Intimate Betrayal (28 page)

It happened a lot while he was driving. He put himself on automatic pilot and just let his mind drift. Images were coming
back to him. Memories were being unearthed—things so far in the past that he’d thought they were buried forever.

He’d always been good at blocking out the bad memories. His mother, stripping him naked and beating him with a metal curtain
rod—his mind still shied away from those images, thank God. When she’d died of cancer, he’d actually been
glad.
He’d never gotten even with her because the cancer had finished her, and he resented that. Sometimes he thought the cancer
had been too good for her.

But Annie inspired the good memories. Sometimes when he thought about her, his brain hyperlinked to other moments in time,
and he found himself envisioning another girl… another blond-haired lady with buff-colored fingernails and some sweet perfume
that smelled like summer wildflowers.

When he thought of her—that long-ago, long-buried girl, he felt it starting all over again. Those wicked, delicious feelings
that he thought he’d conquered. Those feelings his counselor in prison had urged him to bury, bury deep. Bury them with the
girl, the girl he’d kidnapped, the girl he’d mastered, the girl he’d loved day after day in the dark secret basement where
he’d kept her, the girl he’d oh-so-adoringly choked because he’d read that the less oxygen she breathed while fucking, the
deeper her sexual ecstasy would be…

He hadn’t meant to choke her too hard. He’d cried and mourned and felt completely lost for weeks after her death.

They’d never gotten him for that.

They’d gotten him for the rape.

Anyhow, he wasn’t
sure
he’d killed her. He wasn’t sure if
it had been real, or a dream, or a nightmare fantasy. He wasn’t even sure if he’d ever known her, ever touched her—if she’d
even been real.

But Annie—she was real.

She was real, and she was his.

Annie’s fingers froze as she heard the crunch of gravel under tires. She doused her flashlight and shut down the computer.

It had to be Fletcher, she thought. Who else would come there in the middle of the night?

She slipped the forms she’d been studying back into the drawer where she’d found them, then rushed to the door and cracked
it open. She could see the sweep of headlights coming toward her. There was no place to hide in the trailer, she realized.
She had to get out or she would be caught. But with the headlights shining directly at the trailer, she didn’t dare open the
door any wider. He would see her; he would know.

The headlights angled and turned, and she figured he was looking for a place to park where his tires wouldn’t get stuck in
the mud. The front of the trailer was dark now and she didn’t think he could see her. But if he was parking so close, he’d
be upon her any second.

Go! Go!
she ordered herself. She eased the door open—it didn’t squeak, thank God—and slipped out, forcing herself to move carefully,
silently. She darted along the side of the trailer, keeping in the shadow of its dark hulk as she glanced uneasily at the
bright moon. She heard a car door close at the far end of the trailer, and she slipped around the corner at the
back just as his heavy footsteps approached the door where, seconds ago, she’d been standing.

The lock.
She hadn’t had time to relock the door behind her. Dammit, she had to get away from here now!

There was another trailer to the rear of Fletcher’s, and she ran silently for it, taking refuge on its far side. The latch
had been flimsy, and perhaps he’d simply think he hadn’t locked it properly when he’d left. It happened. She occasionally
made the same mistake with her own locks.

Beyond the next trailer was a dumpster, which she also put between herself and Jack Fletcher. Only a little bit farther and
she would gain the street.

She glanced back and saw the lights in Fletcher’s trailer come on. She hoped he wasn’t fretting about the lock. She tried
to remember if she’d disturbed anything. Would he notice that someone had been there? She thought she’d been very careful,
but it had been years since she’d done this sort of thing.

And, given the way her heart was pounding, she was never going to do it again.

Fletcher was a little put out when he discovered that he hadn’t locked the door. Shit! He was getting careless. It seemed
like all he could think about was Annie, and thinking about Annie was messing up his mind. He had to stop thinking and start
acting.

But as he lay down on his narrow bed, he felt that Annie was very close to him. He even imagined he could smell her scent.
When he closed his eyes, she was all around him—
the heady fragrance of her body making him hot and dizzy and weak.

He had to have her. He’d go mad if he didn’t take her soon.

He opened his jeans and took himself in his hand as he let his dark fantasies unfurl.

Matt called Annie from the airport the next evening and asked if he could come over. “I don’t want to go back to my place.
Mrs. Roberts tells me the cops are staking it out.”

Why? she wondered. Could Sam have gone to the police and reported that he’d witnessed Giuseppe and Francesca making love?
He wouldn’t do that, surely.

“Don’t worry. Matt’s always been able to count on me. “

She hoped so. God, she hoped Sam continued to be as good a friend as Matt had always believed.

While she waited for Matt to arrive, her brain continued its anxious spinning. She’d had a tense day at the site today, dreading
every contact with Jack Fletcher, who had seemed sullen and threatening in the way he followed her constantly with his eyes.
She just
knew
there was something wrong about him. If only she’d had a little more time to search his trailer. After her close call last
night, she didn’t think she’d ever try it again.

And yet, the more she thought about it, the less she could see Fletcher masterminding the alleged plot concerning some sort
of fraud with the cathedral construction. Participating in such a plot, yes. Dreaming it up and implementing it, no.

Equally disturbing was the way her mind kept replaying her last encounter with Sam. When he’d caught her examining the CAD
file, she’d actually felt frightened. She’d sensed a hint of something in him that she had never seen before. Either that,
or her fevered imagination was working overtime again.

Darcy’s words about Sam’s elusiveness had come back to her several times. Until Darcy said it, Annie had never really thought
of Sam as elusive. But her friend was absolutely right—none of them knew very much about Sam, despite his genial and seemingly
open manner.

Now it struck her that instead of being able to see into Sam’s depths, she felt as if she were always looking at the shiny
glass of a mirrored surface, which reflected back to her whatever she expected to see. She couldn’t get beneath the surface—it
was one-way glass.

Had he really seen Giuseppe and Francesca making love? Why did she doubt his word? Had Sam, like everybody else she’d thought
she knew and cared about, ended up on her not-to-be-trusted list?

Curiously, the only person she totally trusted right now was Matt. The accused murderer whom more than half the city’s population
believed had bribed his way out of the gas chamber was the only person whose story she fully believed.

“God, I’ve missed you, Annie,” he said when he arrived. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her hungrily, as if her lips
offered him salvation.

She had to do something to help him. She hadn’t been able to save Charlie. Dammit, she wasn’t going to sit back and watch
another man whom she loved be unjustly destroyed.

“I’ve got some dinner ready,” she whispered.

“Later,” he said.

They still hadn’t gotten around to eating when the phone beside Annie’s bed rang. It was Barbara Rae. “I think you ought to
get down here right away,” she said in her firm, quiet voice. “Is Matthew with you, by any chance?”

“Yes.”

“Bring him.”

“Barbara Rae, what’s happening?”

“I have somebody here who would like to talk to you.”

“Vico?”

“Paolina. She’s alone. I’m not sure how long she’ll be here, so you’d better hurry.”

Barbara Rae met them at the rear entrance to the youth center. Her broad, kindly face appeared troubled; there was a crease
between her eyes, and she seemed unable to summon her famous smile. “Come,” she said, ushering them through a dark corridor
to a staircase that led to the basement. “She came to me after all, and I think I’ve convinced her to talk to you. I had the
doctor come to see her. She was bleeding, but it seems to have stopped. She was terrified that she might be losing the baby,
but it seems to have been a false alarm.”

“What about Vico?” Matt asked.

Barbara Rae shook her head. “She still refuses to say.”

They found the girl in a tiny but pristine room in the basement. She lay on a narrow cot, covered with blankets,
her legs elevated to stave off further bleeding. Her lovely face was paler than Annie remembered, but her huge round eyes
were dark and alive.

Annie and Barbara Rae went to her side. Matt hung back, leaning against the wall near the doorway.

When Paolina saw Annie she began to cry. Annie quickly sat down beside her on the bed and gave her a hug. The girl clung to
her and sobbed.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Annie murmured.

“I wanted to come to you, but I was too afraid.”

“It’s okay. Being afraid is something I understand very well.” She held her for a while, despite what she read as impatience
in Matt’s eyes. When at last the girl was calmer, she said, “Paolina, you must know that people are looking for you. And for
Vico. Lots of people, including the police.”

“And the killer?” she whispered.

Annie shot a look at Matt, who was listening attentively. “You and Vico were in the cathedral, weren’t you, when Giuseppe
died?”

Paolina nodded, her eyes wide. “It was our meeting place.” She looked guiltily at Barbara Rae, who was standing back in the
shadows. “I know this was wrong, but we had nowhere else to go.”

“It’s all right,” Annie said gently. “Everybody needs a meeting place.”

“I didn’t see what happened. Vico did. But he still won’t talk to me about it. He says it’s men’s business and that women
must not interfere in such matters.” She made a helpless gesture. “It’s part of his machismo, I think. He is very brave. But
he is just a boy, really. I do not think he can fight this murderer alone.”

“What happened that night, Paolina?”

“We went to the cathedral as usual, and stayed until early morning because Vico knew that his uncle would be the first on
the job. He was always the first on the job, and everybody knew it.”

The regularity of Giuseppe’s habits had contributed to his death. The killer had known exactly where and when to find him.

“Vico needed money. He wanted me to have an abortion and his uncle was the only person he could ask.”

Annie knew it would have been too late then for an abortion, but she didn’t interrupt. No doubt Vico thought he knew best,
and the girl had been too frightened of him—or too much in love—to argue.

“Then what?”

“We heard someone coming. Vico thought it was his uncle, and he didn’t want his uncle to see me. So he made me hide in that
room down the steps from the altar. The basement room.”

“The sacristy?”

“Yes. Where they will keep the sacred vessels and the priests’ clothes. I didn’t see what happened. Vico went back up to talk
to Giuseppe. He came down once to whisper that it wasn’t his uncle we had heard, then he went up again. The next time he came
down, he was crazy.”

“Crazy? What do you mean?”

The girl was trembling, obviously from the strain of remembering an unpleasant experience. “He was crying. I have never seen
him cry. He was crying and he was angry. I thought he was going to hit me he was so angry. He told me that Giuseppe was dead.”

“Do you mean he left you down in the sacristy, and you didn’t see him again until after his uncle had been murdered?” Matt
asked.

“That’s right.”

Annie glanced at him, knowing what he was thinking. If the girl had witnessed nothing, how were they to know that Vico himself
hadn’t been the killer after all?

“You came back to the cathedral the following night,” Annie said. “Why?”

Paolina looked confused. Then, slowly, she said, “I was frightened, and besides, there was my baby to think about. I didn’t
have the same hatred of the police that Vico has. I thought I should talk to them, maybe tell them that I, not Vico, had been
in the cathedral, so they would know
something,
at least, of what happened on the scaffolding.

“I knew the police would be at the cathedral. But I also knew Vico would be very angry if he found out. I realized I couldn’t
do it. There would be too many questions. They would make me tell them everything. Vico would be caught and arrested and I
would never be able to forgive myself. So I ran away.”

“But later you tried to talk to me.”

“You were so nice to me. I was afraid of the police, but I needed to talk to somebody. But…” She shrugged helplessly. “You
had so many questions. It seemed to me that if I answered them, it would all unravel. And the biggest question of all I could
not answer anyhow. I did not see the murderer. I cannot identify him.”

“Vico has never told you who the killer was?”

“No. When Vico decides to be silent, he is a rock.”

“But he knows?” Matt asked. “He recognized the killer?”

“Yes. He knows.”

“So if he recognized the killer, it was someone Vico knew from the time when he was part of the construction crew? Someone
he’d met here, on the job?”

Paolina shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

“Can we be sure of this: Was the killer definitely a man?” Annie asked.

“I—I don’t know.”

“How does Vico refer to the killer?” Matt cut in. “Does he say ‘he’?”