One Scream Away (2 page)

Ring.

She whirled and turned a dangling red speed bag into a blur, the flurry of sound beating at her ears. Not loud enough, though. The phone still sang out over it. Four rings, five. He wasn’t hanging up this time.

“Damn it.” She threw up her hands and took the stairs two at a time, planning to… what? Pick up and tell the caller what she was wearing? Tell him to go to hell? She eyed the kitchen phone, frowning at the number that dribbled across the caller-ID screen. Area code 206. Seattle, again, but she didn’t recognize the number.

Six rings, seven. The answering machine picked up, her own cheerful voice spinning out:
Hi. You’ve reached the Denisons, or rather, our machine. You know what to do. Beeep.

“Hello, doll.”

The voice was low and clear. A finger of fear pressed down.

“Beth. I know you’re there. Pick up the phone.”

Beth?
The finger turned into a fist. She shot a worried glance toward Abby’s bedroom. No sound, no stirring of the bedcovers. Thankfully, Abby had sunk into the kind of sleep nature reserves for the very young.

“Be-heth. It’s been seven long years. Don’t you want to talk to me?”

Her lungs seized.
No. Please, no.
It couldn’t be.

“Yes, Beth.” And his voice lowered. “Surprise.”

The past sputtered to life, the chilling drops of memory trickling down her spine.

“I bet you thought I’d never find you,” he said. “But I’m a resourceful man. In fact, I’m so resourceful that I’ve arranged some
very
special gifts for you. I can’t wait until you see them.” He paused, as if he knew she’d had to grab the back of the kitchen chair to stay upright, and that her world was suddenly careening into orbit.

Idiot, Beth said to herself. Of course he knew.

So don’t answer. Just ignore him and don’t pick up the—

“By the way, Beth, how’s your daughter?”

She snatched up the phone. “
Bastard
.”

“Ah, there you are. For a moment I was beginning to worry.”

Red sparks burst behind her eyes. “H-how?”

“How, what? Oh, I guess you haven’t heard. Well, it’s no wonder, of course. Why would anyone think to contact you with the news?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Freedom. Comeuppance. Getting what I’ve been denied all these years.”

The room seemed to be in motion. Beth couldn’t even swear her feet were still on the floor. She closed her eyes. Think,
think
. Why, no,
how
was he calling her? “I don’t understand,” she said.

“I’m sure you’ll find the whole story on the Internet with just a few keystrokes. For now, suffice it to say that I’m free. I’ve been free a while now, in fact, using the time to arrange the details of our reunion.”

Nausea crawled up the back of Beth’s throat, lodging there like a burr.
Free?
Hold on. Stay in control. If he was out of prison, there was only one reason he would contact her. And he couldn’t possibly want to dredge up the past to get it. “I’ll call the police. I’ll tell them every—”

He chuckled. “No, you won’t. You think you have everyone fooled, living your pretty life with your pretty daughter, but you’ve forgotten: I know your secrets.”

She gripped the receiver so tight cramps screamed up the tendons in her arm. “You don’t know anything.”

“Really?” he asked. Something clicked on his end, and for a second Beth thought he’d hung up. Then he was breathing in her ear again, a faint
whrrr
on the line. “Let’s review: I know what happened to Anne Chaney. I know why you moved from Seattle, all the way across the country to Arlington, Virginia.” He paused. “I know about your little gir—”

She gasped, then bit it back. Too late.

“Oh, that was nice, Beth. Do that again.”

“ Stop—” She spit the word but caught herself. Quiet, now. Don’t make a sound. She remembered how much he liked sounds.
Scream, bitch. Cry for me.

“Let me hear your voice again, Beth,” he said. “It doesn’t need to be much, not yet. Just a few small sounds to get the opus star—”

Beth hurled the phone across the room. Fear and fury coiled in her belly like snakes, and she forced herself to breathe, letting fury writhe to the top. Damn it, she had to keep her head. Even as a free man he wasn’t half the threat to her that she was to him. He was the one who should be afraid. Besides, the call hadn’t even come from this part of the country.

Area code 206… Seattle.

Reality sank to the pit of her stomach. This wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t some vile memory from the bowels of another lifetime. It wasn’t a prank caller with a six-pack and a phone book, who’d latched on to a number he liked and kept hitting Redial.

It was Chevy Bankes.

The need to see Abby kicked Beth in the chest. She raced upstairs and peered into the bedroom. Abby lay sprawled in a puddle of moonlight, a toy cat clutched against her tummy, a real dog draped over her ankles. The dog swished his tail and lolled hopefully to his back, oblivious to the chill creeping through Beth’s veins as she stood watching the rise and fall of Abby’s stomach: one breath, two breaths, three. Three was the magic number. Beth always counted three breaths in a row before she went to bed at night.

This time she counted ten.

She slipped back into the hallway, the heels of her hands bullying back tears. Don’t cry. God knows, tears had never accomplished anything. This wasn’t supposed to have happened, but she’d always known it might. Bankes wasn’t the only one with a plan.

Inhale, focus, balance.
She called on years of Muay Thai to center herself, then went to the master bedroom. She dragged a rocking chair across the room and set it beside a huge Chippendale chest of drawers. It was an early New England piece with heavily carved aprons, the escutcheons all original, the patina rich and dark. Still, she hadn’t bought this dresser for its age or beauty. She’d bought it for the cornices.

She climbed onto the tottering rocker and wrenched the finial on the top right cornice of the dresser. It creaked and gaped open.

A folded piece of paper sprang out. Beth tucked it under a sweatband on her wrist and reached back into the secret compartment. Her fingers curled around the butt of a 9 mm Glock, cool and powerful, neglected but never forgotten. She lifted it, straightened both elbows, and sighted the little red light on the phone across the room.

She could do it. If she had to—for Abby’s sake—she would.

She lowered the gun, climbed down, and unfolded the list of names from her wristband. Cheryl Stallings, her sister-in-law. Two attorneys, one who had authored Beth’s will and another who had a reputation for winning at any cost. Three Early American furniture dealers, each of whom had offered cash for a few of Beth’s finer pieces and would buy them, no questions asked.

Reviewing the list had a calming effect, a tangible reminder that she had a plan and the resources to achieve it. She took a deep breath. Despite the hour, she picked up the phone, then paused. The digits 9 and 1 seemed to glow brighter than the rest.

I’ll call the police; I’ll tell them everything.
But it was a bluff and Bankes knew it. She couldn’t call the police. She couldn’t do that to Abby.

Steadier now, she muttered a prayer—for forgiveness, just in case there was a God after all. She cleared her throat and schooled her voice into the calm, composed tone she’d perfected years ago. Dialed the top number.

The first lie would be the hardest.

New York, New York

T
hunder rolled in, dragging Neil Sheridan from the depths of a stupor he’d worked on for weeks. A jackhammer pounded in his skull and he reached up, expecting to find his head split in two. His fingers closed around something warm and soft. His brain? No, a breast. He moved his hand. A second one. Oh, that’s right, they usually came in pairs.

The thunder intensified. “Neil. Goddamn it, open the door.”

He cracked his eyelids and sunlight bleached his eyes. He twisted from it, the breasts rolling over with a soft moan.

“Neil. I’m about to have the hotel staff unlock this door. Fair warning.”

“Stop yelling,” he muttered, lumbering to his feet. He found a pair of jeans at the foot of the bed and humped into them, bracing a shoulder against the wall.

“Go ahead, unlock the door,” the voice in the hallway was saying. Rick? Damn it. The thunder had stopped, though pain still ricocheted around in his head like a round from an M16. Somewhere outside, a female voice took off in quick-fire Spanish and Rick cut her off: “I’m a police lieutenant, lady. Just unlock the damned door.”

“Hold on,” Neil said, but his voice was a croak. He fumbled with the lock and pulled the door open. A maid gawked at him.

“Whoa, you look like hell,” Rick said, pressing a twenty into the maid’s hand. He watched her skitter down the hall then stalked into Neil’s suite. “I’ve been calling you. Heard you quit the Sentry. You’ve been back in the States over a month.”

“Time flies.”

Rick picked up an empty whiskey bottle, bent to the floor, and hooked a lacy camisole between two fingers. He set both on a table littered with Chinese carryout boxes, peeking into one. He sniffed. “General Ts’ao’s chicken,” he said. “With whiskey?”

“The beverage that goes with anything.”

Rick nudged a second bottle with his toe. It rolled over a ripped-open foil packet on the floor. He glanced at the bedroom door, shaking his head so fractionally Neil thought he might have imagined it. “I want you to come to Arlington with me. You been wallowing in self-pity long enough.”

“I’ve been wallowing in Jack and Jill. And they’re still waiting for me in the bedroom.”

“Jack Daniels and Jill Who? Do you even know her last name?”

“Didn’t ask,” Neil said, dropping into a chair and bullying his brow with his fingers. His brain ached, and that shouldn’t have been possible. He shouldn’t even have a brain anymore. At least that’s what they taught boys in high school: too much drinking, too much screwing, and your mind goes blank, your soul goes numb, you become an empty shell of a man who can’t think or feel.

Promises, promises.

“Don’t you wanna know why I’m here?” Rick asked.

“I know why. You think I’m less likely to eat my gun in front of your wife and kids than I am here.”

A beat passed. “Are you?”

Neil closed his eyes, but the pictures came anyway: video footage of his brother visiting a refugee camp, running, running, until the ground exploded and Mitch went flying through the air. He blinked to kill the images. “Eating my gun would be too easy.”

“It wasn’t your job to stop the attack, Neil. The Sentry is a security organization.”

“Right. And I provided security for the bastard who blew up a refugee camp and nearly killed my brother.”

Rick grimaced. “Where’s Mitch now?”

“In Switzerland, healing. Getting good at phrases like
mea culpa
and
fuck off
.”

“I thought you held the copyright to those,” Rick muttered, thumbing three tablets from a roll of Tums. “Fly to D.C. with me. I’m looking at a murder case that’s interesting.”

Neil looked at him as if he were an alien. “Murder cases haven’t interested me in nine years.”

“A woman was killed near Seattle three nights ago.” “Not interested.”

“Hikers found her body early this morning.”

“Not interested.”

“She was a dancer, twenty-six years old. Had a little girl in preschool.”

Neil closed his eyes.

“The murderer could be the same—”

“I. Don’t. Care.” Neil ground out the words, his jaw so tight that for a second he wondered if he could break his own molars. He reached for the nearest bottle, but Rick got there first and heaved it across the room.

The last precious sips of oblivion splattered all over the wallpaper.

“Well, now look what you’ve done,” Neil groused, coming to his feet. “And that was the last bott—”

Rick sprang. In two seconds, Neil’s spine was against the wall. “It looks like Anthony Russell, you stupid, self-serving son of a bitch,” Rick said, his fingers digging into Neil’s arms. “This murder could’ve been done by
Anthony Russell
.”

Neil’s lungs shut down. Seconds passed before he got them working again, and when he did, he broke free of Rick with a shove. “Go to hell,” he said, but two strides later he spun back around. “Anthony Russell is dead. I shot him.”

“After he jumped a bailiff and took off from his own arraignment. I remember.” A vein pulsed in Rick’s forehead. “It was never a sure thing, though, was it? That he killed that college girl?”

“He confessed. How much more of a sure thing do you need?”

“I mean—”

“What?
What
do you mean?” Neil advanced. “Anthony Russell abducted Gloria Michaels after a fraternity party. He stabbed her almost dead then shot her in the head for good measure, and when he escaped from custody, I killed the bastard. So whatever this Seattle woman looks like, there’s no way she was killed by Anthony Russell.”

“You didn’t find Gloria’s body where he said you would.”

A thread of doubt began to fray. Not for the first time. “The fucker
confessed
.”

“In exchange for the DA lessening three other charges.”

The pounding in Neil’s head picked up again. Anthony Russell’s reasons for confessing weren’t something anyone had bothered to examine too closely. They had a confession; that’s all that had mattered. “Why are you pulling Anthony Russell up on me?”

“The report about the Seattle woman rang some bells.”

“What bells?”

Rick ticked them off on his fingers. “Woman disappears with her car. Car was dumped, wiped clean. Body found days later in a wooded area, and some knife-work done on it. Thirty-eight-caliber hollowpoint to finish her. Piece of candy wrapper at the scene.” He paused. “Reese’s Cup.”

The ancient doubt began to dig roots. That did sound like Gloria. Even down to the tiny piece of candy that had been left in the car by her killer. Neil swallowed. “Raped?”

“Can’t be sure yet, but”—he paused and ran a hand over his face—“it looks that way.”