by Nora Roberts
He, whoever he was, was closing in. She could feel it. When he struck, she wanted Boyd far away.
If this man was determined to punish her for what had happened to John McGillis, she would deal with it. Boyd had been right, to a point. She didn’t blame herself for John’s suicide. But she did share in the responsibility. And she couldn’t keep herself from grieving for a young, wasted life.
The police would protect her, she thought as she cued up the next song. And she would protect herself. The new fear, the grinding fear, came from the fact that she didn’t know how to protect Boyd.
“You’re asleep at the switch,” Boyd commented.
She shook herself. “No, just resting between bouts.” She glanced at the clock. It was nearly midnight. Nearly time for the request line.
Once again the station was locked. There was only the two of them.
“You’re nearly halfway home,” he pointed out. “Look, why don’t you come back to my place tonight? We can listen to my Muddy Waters records.”
She decided to play dumb, because she knew it amused him. “Who?”
“Come on, O’Roarke.”
It helped, a great deal, to see him grin at her. It made everything seem almost normal. “Okay, I’ll listen to Muddy Whatsis—”
“Waters.”
“Right—if you can answer these three music trivia questions.”
“Shoot.”
“Hold on.” She set the next record, did a quick intro. She ruffled through her papers. “Okay, you’ve got three minutes and ten seconds to come up with them. Number one. What was the first British rock group to tour the States?”
“Ah, a trick question. The Dave Clark Five. The Beatles were the second.”
“Not bad for an amateur. Number two. Who was the last performer at Woodstock?”
“Jimi Hendrix. You’ll have to do better, O’Roarke.”
“I’m just lulling you into complacency. Number three, and this is the big one, Fletcher. What year was Buddy Holly and the Crickets’ hit ‘That’ll Be the Day’ released?”
“Going back a ways, aren’t you?”
“Just answer the question, Slick.”
“Fifty-six.”
“Is that 1956?”
“Yeah, that’s 1956.”
“Too bad. It was ’57. You lose.”
“I want to look it up.”
“Go ahead. Now you’ll have to come back to my place and listen to a Rolling Stones retrospective.” She yawned hugely.
“If you stay awake that long.” It pleased him that she had taken a moment out to play. “Want some coffee?”
She shot him a grateful look. “Only as much as I want to breathe.”
“I’ll get it.”
The station was empty, he thought. Since Nick Peters had gotten his ego bruised and quit, there had been no one around to brew that last pot of the evening. He, too, glanced at the clock. He wanted to have it done and be back beside her before the phones started to ring.
He’d grab her a doughnut while he was at it, Boyd decided as he checked the corridor automatically. A little sugar would help her get through the night.
Before going to the lounge, he moved to the front of the building to check the doors. The locks were in place, and the alarm was engaged. His car was alone on the lot. Satisfied, he walked through the building and gave the same careful check to the rear delivery doors before he turned into the lounge.
It wasn’t going to go on much longer. With the McGills lead, Boyd had every confidence they would tie someone to the threats in a matter of days. It would be good to see Cilla without those traces of fear in her eyes, that tension in the set of her shoulders.
The restlessness would remain, he thought. And the energy. They were as much a part of her as the color of her hair.
He added an extra scoop of coffee to the pot and listened to her voice over the speaker as she segued from one record to the next.
That magic voice, he thought. He’d had no idea when he first heard it, when he was first affected by it, that he would fall in love with the woman behind it.
It was Joan Jett now, blasting out “I Love Rock and Roll.” Though the lounge speaker was turned down to little more than a murmur, the feeling gritted out. It should be Cilla’s theme song, he mused. Though he’d learned in their two days in his cabin that she was just as easily fascinated by the likes of Patsy Cline or Ella Fitzgerald.
What they needed was a good solid week in the mountains, he decided. Without any outside tensions to interfere.
He took an appreciative sniff of the coffee as it began to brew and hoped that he could get to Chicago, find the answers he needed and make the trip back quickly.
He whirled, disturbed by some slight sound in the corridor. A rustle. A creak of a board. His hand was already on the butt of his weapon. Drawing it, turning his back to the side wall, he took three careful strides to the doorway, scanning.
Getting jumpy, he told himself when he saw nothing but the empty halls and the glare of security lights. But instinct had him keeping the gun in his hand. He’d taken the next step when the lights went out.
Cursing under his breath, he moved fast. Though he held his weapon up for safety, he was prepared to use it. Above, from the speakers, the passionate music continued to throb. Up ahead he could see the faint glow of lights from the booth. She was there, he told himself. Safe in those lights. Keeping his back to the wall, skimming his gaze up and down the darkened hallway, he moved toward her.
As he rounded the last turn in the hallway before the booth, he heard something behind him. He saw the storeroom door swing open as he whirled. But he never saw the knife.
***
“That was Joan Jett and the Blackhearts coming at you. It’s 11:50, Denver, and a balmy forty-two degrees.” Cilla frowned at the clock and wondered why Boyd was taking so long. “A little reminder that you can catch KHIP’s own Wild Bob tomorrow at the Brown Palace Hotel downtown on 17th. And hey, if you’ve never been there, it’s a very classy place. Tickets are still available for the banquet benefiting abused children. So open your wallets. It’s twenty dollars stag, forty if you take your sweetie. The festivities start at 7 o’clock, and Wild Bob will be spinning those discs for you.” She potted up the next song. “Now get ready for a doubleheader to take you to midnight. This is Cilla O’Roarke. We’ve got the news, then the request line, coming up.”
She switched off her mike. Shrugging her shoulders to loosen them, she slipped off the headphones. She was humming to herself as she checked the program director’s hot clock. A canned ad was next, then she’d segway into the news at the top of the hour. She pushed away from the console to set up for the next segment.
It was then that she saw that the corridor beyond the glass door was dark. At first she only stared, baffled. Then the blood rushed to her head. If the security lights were out, the alarm might be out, as well.
He was here. Sweat pearled cold on her brow as she gripped the back of her chair. There would be no call tonight, because he was here. He was coming for her.
A scream rose in her throat to drown in a flood of panic.
Boyd. He had also come for Boyd.
Propelled by a new terror, she hit the door at a run.
“Boyd!” She shouted for him, stumbling in the dark. Her forward motion stopped when she saw the shadow move toward her. Though it was only a shape, formless in the darkened corridor, she knew. Groping behind her, she stepped back. “Where’s Boyd? What have you done with him?” She stepped back again. The lights from the booth slanted through the glass and split the dark in two.
She started to speak again, to beg, then nearly fainted with relief. “Oh, God, it’s you. I didn’t know you were here. I thought everyone had left.”
“Everyone’s gone,” he answered. He moved fully into the light. And smiled. Cilla’s relief iced over. He held a knife, a long-bladed hunting knife already stained with blood.
“Boyd,” she said again.
�
��He can’t help you now. No one can. We’re all alone. I’ve waited a long time for us to be alone.”
“Why?” She was beyond fear now. It was Boyd’s blood on the blade, and grief left no room for fear. “Why, Billy?”
“You killed my brother.”
“No. No, I didn’t.” She stepped back, into the booth. Hot hysteria bubbled in her throat. A cold chill sheened her skin. “I didn’t kill John. I hardly knew him.”
“He loved you.” He limped forward, the knife in front of him, his eyes on hers. His feet were bare. He wore only camouflage pants and a dark stocking cap pulled low over his graying hair and brows. Though he had smeared his face and chest and arms with black, she could see the tattoo over his heart. The twin to the one she had seen over John McGillis’s.
“You were going to marry him. He told me.”
“He misunderstood.” She let out a quick gasp as he jabbed with the knife. Her chair toppled with a crash as she fell back against the console.
“Don’t lie to me, you bitch. He told me everything, how you told him you loved him and wanted him.” His voice lowered, wavered, whispered, like the voice over the phone, and had her numbed heart racing. “How you seduced him. He was so young. He didn’t understand about women like you. But I do. I would have protected him. I always protected him. He was good.” Billy wiped his eyes with the hand holding the knife, then drew a gun out of his pocket. “Too good for you.” He fired, ramming a bullet into the board above the controls. Cilla pressed both hands to her mouth to hold back a scream. “He told me how you lied, how you cheated, how you flaunted yourself.”
“I never wanted to hurt John.” She had to stay calm. Boyd wasn’t dead. She wouldn’t believe he was dead. But he was hurt. Somehow she had to get help. Bracing herself on the console, she reached slowly behind her and opened her mike, all the while keeping her eyes on his face. “I swear, Billy, I never wanted to hurt your brother.”
“Liar,” he shouted, lifting the knife to her throat. She arched back, struggling to control her shuddering. “You don’t care about him. You never cared. You just used him. Women like you love to use.”
“I liked him.” She sucked in her breath as the knife nicked her throat. Blood trickled warm along her skin. “He was a nice boy. He—he loved you.”
“I loved him.” The knife trembled in his hand, but he pulled it back an inch. Cilla let out a long, quiet breath. “He was the only person I ever loved, who ever loved me. I took care of him.”
“I know.” She moistened her dry lips. Surely someone would come. Someone was listening. She didn’t dare take her eyes from his to glance around to the phone, where the lights were blinking madly.
“He was only five when they sent me to that house. I would have hated it there, like I’d hated all the other places they’d sent me. But John lived there. He looked up to me. He cared. He needed me. So I stayed until I was eighteen. It was only a year and a half, but we were brothers.”
“Yes.”
“I joined the Army. When I’d have leave he’d sneak out to see me. His pig of a mother didn’t want him to have anything to do with me, ‘cause I’d gotten in some trouble.” He fired again, randomly, and shattered the glass in the top of the door. “But I liked the Army. I liked it fine, and John liked my uniform.”
His eyes glazed over a moment, as he remembered. “They sent us to Nam. Messed up my leg. Messed up my life. When we came back, people wanted to hate us. But not John. He was proud of me. No one else had ever been proud of me.”
“I know.”
“They tried to put him away. Twice.” Again he squeezed the trigger. A bullet plowed into the reel-to-reel six inches from Cilla’s head. Sweaty fear dried to ice on her skin. “They didn’t understand him. I went to California. I was going to find us a nice place there. I just needed to find work. John was going to write poetry. Then he met you.” The glaze melted away from his eyes, burned away by hate. “He didn’t want to come to California anymore. He didn’t want to leave you. He wrote me letters about you, long letters. Once he called. He shouldn’t have spent his money, but he called all the way to California to tell me he was getting married. You wanted to get married at Christmas, so he was going to wait. I was coming back for it, because he wanted me there.”
She could only shake her head. “I never agreed to marry him. Killing me isn’t going to change that,” she said when he leveled the gun at her. “You’re right, he didn’t understand me. And I guess I didn’t understand him. He was young. He imagined I was something I wasn’t, Billy. I’m sorry, terribly sorry, but I didn’t cause his death.”
“You killed him.” He ran the flat of the blade down her cheek. “And you’re going to pay.”
“I can’t stop you. I won’t even try. But please, tell me what you’ve done with Boyd.”
“I killed him.” He smiled a sweet, vacant smile that made the weapons he carried incongruous.
“I don’t believe you.”
“He’s dead.” Still smiling, he held the knife up to the light. “It was easy. Easier than I remembered. I was quick,” he assured her. “I wanted him dead, but I didn’t care if he suffered. Not like you. You’re going to suffer. I told you, remember? I told you what I was going to do.”
“If you’ve killed Boyd,” she whispered, “you’ve already killed me.”
“I want you to beg.” He laid the knife against her throat again. “I want you to beg the way John begged.”
“I don’t care what you do to me.” She couldn’t feel the knife against her flesh. She couldn’t feel anything. From a long way off came the wail of sirens. She heard them without emotion, without hope. They were coming, but they were coming too late. She looked into Billy’s eyes. She understood that kind of pain, she realized. It came when the person who meant the most was taken from you.
“I’m sorry,” she said, prepared to die. “I didn’t love him.”
On a howl of rage, he struck her a stunning blow against the temple with the knife handle. He had planned and waited for weeks. He wouldn’t kill her quickly, mercifully. He wouldn’t. He wanted her on her knees, crying and screaming for her life.
She landed in a heap, driven down by the explosive pain. She would have wept then, with her hands covering her face and her body limp. Not for herself, but for what she had lost.
They both turned as Boyd staggered to the doorway.
Seconds. It took only seconds. Her vision cleared, her heart almost burst. Alive. He was alive.
Her sob of relief turned to a scream of terror as she saw Billy raise the gun. Then she was on her feet, struggling with him. Records crashed to the floor and were crushed underfoot as they rammed into a shelf. His eyes burned into hers. She did beg. She pleaded even as she fought him.
Boyd dropped to his knees. The gun nearly slipped out of his slickened fingers. Through a pale red mist he could see them. He tried to shout at her, but he couldn’t drag his voice through his throat. He could only pray as he struggled to maintain a grip on consciousness and the gun. He saw the knife come up, start its vicious downward sweep. He fired.
She didn’t hear the crashing glass or the clamor of feet. She didn’t even hear the report as the bullet struck home. But she felt the jerk of his body as the knife flew out of his hand. She lost her grip on him as he slammed back into the console.
Wild-eyed, she whirled. She saw Boyd swaying on his knees, the gun held in both hands. Behind him was Althea, her weapon still trained on the figure sprawled on the floor. On a strangled cry, Cilla rushed over as Boyd fell.
“No.” She was weeping as she brushed the hair from his eyes, as she ran a hand down his side and felt the blood. “Please, no.” She covered his body with hers.
“You’ve got to move back.” Althea bit down on panic as she urged Cilla aside.
“He’s bleeding.”
“I know.” And badly, she thought. Very badly. “There’s an ambulance coming.”
Cilla stripped off her shirt to make a pressure bandage
. Kneeling in her chemise, she bent over Boyd. “I’m not going to let him die.”
Althea’s eyes met hers. “That makes two of us.”
Chapter 12
There had been a sea of faces. They seemed to swim inside Cilla’s head as she paced the hospital waiting room. It was so quiet there, quiet enough to hear the swish of crepe-soled shoes on tile or the whoosh of the elevator doors opening, closing. Yet in her head she could still hear the chaos of sirens, voices, the crackle of static on the police cruisers that had nosed together in the station’s parking lot.
The paramedics had come. Hands had pulled her away from Boyd, pulled her out of the booth and into the cool, fresh night.
Mark, she remembered. It was Mark who had held her back as she’d run the gamut from hysteria to shock. Jackson had been there, steady as a rock, pushing a cup of some hot liquid into her hand. And Nick, white-faced, mumbling assurances and apologies.
There had been strangers, dozens of them, who had heard the confrontation over their radios. They had crowded in until the uniformed police set up a barricade.
Then Deborah had been there, racing across the lot in tears, shoving aside cops, reporters, gawkers, to get to her sister. It was Deborah who had discovered that some of the blood on Cilla was her own.
Now, dully, Cilla looked down at her bandaged hand. She hadn’t felt the knife slice into it during the few frantic seconds she had fought with Billy. The scratch along her throat where the blade had nicked her was more painful. Shallow wounds, she thought. They were only shallow wounds, nothing compared to the deep gash in her heart.
She could still see how Boyd had looked when they had wheeled him out to the ambulance. For one horrible moment, she’d been afraid he was dead. So white, so still.
But he was alive. Althea had told her. He’d lost a lot of blood, but he was alive.
Now he was in surgery, fighting to stay that way. And she could only wait.
Althea watched her pace. For herself, she preferred to sit, to gather her resources and hold steady. She had her own visions to contend with. The jolt when Cilla’s voice had broken into the music. The race from the precinct to the radio station. The sight of her partner kneeling on the floor, struggling to hold his weapon. He had fired only an instant before her.
She’d been too late. She would have to live with that.
Now her partner, her friend, her family, was lying on an operating table. And she was helpless.
Rising, Deborah walked across the room to put an arm around her sister. Cilla stopped pacing long enough to stare out the window.
“Why don’t you lie down?” Deborah suggested.
“No, I can’t.”
“You don’t have to sleep. You could just stretch out on the couch over there.”
Cilla shook her head. “So many things are going through my mind, you know? The way he’d just sit there and grin after he’d gotten me mad. How he’d settle down in the corner of the booth with a book. The calm way he’d boss me around. I spent most of my time trying to push him away, but I didn’t push hard enough. And now he’s—”
“You can’t blame yourself for this.”
“I don’t know who to blame.” She looked up at the clock. How could the minutes go by so slowly? “I can’t really think about that now. The cause isn’t nearly as important as the effect.”
“He wouldn’t want you to take this on, Cilla.”
She nearly smiled. “I haven’t made a habit of doing what he wanted. He saved my life, Deb. How can I stand it if the price of that is his?”
There seemed to be no comfort she could offer. “If you won’t lie down, how about some coffee?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
She crossed to a pot of stale coffee resting on a hot plate. When Althea joined her, Deborah poured a second cup.
“How’s she holding up?” Althea asked.
“By a thread.” Deborah rubbed her gritty eyes before she turned to Althea. “She’s blaming herself.” Studying Althea, she offered the coffee. “Do you blame her, too?”
Althea hesitated, bringing the coffee to her lips first. She’d long since stopped tasting it. She looked over to the woman still standing by the window. Cilla wore baggy jeans and Mark Harrison’s tailored jacket. She wanted to blame Cilla, she realized. She wanted to blame her for involving Boyd past the point of wisdom. She wanted to blame her for being the catalyst that had set an already disturbed mind on the bloody path of revenge.
But she couldn’t. Neither as a cop nor as a woman.
“No,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t blame her. She’s only one of the victims here.”