Obsession Falls (32 page)
Summer, God bless her, didn’t deny it. “But to forgo the food, the music, the spectacle, because of your vanity—that’s dumb.”
Stung, Kateri said, “Yeah, but vanity’s all I’ve got.” She sighed. “He’s got a girlfriend.”
“Luis’s got a girlfriend? You’re kidding! He loves
you.
” Summer’s honest astonishment salved the wound a bit.
“A man has needs. So do you want to sell our party tickets to Mrs. Branyon and use the proceeds to go on vacation? Mexico? Hawaii? Bella Terra? Tuscany?”
“Sadly, my dear friend, that is the best offer I’ve had all year.” Summer gave Lacey one last pet and headed for her car. A few steps away, she turned. “There’s only one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Getting her hands on our tickets would make Mrs. Branyon happy.”
Kateri’s pleasure deflated like a busted balloon. “That sucks.”
* * *
For five days, Rainbow had camped out, keeping an eye on the old, abandoned World War II airport. The weather was getting progressively cooler, the wind livelier. She had decided that tomorrow morning she would give up, knock down her tent, and head back to Virtue Falls. She’d seen enough suspicious stuff to give a report to Garik Jacobsen, and she knew he would take action.
Then, right after sunset, a truck rattled down the road, bringing two men dressed in black coveralls who headed inside the ramshackle old building and shut the door behind them.
Rainbow figured she was too tall to flit, but she could dash, and she did, from tree to tree, getting close enough to see inside the windows while one man talked into a radio and the other fiddled with some switches.
Across the treetops, she heard the roar of a plane.
The guy flipped the switches, and long rows of lights illuminated the edges of the runway. The jet came down steep and fast, landing lights glaring. It landed hard, thrust reversers engaged before touchdown, then slowed swiftly, taxied up to the small building, and shut down the engines.
The man who had been talking on the radio walked up to the side of the plane as the stair door opened.
A smooth, handsome, well-dressed gentleman and two pilots descended and headed toward the building.
Rainbow lost sight of the gentleman. Then she heard a sound off to the right, swung around, and saw a man-shape silhouetted against the lights, taking aim at her.
She flung herself to the ground.
A bullet whistled past.
Then she was up and running, dashing, flitting, and all round getting the hell out of there.
It looked like her hunch about the airport had panned out.
Summer parked the Judge in the Hartmans’ driveway and gathered the cardboard Chinese food containers out of the passenger seat.
She didn’t really want to go in. She was bruised and sore, she didn’t want to explain what had happened today, and worse, she felt guilty for being late, like she was a straying wife who’d stopped at the bar for a drink after work. This morning, she had stormed out of here in righteous indignation. Kennedy had been an asshole who doubted her integrity.
Tonight, she was feeling sorry for not feeding him dinner on time. And she knew he could cook.
She was so screwed up.
No.
Women
were so screwed up.
Yes. Blame it on the whole gender rather than on herself. It wasn’t fair, but it made her feel better.
Sluggishly, she climbed out. She wouldn’t even have come back, but she could see him showing up in town, searching out her apartment, outing himself to the population of Virtue Falls. For the most part, she wished he would go back to California to do his research. She didn’t know why he wouldn’t, unless he figured he was going to convince her to do the horizontal tango.
Man, did he have the wrong girl tonight.
The back door flung open.
She swiveled on her heel.
Light from inside the utility room flooded the drive, and there he was, Kennedy McManus, a perfect silhouette of a perfect man: broad shoulders, narrow hips, long legs, big hands he used with the skill of a concert pianist. “Need help?” he called.
“No! I’ll get this.” She did
not
want him to see her car. She suspected he would say stuff like,
I told you so.
After the day she’d had, she didn’t need that. Even if it was true.
But he ran down the steps, then like a husband of long-standing, he leaned in and kissed her.
She had never had a husband of any kind, but if that deliberate, hot, lingering kiss was any indication of what married life was like, she had been missing a lot. If she hadn’t been creaking like an old woman, she would throw the Chinese food on the ground, flung herself at him, and have used him until he made her forget her fear and her pain. But she
was
creaking.
Gradually he pulled away. He looked down at her. He used his thumb to wipe her lower lip, and smiled. In an absentminded tone, he said, “It’s incredible how pretty you are.”
Pretty? With no makeup to start with, a few tear stains, and a thorough battering today? The light out here must be bad. Or good, depending on how she looked at it.
He took three of the containers. “Wait until I tell you what I’ve found out about Michael Gracie.” He headed toward the house.
Kennedy McManus had a reputation as having a one-track mind, and now she believed it. He hadn’t noticed the car at all—the first male who hadn’t freaked out about the damage. Points to him.
She shook the kinks out of her legs and followed. “What?”
“Nothing.” He held the door for her. “His background is impeccable. Everything he says about himself is true.”
She bristled as she walked into the house. “Except that I know his name is Jimmy.” Was Kennedy doubting her?
“Everything is so smooth. Normal people can be caught in self-serving lies. They spin their stories to prove they’re not to blame in a dispute, not at fault during an accident,… to make themselves look better. Everything Michael Gracie says about his flawless self appears to be absolutely, positively the truth.” They headed into the kitchen. “Which makes me doubt every word.”
She relaxed. “That is pretty shady, isn’t it?”
“Almost impossible.” Kennedy put down the containers and started opening them. “What did you get?”
“I don’t know what you like, so I got a little of everything. I figured there would be too much, but you could have it for lunch tomorrow.”
“I like it all, and this ocean air gives me an appetite. When I got tired of looking at the computer, I took a run on the beach.”
Immediately her brain stripped him down to his shorts and sent him sprinting across the sand, the waves crashing behind him, seagulls sailing overhead, as the sun set and cast a golden glow over his rippling chest. If her business didn’t pan out, she could have a career creating commercials for orange juice or insurance or dog food. Or female erectile dysfunction … too bad that didn’t exist.
She cleared her throat. “Did you get a lot accomplished?”
“Accomplished? No.” He got out plates and silverware, and loaded them and the food boxes on a tray. In one day, he’d certainly made himself at home.
He said, “I brought up Michael’s photograph and then compared every James/Jim/Jimmy in my corporation. I started about a year ago, the time of the kidnapping, and worked backward. I included men who have moved on.” Kennedy headed for the living room.
She trailed behind. Again.
“Did you know that during the years my company has been in operation, there have been fifty-two men who have some variation of James in their names? And two women.” He put the tray on the coffee table and turned to Summer. “Should I run the women?”
“You mean you think Michael Gracie could be a transsexual?” Remembering him and his almost visible sexual aura, she laughed. “No. He is most definitely a man, born with package in place.”
Kennedy scrutinized her as if seeing something he did not like.
In the brief time she’d known him, he’d done that too often. She met his gaze, and smiled tightly. “He’s unself-consciously male, and attractive.”
“Got it. Not gay, not a transsexual.” Kennedy waved her into the armchair and seated himself on the closest corner of the couch. “When I expand the search to include men I’ve ever worked with in any corporation who have the names of James, it gets exponentially larger and more difficult.”
She browsed through the containers, found the pork fried rice and the black pepper beef, and filled her plate. “Sounds boring.”
“It is like strolling through a garden of businessmen in white shirts and dark suits, and looking to see which one is different. The conclusion—none of them are. It’s made me rethink my business attire.”
She laughed out loud.
He looked surprised, then pleased. Apparently he didn’t make people laugh often. “After I got done with that, I set up a facial recognition program to compare the faces. It’s running now, and should pick up our man.”
“Should?”
“If Jimmy has had enough plastic surgery, it’s possible that the parameters for the facial recognition software need to be tightened.” Kennedy didn’t pay attention to what was in the containers, he just loaded up and used his chopsticks to attack the food. “This is good,” he said in surprise.
“Try the mu shu shrimp,” she advised. “But only if you like garlic.”
He looked right at her. “Do you?”
“Love it.”
“Then I’ll eat it.”
He was telling her … they were on a date. Emotions. Relationships. She wasn’t ready for all that. “So—why don’t you make the parameters tighter anyway?”
“The search takes longer, and to my mind, it seems unlikely that any man—any person—would go to such extremes.”
“Not to fool you, but maybe for other reasons.” She remembered Michael Gracie so clearly, his form, his grace, his mobile features, his eyes glowing with an inner light. When she first caught a glimpse of him, she thought he looked like a god. Then she saw him shoot Dash, and realized he was more like Lucifer, the dark angel. She feared him for his power, his intelligence. She sank back in her chair, and flinched at the bruising in her ribs. “I think he’s as smart as you are.”
“It’s possible. Looking at the complete and brilliant cover-up of his past, I would say even probable.” Kennedy put down his plate. Lifting Summer’s feet from the ottoman, he sat and placed them in his lap. He started a slow massage, thumbs in her arches, then running to her heels and toes, each spot receiving its own massage.
The sensation was so intimate, the silence so intense, she wanted to object. Then, as she relaxed into the massage … she didn’t want to object.
His voice was hushed and gentle. “You’re moving with caution, and your car is crunched. Tell me what happened today.”
Kennedy had let Summer think that she could pick her time to tell him about the tree and the car and her injuries and who and why and what were they going to do. He’d eaten with her, talked to her, listened to her, soothed her into a state of relaxation, and then dropped the bomb right in her lap.
She wanted to squirm in her chair. But squirming would hurt too much. “Someone felled a tree … on me.”
Kennedy’s expression did not change. “On purpose?”
“The guy leaped out of his excavator and started running, and to the best of my knowledge, he hasn’t stopped yet.” To say it out loud made it so real. “The only explanation is that Michael Gracie has found me.”
“Have you been to the doctor?”
“She suggested ice and heat, pain relievers, and a massage.” It seemed unwise to mention that Dr. Watchman was a veterinarian. “But aspirin is all I’ll take.
He
will not come at me when I’m drugged and helpless. And I won’t go in for a massage.”
Except for the one you’re doing on my feet … don’t stop.
“Why not?”
“I’m not going to lay facedown on a table, naked and vulnerable.”
“No. I wouldn’t like you to do that, either.” He stood up and went into the kitchen.
She dug the paper with her photo out of her bag.
He came back with a Costco-sized bottle of pain reliever and an ice bag wrapped in a towel. “Where do you need the ice?”
“My ribs.” She took it from him and started to slip it under her shirt.
But he seated himself on the ottoman, unbuttoned her shirt and examined the purpling bruises. He set his jaw, but placed the ice bag gently on the worst of the marks, handed her two aspirin and a bottle of water, and asked, “What do you have there?”
She gave him the paper. “I found this in the cab of the excavator.”
“He tried to clumsily kill you.” Kennedy’s face looked as it did in his off-putting online photos: distant, unemotional, analytical.
At this moment, having that formidable logic working for her was a comfort. But at the same time, it was hard to reconcile the passionate lover with the rational brainiac. “All this time, I have feared a sniper’s bullet.” She took the aspirin. “I’ve thought that every moment on earth could be my last. Why … why this? Why the hit-and-run?”
“The hit-and-run?”
What was
she
thinking, to mention Mrs. Dvorkin’s accident? “I suspect he hired someone to run over me last week, someone who looked like me. But Michael Gracie is an efficient killer. So what is he thinking?”
“Without knowing who he really is, I can’t successfully speculate on his motivations.” She could see Kennedy’s mind at work, assessing, organizing, deciding. “Give me the rest of the information. How did you end up seeing Gracie murder someone?”
Her head hurt, and she rubbed her temples with her fingers. “In the Sawtooths, winter was setting in, and breaking into houses wasn’t cutting it. But I lucked out. I showed up at a party, and I got a job. I worked for Georg’s, the catering firm in Sun Valley.”
“Doing what?”
“Waitstaff. Kitchen staff. He paid me, too. Cash. But you know what? When you’re living in a tent in the mountains, there’s nowhere to spend the money. What he gave me that I needed was the leftovers. If not for Georg, I wouldn’t be alive.” She laughed a little. “He thought I was an abused wife. He was going to drive me down to the women’s shelter, and I was going to go. I thought I could move from that position to somehow contact you and get back to reality. Man, did that plan fall apart.”