I’m not a demon, either.”
“Maybe not, but you do look after a passel of celebrities. That’s gotta be hell.”
She had to give him that.
She opened it and entered the church. Irrationally, she felt like an intruder here.
“Vince?” she called, and her own voice came back at her in a volley of echoes.
“Coming.” Di Milo appeared out of the dimness, holding a thin, rectangular object in one hand. “You were right about Swann. He cleared out. But he left this.”
He held it up. A laptop. Kate nodded to Skip, who took it eagerly, pleased as a child. He flipped open the lid, and the screen cast a blue glow on his face. The glow shifted as he clicked rapidly through a series of screens, balancing the computer on one knee.
“He’s got a camera on the Brewers’ house,” he said suddenly, turning the computer so Kate could see. “Live feed from a webcam.”
“He said he had eyes on the place. I assume the feed is uploaded to a web server.”
“Yeah. And by stealing the Wi-Fi signal next door he could access the site anytime.” He squinted at the image. “Looks like the camera’s across the street, probably wired into a utility pole. I can find it and shut it down.”
Kate shook her head. “Even without the laptop, Swann must have some way to monitor the signal—a backup computer or his cell phone. If the video goes dark, he’ll terminate communication and we’ll never get Chelsea back.”
An icicle of fear pierced her stomach as she said the last words. She wished she hadn’t spoken them aloud. It felt too much like uttering a prophecy.
“You think so?” Skip asked dubiously.
“I’m sure of it. This man is all about control.”
“Then why’d he leave his equipment behind?”
“I don’t know.”
“Swann left something else behind,” Di Milo said quietly. From his tone of voice, Kate knew it was nothing good.
She followed him into what must have been the sanctuary, where the main altar had been. In the transept on the left, electric light from outside glimmered through high stained glass windows, throwing a dim pool of color on the body that lay on the floor.
“Jesus,” Skip breathed.
Kate approached the corpse. It was a middle-aged man, trim and tall, almost familiar. He’d been shot—she saw the gunshot wound in his gut—and then tortured, his arms and legs broken, bent at impossible angles, like a smashed stick figure.
She thought of Lazarus’s smashed knuckles and broken fingers. Swann liked cracking bone.
“You check his ID?” she asked Di Milo.
“Didn’t have to. Recognized him from the brochures in the Westwood house. Daniel Farris.”
A wave of weakness passed through her as she remembered the slow descent down the cellar stairs.
She tried to understand how it had happened. Farris hired Swann. Swann didn’t follow the game plan. Farris had it out with him and lost the argument. That was the essence of it, anyway.
When she looked away from the body, she caught Skip staring down at it, his face pale.
She couldn’t resist a jab. “Squeamish, Mr. Slater? I’m surprised. Death is your livelihood, isn’t it?”
“It’s not so real when it’s just pixels,” he said softly.
“No, it’s equally real. You just don’t have to see it. Well, you’re seeing it now.” She focused her flashlight on the corpse. “Take a look. Take a good look.”
Skip swallowed slowly. He had no smart comebacks.
“Farris tried to defend himself, it looks like.” Di Milo pointed at a pistol lying a few yards away from the body.
Kate glanced at it. A Sig Sauer 9. The gun Farris must have held to her head in Westwood. The gun that had nearly ended her life.
She fanned her flashlight beam across the floor and saw a pair of shell casings. “Two rounds expended.”
“Swann must be a better shot,” Di Milo said.
“Farris was probably scared. He was scared in Westwood, too.” Fear could throw off even the best shooter’s aim.
Her flashlight probed farther and found a discarded syringe, empty.
“Think Swann used drugs on Farris?” Di Milo asked.
“No. He drugged Chelsea in the club. He’s still using drugs to control her. She must have been right here.” The flashlight picked out the door to the confessional, ajar. Something small and cream colored lay inside.
She moved toward it. The beam illuminated Chanticleer, dead, the pallid fur stained purple in patches with drying blood.
“Hell,” Di Milo said.
“Entry wound,” Kate said, leaning over the small body.
“He shot the dog?” Skip was appalled.
“He’s done a lot of shooting tonight,” Kate said, thinking of the old man who’d given them refuge in his apartment. “Let’s go.”
“What do we do about him?” Skip pointed at Daniel Farris’s corpse.
Kate turned away. “We leave him. Let the dead bury their dead.”
SWANN felt it in his palms. The itch.
He knew the feeling. It had come on him before. Always, it led to the same conclusion.
He drove east, taking side streets in case the police were looking for the stolen Hyundai. The car was a zippy little thing, unpretentious but serviceable. His left knee ached; he’d banged it up pretty good in the wreck. But the pain didn’t matter. He’d known pain before, plenty of it. He almost enjoyed it. It kept him alert, heightened his awareness, staved off complacency.
That was why he’d made the whore cut him tonight. After she’d done her job, he’d given her a straight razor. “Cut me,” he’d said, his legs spread, exposing the web of thin, pale scars on his thighs.
Her hand had trembled, and he had seen she wanted to refuse but didn’t dare. She’d taken the razor by its handle, chosen a clean spot among the nest of scars, and pushed the blade down, breaking the skin, raising a slim line of blood, then guided the razor in an unsteady course, slicing flesh.
He’d released a deep, slow groan of pleasure and pain. She’d done the job well, adding a fine new notch to his belt. Any deeper and she might have nicked the femoral artery. The wound still burned a little when he shifted his legs. The electric current traveling up his groin made him feel alive and free.
Free, despite the nun’s best efforts.
The nun. Though his mind ought to be on his next move, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
He could have killed her in Stiletto, of course. If he’d waited in the back room instead of clearing out, she never would have stood a chance. But he hadn’t wanted her dead just then. Someone would have found the body. There would have been a commotion. His plans for Chelsea would have been jeopardized. Under the circumstances, he’d shown admirable self-restraint.
But now he wanted her dead. Or if not her, then somebody. In a city of millions, there had to be someone he could kill.
Then he remembered. And smiled.
At a stoplight, he turned to the girl, cupping her chin and staring into her eyes. She gazed back blankly. The drug had done its job.
“Mind if we make a detour? You won’t give me any more trouble, will you?”
Chelsea didn’t answer.
“I mean, you won’t run away or start screaming or pull any other stupid shit, right?”
Mutely, she nodded.
“Good girl.”
The light cycled to green. He punched the gas.
The itch was still there, gnawing at him, but he didn’t mind it now.
——
Kate had pushed the damaged Jag as far as it would go. She left it in the diner’s parking lot next to the church and rode back to the Brewer house with Di Milo. She was thinking hard. Thinking about James.
She was sure he’d been watching her in the alley. But how could he have known where to find her? She was sure he hadn’t followed her from the scene of the crash. It was almost as if he’d been at the church before she was, waiting for her, but that didn’t make any sense…
Di Milo’s phone chimed—no cutesy ringtone for him—and af
ter answering, he handed it to her. “Alan,” he said in explanation.
“Another problem,” Alan said as soon as she took the phone. “Got a call from Barry Larrison.”
“Oh, hell.” Larrison was an attorney-turned-reporter with his own tabloid TV show and a regular gig on Good Morning America.
“He knows something’s up, and I couldn’t put him off. I said you’d call him.”
“Give me his number.”
She punched it in and waited.
“Larrison,” a chirpy voice answered.
She identified herself.
He cut her off. “Right, your guy said you’d call. Here’s the deal, Kate. I know what’s up and I’m gonna run with it.”
She didn’t know him and disliked his smarmy familiarity. “Nothing’s up, Barry. You’ve been misinformed.”
“Nice try. I have a source at the hospital who confirms that Chelsea Brewer’s bodyguard was brought in tonight, sans Chelsea. Your client didn’t leave Panic Room with her security guy.”
“That’s correct. She left with someone else.”
“I’ll bet she did.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means Chelsea’s mom just bought up a truckload of jewelry on Rodeo Drive in the middle of the night.”
“I don’t know anything about Mrs. Brewer’s shopping habits.”
“Kate, you’re starting to piss me off. And that’s something you don’t wanna do.”
She shut her eyes. Lying to him was pointless. He’d already guessed most of it.
“All right,” she said. “Chelsea’s been abducted. Her mother is obtaining valuables to use as ransom. The kidnapper has made it clear that if word gets out to the media, all bets are off. So you can’t run the story, Barry. If you do, Chelsea will die.”
“You don’t know that. The guy could be bluffing.”
“He’s not bluffing. Look, we can get her back. We will get her back. Unless you blow it for us.”
“It’s too big a story to sit on.”
“If you put this out there, it’ll kill Chelsea. Is that what you want?”
“Hell, she’s been doing a pretty good job of killing herself.”
She hated this man. It took an effort to keep the contempt out of her voice. “She’s one of the most popular celebrities in the world. If she doesn’t make it, I’ll publicize the fact that your irresponsible pursuit of a scoop cost Chelsea her life.”
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