Seeing Red (43 page)

Buy some time. Figure this out.

The question kept ringing in his mind, Who
had
attacked Laura?

Later. He had to get out of this first.

Nate offered what he hoped appeared a sadist’s grin as he rested his hands on the edge of the bench behind him, maneuvering his hands into a better position to reach his gun. “Well, now, trade secrets—”

He heard a door open.

“Hollis? Hollis, are you down there?” Justine called loudly.

“Son of a bitch,” Alexander muttered. “Yeah,” he yelled. “I’ll be up in a minute.”

“What are you doing down there?” she called.

Irritation flashed across Alexander’s face. His gaze shifted for an instant.

Nate pulled his gun and fired in one quick motion.

The sound of his handgun was eclipsed by the sharp crack of the rifle.

Nate’s left arm burned like a branding iron.

Alexander’s eyes widened.

Justine screamed, “What’s going on! What’s happening down there?”

Alexander’s stunned gaze moved to the rapidly spreading bloodstain in the center of his chest.

His grip loosened on the rifle, and it slipped from his hands.

“Hollis! Hollis! Are you all right? Holllllisssss!”

It was two full seconds before the man fell.

The first thing that registered in Ellis’s consciousness was the throbbing pain and the fire on the right side of her forehead.

The second was that she couldn’t move her arms.

The third was that she wasn’t in back of this SUV alone.

She tried to open her mouth but realized it was taped.

A shot of adrenaline brought her fully conscious. She opened her eyes. It was dark.

No, not dark. There was something covering her, lightweight and opaque. Sweat trickled across the back of her neck.

She was on her side, her knees bent behind her.

She lay on carpet. The carpet was vibrating.

They must be moving.

She could hear someone’s labored breathing. Behind her.

When she tried to turn over, she realized she was not only bound, but also her arms were somehow anchored into place behind her. Her ankles were tied together and similarly restricted.

Her thrashing did nothing but make her sweat more.

“Awake back there?” Carr’s voice called over the drone of the tires. “Just relax, you’re going to wake up your uncle.”

Carr’s confident arrogance was back.

And Ellis knew she was going to die.

As he checked Alexander for a pulse, Nate hoped the man would live to face justice for all the crimes he’d committed. But Alexander was stone dead. From the amount of blood on the floor, there would be no bringing him back.

Upstairs, Nate heard Justine’s panicky raised voice calling the police.

All he could do now was wait for them to show up.

As Nate stared down at Alexander, his mind filled with the image of that tangle of broken jewelry, those souvenirs of brutality. He barely suppressed the urge to kick Alexander’s lifeless body.

Dear God, what if he’d gotten his hands on Ellis?

Nausea rolled over him, and he broke out in a cold sweat.

Nate dialed her cell phone. He needed to hear her voice, needed to tell her the danger had passed—before the police got here and detained him up for who knows how long.

Ellis didn’t answer.

He called the Greenes’ house.

Charlie answered, which meant Bill must be home from the hospital.

Nate didn’t mince words. “Let me talk to Ellis.”

“She isn’t here. But you might want to know some lawyer called for her, wanted to interview her in Alexander’s case, said he was reopening it.”

“She hasn’t been there at all?” Nate tensed.

“No. She called earlier and said she’d be a while.”

“Did she say why?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“Hey, I figured she was still with you.”

Nate disconnected. That’s probably just what Ellis had wanted Charlie to think.

Where was she—and what in the hell was she up to?

He dialed the Belle Island Police Department’s nonemergency number.

“Hello, this is Bill Greene,” Nate said when the phone was answered. “Has my daughter, Ellis, been there this morning?”

“Sorry, but, no, Mr. Greene,” the woman said. “I’ve been on since seven and no one’s been in.”

Nate wrapped his will around the panic that threatened to overtake his reason. Alexander was here. No danger to Ellis.

But where was she?

His mind quickly sifted through the facts. Alexander didn’t attack Laura. He’d told the truth; she’d been gone when he showed up at her window.

Ellis
had
heard someone talking to Laura around midnight. Not Alexander. Not Nate.

That person was the one who’d beaten Laura.

The truth washed over him with heart-stopping iciness. Wayne Carr. He’d been the only local person with Laura in Alexander’s photos.

Carr had come right out of the box with aggressive accusations against Nate after the attack—
before
Ellis had IDed Alexander.

Alexander’s case was being reexamined.

Did Carr know?

Oh, God. Those photos. What had Ellis done?

Nate let loose a string of curses as he sprinted out of the basement.

Sirens approached as he floored the truck and pulled away from the curb.

As he wove through the narrow streets, he dialed Charlie’s cell.

“Leave Ben there and get out to the Carr place. Ellis is in trouble.”

Nate pushed the truck’s speed until the floorboards rattled. He flew past slower vehicles, passing in unsafe places. If the police came after him, they’d damn well have to chase him all the way to Carr’s house.

His upper arm throbbed and was sticky with drying blood down to his forearm, but the bleeding had nearly stopped. The bullet had only gone a little deeper than a graze.

“Come on, Charlie,” he muttered. “Come on.”

The Carr place wasn’t inside Belle Island town limits. Charleston County Sheriff’s Department would take a while to get there, if they responded to Nate’s theory at all. Wayne Carr against Nate Vance—who were they going to believe?

Charlie was his best and fastest bet. Why hadn’t he called yet?

Nate decided to call the sheriff’s department as a backup; to avoid a long explanation, he reported a breakin at Carr’s.

By then, he was nearly there himself.

Nate swung the truck into the lane that led to the Carr place, turning so hard and fast that the rear end fishtailed.

He flew past Charlie’s car, which was parked behind a huge Magnolia whose branches reached the ground. Charlie had moved in with caution.

So why hadn’t he called?

Nate drove right up to the front steps of the house and jumped out.

The front door was open.

Nate called Ellis’s name as he jerked open the screen.

The house was silent.

He ran to the back door. The terrace was empty.

Maybe on the grounds. Best to search the house first.

He made a quick circuit of the downstairs. As he hurried through the front parlor, he noticed a shell casing on the hardwood floor.

Not a .38 from Ellis’s gun. It wasn’t from Charlie’s pistol.

Sickness swelled in his belly. Scanning the room, he saw no trace of blood.

Yelling her name, he sprinted up the stairs and checked the upper floors.

He was going so fast as he came back down that he caught his heel on a step and pitched forward. One hand on the wall and the other on the rail prevented a tumbling fall to the bottom.

He exploded out the front door and looked around.

The garage doors were open.

He ran toward it, coming to his senses right before he reached it. He knew better than to run headlong, unarmed, into the unknown. The shell casing said there was a gun involved. His fear for Ellis had nearly eclipsed his training.

Moving with more caution, he pulled his gun and entered the garage. It smelled of old wood and motor oil. There was a Jaguar parked in one of the four bays. Other than that, it was empty.

He went outside and circled around to the back.

There was a vehicle under a tarp, parked very close to the back wall.

Nate edged closer and lifted the edge of the canvas. Ellis’s Mustang was under it, passenger side close to the building.

He whipped the tarp off. Her purse was on the passenger seat. So was the manila envelope she was supposed to be taking to the police.

Yanking open the driver’s door, he saw her keys in the ignition.

He checked her bag. The .38 was inside. Her cell phone wasn’t.

He walked to the rear of the car. There, in the small space between the passenger side and the garage, lay Charlie.

“Christ.” Nate checked. Charlie was dead, a single shot to the head.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-TWO

W
ith dread choking him, Nate went back to the driver’s door and popped open the Mustang’s trunk. With leaden feet, he walked to the rear of the car, praying he was wrong, that Ellis’s body wasn’t inside.

His heart stopped beating as he lifted the trunk lid.

Empty.

The rush of relief made him light-headed. His breath left him in a shuddering exhale.

There was only one way out for Carr. He had to kill Ellis and make it look like Alexander did it.

Kill her. Then Alexander would disappear or go back to jail. Carr had no idea Alexander was dead in Justine’s basement.

Nate hurried back to the front of the garage. There on the ground, he saw two empty shell casings. He knelt down. No blood. One casing looked like it had been driven over, flattened and pressed deeply into the ground. They were both the same caliber as the one in the house.

Carr had driven away after he’d fired the gun. Ellis must be with him.

He kept telling himself,
There is no blood. No blood.

Where would he take her?

It wouldn’t be on his own property.

He’d want it to fit what the police knew about Alexander.

The beach?

It was daylight. A beach would be risky.

There were miles and miles of waterfront around Belle Island, acres upon acres of isolated woodlands and marsh.

How to find her?

Ellis’s cell phone hadn’t been in her purse.

Oh, baby, please have that thing in your pocket
.

He called his techie, Raymond, and gave him Ellis’s cell number and had him start working on locating it.

“It’s gonna take a few minutes.”

“Hurry.”

Nate took the tarp and covered Charlie’s body. Then he got in the Mustang and pulled carefully away from the garage; it was much faster than Jake’s truck.

He drove out the lane and sat at the intersection of Bastine Road, squeezing the steering wheel, revving the engine, waiting for the call.

“Come on. Come on. Come on.” He couldn’t just start driving; he might head in the wrong direction and put more distance between him and Ellis.

His cell rang.

“Got it.”

“Where?”

“I triangu—”

“I don’t care how you got it!” Nate said. “Where is it?”

Raymond told Nate the location of Ellis’s cell phone.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

He snapped his phone closed and tore out of the drive, spinning the tires and kicking up a cloud of sand and gravel.

The SUV had stopped moving several minutes ago. Before that, they’d bumped along slowly for quite a while. Ellis had heard brush scraping the sides of the vehicle.

Not good.

She wished Greg would come to, help her figure a way out of this. She could tell from his breathing that he was still alive.

Carr had gotten out. But he hadn’t come around and opened the back. Wherever they were was quiet—not good either.

Sweat stung her eyes and set her wrists on fire where she’d abraded them in her efforts to free herself. She’d been able to get the duct tape on her wrists to stretch somewhat. It felt like a plastic wire tie was looped through her arms and over the tape, tying her to the floor of the van. If she could get it to start a tear in the tape . . .

The muscles in her arms trembled and cramped.

She took a deep breath and tried to relax them.

God! All of her preparation, all of her caution, and here she was as helpless as a woman ever could be.