Outfox

by Sandra Brown

  What a well-deserved comedown! He wouldn’t be so cocky when standing before a judge, would he? He wouldn’t be glib and disarming. The court would not go all aflutter over the dimple that Elaine had found so dashing. Drex Easton, humbled to the level of a common criminal, would be a sight to behold.

  Not that Jasper would go anywhere near that courthouse.

  In his current incarnation, the chances of being recognized were slim to none. But it would be foolish to risk exposure when he was so close to being free and clear of this venture and ready to move on to his next.

  He turned off the TV and wiped down the remote. Everything else in the room he had already thoroughly sterilized. His suitcase was packed except for the last two items to go into it. It lay open on the end of the bed. He’d hung the Do Not Disturb card on the outside doorknob to ward off the housekeeper, both while he remained and after he was gone.

  Watching the noon news had been the last item on his agenda before taking his departure. He confessed that the half-hour delay had been a trifle self-indulgent, but he couldn’t resist watching all the reports about himself, and he had enjoyed them immensely. He could leave Charleston feeling very proud.

  Although it did stick in his craw that he was leaving with a major ambition unfulfilled: killing Talia. He had never before abandoned a project without completing it, and it galled him to do so now.

  He was undeterred, of course. He would kill her. But the risk of doing so presently was too great. He would wait for several months, perhaps for as long as a year. Which, now that he thought on it, wouldn’t be at all bad. The anticipation of ending her life, especially when she believed him dead, would ferment in his imagination like a fine wine. He could spend idle days fantasizing it.

  He wondered if she and Drex had consummated their grubby, base lust for each other? Of course they had. No doubt that’s what they’d been doing while she was supposed to have been cooperating with the police investigation. Jasper didn’t care a whit if they’d screwed like rabbits. He only wished the two of them knew how utterly indifferent he was to it.

  It also nagged him that he had to leave without learning what had drawn Drex’s attention to him in the first place. Over the course of many years suggested that for most of Drex’s adult life he had nursed an obsession so consuming that he had bucked the FBI in order to indulge it.

  Jasper couldn’t help but wonder what had instigated that fixation. Had it been a particular episode, an individual, or had Easton simply been born with a righteous zeal to seek justice for those who couldn’t obtain it for themselves?

  He would like to have had those questions answered. Strictly out of curiosity. He wasn’t afraid that Drex and his fancy PhD would one day close in on him. Whatever authority Drex had possessed previously he’d been stripped of. He’d overstepped, flouted rules, and now was up to his neck in criminal charges. Jasper would love to be inside that courtroom when Drex had to answer for them.

  But no. It would be unwise to tempt fate. He would leave as planned. Talia and Drex could play out the rest of their plebeian, romantic melodrama without him.

  It wasn’t as though he wished to be the star of it.

  New challenges awaited him. He was off to meet them. The FBI was moving closer to identifying and apprehending a serial perpetrator? He had left a signature? He’d been outsmarted? That was a laugh. Who did they think they were dealing with?

  “I’m not an amateur, you know. Just ask her.”

  He looked behind him at the dead woman on the bed. She lay facedown, her head at an odd angle to her shoulders. The back of her dress had ridden up, revealing thick thighs, lumpy with cellulite.

  Stupid cow. He’d needed refuge and hadn’t wanted to press his luck by checking into a hotel. She’d been so trusting. But then, why wouldn’t she be? He had appeared harmless.

  He loathed the idea of touching her again, but he tamped down his revulsion and used a tiny pair of manicure scissors to clip the threads securing a button to the neckline of her dress just above the zipper. Holding it by the eyelet, he twirled the small, fabric-covered sphere. What clever way could he sport it, he wondered.

  He didn’t have to decide now. He could take his time and be creative, as he’d had to be with some of the buttons already in his collection. But he never failed to come up with an ingenious way in which to hide them in plain sight.

  He replaced the scissors in his leather manicure set, zipped it up, and placed it in his suitcase, then removed the velvet pouch from the inside pocket. Over the past two days, he had increased his collection from an even dozen to fifteen buttons. The FBI had underestimated his achievements by six women, proof that their agents weren’t as brilliant as that moron on TV had boasted. Jasper’s nimble mind could run circles around Dr. Easton’s.

  Indeed, it had, hadn’t it?

  He worked open the pursed top of the velvet bag and was about to drop the new addition into it when, yielding to an irresistible urge, he dumped the contents onto the top of the dresser. The hectic pace of the past few days had prevented him from looking at his souvenirs arrayed like this.

  He wondered if the FBI’s “striking similarities” and “signature” were the missing buttons. Had Easton made that connection? Jasper didn’t see that it mattered, except that it caused another, sharper pang of regret that there wasn’t a button from Talia. That would have been the best prize of all.

  But he really must get over that disappointment. He couldn’t allow himself to be detained by it. For the time being—and only for the time being—Talia was beyond his reach. Accept it.

  He soothed his irritation by separating the buttons so he could admire them independently and reminisce on how he’d come by each one. There were three pearls, but each of a different size. Two were made of tortoiseshell. Four of various shapes and textures were solid black. The matte white one had adorned the skirt of the woman he’d killed last night. Naturally, all the brass ones looked somewhat military. One silver disk had a finish as smooth as satin. And, now, this cloth one.

  He took a moment to appreciate its uniqueness, then it went first into the pouch. One by one he added the others, each joining the collection with a satisfying clink. He was about to pull the drawstring closed when something struck him as odd. He paused to consider, then upended the bag and spread out the buttons again. He counted them. Recounted. Meticulously, he grouped them into rows of five.

  He hadn’t miscounted. One of the rows was short a button.

  With his heart knocking and a sweat breaking out over his shaved head, he squeezed the velvet pouch to see if one of the smaller buttons had become trapped by an inside seam. He didn’t feel anything, but to be sure, he turned the bag inside out.

  He searched among the magazines stacked on top of the dresser. He felt along the bottom of the television set, thinking that perhaps one had slid beneath it. He pushed aside the ice bucket and plastic wrapped glasses.

  It wasn’t on the dresser. He dropped to his knees, looked under the bed, the desk, the dresser. He crawled across the floor, madly skimming his hands over the carpet.

  He stood up, breathing as though he’d swum miles. Starbursts of red exploded behind his eyes. Twin freight trains roared through his ears.

  One of his trophies was missing.

  Chapter 38

  After his face-off with Rudkowski, which had produced the desired result, Drex powwowed with Locke, Menundez, and Talia in the interrogation room.

  “You wanted him to blab all that on TV?” Locke asked.

  “In the hope of luring Jasper to the courthouse for my arraignment. Once he learns I’m being publicly disgraced, I don’t think he can stand to miss it.”

  “That’s your plan?” The detective looked skeptical.

  “Do you have an alternative?” When no one spoke, Drex said, “The first step worked, and it was crucial. While Rudkowski is busy being a TV star, let’s take another look at that security video.”

  “I’m supposed to be booking you,”
Locke said.

  “A minute or two isn’t going to matter.”

  Grudgingly, the detective did as asked. Drex sat down at the small table. The other three gathered around to watch the video.

  “As I play it, keep an eye on this person and watch how he navigates.” Drex pointed to a blurred figure on the monitor. “See? He walks right past Gif, then turns and comes back. It’s hard to tell with all the jostling and shoving, but I think that on that second pass, they bump shoulders. That could have been when he struck.”

  “How could he have done it that quickly, and without anyone noticing?” Talia asked.

  “Someone did.” Drex paused the video. “Now here, five seconds later, Gif has disappeared. We know that he was on the ground. A minute after that, here’s the same individual, standing a few yards away, watching. EMTs arrive. He makes a slow circuit of the area.”

  He fast-forwarded, picking up the person at various spots around the perimeter of the camera’s range. “Once Gif had been taken away—” He fast-forwarded before pausing the video again. “—he reappears briefly here before being swallowed up by the crowd. That’s his back,” he said, pointing.

  “I don’t know,” Locke said, frowning. “Looks to me like just another curious bystander. There were dozens of them milling around.”

  “But only a very few came into such close contact with Gif mere seconds before he went down. Appearing to be a curious bystander would be good cover. He didn’t make himself conspicuous by running, or even rushing to get away.”

  “The height is right,” Talia said. “He’s a little thicker in the middle than Jasper.”

  “He padded his clothing.”

  “Even with that,” she said, “I couldn’t swear that it’s him.”

  “Sorry, Easton, but I don’t think so, either.” Menundez was squinting at the screen. “In fact, to me, your suspect looks like a woman.”

  Drex turned away from the screen to face the three of them and gave a sly smile. “The perfect disguise. No one was looking for a woman. No one would suspect an older woman of committing an unprovoked attack like Gif suffered. Sara Barker would have turned her back to her without reservation.”

  “Son of a gun,” Locke whispered.

  Menundez said something in Spanish that Drex figured was a bit more explicit.

  Talia just looked at him, her lips parted in astonishment.

  Drex asked Locke if he could round up some men within the department whom he trusted. “Who can keep their eyes open and mouths shut. Have them take a look at this video, then ask if they’d be willing to loiter around the courthouse this afternoon and be on the lookout? Best I can tell by this video, he was dressed in a generic, dark-colored tracksuit that would be appropriate for either sex. Short-haired wig.”

  “He might have changed identities again.”

  “He might have,” Drex said. “But it’s a damn good ruse, the kind of joke that Jasper would eat up, and it worked well for him last night.”

  Locke said, “I’ll do the recruiting while Menundez is booking you.”

  Over Rudkowski’s protests, the detectives hadn’t put Drex in lockup to await his arraignment, but had remanded him to the interrogation room with a stern warning not to betray their trust by trying to sneak out.

  He gave them his promise, but they’d posted an officer outside the door anyway. Rudkowski was too busy fielding calls from media outlets to closely monitor Drex’s preferential treatment. Had he, he would have created a ruckus.

  Drex’s phone had been confiscated along with his other personal belongings, but he was allowed to borrow Talia’s to put in a call to Gif.

  When Gif answered, Drex said, “Man, it’s good to hear your voice.”

  “Drex, have you lost your fucking mind?”

  “I see you’ve talked to Mike.”

  “We just hung up. Sheriff’s office finally released him, and he’s on his way to you. He called from an Uber car and filled me in. Said you played Rudkowski like a fiddle.”

  “With Mike’s help. He tipped that reporter for me, anonymously. The stealth only made her more determined to seek out Rudkowski for comment. I knew he would jump at a chance to denounce me on TV. While appearing to try and talk him out of it, I spoon-fed him what I wanted Jasper to hear. He even quoted me directly. Let’s hope it works to draw Jasper out.”

  “I understand your reasoning, but, Drex, you let the genie out of the bottle. You stand accused of breaking the law of the land.”

  “I did break the law of the land.”

  “But now the world knows it.”

  “Worth it, Gif, if we nail him.”

  “Are you in lockup?”

  “An interrogation room. With visitation rights.” Across from him Talia sat, unsmiling.

  “How will you plead?”

  “Not guilty. I’m not going to make it easy on Rudkowski. I’ve met with my court-appointed counsel. He’s old and tired, but knows the ropes. He told me we lucked out on the assigned prosecutor, who’s green, lazy, and none too bright. I was booked on misdemeanor state charges. Even if it goes to trial, which I doubt, I’ll probably get off with a fine and probation.”

  “Rudkowski won’t settle for that. He’ll file federal charges and see to it that you do time. You know he will. Furthermore—”

  “Gif, if you want to tell me how crazy I am, you’ll have to get in line. But what I did, I did out of desperation, not insanity. Now, enough of that. How are you doing? Are you in pain?”

  “They gave me one of those self-dispensing things.”

  “Good drugs?”

  “Not good enough.”

  “Jesus, Gif. I’ll never forgive myself for sending you to wander around alone last night, knowing that whack job—”

  “Don’t try to get off the subject.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Sure you are. I recognize the tactic. What does Talia think about what you’ve done?”

  Drex looked over at her, where she sat, her brow knit with consternation. Her arms were folded across her middle, providing a shelf for her delectable breasts. Although, clearly, allure wasn’t her intention.

  “She’s so mad at me, her freckles are about to combust.”

  “Why’s she mad?”

  “She says I’m setting a trap with myself as bait.”

  “Well, you are.”

  “Listen, Gif, all this talk is wearing you out. I can hear it in your voice. You need to rest. Don’t worry about anything.”

  “That sounds like a brush-off.”

  “It is.” Although Gif did sound out of steam, his voice having gone thin.

  “I hate this, Drex. When you need me most, I’m laid up here, useless. I want to help, to be doing something.”

  “You’re healing. That’s a big something. Get well enough to lay into me the next time we see each other.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Uncertain. Depends on whether or not I’m granted bail. Rudkowski will argue that I’m a flight risk.”

  “You are.”

  “Yeah, but maybe the judge will rule in favor of a flight risk over a buffoon.”

  “You’re joking, but you could go to jail. After all these years, everything you’ve sacrificed to this, I can’t stand to think of it ending with you behind bars.”

  “You’re not going to cry, are you?”

  “Maybe.”

  Drex smiled, but his voice was husky with emotion when he said, “You’ve been true blue, Gif. Thanks.”

  He disconnected, stared into the near distance for several seconds, then shook off his melancholia and passed Talia her phone. “Somebody was beeping in.”

  She pulled up the number. “Third time today. I don’t recognize the number. Solicitation, no doubt.” She set aside her phone and reached for his hands, drawing them across the table toward her. “Drex—”

  “We’ve been over it,” he said, interrupting what he knew would be another round of arguments, all reasonable, none he cared to
go through again. “You’re not to get anywhere near that courthouse. If you show up in the courtroom—”

  “What will you do?” she challenged.

  “It’s what he’ll do that should worry you.”

  “It does,” she exclaimed softly. “I worry about you. You’ve made yourself a target. Even your best friends don’t understand why.”

  “Yeah, they do. They argue, but they understand.”

  She turned his hand palm up. “You and your damn sense of honor.” She lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed the self-inflicted scar. “But I wouldn’t like you nearly as well if you didn’t hold to it.”

  “Life’s crammed with cruel ironies like that.” He reached for a strand of her hair and rubbed it between his thumb and fingers. “I came down here in search of my nemesis, and discovered you. You were an unexpected lightning strike, Talia Shafer.”

  “So were you, Drex Easton.”

  “That last time…?” He arched his brow suggestively. “I liked the way you woke me up.”

  “I thought you would never notice.”

  He snuffled a laugh. “When a man is sleeping with a woman on top of him, and his cock starts being squeezed in that particular way, he tends to notice. Just so you know.”

  She ducked her head coyly. “I’ll tuck that away for future reference.”

  “I didn’t know how much I liked slow, sleepy sex.”

  “That was my first time for it.”

  “Mine, too. Which is why I didn’t know how much I liked it.” His gaze took a lazy tour down her front. “I had a particularly depraved encore planned for us.”

  “Oh?”

  “Hmm. Hell of a one.”

  She reached across and poked her finger into his dimple. “Give me a hint.”

  He turned his cheek toward her hand and captured her finger between his teeth. “It was going to start out tame enough, but would end up with you seeing God and screaming my name.”

  “The imagination runs wild.”