Obsession Falls (24 page)

“I’m working on that now. I believe”—Michael could almost hear Barry squirm—“we may have had a wine theft.”

Michael did not like that answer, either. “On that night, we had a wine theft, and a woman who saw me shoot Dash? Are the incidents linked?”

“No. No, I’m pretty sure not.”

“Pretty sure?”

“Very sure.”

“Then perhaps the wine theft involves my security team?”

“No!”
That
Barry sounded relieved to report. “They’re reviewing the video, and they found one of Georg’s staff, some big dude, strolling into the cellar after the party was over. Just walked in. He was inside for five minutes and came out with a case under his arm. He, um, turned and waved at the camera.”

“Insolent bastard.”
Nobody
laughed at Michael Gracie. “I have some very expensive wines in there. Or rather … I had.”

Barry talked faster. “Security found an earlier glitch in the computer program. They suspect before this guy arrived, he hacked the system, took a trip to the cellar, did surveillance, then came and got what he wanted.”

“Do we know the man’s name?” Michael asked.

“According to our records, he’s Brent Kenney, an Idaho farm boy. But while there’s a Brent Kenney living on a farm outside of Pocatello, it isn’t this guy. This guy is a hacker, and a thief, and he’s
good.
”

“Track the illegal sale of my wine. Find the seller. Kill him.” Michael was finished with the subject. “Now—show me a close-up of the woman’s face.”

The video reversed. Taylor came backward out of the wine cellar, paused at the door, and looked around. The focus zoomed in, then sharpened.

Yes. His instincts were correct. That was the woman he remembered in the kitchen.

“Skinny female. She could almost have slipped through the crack in the door.” Barry was making excuses.

Michael wanted no part of that. “She didn’t, though. Tell my computer security team I will personally go through records and find out how my system was hacked and why we weren’t alerted.” He made his voice softer and deeper. “Before I do that, they might want to make sure it never happens again.”

“I’ll tell them.”

“Now—get Georg in here. Let’s have a conversation with my dear caterer.” Michael clicked off the speaker.

He had spoken to Taylor Summers. He had touched her.

He kept a computer file on the McManus kidnapping; from inside that, he brought up a photograph of Taylor Summers, taken three years earlier. He divided the monitor and placed the two pictures side by side, one for her career portfolio, and this one, a close-up from that night at the party.

In the professional shot, Taylor’s blond hair was skillfully styled and expertly colored. Her rounded cheeks blushed and her skin had been made up to give her a perfect matte finish without a hint of shine. Yet not even the most assiduous of photographers could completely hide her character. Her full, smiling lips hinted at a passionate soul. Her head tilted as if she could hear the winds calling her to adventure.

In the video still, Taylor was thin,
gaunt,
her face bony and unattractive. Her brunette hair had been shaved close at the sides and cut short at the top. Her lips were chapped. Her skin was rough and shiny, as if she was sweating with nerves.

Yet for all that, in the kitchen, something about her had caught his attention. He remembered thinking she was interesting in an odd, wild, waifish way. He remembered being fascinated by the girl, speaking to her, accusing her of being underage and thinking she was too much of a fledgling for him.

Part of her youthful appearance had been the haircut. Part had been her wary, terrified gaze, as if she had suddenly realized the world was full of peril and predators, and she was a tasty morsel.

He supposed that was exactly what Taylor Summers had realized, and when she sneaked down into the cellar and seen him shoot Dash …

But he had good reason. Did she understand that?

Yes, he thought she did. He didn’t know what hardships she had suffered, but the soft, sweet, ultra-civilized Taylor Summers of the first photo had been transformed into a woman who would do,
had done,
whatever it took to survive. That woman had cut off her own finger to save herself.

He stood and walked to the large, gilt-framed mirror hung over the bar, and he scrutinized his reflection.

Long ago, he had gone through a similar transformation.

He traced the barely visible white lines down the length of his nose, over his lips and chin, under his eyes and across his forehead.

Scars. Scars from a day that had changed him from Jimmy Brachler, farm boy, small-time drug dealer, and sometime pimp, into Michael Gracie, a man to be feared.

Jimmy Brachler had been so fucking cocky. He had been a college student, paying his tuition by running MIT’s drug and prostitution rings. It hadn’t been hard to set up the system; he had the brains for it, and he knew how to hide his tracks. Only one man could have caught him—Kennedy McManus.

But Jimmy hadn’t worried about that. Kennedy was brilliant, yes, an upperclassman, lofty and noble. Kennedy had offered his friendship to Jimmy. He had admired and encouraged Jimmy’s computer knowledge, Jimmy’s head for strategy, and the speed at which he learned and adapted to change. Kennedy and Jimmy’s online game battles were legend among MIT students.

So why would Kennedy bother to look into the successful drug and prostitution rings Jimmy had set in place?

Because MIT officials asked him to.

And why would Kennedy betray his friend and worthy opponent without a word of warning?

Because he was so lofty he refused to have anything to do with anything ignoble. When Jimmy went to him, to demand an explanation for his treachery, Kennedy had been scathing in his condemnation, called Jimmy’s scheme illegal and immoral. When Jimmy pointed out that someone was always going to sell drugs and sex, so why not do it right, Kennedy had turned his back.

But when Jimmy stepped through the doors of the federal prison, he had not yet resolved to take revenge on Kennedy McManus. He had been pissed about going to prison, but he had also believed he could run things there the same way he’d run things at MIT. After all, he knew he was smarter than everyone else at the penitentiary.

What he hadn’t been was wise. He’d never experienced the kind of vicious ruthlessness that ran like a sewer beneath the prison system. In the first week, he’d made his moves to take control of the market.

In retaliation, the prison’s drug dealer, Shel Baranyi, had his men capture Michael in the men’s toilet. They raped him, broke his legs, sliced his face with a rusty box knife, pissed on him, and left him to die. The prison guards hadn’t found him for hours. By the time Michael had arrived at the hospital, he was DOA.

No one cared.

Somehow, he revived.

No one cared about that, either. No one except his grandparents, and all they did was pray for his soul.

According to them, he was already damned to hell, so why bother? What he had needed was a doctor with skill at plastic surgery, and when he’d revived in Emergency, no such doctor was available. By the time the available doctor finished sewing him up, his appearance sent the nurses backing out the door. He’d sent a message to Kennedy McManus, begging him to come and help.

The silence was deafening. And damning.

Three months later, he was back in prison, walking the halls with a stiff gait and wearing Frankenstein’s face. Even Shel Baranyi had shrunk away. And for good reason—Jimmy now understood what it would take to win.

Within a month, Shel Baranyi died, strangled by a garrote.

One by one, Baranyi’s men were murdered in various and vicious ways.

Prison officials suspected Jimmy Brachler.

Nothing was ever proven.

Seven years later, when he got out of prison, Jimmy Brachler disappeared as if he had never existed.

After three surgeries to his face, not even his grandparents recognized him … and Michael Gracie was born. Michael Gracie, with his noble pedigree and his expensive homes and his quietly successful organization. He traced people who didn’t want to be traced, hacked governments and industries that didn’t want to be hacked, organized prostitution rings, and moved supplies of drugs and guns around the world and into the hands of anyone who had the money to pay.

Yet no one suspected him of anything, for everything he did, he did with originality and flare. No detail escaped him; for him, discovering new and unique ways to circumvent the system provided endless entertainment. When he finished setting a procedure in place, no one in law enforcement ever had a clue. Well, sometimes some smart cop stumbled into one of Jimmy’s organizations by accident. But then s/he either joined … or died. Mostly died.

Kennedy McManus had gathered the information to send Jimmy Brachler to prison, and because of that treachery, Kennedy had had an extra seven years to build his company.

But Michael Gracie had caught up, surpassed his former friend, and now was poised to crush Kennedy in every way possible—by destroying his company, his family, his confidence, and ultimately, his life. Michael would never have been so cold-blooded if not for his years in prison. For that, he owed Kennedy thanks.

As for Taylor Summers … she had ruined his first move in the strategic game Michael played with Kennedy.

She deserved death.

And she either was dead, or out there somewhere plotting … what?

Yes, what? After hearing what had passed in that cellar, she most certainly now knew he was behind the kidnapping, yet nine months later, she hadn’t betrayed him.

Probably she was dead.

Yet … he returned to his desk and again stared at the two photographs on his monitor. He admired the new Taylor Summers. She was like him. She lived when she should have died. She had transformed herself into a formidable survivor. She had done what she had to do to discover his identity, and she was willing to sacrifice anything to stay alive.

Maybe, in his kitchen, he had subconsciously recognized her as a woman of strength and determination … and a worthy opponent. He had never met a woman who could match him. Taylor Summers could very well be that woman.

*   *   *

“That was a waste of time.” Barry stripped off his bloodied rubber gloves and tossed them in the plastic trash can. They landed with a moist
plop
. “He didn’t know much.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Michael dispassionately surveyed the broken body on the table. “We learned a few things.”

The wine cellar was cool and, at last, quiet. No echoes of screams had worked their way into the walls, no desperate pleas hung on the air. It was always that way. When someone was dead, they were gone. Ghosts did not exist, the afterlife was an empty promise, and all that mattered was winning, here and now.

Georg had not won, not here, not now, nor would he ever again supervise a feast or be kind to the help, or visit his female wife or lay with his male lover. He was gone.

But he had given Michael a few valuable chunks of information. “We learned Georg thought Taylor Summers was an abused wife, that he was going to take her to a shelter, that the last time he saw her was the night of my party. She walked out the door and she never came back.”

“Remember right after the shot, you looked around the cellar?” Barry scratched the dark stubble on his chin, leaving a bloody mark. Probably he’d cut through his glove with the scalpel. “Why’d you do that, boss?”

Michael did remember. “I thought I heard something. But I didn’t really have that sense of someone watching me. I wonder why not?” No one observed him unaware; his instincts had been honed by seven bitter years of training in the penitentiary, where failure to remain alert ended in pain and death. How had this woman sneaked past all obstacles to view him in the act of murder? He should have been more aware, not less.

“Why didn’t she go to the cops and report the crime?” Barry removed his butcher’s apron and stuffed it in the trash can. “She’s dead. Or she’s smart. And afraid.”

“For safety’s sake, let’s assume she’s alive. She found out
I
kidnapped Kennedy’s nephew. She saw me kill Dash. She’s afraid I’ll find her, too.” She would be right to hold Michael in terror. “So where did she go? How did she get there?”

“Hitchhike?”

Michael’s mind flipped through the vehicles in the parking lot, the helicopters that had ferried guests in and out, the private planes at his airstrip … “I’ll look for her. If she’s alive, I’ll find her. Then I’ll put her through her paces. She lived through months of winter in Wildrose Valley and the mountains. She survived somehow … you have to admire that.”

“
I
don’t have to,” Barry said truculently.

“I do. It’s not often somebody ruins my plans and lives to tell the tale. How did this woman survive her encounter with Dash, and the winter, and manage to maneuver herself into place to find out everything she needed to know about me?” The drawings proved she remembered everything, too. So many details, all safe within her head. “Taylor Summers bears further examination.”

At the same time, he wanted to laugh. No one ever thwarted his plans, much less a high-end interior decorator with artistic aspirations.

“Sure, boss.” Barry grimaced at the blood that had splashed his white, rolled-up sleeves.

Michael spread his arms wide. “Did any of the blood spatter hit me?”

Barry looked him over. “You stood back. You’re clean.”

Michael glanced at the table. “It really is too bad about Georg. He was a great caterer, and up here, it’ll be tough to replace him.”

“Someone will step up to take his place.”

Michael started toward the door. “Yes, but will they serve those cotton candy cups?”

Barry joined him. “They will if you tell ’em to.”

“Yes. They will.” Michael stopped Barry. “Clean up the mess. Get rid of the body. And this time—make sure no one’s hiding behind a cask.”