Call Me Killer (21 page)

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. If he was expecting me to apologize for Rory’s skepticism, forget it. I didn’t owe anything to the cops in this town.

Brandon left the apartment.

Now what? I didn’t know where we stood with Connor. I think Rory was confused, too. She reached out and grabbed my hand, and both our palms were a bit clammy. Neither of us knew what to expect or what the fuck was truly going on.

“Well, that was awkward,” Finlay said. “I’m not surprised, though. Sam predicted this might be necessary.”

“What might be necessary?” Sam, I remembered, was Silas Marks.

“That you wouldn't be satisfied. That you’d want more. And that you’d make nothing but trouble until we gave you something that would shut you up.”

I don’t know what I thought was gonna happen, but I instinctively moved closer to Rory as Finlay reached into his backpack. He removed what I half-expected would be a weapon. I was tense and ready to fight.

I wasn’t sure exactly what we had stumbled into when Rory had decided to target Silas Marks, but it felt like we’d been peeling back the layers of an onion. Now we’d reached the point where somebody was going to cry.

But what he pulled out was a slim laptop computer. He strolled over to the coffee table and set it down, sat on the sofa and attached some gadget with an antenna to it. I wasn’t sure what it was, but Rory knew.

“He’s getting a connection. Not through your local WiFi.”

That made sense. He wouldn't want to leave any tracks on my network. No doubt for someone like Super Hacker here, getting on the internet was a trivial matter.

He began typing with fingers that flashed over the keys with a quickness similar to Rory’s.

“He’s contacting someone,” she said, squinting at his screen. He promptly angled it away so she couldn’t see.

Finlay pulled out a headset and plugged it into the laptop. It had an earpiece and a microphone, which he spoke into. In numbers. He reeled of a long set of what sounded like random numbers.

I looked at Rory. Her forehead was furrowed and I knew she must be analyzing the code, but it didn’t look as if she could make anything of it.

Who
was
this guy? Who the fuck did he actually work for?

Finlay nodded as if acknowledging something we couldn't hear. Then he waited. We all waited. For what, I wish I knew.

At last, he nodded. He spoke again, this time in normal English. “Yeah. Right now. This connection is secure but keep it short, please.”

He pulled the headset out of the computer and turned the screen so we could see the web telephony app that was running. It was not an interface with which I was familiar.

But sweat ran down my spine as the picture on the screen resolved into a face that I knew.

“Hey, Griff,” said a voice from my past. “How’s it going?”

It was Hadley.

Griff

Well, fuck me.

Rory had pretty much convinced me that the images had been fake, so this was the last thing I’d expected. The air whooshed out of my lungs and I thought I was going to fall on my face.

It was her. No doubt about it. It was Hadley, her red hair pulled back and piled atop her head. She was sitting at a small table in a featureless, ill-lit room that had a foreign air about it. She looked thinner than usual and her face seemed drawn, but she sounded the same—her voice sharp and bright.

I flopped down on the sofa and stared at the screen. I was dumbfounded. Could she see me, too? Probably, if it was one of those web telephony apps.

“I thought you were dead,” was all I could manage to say.

“Nope. As you see, I’m alive.”

“I got arrested for your murder.”

Regret passed over her features briefly. “I’m sorry about that. But they let you go, right? They didn’t actually accuse you of a crime? It’s all in the past now, surely?”

All in the past? Somewhere deep inside me, anger was beginning to grow. I thought of all the months of hassle, of worry, of grief. The nasty way people had treated me. The weight of my own guilt over not being able to keep her safe.

“It’s not that simple. Everybody still thinks I killed you and buried your body in the woods. That hasn’t exactly endeared me to the community.” I took a deep breath. “Where the fuck are you? Are you OK? Why did you just vanish without a word?”

“I can’t tell you that. I can’t keep talking to you, either. I’ve cut all ties. You wanted proof of life, right? Well, here it is—see? I’m fine. But I’m not coming back.”

Some of Rory’s skepticism must have rubbed off on me. “How do I know this isn’t just some clever tech that was recorded months ago? And now they’ve got it working so it looks like I’m actually talking to you?”

Hadley smiled. Damn. I remembered that smile—how it used to warm me all through. Now, for some reason, it left me cold.

“You’re actually talking to me, dude. This is real, if kinda weird. Who’s that girl behind you? Someone new? I hope you’re happy, Griff. Really.”

“Ask her the date,” Rory said quietly.

I did. Hadley raised an eyebrow but answered correctly. I thought of her phrase,
proof
of
life
. “Are you a prisoner? Is someone holding you against your will?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m fine. I’m where I want to be. That’s all I can say, except that I’m sorry, Griff.”

“Hadley, for fuck’s sake, what to you mean, you’re where you want to be? I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in, but there’s gotta be a way out of it. Tell me where you are and I’ll come and get you, babe.”

“No. Listen. You’ve got to let this go, OK? I’m living a different life now. You need to forget you ever knew me.”

“It’s not that easy. A lot of shit went down when you disappeared. Besides, you can't just abandon your whole life, your family, your friends…it doesn't even make sense, Hadley.”

“I know, but I can't explain.” Her voice was calm, her expression unyielding. “That’s just the way it is.”

I had a million questions, but Connor elbowed me.

“Enough. I said, keep it short. Say goodbye.”

Hadley must have heard this because she flipped me a little wave of her fingers. “Bye, Griff. Be happy,” she said, just before Connor pulled the plug and the screen went dark.

“What the
fuck
?” I growled at him. “I haven't spoken to her for months and—”

“You’ve heard of NSA surveillance, right? Not to mention various other snoops? That was a secure as I could make it, but do you think she’d thank you if it revealed her location?”

“How did you set it up? Who the hell are you, anyway? Who do you work for?”

“Cut me some slack, dude. Do you have any clue how far out on a limb I’ve climbed for you? She’s alive, she’s gone, and she’s not coming back. No one’s gonna charge you with murder. That’s all you need to know. It’s far more than you ought to know, so keep your fucking mouth shut. And keep hers shut, too. Your new girlfriend. If she hasn’t decided to dump your ass.”

I wheeled around, remembering Rory. She was no longer there. Where was she? I hadn’t heard her go.

Connor looked at me with scorn in his eyes. “She took off right around the time you asked Hadley to tell you where she was so you could go get her.”

I jumped off the sofa and looked round the place for Rory. Her stuff was still here, but she must have gone outside. Holy fuck. Couldn’t any of these women ever stay put?

Rory

I’d ducked out because I’d had to.

Seeing Hadley, actually seeing her face on the screen, alive, talking, looking gorgeous—had pushed me over the edge. I needed a few minutes to gather myself, so I took a walk around the block.

She wasn’t supposed to be alive. Even when Silas Marks had suggested she might not have died a year ago, I’d been dubious. From day one when I’d started this, I’d believed her in the ground. So had everyone else who’d looked into the case. She’d been seen as “missing and presumed dead” almost from the start.

I’d been all cocky about my ability to hack into anything. Conduct an investigation. Prove that the guy I’d fallen so hard for was no murderer. Prove that his old girlfriend, whom he was still hung up on, must have been killed by somebody else.

But still alive? And, worse, still alive and needing to be rescued? Oh man, I’d never once considered that.

She was beautiful. I’d seen plenty of beautiful women, starting with my own mother and sister. Hadley’s looks might not be conventional—not everybody went for redheads—but her features were flawless, even without makeup. She hadn’t been wearing makeup and my impression was that she’d been almost as surprised by the call as we’d been.

I still couldn’t make sense of it. Whatever we’d stumbled into, it was far more layered and complicated than I’d expected.

Her story still made no sense to me. The only thing I could figure was that she was in Witness Protection and they’d let us talk to her because all my investigating had put her safety at risk.

I wasn’t sure about the whole Istanbul airport thing, or if she was in or out of this country.

But I also found that I didn’t care anymore. The bitch had been alive all this time and she’d never let Griff know. Whatever her excuse was, that sucked.

I honestly had no idea what Griff was going to do now. The way he had spoken to her—so familiar, so intimate—had just about destroyed me. And it had driven home everything that I’d been denying: I wanted Griff all to myself. I’d fallen for him. Hard. I’d wanted to clear his name, not to push him back into the arms of his old honey.

What a fool I’d been!

Outside it was cloudy, and thunder was lowering in the distance. It looked like rain. The heaviness in the air echoed the heaviness in my heart. “Tell me where you are and I’ll come and get you, babe.”

I’d read some place that in love there was always one person who loved more than the other. One person who wanted more. Needed more. Griff knew Hadley was bad for him, but he’d been wrapped up in her anyway. She’d cheated on him. He’d claimed they’d had an open relationship, but he’d never once mentioned anything about dating other girls while she was running off to have dangerous kinky sex with other men.

In our case, maybe it was me who needed more. Wanted more. Loved more. I hadn’t thought that until today. I’d thought from the way he’d treated me, the way he’d loved me, that Griff and I were equal in our yearnings for each other.

As the week had gone on and we’d spent all our time together, it was as if we’d fused. There had been so many occasions when he’d told me to shut up about Hadley. He was sick of hearing about her.

Why hadn’t I listened?

I’d walked down to the end of his street and turned out onto the broader road that fed into it, walking along the sidewalk, occasionally kicking at a stone or a twig, not really noticing my surroundings because I was too miserable. But I became aware of a car driving beside me.

When it slowed to a crawl instead of passing, I snapped out of my self-absorbed misery.

I checked it out. Black town car. Some upscale model. Tinted windows. I realized it was the same car that had been in the driveway.

Great.

I stopped. The car pulled over to the curb. The driver’s window slid down. “Get in,” said a voice I recognized.

It was Silas Marks, the billionaire. He was driving. How odd. I’d have thought someone as rich as Marks would have his own personal driver.

“Get in? Why? So I can disappear like Hadley did?”

I wasn’t being as sarcastic as it sounded. Hadley might be breathing and talking and whatever, but despite her bravado, I did not believe she was a free agent. I didn’t know what the hell had happened to her or who was responsible, but I sure didn’t want the same thing happening to me.

“Just get into the damn car,” Marks said.

“Don’t you have better things to do than follow me? Are you a stalker as well as a sadist?”

“I saw you leave the house. I’ve got a proposition for you.”

I glared.

“Not that kind of proposition,” he said, with what might have passed for a grin in a more genial man.

I stood there, staring at him, still trying to work it all out. So he’d been there all along, at Griff’s house, in his car? He must have come with Connor. Maybe he’d even been listening in? Probably. That call with Hadley had probably happened at his direction.

“How’d you find her? Or did you always know where she was?”

“Get in and I’ll tell you.”

Curse my infernal curiosity. I went around to the passenger’s side, making sure the phone in my pocket was turned on and that I could dial 911 easily. He opened the door for me. I climbed into the luxury car. “So you were outside the house?”

“Yeah. I didn’t want to make your boyfriend jumpy by coming in.”

“Good move. He might have hit you again.”

“His temper is one of the reasons why the cops suspected him. Well, that and his record of arrests as a juvenile. You trust him not to harm you?”

“What the fuck business is that of yours?”

“If you’re going to do BDSM, you need to establish trust.”

“Save the lectures for your club.”

Lightning jagged the sky, briefly illuminating his features. Silas Marks was hot. Too bad he was also pond scum.

“So? Was Hadley’s disappearance all your doing or not?”

“Of course not. Like everyone else, I thought O’Malley had murdered her. He had a motive—she was unfaithful.”

“They weren't exclusive.”

“Sexual jealousy can be a powerful thing. Until this week I figured she was dead and we’d never see her again. Then you come along and start poking into a cold case. Championing the guy we all thought was the killer. Made me wonder how you could be so sure.” He paused. “The suggestion you gave Connor about airport and railroad surveillance was a good one. I have resources, contacts. And if O’Malley was ruled out, I had some ideas of my own.”

“Such as?”

He shrugged. “You’ve had all you’re gonna get, I’m afraid. The girl was not pleased to be tracked down. She made her choice a whole year ago. I think we have to respect it.”

“Fine with me,” I muttered. One contact with Hadley Allison was enough for me. Too bad Griff didn’t feel the same.