Lord of the Wolfyn and Twin Targets (25 page)

Two taps,
John thought.
Professional.
According to Drew, it’d been the same with the other victim, the aide’s boyfriend, Jay Alphonse. His body was in the garage, as though he’d been nailed on his way out.

There had been no passion to the kills. They had been pure practicality, a means to dispose of obstacles. Typical of Tiberius and his ilk.

Sydney sucked in a breath that sounded like a sob, and turned to him. “Where is my sister?”

He didn’t answer because he’d already told her that her sister wasn’t in the house, and telling her again was pointless.

Her eyes filled with tears. “She’s really gone, isn’t she?”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Her face crumpled and she seemed to collapse in on herself, her hands coming up to cover her face, her shoulders folding inward and shaking with silent sobs.

When her knees buckled and she headed for the floor, he reached out and caught her.

One piece of his brain said he was simply making sure she didn’t mess up the scene, but in reality the move was pure instinct, just as it was instinct that had him folding her into his arms and holding her tight as she wept.

Just then, Drew strode in through the back. He stalled hard and his eyebrows hit his hairline when he saw his boss holding a sobbing woman in his arms.

Feeling a low burn in his gut, John snapped, “Anything new?”

“No— Ah, no. Sorry.” Drew gestured with the film camera he used to photograph scenes. “I was just getting started with the pictures.”

“Do it.”

Drew bolted and John stared over the top of Sydney’s head as she burrowed against him and sobbed into his chest. This was a good thing, he told himself. It was all about expediency. He’d wanted her to break so he could get the information he needed. None of this had anything to do with the feel of her in his arms, or the way she seemed to fit naturally against him, all soft curves and woman, urging his body to soften in some places, harden in others.

Drew stuck his head back through the door and made a point of not staring at them. “I had another look at—”

The phone rang, interrupting. John and Drew turned toward the cordless unit, which sat alone at the center of the butcher-block island.

Sydney stiffened in his arms, as though suddenly realizing who she was clinging to, and maybe even wondering how that had come to be.

She pulled away, took a couple of steps into the kitchen and then looked at him for permission.

At Drew’s signal that the handset had been processed, and Grace and Jimmy Oliverra had the trace and tape setups jacked into the phone line from the other room, John nodded. “Go ahead. Answer it.”

She picked up the handset and hit the button to connect. “Hello?”

In the moment of silence that followed, John wished he had one of the headsets Grace and Jimmy were using to listen in. Seconds later, Sydney’s whole body stiffened and she hissed a breath through her teeth before she shrieked, “You bastard. Where is she? Where is my sister?
What have you done with her?
”

John didn’t need to wonder anymore; he knew. Tiberius was on the line, looking to make a deal of his own.

“S
HE’S FINE
…
FOR NOW
.” Tiberius’s voice seemed to slither down the phone line, hissing into Sydney’s ear where it curled, waiting to strike as he continued. “She’ll stay that way, too, as long as you cooperate.”

She didn’t bother asking what he wanted. “Before I give you the password, I’m going to need some assurance that she’s alive.”

In her peripheral vision, she saw John surge forward a step and then stop himself, his expression dark and accusatory. He caught her eye and shook his head, mouthing,
Don’t tell him the password.

She frowned back at him. What did he think, she was stupid? If she gave up the password over the phone she’d never see her sister again.

“You’re in no position to be making demands,” Tiberius said, the slither turning cold and chilling her blood in her veins. “The password. Now.”

Wrapping her free arm around herself and hugging the borrowed sweatshirt tight around her body, she turned away from the bloodstained kitchen and wandered out into the hall with the cordless phone pressed to her ear. She was aware that Sharpe followed, his steps nearly silent, making her feel stalked and protected at the same time.

Ignoring him, she moved into the sitting room, which contained a small television and three walls worth of books. Interspersed amongst the paperbacks and research books were photographs of her and Celeste, over and over, just the two of them, spanning from earliest childhood to the previous year, as they’d lived their lives out together.

Tears misted Sydney’s vision, forcing her to pinch the bridge of her nose to hold them back.

“I’m not giving you the password now,” she said with a faint quiver in her voice from nerves at what she was about to propose. “And I’m not doing it over the phone. It has to be in person. I’ll meet you—”

She broke off as her eyes locked on one photo, a special picture that showed Celeste and her kayaking in Puget Sound. It had been the summer before Celeste had gotten sick. They’d had plenty of money from the sale of her computer programs, and Sydney’s new university job hadn’t started until fall, so they’d worked their way across the country. It’d been the best summer Sydney could remember.

And the picture was upside down.

“Oh, hell.”

“Excuse me?” Tiberius said, in a tone that indicated she’d managed to surprise the master of surprises.

“I’m not trading the password for a bluff, Tiberius. Sorry. You lose this round.”

When she clicked the phone off, hanging up on the criminal mastermind, the two agents manning the phone tap gaped and squawked, and fiddled with their equipment in an effort to get the call back.

Sharpe didn’t move, though. He watched her, face expressionless, as she dropped the phone and hurried to the bookcase.

Heart pounding, she grabbed the framed picture and twisted it a hundred-eighty degrees on the hidden rod that went from the back of the old frame, through the wall and into a mechanism that the contractors she’d used for the renovations thought might date back to Prohibition. Metal grated against metal and a section of wall swung inward on heavy, hand-forged hinges, revealing a dark corridor that traveled inward a few feet and took an immediate ninety-degree turn. The small bolt hole in front of them was empty. Beyond the turn, no light penetrated farther into the hidden tunnel.

But there were two parallel lines in the dust, exactly the width apart of a wheelchair’s wheels.

Celeste
. Afraid to say her sister’s name in case she’d been wrong, in case Tiberius wasn’t bluffing after all and he’d somehow gotten her after she’d made it to the bolt hole, Sydney surged forward toward the passageway.

An iron-strong hand gripped her arm, pulling her back.

“I go first,” Sharpe said, and did just that, heading into the passageway with his weapon drawn. Seconds later she heard him hiss a curse.

Ignoring the others, she plunged into the darkness after him.

Two steps in, she slammed into him where he’d stopped dead. Though she’d been going full tilt, he weathered the impact easily, holding out an arm to keep her from falling. “Easy there.”

“Celeste?” she whispered, clinging to his arm for reassurance, though she knew damn well he was the last person she should be leaning on.

“Yes,” he said. “And yes, she’s alive. She’s unconscious, but her pulse is steady and her breathing seems okay. The chair seems to be wedged or something. If you back up a little, I think I can get it free.”

Sydney pretty much stopped processing his words after
Yes, she’s alive.
Relief shivered through her, followed by a wash of nausea and guilt. This was her fault, all of it. If she hadn’t taken that job—

Stop, she told herself. Stop there. What was done was done. She couldn’t go back and undo it, so she was going to have to find a way to make the best while moving forward. She was going to have to find a way to fix what she’d messed up so badly.

Still, she whispered, “Thank you.” She wasn’t sure whether she meant it for the man ahead of her in the secret passageway or for some celestial being looking down on her from up above, but she knew one thing for sure: she’d gotten lucky with Celeste.

The aide and her boyfriend, however, hadn’t been lucky at all. Their blood would remain on Sydney’s hands.

She heard the catch of metal on leather as Sharpe holstered his weapon and tried to work the heavy, mechanized chair free and drag it out into the main room.

“You’ve got to put the transmission in Neutral,” she said, stepping forward and reaching past him to work the controls in the darkness.

In the close quarters, she had to squeeze tightly against him to reach the mechanism. They wound up pressed together, with her shoulder and arm against his torso and her leg touching his from hip to ankle. It was impossible not to notice that they lined up perfectly in all the right spots, and that he was warm and strong and incredibly male.

It might’ve been partly relief at finding Celeste, might’ve been the sensation of finally being home after so long, but the giddy rush of excitement seemed to come, not from the circumstances, but from the man. But when she found herself wanting to lean into him and stay there, she made herself pull away instead.

“There.” Her voice came out high and breathy, and she forced it level before continuing, “You should be able to move it now.”

She backed out of the passageway as Sharpe wheeled Celeste out of the darkness and into the light.

As he did so, her eyelids flickered.

“We’ll want the paramedics in here, Grace,” he said quietly to the short, dark-haired woman who’d been one of the two agents manning the phone trace.

Grace nodded and headed outside, but Sydney couldn’t wait. She knelt down beside Celeste’s chair and took one of her sister’s cool hands, rubbing it between her own. “Celeste, hon? You in there? Knock, knock?”

It was their sad little inside joke, because Celeste was always “in there.” Sometimes, though, she couldn’t get out past the shell of her own body.

Singer’s syndrome was a progressive debilitating neuropathy, which as far as Sydney could tell was a fancy way of saying that Celeste’s mind was sharp as ever but her body was giving out on her day by day, as plaques of a faulty neural protein—the one containing the expanded trinucleotide repeat—built up along her nerve fibers. The more it accumulated, the harder it was for Celeste’s brain to get neural impulses to her extremities.

She could still hold a pen on her good days. On the bad days, she had to rely on her chair, which could be operated by a press-and-puff joystick affixed at mouth-level.

At least that had been the situation when Sydney left. Now, as Celeste’s eyelids fluttered open and her sky-blue eyes locked on her sister, Sydney wondered whether she’d deteriorated even further and faster than they’d both feared she would. Her hand remained cool and lax in Sydney’s, and she didn’t react right away, just sat there, eyes dreamy.

Then, as if she’d bumped up against a live wire, Celeste gasped, yanked upright in her chair and grabbed onto Sydney’s hand.

Yet still, she didn’t speak.

“Thank God.” Sydney exhaled a long, relieved breath and leaned in to gather her sister close. “I was so worried.” The words were completely inadequate, but what else could she say just then?

“Danielle and Jay are dead, aren’t they?” Celeste whispered, voice trembling.

“Yes, they are. Thank God you made it into the hidey-hole.”

“I just…” Celeste’s eyes filled. “Your last email warned me to watch out, that something bad might happen.”

Sharpe cleared his throat.

“Celeste, honey,” Sydney said. “This is Agent Sharpe of the FBI. He needs to ask you some questions.”

“Did you see the killer?” he asked quietly. Behind him, several other agents and police officers were hard at work on the crime scene.

Celeste shook her head. “No. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Sydney responded immediately. “If he’d seen you…” She trailed off and swallowed hard, then pressed her cheek against Celeste’s and repeated in a whisper, “Don’t be sorry. Ever.”

Celeste leaned into the embrace, but her voice was stronger and a little reproving when she said, “I’m not going to say I told you so.”

“Then I’ll say it,” Sydney replied. “You told me so.”

Celeste had wanted her to turn down the job on Rocky Cliff Island. They had argued back and forth for nearly a week before Sydney left, and the parting had been more bitter than sweet.

The homecoming was proving far worse.

Grace stuck her head around the corner to report, “The paramedics are here.”

Celeste submitted to a quick vitals check, then waved them off. “I’m as fine as I get.” She looked at Sharpe. “Besides, I have a feeling your Fed here wants to ask me some questions.”

“He’s not my Fed,” Sydney said, and damned the flush that touched her cheeks.

Sharpe didn’t crouch down to talk to Celeste, which gained him points in Sydney’s eyes. Instead, he dropped into a nearby chair so he and Celeste were eye level with each other before he said, “Do you feel up to answering a few questions?”

Celeste glanced at Sydney and raised an eyebrow in a look of,
How much should I tell him?

“He’s okay,” Sydney said. “Tell him everything you remember about what just happened.”

In other words,
Don’t say anything about Rocky Cliff Island or the emailed computer programs.

Sharpe glanced at Sydney and scowled faintly. “I guess that will have to do. For now.” Then he turned to Celeste. “Please backtrack as far as you’re willing to go, and walk me through last night and early this morning. Tell me whatever you remember about the attacks. I’m recording this, okay?” He held up a PDA, and at her nod, keyed it to record.

She described her normal bedtime routine, then waking up and hearing strange noises, and thinking that Danielle’s boyfriend was trying to sneak out before she woke up again. “I heard what sounded like silenced gunshots, you know, like they sound on TV,” Celeste said. “I tried my cell phone but it wasn’t working, like it was jammed or something. Right about then I figured out it was a break-in, and I got myself strapped into my wheels.” She tried to pat the armrest and managed little more than a feeble flip of her hand.

That told Sydney that she was getting low on energy. She touched her sister’s hand. “You should rest.”

“I’m fine,” Celeste snapped.

Trying not to feel the sting of a reunion that wasn’t anything like she imagined, Sydney pulled her hand back and said softly, “I’m just trying to help.”

“So am I.” Celeste turned back to Sharpe and continued, “I wheeled myself out into the hall and used the stair lift to get downstairs. Thank God they didn’t hear me.”

“They?” He hadn’t moved, but Sydney sensed his attention shift, focusing more precisely. “Are you sure there was more than one?”

“Positive. I saw—” Celeste broke off and swallowed. “I saw them leaning over something in the kitchen. I saw blood…and I went the other way.”

Sydney could see her sister’s frustration growing, her anger at a body that let her down over and over. And though Sydney knew it wasn’t her fault she was healthy and her sister was ill, guilt stung anyway.

When a tear trickled down Celeste’s cheek, Sydney announced, “That’s it. We’re done for now.”

“No, we’re not,” Celeste snapped. “Look, Syd, I know you’re trying to help, but you’re just getting in the poor guy’s way.” Sharpe looked mildly surprised to be called a poor guy, but kept his mouth shut as Celeste continued, “Either stop fussing and let me finish, or go sit upstairs or something.”

“You’re tired,” Sydney said softly. “You know how you get cranky when your energy runs low.”

Celeste narrowed her eyes. “Yeah, and I get cranky when you treat me like a toddler, too. I’m wheelchair-bound, not a vegetable. Give me some credit for knowing when to say when.” As Sydney’s mouth dropped open, she smiled a little. “You’ve been gone nearly a year, Syd. Surprise.” She turned back to Sharpe. “I know for sure there were at least two of them, but I only saw them from the back, and nothing really stood out. Dark clothes, dark caps, medium builds. One was shorter than the other. The one—” She broke off and swallowed hard. “The one with the gun was wearing gloves. I didn’t see the other guy’s hands. It was all so quick. When I realized what they’d done, all I could think to do was hide in the secret passageway. I knew they’d hear me if I tried to go out the front, and it was so late…” She trailed off. “I just…hid.”

“Best thing you could’ve done,” Sharpe said, without on ounce of coddling or softness in his voice. “The only way for you to help is to help us catch them, and you’ve got to be alive to do that.”

Sydney knew that his blunt words probably meant more to her sister than a hundred reassurances from her.

Celeste sniffed, nodded and finished, “I’d just gotten the door shut behind me—there’s another lever on the inside that locks the mechanism—when I heard footsteps going upstairs, then some banging, like they were looking for me. I just…stayed there. I heard the front door slam, like, five minutes later, but I was too scared to move. After a while, I must have dozed off.”