by Linda Ladd
Black didn’t answer, his eyes slid down and to the right, and oh, yes, he looked evasive as hell. And she also caught how the two men exchanged a brief but significant glance. What the hell? He was hiding something from her. Now that caught her off guard. “You’re not telling me something. What the hell’s going on, Black? And don’t lie to me.”
“Nothing.”
“That is absolute bullshit. Give me some credit here.”
Black really looked like he wanted to squirm himself under his bed about now. Guilty, even, oh, yes-siree.
“C’mon, Black, I’m not an idiot. Don’t play me. I may not remember everything yet, but I remember how to tell if somebody’s lying to me.”
Booker now appeared as if he wanted to get the hell out of Dodge, too. He just stood there and looked tough as nails. He obviously didn’t have a dog in this fight. But he knew the dog, you can bet on that.
Black looked everywhere but at Claire for a while. Gathering his thoughts, huh? Then he did look at her for a long moment. It finally came out, but reluctantly.
“I can’t tell you, Claire. So let’s just drop it.”
“Oh, yeah, right. Like hell I’m going to just drop it. You and Booker here have a big secret concerning somebody trying to kill you. Somehow that piques my interest. Especially since somebody came after you, or me, or us both, with a high-powered rifle that almost put you out of commission for good. So go ahead, Black. Tell me how holding back pertinent information from my police investigation makes sense.”
Black listened, looking guilty as hell. Instead of answering her, he turned to Booker. “Keep me posted, man, okay? If you turn up anything, let me know. I’ll probably be back at Cedar Bend by tomorrow.”
“Oh, no, you won’t,” said the sturdy, rather matronly-looking nurse just entering the room. “Dr. Atwater said you will be here for several more days, at the very least.”
Booker nodded at Claire and gratefully headed for the hills in a rush. Black was no doubt getting his rational explanation in order, or formulating a serious pack of lies, while the nurse took his blood pressure, checked his bandages, clucked around a bit about lying still and not getting worked up by all these visitors, and doctors should full well know that.
When she left the room, Black squeezed Claire’s hand again and tried for a pitiful look. It was hard for a big virile man like him to look very pitiful, and he failed miserably, especially now that he had his color and self-confident, bossy manner back. She’d never seen him look pitiful. Even nursing a recent gunshot wound, he looked vital and in charge. “Claire, I can’t tell you anything, other than it deals with my military past. That’s all. If it’s not Thomas Landers wanting to get me out of the picture, then Booker and I will handle our own private investigation about the shooter. It’s highly confidential, that’s all I can tell you.”
“Did I know about any of this before the crash?”
Black did actually squirm this time. She bet he hadn’t done that since he was five years old. “It never came up.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet it didn’t.”
Claire questioned him further, trying all her police interrogation tricks, short of pulling off his fingernails with pliers. Unfortunately, Black seemed to know all the same techniques. He must’ve been an ace interrogator in the service. Whatever he was, or had been, she wanted to know the details. Especially if he had some old but newly motivated and seriously armed enemies out gunning for him.
“It’s Thomas that you should be thinking about.” He stopped, and looked annoyed, which probably did mean he was feeling better. “For God’s sake, Claire, trust me, for once. I know it’s him. I’ve dealt with him before. But I guess you’re not going to believe me until we get verification from forensics.”
“That’s usually the way police officers do it. Tell me more about this Landers lunatic.”
“He’s the typical obsessed stalker. Except he’s totally and completely psychotic. On top of that, he’s a homicidal maniac who kills at random whenever it occurs to him. No empathy for others, no remorse, no guilt. He almost killed you and Harve and spent some enjoyable moments torturing me with a stun gun.”
Well, Black certainly knew how to lay it on the line. No sugarcoating nothin’, unh-uh. Claire could only stare at him, envisioning Hannibal Lecter and others of his ilk.
But Black wasn’t finished with his horror story and continued relentlessly. “I’ve been trying to protect you from the nightmare this guy put you through. I don’t think you’re ready yet, but I can’t keep you in the dark anymore. You’ve got to know what he is and what he’s done to you. You are his whole focus in life. I think when he was in the asylum, he planned all this out. How to get you under his control when he got out. That’s his life’s passion. For God’s sake, Claire, this guy cut your name on his chest with a used syringe needle, one that a nurse accidentally dropped on the floor. He carved it in a fellow patient’s chest, too, a guy named Bones Fitch, who’s a psychopathic killer in his own right. All of this is noted in his medical file. You can read it yourself, if you don’t believe me.”
Okay, you betcha, one serious, long-lasting, flesh-crawling, chill-producing shudder inched up my spine at that little tidbit of nutty as a fruitcake, she thought. “If you’re trying to scare me, you just hit the jackpot.”
“I’m trying to make you understand what we’re dealing with. When I get back home, I’m going to get out my files and show you some pictures of him and then some photos of his handiwork.”
“Gee, I can’t wait.”
“You better get serious about this, Claire, and fast.”
“Okay, I get it. This guy is a freak and he loves me.”
“Don’t be cavalier, Claire. He’s deadly.”
“Okay, you’re right. I am serious. I’m not taking this lightly, I assure you. You’ve got my attention. But I’m armed and dangerous, too. I hit the guy in the dark from thirty or forty feet. Next time I’ll put him down.”
“That’s what you said last time.”
His words hit home, and she knew she needed to be very, very careful until they got him. “So you have a picture of him?”
“Oh, yeah. Several. All disguised as different people. He’s like a chameleon. He is equally adept at presenting himself as male or female, if you can believe that.”
“You already told me that. It’s hard to believe.”
“Everything about him is hard to believe. I won’t rest until he’s behind bars again, or better yet, dead, a bullet inside his defective brain.”
All righty, now, Black was deathly serious, and Claire better be, too, if she wanted to survive this horrific ordeal. First off, though, Black had to get well, and she had to be extremely cautious, everywhere, all the time, 24/7. Maybe she’d spend the night in the chair beside his bed again, with a loaded Glock on her lap and a finger resting on the trigger. Maybe that would make them both breathe easier. And tomorrow, armed and ready for trouble, she’d interview the staff at Cedar Bend and see if this Thomas Landers guy had worked his disguise magic on them. Most likely that would be in the guise of one Weird Jesse, she had begun to believe. At first, she had doubted that big-time, but stranger things had happened. Usually to her, as it turned out.
Jesse’s Girl
Right now
After a flood of misery and tears, Jesse decided to forgive Annie for shooting him. At first, when his arm hurt so badly that he had to put his head on the pillow next to Miss Rosie so she could comfort him, he vowed to cut off Annie’s head and dispose of her betraying body. She had shared herself in bed with that devil, Nicholas Black, anyway. If he killed her, she couldn’t ever pick up a gun and shoot him again, now could she?
But then, after several good nights’ sleep, he stopped feeling angry and began to miss her. Maybe she didn’t even know that he was the one shooting at them. He thought again that she must’ve thought she was in danger, too, and had to return his fire. Poor Annie. Something bad was always happening to her. She was bound to be
a little paranoid, and whatnot.
Black was dead, that was the most important thing. He would not be around to steal her away and wine and dine her and spend tons of his money on her. Yes, he was out of the picture now, dead as a doornail. Jesse was pretty sure he’d hit Black true to aim, probably straight through the heart. At least, that’s what he was hoping. So now, it was time to go into phase two. Of course, he’d have to devise a new plan to get Annie under his power. Sometimes she didn’t realize how much she wanted to be with him. But he really wasn’t too worried about that.
At the moment, his major problem was finding Annie a brand-new little toddler to love on. She missed the little boy that died—Zach. She had never gotten over that. Now that Black was dead and unable to steal her away from Jesse, he would just have to get her a new kid. A pretty, little blond-haired boy that she could love, and that they could raise together as their own special love child. They’d name him Zach, too, and Miss Rosie could be his grandmother. It would all be so wonderful, to have a family again, all together, traveling around the country.
As soon as Jesse’s arm felt better and his fever was down, he took Miss Rosie’s car and headed out to the grocery store. He retrieved a current newspaper out of a sidewalk stand and skimmed the front page for Nicholas Black’s obituary. When he didn’t find it, he began to worry and drove at once to Cedar Bend Lodge. Nobody tried to stop him. He still had his staff credentials to show around. It was a risk, but one he had to take.
While he was nosing around on the grounds, his St. Louis Cardinals cap pulled down low on his forehead, his big black sunglasses hiding his eyes, he sat down at a table that overlooked the largest pool and drank a Diet Coke. When he heard the low thunder of rotors in the distance, he picked up the binoculars hanging around his neck and focused them on the Cedar Bend helicopter that was sweeping in over the lake. He watched it bank gracefully and then set down out on the point where Nicholas Black had his private helipad. It was pretty far away, so he stood up and walked to a stacked stone wall and watched them through the binoculars as they unloaded a gurney. Damn it, Black had survived. And there was Annie, getting off behind the nurses and other medical personnel.
Cursing, he clenched his fists until his nails bit into his palms. Now he would have to think of another way to kill Black. Unless the frame-up worked and they put him in jail, Black was still around and causing him grief. But it was Annie that he kept his eyes on, his heart trembling with joy and the longing to hold her in his arms, lick her troubles away, and make her his own special friend.
But then he saw the big guy he had met at Jeepers, the one named Joe McKay. His Annie stopped when Joe and the little girl with him walked up to her. The child ran up and put her arms around Annie’s knees. Annie quickly picked up the child and hugged her close. Joe McKay stood by, but he wasn’t smiling. He was looking after the gurney, and then he was talking to Annie seriously, probably wanting to know Black’s condition. What a happy coincidence. Just when he was looking for a new little kid for Annie, he found one that she already liked a lot and who liked her, too. It was perfect. He could just follow Joe and steal the little girl away at the first good opportunity. Once he had her, Annie would probably come to him on her own accord.
God was with him. God wanted them to be together, all three of them, all a big happy family. He smiled, now that things were working out so admirably, and trailed Joe McKay and his and Annie’s future child out to the parking lot.
Chapter Twenty-two
As it turned out, Black did have enough sense to stay in the hospital a bit longer. Right off the bat, however, he was back at work, conducting conference calls to his clinics in Europe from his hospital bed and getting around fairly well on his own. His pain was fairly controlled, but he remained weak. Several days later, he was released and Claire boarded the Bell 430 with him and flew home. Joe and Lizzie happened to be there, swimming in Black’s private gated pool, and she spoke briefly with them while Black was whisked upstairs on a gurney, much to his dismay. The guy thought he was Superman, no doubt about it.
After explaining all that had happened, Claire bid Joe and Lizzie good-bye and hurried after Black’s little medical entourage. Joe and his daughter wanted to come up and say hello to Black, but she quickly explained the situation and told Joe he should let Black get settled and come back in a few days. Black was weaker than he would admit, and the move out of the Canton County Medical Center had been directly against Dr. Atwater’s orders. She had wanted him to stay a full week. Black could be stubborn, oh, yes, he could. Claire was finding that out the hard way.
Upstairs, he was already in the hospital bed Claire had just vacated a short time ago, and she decided that they better leave it in place for a while, at the rate the two of them were ending up hurt and/or wounded. It was a good thing Black was a doctor, but he wasn’t in the best shape, either. She just hoped he had plenty of painkillers and antibiotics in his personal medicine chest.
In the penthouse hallway, she passed the hospital ambulance team on their way out. One of the nurses waved as they entered the elevator. “Good luck, detective. You’re gonna need it. He’s one of the worst patients I’ve ever had to deal with.”
But they all laughed, and so did Claire, because it was oh, so true. He was not as patient with himself as he had been with her. But she owed the guy. He treated her like royalty when she was drifting around in those soft ephemeral clouds of nowhere land in that self-same hospital bed. She walked into the guest bedroom/triage center, and Black was already sitting up on the edge of the bed. “I was just about to come looking for you.”
“Lie down, Black, relax. I’m right here, at your beck and call.”
“I wish that were true.” But he did lie back, and by his grimace, she knew his shoulder was not showing him a grand old time.
“Are you in pain?”
“A little.”
“Well, you won’t be for long. They gave you a shot of morphine before they moved you.”
“Yeah, and I told them not to do that, damn it.”
“You need to sleep a lot, regain your strength. It’ll be better here in your own digs. You’ll be able to order your staff around and make them wait on you hand and foot.”
“You’re staying here, too.”
That was not a request. “Black, you are downright grouchy. You know you can’t tell me what to do.”
His frown was massive, and she watched his pulse rate shoot up. “You’re going to get yourself killed, Claire.”
“No, I am not. I am going to do my job, just like I do every day. With Bud. And you are going to go to sleep and sleep most of the afternoon. I’ll be back later and feed you dinner. Then we can discuss your theory about what’s going on. I will listen to every word you say and if I think you’re on the right track, we’ll go from there. Fair enough?”
“Hell, no.”
Actually, he looked like he was getting ready to sulk, certainly not used to this kind of helpless acquiescence, but then he held out his hand to her. She took it and squeezed his fingers. “Just do what you should, Black. Give yourself time to heal. Stay cool. Quit worrying so much.”
“I can’t help it. You’re in danger. And I can’t protect you.”
“I’m armed. Bud’s armed. We will be extra cautious, just for you.”
“Where are you going today?”
“We’re going down to check out the rest of Miriam Long’s listings here at the lake. Her husband says a murder was committed in one of them and that spooked Miriam. Her partner up here, Kay Kramer, doesn’t know anything about it. So we’re going to have to go down to Springfield and get a key from her previous employer so we can investigate the place. But we’ll probably check out the ones here at the lake first. If Landers is holed up inside one of them, we’ll find him. Or Jesse, either, as far as that goes.”
“Was it one of your cases, this murder the husband’s talking about?”
“We don’t know yet. We’ve investigated some on the la
ke, but we can’t think which one it could be. Most of them are listed right here with lake Realtors. It was probably a different jurisdiction.”
“Check out the one where Landers held you and Harve captive. It’s got to be that one.”
“Yeah, we’ve already decided to go out there. Bud thinks it’s the logical place to start, too. But Landers might be too cautious to return to the scene of one of his crimes.”
Black nodded. “Promise me you’ll be careful if you go there, and take along backup.”
“Sure, we do know our jobs, Black. Now cut the chatter and go to sleep.”
He did, of course. That hefty a dose of a powerful opiate will do that to a man. Once he was out and resting comfortably, with his newly hired, elderly RN named Violet Kelly sitting beside the bed, Claire waved good-bye to her and tiptoed out of the room. She was not exactly coveting the poor woman’s job when he woke up and started trying to take a jog, or something worse. Violet might even have to get out those bed restraints that he used on Claire. But then again, he did have some legitimate and deadly issues to worry about. So did everybody else involved in this case.
Claire took a quick shower in the master bedroom, fixed herself a cup of coffee in the penthouse’s fabulous, black granite and stainless-steel kitchen, and waited impatiently for Bud to call and tell her he was downstairs. Sitting on one of the high mahogany and black leather bar stools in the quiet depths of the penthouse, she decided to check out the staff’s human resource records. Jesse’s involvement was still troubling her. Not to mention his peculiarity. And she wanted to find another address for him so she and Bud could pay him a visit. The one on Monica’s laptop hadn’t panned out as legitimate. She wanted to check out every single detail of his life, in fact. She wondered if Jesse could possibly be Thomas Landers, so well-disguised and clever that he could fool everybody. Word was that Landers was prone to do such things, and as far as she knew, nobody who had seen him in his other incarnations had laid eyes on him as Jesse. He could very well have been under their noses the entire time. It seemed too far-fetched and incredible, but she was finding nothing in her life was above being far-fetched and incredible.