Gospel (45 page)

Lisa said nothing, just left the room to give them some space,
obviously terrified of what she did and didn't hear. Ten minutes later she must have heard the front door close because she returned to the living room. ‘Where's Sara?'

‘She went home. Said something about being tired and not wanting to worry Cindy – and her cream skirt was soaking and . . .'

‘David, I have no idea why you . . .' she said, but she was interrupted by the phone and so returned to the sofa, listening to a one-way conversation.

‘Karin . . . Karin, you have to calm down. You're safe there. The Hotel has put on extra security. The police have cars on patrol. You . . .'

‘It was probably just a car backfiring. There is no way anyone could . . .'

‘The press can't get beyond the lobby. You've already changed suites twice. They don't even know which room you . . .'

‘I don't think that's such a good idea. You are probably a hell of a lot safer over there than you would be here with . . .'

‘Maybe so . . . but I still don't think we should . . .'

‘Okay, okay. I'll call the concierge and arrange for a cab to pick you up in the hotel basement. Make sure you duck down when the taxi rounds the front of the Hotel. We don't want them following you.'

‘Yes. I'll go down to the garage and buzz you in.'

‘About twenty minutes. Okay. See you then.'

And then he said nothing, feeling the sickly sting of betrayal flush over him. He had just fought with Sara, and now Karin was on her way over here and . . . He looked at his sister, knowing she knew nothing and everything about him and Karin and Sara and the danger they were all in, all at the same time.

‘You're a fucking idiot, DC,' she said. And there it was, his father's tactless honesty, his sister's cutting candour.

‘I swear to God, you allow that woman back into your life, you let her screw you up again and I will
not
be around to pick up the pieces. I did that once before and saw how it almost killed you.'

She got up from the couch then, grabbing her purse.

‘That woman is dangerous. You pined after her for so many years, and now look at what her re-entry into your life has done to you – has done to
Sara
.' She walked to the door still holding the bottle of peroxide in her
left hand. ‘I'm warning you bro, you break Sara's heart and I'll never speak to you again. Do you hear me? She is the best thing that ever happened to you and you are too bloody stupid to see it. Don't stuff this up, DC,' she said, throwing the peroxide at his head. ‘I'm begging you . . . for my sake, for Sara's, and most of all, for your own. Don't fucking stuff this up.'

Twenty-five minutes later, just as Karin Montgomery was being met by David in the basement of his Downtown high rise, Sara was wringing the water from her ‘dry clean only' skirt for the umpteenth time, exhausted by the determined tinge of pink that refused to leave the flow.

‘
Damn it
,' she said to herself before flinging the skirt across the room towards the rubbish bin in the corner.

‘You okay down there?' called her housemate and best friend Cindy Alverez from the upstairs bathroom.

‘Yeah, sorry,' said Sara, embarrassed by her pathetic show of frustration. ‘I was just about to take out the rubbish and I bumped into the side table.'

‘Might help if you turn the light on down there, silly,' said Cindy, her head now peeking over the upper balustrade. ‘Anyway, you've had a big day. Go to bed, honey, leave it for me. I'll take it out after my shower.'

‘It's okay,' said Sara, managing a smile. ‘It'll only take a sec, and then I'm off to bed. Promise.'

‘Okay. And Sara, I'm so glad David's okay, you know?' smiled Cindy, trying to contain the long, loose frizz of brown curls that fell in front of her pretty, tanned face. ‘I know how hard today must have been for you and, well, I'm here if you need me.'

‘I know,' said Sara, trying to control the tears that were welling at the base of her eyes. Part of her wanted to tell Cindy everything – about her fears and failures, about Karin and David and her total confusion as to where she stood in this whole God-damned mess. But in the end she swallowed the ever-present lump in her throat and looked up at her friend, praying the dim light would hide the lie she was about to tell. ‘I'm fine, really. But just having you offer is . . .'

‘Sure, any time. I got your back, girl, you know that, right?'

‘Yeah, I know – and thanks,' said Sara, now coughing to stifle the rising sob that threatened to betray her, and lifting her hand in a shooing motion to say: ‘Now go shower. It's late.'

Cindy smiled again before disappearing beyond the railing, and Sara stood there, quiet, still, waiting for the familiar squeak of the vintage bathroom faucets followed by the calming white noise of the shower head releasing hundreds of tiny streams of warm, clean water.

And in that moment, she found herself surrendering, losing all the strength in her legs, holding on to the stainless steel soaking tub as she allowed herself to drop onto the cold laundry floor and give in to the torrent of emotion she had been harbouring all day. Her tears flowed freely now, accompanied by long deep sobs as she tried to distinguish exactly which one of today's disasters she was actually crying for.

There just seemed so much to take in – like what
did
happen and worse, what
almost
happened to David today – if that bullet was meant for Montgomery or more terrifyingly aimed at him. Then there was the hopelessness of their case, the new evidence – a major setback to the defence. She knew David was yet to ask Montgomery if he penned that letter – most likely because he was afraid the answer would be ‘
yes
'. But most of all, she knew, her tears were for herself – for her stupidity in calling Agent King, for David's curt reaction, for their argument in front of an already worried Lisa, and for the fear that Karin Montgomery would steal him from her before she even had a chance to prove just how deeply she loved him.

‘Oh God,' she said to herself, now closing her eyes to see the image of Karin before her – her long chestnut brown hair, her flawless olive skin, her dark almond eyes that lit up every time David walked into the room. She still loved him, Sara was sure of it, and worse still, she could not help but think that part of him – perhaps a
lot
of him – actually enjoyed the fact that he was coming to her rescue. After all those years of rejection, now she needed
him
.

But this was getting her nowhere.

‘
Enough
,' she said aloud before wiping her eyes and getting to her feet, accidentally knocking her cream suit jacket from the hanger which was hooked over the laundry room door.

She bent to pick it up, amazed it was barely touched by the seemingly endless flow of blood from David's forehead – just a spot here and there.
Perhaps I could have it dry cleaned
, she thought, trying to concentrate on something, anything that would banish the demons from her brain.
And
wear it separately, with my beige pants or my tweed skirt or
. . . And then she saw it, protruding from the right hand side pocket, a small, white, folded slip of paper.

‘What the . . . ?' she said aloud. She could not remember putting this in her pocket. Someone else must have, during the chaos at the County Jail.

She pulled out the note and unfolded it slowly, to see the seven words she had hoped with all her heart she would never have to see or hear for the rest of her life.

‘
Your boyfriend is sleeping with his ex,
' she read it to herself, the sting of the words targeting the depths of her greatest fears.

‘
Your boyfriend is sleeping with his ex
,' this time aloud, running her fingers over the fine indentations the old-fashioned typewriter had made on the cheap white notepaper.

She felt an icy chill rush over her – at the same time sensing her body was breaking out in an uncontrollable sweat as her breathing became constricted and her heart pounded deep inside her.

‘It's a lie,' she made herself say, before crushing the note in her hand and moving quickly towards the rubbish bin. She buried it deep beneath her wet skirt, watching the cherry coloured stain bleed onto the crumbled piece of paper. And then she grabbed the plastic tags at the top of the bag and tugged them tight, forcing the sack shut, before wrenching it from their kitchen tidy and running outside to throw it into the dumpster.

A
ntonio Ramirez stretched back in his dark blue, sub-standard, synthetically upholstered office chair, still listening to the beeps of the disconnected telephone call, and allowed himself a smile. John was happy. Ramirez had just completed an early morning briefing with his leader on a secure line from the White House to the Boston FBI office, and was satisfied he had alleviated any concerns she may have had regarding the efficiency and trustworthiness of his highly trained operatives.

‘You are sure they are discreet,' she had asked, at least twice, perhaps three times.

‘Yes,' he had replied. ‘The men I use are a combination of active and inactive agents. They are all loyal to me 100 per cent.'

‘They did not question your instructions?' she had continued.

‘No. They do not ask questions. They simply perform their duties as ordered. They get in and they get out. This agent did particularly well. His aim was perfect. There are very few marksmen who can come that close to a man's brain without killing him. It's a skill. You aim for the temporal lobe and then pull back, a fraction of an inch. The target can literally feel the bullet kiss their ear. The snipers call it the whisper of death. It's very effective, and guaranteed to prime the subject for the necessary negotiations.'

‘So you think it's enough to get Cavanaugh to change his plea?'

‘No. The man is stubborn. I think something a little more personal will be required. But it's a good start. He's angry, which also means he is scared. I saw it in his eyes.'

John's silence had been enough to show Ramirez that she approved of his methods and was pleased with the day's outcomes. And while riding a high he had decided to remind her of their second coup of the day – convincing the Judge to allow the letter into evidence.

‘Don't forget. We have the letter,' he had said.

‘Yes,' she had replied, and he had shut his eyes to picture the small smile of satisfaction that he knew would be sliding across her perfect face. ‘You and Adams did well to get it admitted.'

‘Thank you.'

‘A gift is one thing – but manipulating it to maximum advantage is another. You've done well, Matthew,' she had said in a second expression of approval, to which he had not replied, because there had been no need, because she had been right.

And so here he sat, taking simple pleasure in the strangely soothing rhythm of the disconnection beeps and contemplating the true irony that their strongest evidential discovery to date had turned out to be legitimate. Montgomery's secretary, the forty-something, slightly overweight, heavily made-up Ms Coral Kapetas, had been holding onto a copy of the original letter since April, and only made the heartbreakingly difficult decision to hand it over to the FBI after doing a little math.

It seemed her romantic experiences (the word ‘affair', she had explained to Ramirez, being ‘far too common to consider') with the great Professor, which took place over a period of about six weeks (five weeks, four days and six hours to be exact), ran simultaneously with the alleged affair with that young slut Jessica Douglas, a crossover Ms Kapetas was unaware of until the press divulged details of the FBI's case against her now not so beloved boss almost two weeks ago.

Coral was a woman of compassion, who felt for her dear detained superior, but, as she so aptly put it, she ‘downright refused to be seen as the hospital whore', and ever since the news of the Jessica Douglas affair had hit the press, the staff at Washington Memorial were treating her as such. Yes, they had been aware of her clandestine interludes with the
Professor – gossip Coral herself basically confirmed by her lack of denial and accompanying wink of her permanently mascaraed right eye whenever the subject arose – and the latest talk had her relegated to nothing better than a ‘fall-back secretarial slut'.

If the Professor could have asked, Ramirez would have told him that the old saying was most definitely true – there really was no wrath like that of a woman scorned – even if she was a slightly overweight PA playing second fiddle to the twenty-something social X-ray from Capitol Hill. Cheating was cheating, there were no two ways about it. Long story short, Ms Kapetas called Ramirez, handed him a copy of a letter she had no business replicating in the first place, and stressed she wished her old boss no ill. And that, in a nutshell, was that.

Ramirez allowed himself another smile as he replaced the handset and listened to the rings of the first early morning calls in outer offices, signalling an official start to the ‘average' man's working day.

Life was good. Luke and Mark were cleverly and constructively disposed of, John's future, and that of his own, were safe and secure in his very capable hands and Cavanaugh's personal and professional life, and Montgomery's defence along with it, were on the verge of being skilfully and permanently destroyed.

Still, nothing, not even this feeling of impending victory, could have prepared him for his next stroke of luck, which came in the form of an intercepted phone call originally intended for Special Agent Leo ‘
Fuck Up
' King.

Now that truly
was
a gift – or, more specifically, a storm so masterfully averted and cleverly re-routed in the direction from whence it came.