No Escape (26 page)

* * *

Heath clambered over the security wall without setting off an alarm, then dropped to the ground and ran toward the main house while staying in the shadows. The sweet, heavy scent of the bougainvillea filled his nose and almost made him sneeze.

One of the security guards emerged from the house and went to the car parked in the circular drive. The engine started with a smooth growl. The guy rested behind the steering wheel with the dome light off, the instrument panel glowing in his face. Another guard stood at the door to the house and talked on his cell phone.

Stealthily, knowing there was no turning back at this point but feeling certain that Lauren’s life was in danger, Heath crept up on the man. Just behind the door, he whispered only loud enough for the driver to hear. “Move and I will kill you.”

The man slowly started to raise his hands.

“Put your hands on the steering wheel. Let’s not invite your friend before we need to.”

After a brief hesitation, the man grasped the steering wheel.

“Is the woman still inside the house?”

“Yes.”

“Is she still all right?”

“She was. She’s with Gibson in the library.”

A sharp feeling of relief flooded Heath.

“Doesn’t mean she’s going to stay that way, though. Gibson’s been in the mood to kill her since she showed up at that house. You’re the cop, right?”

“Yeah.”

The guy pressed a hand on the horn as he shoved out of the car and rounded on Heath, catching him off guard. His hand slammed into Heath’s chest because Heath didn’t want to fire immediately. Thrown off-balance, Heath staggered back and watched the man bring up a pistol.

Heath squeezed the .357’s trigger and felt the pistol buck as a bullet whipped past his ear. His round caught the man in the chest, and he followed it with a second round that cored through the man and shattered the door window behind him.

The man at the door brought up his pistol and took a defensive position inside the house.

Keeping a lid on the panic that filled him, not wanting to think that he was going to lose the woman he was almost certain he was in love with, Heath yanked the falling dead man out of his way and slid behind the steering wheel. Shots blasted through the windshield and tore into the passenger seat as he pulled on the safety harness. He slammed the transmission into Drive and pressed his foot down on the accelerator.

The high-performance engine thrust the car forward. Heath laid the .357 in the passenger seat and steered with both hands to bring the car on a direct path with the front of the house. He hoped the front end stayed together long enough to get him where he was going. Otherwise he was a dead man and Lauren was going to brutally die.

The front tires jerked and juddered as the car raced up the wide steps, but they navigated the incline with less trouble than he’d anticipated. The whole vehicle shook and shimmied, but he managed to hold it on course with one hand while he picked up the revolver with the other.

When the car hit the front of the house, the airbags deployed. Even though he’d prepared for the impact, even though the seat belt clamped like a vise around his chest, the face plant against the airbag rushing up at him robbed Heath of his senses.

Chapter 22

S
avage joy filled Gibson when he saw the fear in the woman’s eyes. That look, that palpable feel of the connection to his audience during the final performance he would give them, was an elixir that never failed to transport him out of the ordinary world. Drawn by that fear, he closed on her, eager to open her up and let the blood hit the ground.

It would be the first time he had killed in the library in front of so many of his childhood heroes. He didn’t know why he hadn’t done so before. No one could stop him. Nothing could get in his way. He was invincible.

The woman, Mistress Tereza, cowered before him, giving ground as he backed her toward the fireplace. She reached out and toppled a diorama of Doug Henning’s performance in
Spellbound.
The display smashed across the wooden floor in front of Gibson. He snarled inarticulate curses at her. The diorama could be replaced, but he hated the idea that anyone could touch his things.

He lifted the knife and strode toward her with greater speed.

Then Roylston’s mocking voice halted him. “Hey, Terrence.”

In disbelief, stunned to have heard
that
name here in this house, Gibson turned toward his bodyguard.
“What
did you call me?”

Twenty feet away, Roylston stood framed by the door. He held something in his left hand and a pistol in his right. He flicked his left hand forward, and a cylindrical shape flew through the air to land at Gibson’s feet.

It was a cigar.

Gibson glared at Roylston. “What is the meaning of this?”

Roylston smirked at him. “Your old man just called me. He’s having another son. He doesn’t need you anymore to carry on the family name.” He raised the pistol to fire.

Panicked, filled with fear for himself for the first time in years, Gibson flung the knife he held. It flickered through the air like quicksilver and caught Roylston in the neck.

With a look of shock, the big man clamped a hand to his neck and pulled it away covered with blood. The pistol fell from his nerveless fingers.

Cursing, knowing that Roylston wouldn’t be acting alone, Gibson raced over to pick up the pistol. He gripped it and turned around, determined to get out of the house. But first, he was going to take care of the woman. He started to turn back around, but something that sounded very much like a bomb went off at the front of the house. Security alarms screamed to life throughout the villa.

* * *

Grimly, Heath clawed back up from the thready darkness that was trying to suck him down. He forced his head up and lifted the revolver at the same time.

The man who had been hiding behind the door rose up like a ghost from the grave, covered in plaster and mortar dust that pushed into the house in a large, roiling cloud. He fired at the car, his hand suddenly filled with a muzzle flash.

Taking deliberate aim, Heath put two rounds into center body mass, following through on muscle memory he’d gotten while in the military and from hours spent on the shooting range.

The bodyguard stumbled back and fell.

Looking around, his head feeling as if it was about to shatter from all the security alarms, Heath realized the car had gotten wedged in the suddenly enlarged doorway. The doors were stuck, and he couldn’t open them.

He tried to free himself from the seat belt that felt as if it was crushing the life out of him, but something had to have been broken in the locking mechanism during the crash. He had to fish out his pocketknife and cut himself free.

Breathing hurt. Moving hurt. But Heath leaned back in the seat and kicked the windshield out of the car, then turned around and crawled out after it. He almost fell when he stepped off the front of the car, but he retained his balance and flipped the revolver open, ejecting the four spent shells and replacing them with fresh rounds. He snapped the cylinder closed with a flick of his wrist and moved on into the house. He didn’t know where Lauren was, but the need to find her consumed him.

He started moving toward the stairs, then heard a shot from the right. “Lauren!”

* * *

The only thing that held the fear at bay inside Lauren was the knowledge that her sister’s murderer stood in front of her. Incredulous, she’d watched Gibson throw the knife with deadly accuracy, but by that time her fingers were already closing around the fireplace poker.

When Gibson went after the fallen bodyguard’s pistol, Lauren had gone after him. She ignored the reluctance she felt for what she was about to do and instead stoked her rage over losing her sister. Her hands curled around the poker.

Gibson lifted the pistol and turned around, and Lauren swung the poker off her shoulder in the flat arc that her adoptive father had spent time teaching her for softball. The poker caught Gibson alongside his jaw, and bone cracked loud enough to hear in between the frantic bleats of the security alarms.

Stumbling to the side, Gibson tried to bring up the pistol again. Stepping forward as though she was meeting a fastball pitch, Lauren swung once more, only catching Gibson on the arm that he instinctively raised to defend himself. The blow drove him to the side and down to the ground.

Lauren moved toward him and raised the poker over her head, intending to bring her weapon down on Gibson’s skull. He looked up at her, his face streaming blood. All she had to do was swing and he would go away forever. She knew that.

But she also knew that wouldn’t bring Megan back. Nothing would bring Megan back.

Screaming in frustration, Lauren crashed the poker through the diorama of Houdini exposing the fake spiritualist.

“You should have killed him. You know you wanted to. At least you would have had that.”

Drawn by the wheezing voice, Lauren turned around to discover Roylston once more on his feet. The knife was still in his neck. He hadn’t removed it. And he had another pistol in his hand. He waved the weapon at Gibson. “Go ahead. Bust him up like a piñata. If I do it, it won’t mean as much to me. Just the end of a long, tiring job. But you? You’ll get something out of it. He tried to kill you.”

“He killed my sister. He killed Megan.”

Frantically, Gibson shook his head in agony. Blood dripped to the floor. He pointed at Roylston.

“Megan Taylor? The woman drowned down here?”

“Yes.”

Roylston chuckled despite the pain he was in. “No. That was me. This idiot tried to kill her that night, but she fought him off and got away. It was just one more case of me having to clean up his mess. Then he sent that White Rabbit card to the police. Claiming his kill. Feeding his vanity.” He swallowed with effort and chuckled again. “That’s funny. You coming down here, taking him on—bringing him to this, really, and it was for something that he couldn’t even do right.”

Gibson tried to get to his feet.

“No, you just stay where you are, you sick psychopath. I’m going to let Mistress Tereza have one more—”

Gunfire erupted somewhere in the house.

Roylston glanced back over his shoulder. Seizing her chance, with her sister’s killer once more in front of her, Lauren raised the poker and raced at the bodyguard. Some sixth sense must have warned him of her approach, though, because she knew he didn’t hear her. When she swung, he turned around and caught the poker in his left hand as he lifted the pistol to point at her face.

* * *

Heath zeroed in on the sound of the gunshot and came up on Roylston from behind. Over his shoulder, Heath spotted Lauren standing in front of the man, almost dwarfed by his bulk. Roylston was still holding on to the poker that Lauren had obviously swung.

Another gunshot boomed inside the room, and this time Roylston staggered back and sat down on the floor. Then he fell backward, and the thousand yard stare in his eyes revealed that he was dead.

Lauren turned, still not seeing Heath, and looked back into the room. There, kneeling on the floor, Gibson struggled to get to his feet. His jaw hung strangely, but he pointed a pistol at Lauren, and his intentions were clear.

Unable to get Lauren clear of the situation, Heath stepped into the library with both hands on the .357. “Drop the weapon, Gibson.” Heath didn’t want to risk the man accidentally discharging his weapon by shooting him. “Only chance you’re going to get. Otherwise I make you disappear.”

Gibson blinked to focus on Heath, then nodded and slowly lowered the pistol, leaving it on the floor and lacing his fingers behind his head.

Heath reached down and untied Roylston’s bloody tie, surprised to find the knife lodged in the side of his neck, then used it to tie Gibson’s hands behind his back. He glanced up at Lauren, who looked as if she was ready to fall down.

“You okay? You hurt?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m fine.” Studying him with concern, she crossed over to him and touched his face. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m okay.”

“You don’t look okay.”

“It’s been a long day.” Holding the pistol to the back of Gibson’s head, his knee still firmly planted in his quarry’s back, Heath reached out his free arm and held Lauren tight. “I’m really glad you’re alive.”

“Me, too.” She leaned down and kissed his bruised lips.

Sirens screamed in the distance. Lauren pulled back.

Heath grinned. “That will be Inspector Myton. We’re going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

* * *

It was a
lot
of explaining. Hours passed by while Lauren sat in an interview room and talked with Inspector Myton. She had told him, then two successive investigators, an edited version of what had happened at Gibson’s villa. They had agreed to leave out Sisco’s kidnapping and the encounter at Heath’s hotel. If the inspector wanted to pursue those events, he’d have to do it without their help.

“Well, Miss Cooper, it certainly is a most interesting—and most curious—story you and Detective Sawyer have to tell.” Inspector Myton once more sat on the opposite side of the table in the interview room.

Lauren sipped her water and didn’t say anything.

“I must admit, there are parts of your stories that bother me. Missing pieces, mostly.” The inspector smiled. “But I am willing to let many of them go at this point. After all, the nefarious White Rabbit serial killer was brought in on my watch, was he not?”

* * *

The goodbye at the airport was hard. Lauren held on to Heath as her flight to Chicago boarded. He would be returning to Atlanta on his flight within the hour.

She’d never felt a person who completed her more than Heath Sawyer outside of her family. She didn’t want to let go of that feeling. But the murders of Megan and Janet had been the only things holding them together. Freed from the shadow of the White Rabbit Killer, both of them could go back to their very separate lives.

Lauren forced herself to be neutral, to not think about the end of everything and to concentrate on the good they had done. As Heath had said, there was no telling how many lives they had saved. She cleared her throat to speak. “So how much trouble are you going to be in back in Atlanta?”