Danger in a Red Dress

by Christina Dodd

  “She went to the ladies’ room, went into a stall, and came out about five minutes later. One of her coworkers was parked in another stall, and she reports seeing someone kneel on the floor—”

  “Hannah must have been desperate to do that. Those floors are disgusting.”

  “And the employee heard the lady rummaging around behind the toilet. We checked for tape residue. It was positive.”

  “Hannah had a fake ID.” Gabriel zipped his carry-on.

  “Of course she did. So she could rent a car at the Sugar Land airport and drive to God knows where.” Daniel popped three aspirin and scowled.

  Gabriel gave a soft laugh.

  “What?” Daniel snapped.

  “She cuffed you to the machine. That sweet, little female knocked big, tough Daniel silly. She cuffed you to the machine.”

  “She tricked me!” Daniel gingerly touched the cut on his forehead.

  “You needed five stitches,” Gabriel reminded him.

  “Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think everyone in the business isn’t laughing?” Like the expert tactician he was, Daniel switched topics. “What are you going to Maine for? She’s not going to Maine. She’s running like hell to Mexico and she is never coming back.”

  Gabriel knew how to switch topics, too. “Any word on who shot me?”

  Daniel shifted uncomfortably. “A rumor. No, not even a rumor—a breath of a rumor. Something about New York City.”

  “New York City. So it is Carrick.” Gabriel picked up the suitcase.

  “If it’s true, then . . . yeah, probably.” Daniel waggled his head with uncertainty, then clutched it and winced.

  “Is the plane prepped to fly?” Gabriel limped for the door.

  Daniel grabbed the car keys and followed. “I still say you’re making a mistake. She’s not going to Maine.”

  Gabriel kept walking “Flight plan filed? Pilot ready?”

  Daniel sighed. “We even washed the windshield. You know Dr. Bellota is going to shout when you don’t show up for your one-week checkup, don’t you?”

  “I should be back by then.”

  “If you’re not dead.”

  “My leg is fine.”

  “I meant from a new bullet hole.”

  “Good to know you have confidence in me.” Gabriel knew where Daniel was heading.

  In a wheedling tone, Daniel said, “Let me come with you.”

  “You suck at breaking and entering.”

  “I’m great on backup.”

  Gabriel stopped and considered. “You’ll stay behind unless I call you?”

  Daniel perked up. “Yeah, boss.”

  “And if I do call you in to assist me, you won’t let a girl beat you up and cuff you?”

  “Give me a second to pack.” Daniel headed for his bedroom. “While you blow it out your ass.”

  Gabriel grinned. Then his grin faded.

  Carrick had sent an assassin.

  For Hannah? Unless Carrick had figured out the way to access his father’s fortune, it didn’t make sense to kill the one person who knew.

  So . . . for Gabriel? But why? Did he think Gabriel knew too much?

  All Gabriel wanted to do was keep Hannah safe, and to do that, he had to find her.

  He’d spent the night trying to figure out what she was thinking, what she had planned.

  Somehow she intended to do as she had promised Mrs. Manly and transfer the money into the accounts of the people who had lost so much when Nathan Manly destroyed his company and disappeared. To do that, she had to go back to Balfour House.

  There, he feared, she would die.

  And Gabriel wondered—in his quest to discover his past, had he lost his hope for a future?

  THIRTY-FOUR

  To the casual eye, Balfour House was deserted. The lawn was overgrown, the withered leaves lay where they’d fallen. The windows were blank and frosty, without curtains or warmth.

  But as Gabriel walked around the house, he recognized the signs that someone had been here. He saw car tracks leading into the garage—more than one car—and footprints through the frosty grass—more than one pair.

  Driven by a fearful urgency, he pulled the remote from his black leather jacket, and tuned it to access the surveillance system still in place. If the electricity was off, he was screwed, but if it was on . . .

  “Ahhh.” The handheld screen flickered.

  The computer upstairs in his former office had been brought to life. Now, as he waited for the surveillance program to boot up, he pulled out his lock-pick set and prepared to open the front door.

  But the first rule of breaking and entering was to check to make sure the door was locked . . . and this one opened at a turn of the hand.

  Someone was inside.

  He darkened the monitor on the handheld, pulled the pistol out of the holster at his side, swung the door wide, and waited.

  Nothing happened. He listened, then stepped inside.

  Fresh footsteps wandered across the dust that coated the marble floor.

  Yet the silence set him on edge. It was too much, too deep.

  He faded into the shadows under the stairs, waiting for the computer to perform.

  Some of the most valuable furniture and paintings had gone to auction, leaving blank spaces on the floor and faded squares on the wallpaper. The temperature hovered around fifty degrees, and Gabriel guessed another Maine winter would destroy anything left in here.

  Did Carrick not intend to sell the house and its contents? This neglect would lower the value on a priceless nineteenth-century mansion. To lose money on a sure sale . . . that didn’t seem like Carrick. So . . . what was Carrick doing?

  A quiet beep alerted Gabriel that the computer had gone through its paces, and had started to run the program that activated each on-site camera for a ten-second glimpse of the every corridor and room. But the house had too many rooms, and Gabriel didn’t have ten seconds to waste, so he speeded up the roll to two seconds.

  Yet it took a full two minutes before he located Hannah.

  Gabriel stopped the roll, and observed the scene in the butler’s office in the basement.

  There, Carrick sat before the desk in a straight-backed chair. He stared at the creaky old computer. Hannah sat in the ancient leather desk chair. She wore her new clothes and her new hair style with pride. Her chin was up. She was smiling scornfully. And Nelson, the butler, held a Beretta pointed at her heart.

  Gabriel texted Daniel 911, and set off at a run.

  Hannah divided her attention between that lousy little weasel Nelson and that lousy big weasel, Carrick.

  “Did you really think I wouldn’t watch for you?” Carrick stared at the computer, his face aglow—he’d just seen the total amount in Nathan Manly’s account.

  “Think? No. Hope? Yes.” Hannah rocked the old chair back and forth. Tithe springs creaked rhythmically. Creak, creak. Creak, creak.

  “I knew the key to Father’s fortune had to be here, or you would have got away with it long ago. You had to come back here.” Carrick didn’t look at her. He couldn’t tear his gaze away from the screen.

  “I did have to come back. To keep a promise.” Creak, creak. Creak, creak.

  “To my mother. Isn’t that touching?” Carrick rubbed his hand over his chest as if to calm the beat of his heart. “I admit, I’d hoped for more.”

  “You’d hoped for more?” Her voice rose involuntarily. “Money? More than that?”

  “How much is it?” Nelson asked in a hushed whisper.

  “About a billion,” Carrick said.

  Hannah corrected him. “A billion five.”

  Carrick glared at her.

  “What? Doesn’t he get a percentage?” She rocked the chair back and forth. Creak, creak. Creak, creak. “What disappoints you about a billion five?”

  “It’s not the amount. This program is so primitive. The screen looks like the intro to a child’s learning program.” Carrick ran the mouse up and down, back and forth.
“What do we have to do next?”

  “It’s probably pretty simple. All you’re doing is transferring money from one place to another.” Actually, to about a thousand other places, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. “So far, it’s working the way Mrs. Manly said it would.” Creak, creak. Creak, creak.

  Carrick turned on her, eyes wide and wild. “Would you stop that?”

  “What? That?” She rocked one last time. Creak, creak. Creak, creak. “Sure.”

  He took a breath and calmed himself. “What comes next? How do I transfer the money into my account?”

  “What makes you think I would tell you that?” She injected all the scorn she felt into her voice.

  He turned and looked straight at her. “If you don’t, I’ll have Nelson shoot you in one foot, and then the other foot, and then—”

  She held up the hand with the bandage on her wrist. “All right. I get it.”

  Disaster stared her in the face, and she didn’t really know how to avert it. She didn’t have the information he wanted. All she was capable of doing was performing the transfer into the stockholders’ accounts. Which meant, when she’d done it, Carrick was probably going to shoot her anyway, out of spite and frustration.

  “So how do I make the next step?” Carrick demanded.

  She pushed herself across the floor in the chair, and the springs squalled and moaned. Creak, creak. Creak, creak. When she, and the chair, reached his side, she could see that his teeth were on edge. That gave her some satisfaction. “You’re into the base program. Now go to Household Accounts.”

  He located the icon on the desktop, and opened it.

  “Find Silverware, Inventory.”

  The cursor trembled on the screen. Carrick’s hand trembled on the mouse.

  Hannah liked knowing he was nervous. “Now—I input the password.” She tried to edge him aside.

  He refused to move. “What password?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “I don’t trust you to do this right. I might have to do it over.”

  She jabbed him with her elbow, using the bony end like a sword. “If that’s what you think, what would keep me from lying to you?”

  Nelson shot the Beretta. The blast made her ears ring. The wheel on her chair blew into little plastic shreds. She was thrown to the floor to land on her wrist, and she writhed in pain.

  When the scarlet dots had stopped swimming before her eyes, she looked up to find not one, but two Berettas pointed at her.

  Carrick held one of the compact pistols, and he handled it like a man who knew how to shoot. “Come and sit on your squeaky chair.” He patted the seat. “And tell me what I want to know.”

  He was not, as she had previously thought, a bad seed. He was crazy.

  She glanced at Nelson. He knew it, too, but greed held him in servitude.

  Good luck on seeing any of your cut.

  Moving with an excess of caution, she lifted herself off the floor and perched on the chair, tilted and wobbly from the shot. Creak, creak. Creak, creak. This time she tried to contain the noise; she didn’t want to irritate Carrick further. Not when life was now measured in seconds.

  She whispered, “The password is capital B, as in Balfour, capital H, as in House, small N, as in Nathan, capital M, as in Melinda, small C, as in Carrick—”

  “That bitch of a mother of mine.” Carrick typed in each letter, and as he did, he rocked back and forth on his heels.

  Hannah took a breath. “You killed her. Isn’t that enough?”

  “She deserved it.”

  “Wow.” Hannah couldn’t believe it. “You confessed.”

  “What difference does that make? No one will ever know.” But he was annoyed, as if he hadn’t intended to tell the truth, not even to the people he planned to kill. “The password. What else?”

  She repeated, word for word, Mrs. Manly’s instructions. “Asterisk, 1898, as in the year Balfour House was completed. Not started, completed.”

  Carrick indicated the green screen. “All right. I’ve done it all. Is that it?”

  “That’s all so far. If you’ll let me live and give me a share, I’ll give you the final code.”

  Nelson gave a growl.

  Carrick waved him to silence, then turned the gun on her again. “You are in no position to make a deal with me.”

  “Look.” Her voice was shaking, but she had to stall him in the hopes that . . . that Gabriel would somehow follow her here. Because he might not love her—she guessed he didn’t even like her—but he did love justice, and he wouldn’t let his brother get away with this. “You have to promise me on all you hold dear—promise me on this fortune—that I can walk out of here alive. Because otherwise, you’re going to shoot me anyway, and I’ve kept this secret for too long to die without my share of the loot.”

  Carrick snorted softly. “Sure. Sure, I’ll let you live and give you . . . a half percent of the billion.”

  “A half percent of the billion five,” she corrected.

  “Sure.”

  “That’s not fair. That’s more than I’m getting.” Nelson, the idiot, sounded honestly peeved.

  Could he look into Carrick’s mad eyes and really think he would live to collect?

  “Okay.” She pointed a trembling finger at the one empty box on the screen. “Put the cursor there, and type in Mysons, one word, capital M.”

  “You.” Carrick pointed at Nelson. “Keep her covered.” He placed his pistol into the holster strapped around his chest. He leaned down, placed his hands on the keyboard, and his fingers were trembling, too, as he typed in the letters.

  Mysons.

  The code hung there on the pixels. She could hear the computer working, working, transferring, changing a thousand people’s lives.

  If she didn’t live through this, she could die knowing she had done some good in this world.

  Small comfort for a woman who wanted to live.

  “After this, I’ll be into the account and I can transfer the money as I wish, right?” Carrick pulled a crumpled sheet of paper out of his pocket and placed it at the top of the keyboard.

  It was a bank account number.

  “Is that in Switzerland?” she asked.

  “Don’t be foolish. Nobody does Switzerland anymore.”

  Okay. She guessed she should remember that The Bourne Identity was only a movie.

  At last the program showed progress. One minute the screen showed the green screen with the amount in small letters.

  Then . . . the green pixels shrank away from the edges. Green became gray and gray became black. There was one last glowing speck of green, and then . . . it was gone. All gone.

  “Wh-what’s happening?” Carrick tapped on the screen. “Is that what it’s supposed to do?”

  “I think so.” She leaned back. The chair wobbled and rocked, but before it fell, she caught herself and perched carefully on the edge, positioning herself just . . . so. “That code sent the money to the proper accounts for repayment to the Manly investors and employees.”

  “What?” Carrick came to his feet.

  “What?” Nelson echoed.

  “Not only that, but if the government decides to prosecute for the loss of the fortune, I’m not responsible. You’re the one who typed in the code.” She didn’t laugh; she was too scared.

  But she wanted to.

  “What?” Carrick screamed.

  She flipped the chair into his hip, knocking him sideways, slamming him into the wall. She scrambled away, ready to dodge, ready to run.

  Nelson caught her around the waist.

  And in the doorway, someone laughed.

  Gabriel laughed.

  Everyone froze.

  Except Gabriel. He leaned against the doorframe, shaking his head in amazement. “Honestly, Carrick, did you really think Hannah Grey was going to help you steal our father’s fortune? You don’t know her at all.”

  Gabriel had come. He had followed her. Hannah experienced one brig
ht, glorious pinnacle of pure joy. Then—

  “Don’t you dare laugh at me!” Carrick pulled his pistol.

  Gabriel pulled his.

  Carrick pointed at Gabriel.

  At Gabriel.

  With the scream of rage, Hannah smashed Nelson’s nose with the flat of her hand, and leaped toward Carrick.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Hannah jumped into the line of fire.

  Gabriel twirled his pistol. His shot went wild. Sheetrock showered from the ceiling.

  Carrick’s pistol roared.

  His bullet hit Hannah.

  She flew backward, slammed against the wall, collapsed into a heap.

  Carrick stood, slack-jawed in surprise.

  Nelson lowered his pistol and stared. “Carrick, what did you do?”

  Gabriel could hear nothing but the sound of someone’s harsh breathing. His own. It was his own, as he tried to understand . . . Dead? Hannah was dead?

  No. Not dead. Not dead.

  Yet her eyes were closed. Her head was cocked to the side. She looked like a broken rag doll.

  Most important, she’d been not three feet from Carrick. No one could survive a shot from that close distance.

  Dead. Hannah was dead.

  How could he have screwed up so badly?

  He turned his gaze away from her body. He looked up at Carrick. He knew that somewhere close, an agony of grief waited to pounce. But he held it off with a shield of fury.

  Like a man who had glimpsed his death, Carrick stumbled backward against the desk; then swiftly and with purpose, he raised his pistol again.

  Gabriel could have shot him. He was faster. He was better. But that wasn’t how he wanted to do it.

  Grabbing Nelson by the arm, he swung him at Carrick.

  Carrick’s Beretta roared again.

  As the bullet struck him, Nelson jerked. His chest blew. Blood spattered the walls, the floor, Gabriel. He dropped like a rock. Dead.

  Before Nelson had even hit the floor, Gabriel lowered his head and charged like an enraged bull. He caught Carrick around the waist. He slammed his skull into his chest. The Beretta went flying, and Carrick gave a grunt as all the air left his lungs. Gabriel came up and caught him under the chin with a right uppercut, then used both his fists to rearrange his nose. Carrick crashed into the computer, smashing the monitor. Glass shattered. Gabriel picked Carrick up by the shirt and belt and tossed him into the shards.