Hot Shot (57 page)

God. She had been like a crazy woman for months. Every time she opened Susannah's door and she saw him standing there, she felt as if someone had shot heroin straight into her veins.

All she had to do was shut her eyes and she could see him. She tried to read messages into every change of his expression, and to transform those short cryptic statements he uttered into complex sonnets of passion, but it never worked. She was too much a realist.

Of all the jokes God had played on her, this was the biggest. She, a woman who could chose among the most fascinating men in the world, had fallen in love with the nerdy, absentminded geek who was so obviously in love with her stupid, blind sister.

Susannah carried the file on Edward Fiella upstairs. She decided that she might as well do some work, because she certainly wasn't going to fall asleep easily, not with all those dirty dreams waiting for her. After she had gotten ready for bed, she propped herself into the pillows and flipped open the file. She had been through this material months before, and she didn't really expect to find anything new, but she still wanted to take one last look.

There was a coffee ring on the first page, which held a copy of his employment application. She skimmed through the rest. They had hired Fiella right out of college. He had been with them six months and then left. She knew that he had a degree from San Jose State, and she glanced through his college history. No fraternities. No professional associations. The summer before he had graduated, he had taken a job programming the computer billing system at the Mendhan Hills Yacht Club.

Her eyes stopped moving at the reference to the yacht club. Why had she never noticed that before? She had visited the Mendhan Hills Yacht Club many times. Although it was a small club, it was one of the Bay Area's most prestigious.

And Cal Theroux had been a member for as long as she had known him.

Her pulse was racing. Moments before, the bedroom had seemed cool, but now she was burning up. Don't leap to conclusions, she told herself as she threw off the covers. Cal wasn't the only high-ranking FBT official who was a member of the club, and she couldn't make assumptions just because a former SysVal employee had been in the same room with a competitor. She reminded herself that FBT and SysVal hadn't been rivals until the Falcon 101 had gone on the market. Even then, winning the contract with the state of California had been far more important to SysVal than to FBT.

But all of the logical arguments in the world weren't enough to convince her. Snatching up her telephone, she called Hal Lundeen and told him what she had discovered.

It took two days for Lundeen to report back with the information she needed. He flipped open his notepad. "You definitely stumbled on to something, Miss Faulconer. Cal Theroux headed the committee at Mendhan Hills Yacht Club that put in the computerized billing system Fiella worked on. The two of them definitely knew each other."

Susannah's hand tightened around the pen she had been holding. Now she felt free to acknowledge her instincts. The moment she had seen the reference to the yacht club in Fiella's file, she had known in her guts that Cal was responsible for sabotaging the Blaze.

She thought of all that hatred festering inside him for so many years. Had she really imagined he had forgotten what she had done to him? That he wouldn't, at some point, strike back at her?

"We need something that will stand up in court," she said. "It'll have to be more substantial than this."

"Give me a few more days, and let's see what I can dig up. The more I find out about your Mr. Theroux, the more I think he's a pretty slippery operator. He's left a lot of dead bodies at FBT on his way to the top."

As soon as Lundeen left her office, she called a meeting with Mitch and Yank and told them exactly what she had discovered. But both men had been trained in the scientific method, and neither was impressed with her conclusions.

"These are serious accusations," Mitch said, "and everything you have is circumstantial.

If you're not careful, we'll be facing a lawsuit for slander on top of everything else.

Unless Lundeen comes up with something more definite, I don't see how this will help."

"He'll come up with something," she said. "He has to."

But a week later Hal hadn't unearthed anything more than unpleasant anecdotes from former colleagues about Cal's ruthless but effective climb to the top of FBT.

Susannah stopped sleeping. She couldn't eat. The first week of July slipped into the second, and the weekend arrived. She spent all of Saturday at her desk. Mitch's children were in town, and he had taken them to a Giants game. Because Paige was committed to hostessing the annual FBT party that evening, Mitch had postponed the barbecue he had planned until the next afternoon. Susannah looked forward to seeing the children, but she dreaded watching Paige and Mitch together.

By seven that evening she was exhausted, but she didn't want to go home. She got up from her desk and wandered through the empty hallways. Many of the corridor lights were permanently dimmed, the offices unoccupied. She remembered when Saturday nights had been full of activity. Now her footsteps echoed hollowly on the tile floors. She peered into laboratories that only a year ago had been bursting with brash young engineers eager to strut their stuff. Now they were idle. No one announced loose pigs in the hallways or warned of Japanese invasions over the loudspeaker system. It was as if the whole brilliant, brazen world of SysVal had been an illusion.

She rested her cheek against the cool green wall. The adventure had come to an end. A sense of defeat settled over her so all-encompassing, she wanted to sink down along the wall and curl up against it. Cal Theroux had beaten her. Right now the party would be beginning at Falcon Hill. While he extolled FBT's accomplishments, he would be secretly celebrating SysVal's destruction.

She thought of the bright young kids who had arrived from all over the country to work at SysVal, of the thousands of lives his vengeance had upset. And in her mind, she kept seeing Cal dancing in the gardens of Falcon Hill.

She squeezed her eyes shut. From the beginning Mitch had called her Hot Shot, but she had never felt less deserving of that nickname. A real hot shot wouldn't stand by and let all the people she was responsible for be destroyed by a bastard like Cal Theroux. A real hot shot would do something, have some sort of a plan. A real hot shot would—

Her eyes sprang open. For a moment she stood without moving, barely breathing. Then she looked at her watch and began to run.

Chapter 31

The library at Falcon Hill was unchanged. Her father's heavy mahogany desk still dominated the room. Susannah stood next to it clutching the telephone receiver in her hand while she waited for someone to answer the phone ringing in the pool house near the gardens. She was dressed in a slim scarlet chiffon evening gown with a rhinestone-banded bodice. As she waited, she remembered the night she had walked into this same room and found Sam seated behind the desk staring up at the embossed copper ceiling. A party had been going on then, too.

"Yes?" The voice that answered the pool-house telephone was male with a foreign accent. Probably a waiter.

"One of the guests is needed in the library immediately," she said. "Mr. Cal Theroux. It's an emergency." She repeated Cal's name for the waiter, reiterated the fact that the matter was urgent, and hung up the telephone.

She took several deep breaths and fidgeted nervously with the rhinestone border on the long scarlet scarf that accessorized the gown. The library faced the side of the house, so she couldn't see the party going on in the gardens at the back, but she could hear the lush sounds of an orchestra playing. She glanced toward the antique humidor on the corner of the desk to reassure herself that the small tape recorder hidden within couldn't be seen.

Less than two hours had passed since she had left SysVal. In that time, she had tested the powerful little machine to make certain it was working properly, dressed in her evening clothes, and driven to Falcon Hill. Using one of the side entrances, she had made it to the library without running into her sister, or anyone else for that matter, since the staff was working out of the pool-house kitchen and the main house was deserted. Now all she had to do was wait.

She wandered restlessly over to the bookcases, reviewing what she planned to say to Cal.

He wouldn't be expecting to see her, and she needed to use the element of surprise to her advantage. Once again, the socialite had to pull a hustle. She wished she had been able to reach Mitch so she could tell him what she planned, but he had been out with his children and hadn't answered the phone.

The door behind her opened. Slowly she turned. "Hello, Cal."

Surprised flickered over his features when he saw who was waiting for him, and his eyes narrowed. "What are you doing here?"

"Enjoying your party?" she asked, deliberately sidestepping his question. He was tanned and elegant in his tux, but his appearance repelled her. How could she ever have considered spending her life with this unscrupulous man? She wondered if his antiseptic lovemaking made his wife feel as unwomanly as she had once felt.

"What do you want, Susannah?"

She stepped forward, making no effort to conceal her hostility. "I want to see you sweat, you bastard."

He hadn't expected a direct attack. The woman he remembered had been obedient and aristocratic. She would never have dreamed of challenging him like this. "What are you talking about?"

"I didn't realize you were responsible until a few weeks ago," she said bitterly. "Isn't that ironic? It never occurred to me that you were capable of doing something so horrible."

He had regained control of himself. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about my computers, you bastard."

"What—"

"I'm talking about the Blaze III and a sabotaged ROM chip."

"You're ridiculous."

"I'm talking about thousands of lives that have been disrupted. About innocent people who have lost everything. I'm talking about a man so twisted that he didn't care who was hurt as long as he could get even with the woman who ran away from him."

She saw it then. A flicker of satisfaction crossed his features before he could hide it.

"SysVal's problems are well-known," he said. "I suppose it's even understandable for you to look for a scapegoat. After all, it's easier to blame some mysterious saboteur for your troubles than to blame your own inept management."

Her stomach curled. "You're enjoying dancing on our grave, aren't you, Cal? How can you sleep at night knowing what you've done?"

"I sleep very well. Probably just as well as you slept after you decided to humiliate me in front of all my friends and business associates."

"I didn't run away from our wedding out of malice. What you've done is obscene."

He walked over to a chest that held an assortment of crystal decanters and poured himself a small brandy. There was a smugness in his every gesture, a sense of absolute confidence. He took a sip, then smiled, showing perfect white teeth. "I heard you left your husband. Sorry it didn't work out."

"Oh, it worked out. Not forever, I admit. But I wouldn't trade those years with Sam for anything."

He didn't like her response, and his jaw set. "There's a certain vulgarity about you, Susannah, that I didn't notice when we were together. I suppose I should be grateful that our wedding ceremony was never completed. I can't imagine having been forced to live with you."

"No," she said. "I can't imagine it, either. And now after all these years have passed, you finally have what you've been waiting for. I'm sure you know that SysVal is on the verge of bankruptcy."

He smiled, a sly fox's smile that made the hair prickle on the back of her neck.

"Unfortunate."

"Unfortunate for both of us."

He swirled the liquor in his glass. "I doubt that it's going to affect me very much. Except in profits on the 101, of course."

"You're wrong. It's going to affect you quite a lot." She paused for a moment and then said softly, "I don't have anything more to lose, Cal. So I'm going to take you down with me."

The room grew quiet. Only the distant sounds of the orchestra penetrated the silence. He set down his glass. "You're bluffing. You can't hurt me."

Hustle
, a voice inside her screamed.
Hustle, hustle, hustle
. "Oh, I can hurt you very badly. All of those people out there in the garden. All of the FBT executives and board members. The United States senators and newspaper publishers. All those important people." Her voice dropped to a whisper as she began her lie. "I'm going to go out there in just a few minutes and entertain them with a little story about treachery."

His face took on a grayish hue beneath his tan. "Susannah, I'm warning you—"

"I'm going to move from one group to the next. I'm going to tell them about the Mendhan Hills Yacht Club and your connection with a man named Edward Fiella. I'm going to tell them about that brand new Mercedes Fiella bought after he did his dirty little job for you.

I'm going to lay out every piece of evidence we've gathered."

His features hardened. "You can't prove anything."

"It's a party, not a courtroom. I don't have to prove anything."

"That's slander. I'll ruin you."

"You already have."

Silence fell thick and heavy between them. She knew that she needed something more definite on the tape. He pulled an immaculate white handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his forehead before slipping it back into his pocket. She could almost see the wheels turning in his head as he tried to find a way out. He couldn't know her threat to expose him to the people in the garden was a bluff. She intended to bring him to justice legally, not through gossip. But he needed to incriminate himself for her tape recorder before that would be possible.

"They'll think you're crazy." A small muscle had begun to tic near his eye. "No one will believe you."

"Some of them won't. But you've made enemies, Cal. A lot of them are out there right now. Your enemies will believe me."