Total Control (59 page)

'Tin a big boy, I'll take my chances about that. I give you my word it'll just be me coming." His voice trembled with suppressed excitement. Sidney could not speak. "Sidney, I'm shooting straight with you. I... I really want you to be okay, all right?"

There was a catch in Sidney's throat. "! believe you, Lee. And I can't tell you how much that means to me. But I'm not going to let you throw your life away either. I'm not having that on my conscience too."

"Sidney--"

"I have to go now, Lee."

"Wait! Don't."

"I'll try to call back."

"When?"

Sidney stared straight ahead through the windshield, her face suddenly rigid, her eyes widening. "I'm... I'm not sure," she said vaguely. Then the line went dead.

Sawyer put the phone down and fumbled in his pants pocket for the pack of Marlboros and lit another cigarette. He used his cupped hand for an ashtray while he paced around the room. He stopped and fingered the fist-sized hole in the wall and seriously contemplated giving it a twin. Instead he stepped to the window and looked out in complete despair at a frosty winter night.

As soon as Sidney had gone back into the house, the man stepped from the dark shadows of the garage. His breath frosted in the freezing environment. He opened the door to the Land Rover. As the car's interior dome light came on, the deadly blue eyes shimmered like hideously carved jewels in the soft light. Kenneth Scales's gloved hands expertly searched the car but found nothing of interest. He then picked up the cell phone and hit the redial button. The phone rang only once before Lee Sawyer's excited voice came on the line.

Scales smiled as he listened to the urgent tones of the FBI agent, who evidently thought Sidney Archer had called him back. Then Scales disconnected the call, quietly closed the car door and made his way up the stairs to the house. From a leather sheath on his belt he pulled the stiletto blade he had used to kill Edward Page. He would have taken care of Sidney Archer as she stepped from the Land Rover except he was uncertain whether she was armed. He had already seen her skill with a gun. Besides, his method of killing was based on the total surprise of his victims.

He made his way through the first floor looking for the leather jacket Sidney had been wearing, but did not find it. Her purse was on the counter, but what he wanted wasn't in there. He proceeded over to the stairs leading up to the second floor. He paused at that point and cocked his head. Over the rush of the wind, the sound reaching his ears from the second floor made him smile once again.

Water running in the tub. On this bitterly cold winter's night in rustic Maine, the sole occupant of the house was preparing to take a nice, hot, soothing bath. He made his way silently up the stairs.

The bedroom door at the top of the landing was shut, but he could clearly hear the water running in the adjoining bathroom. Then the water was turned off. He waited a few more seconds as he envisioned Sidney Archer climbing into the tub, letting the hot water comfort her weary body. Then he stepped to the door of the bedroom.

Scales would get the password first and then occupy himself for a while with the lady of the house. If he could not find what he wanted, he would promise to let her live in exchange for her secret and then he would kill her. He wondered briefly what the attractive lawyer would look like naked. From what he had seen of her, Scales concluded she would look very good indeed. And it wasn't as though he was in a rush. It had been a long, weary trip up the East Coast to Maine. He deserved a little R&R, he thought as he contemplated the upcoming event.

Scales stood to the side of the door, his back against the wall, his knife at the ready, and placed one hand on the knob, turning it virtually noiselessly.

The shotgun blast that disintegrated the door and embedded several pieces of the weapon's Magnum load in his left forearm was not nearly so quiet. He screamed and threw himself down the stairs, athletically rolling and landing virtually upright, gripping his bloody arm. He jerked his eyes upward as Sidney Archer, fully dressed, charged out of the bedroom. She racked the action of the shotgun again and Scales barely managed to throw himself out of the way before another blast hit the very spot where he had been standing. The house was almost totally dark, but if he moved again she would be able ro zero in on his location. He crouched down behind the sofa, his predicament evident. At some point Sidney Archer would risk turning on a light and the deadly power of the shotgun would quickly devastate everything in the small room, including him.

Breathing quietly, he gripped his knife with his good hand, looked around the confines of the living room and waited. His arm stung terribly; Scales was far more used to inflicting pain than receiving it. He listened to Sidney's footsteps as she proceeded cautiously down the stairs. He was sure the shotgun was making wide sweeps of the area. From out of the darkness, he cautiously raised his head an inch or so above the top of the sofa. His eyes instantly riveted on her. She was halfway down the stairs. So intent was she on locating her quarry, she did not see a piece of the bedroom door that had landed on the stairs. When she unwittingly placed her weight fully on it, the piece slipped free and both her feet flew out from under her. With a scream, she tumbled down the stairs, the shotgun smashing against the railing. In an instant he pounced. As the pair rolled along the hardwood floor, he pounded her head against it. She kicked furiously against his chest and ribs with her heavy boots.

Then she twisted away just as he struck savagely with his knife. The blow missed barely, tearing through the inside of her jacket instead of her flesh. A white object that had been in Sidney's pocket was dislodged from the impact of the blow and floated to the floor.

Sidney managed to grab the shotgun and delivered a terrific blow to Scales's face with the butt of the solid Winchester, breaking his nose and knocking out several front teeth. Stunned, Scales dropped his knife and fell back for an instant. Then, furious, he wrenched the shotgun free, turning it on a dazed Sidney Archer. In a panic she hurled herself several feet away but was still easily in range. His finger pulled the trigger, but the muzzle remained silent. The fall down the stairs and the ensuing struggle had jammed the weapon.

Sidney, her head bursting with pain from the earlier blow, desperately crawled away. With a vicious snarl, Scales threw the useless shotgun away and stood up, blood streaming down his shirt from his torn mouth and rearranged nose. He picked up his knife where it had fallen and advanced with murderous eyes toward Sidney. When he lifted the blade to strike, Sidney whirled around, the 9mm pointed right at him. A split second before she fired, however, he exploded into an acrobatic leap that carried him over the dining room table. She held the trigger down, throwing the 9mm into full auto maric fire, the Hydra-Shok slugs tracing an explosive pattern across the wall as she tried desperately to follow the path of his impromptu flight. Scales hit the polished wood floor hard, his momentum sending him headlong into the wall. As his torso whiplashed sideways from the impact with the wall, he crashed into the legs of an ornate mahogany sideboard. The slender mahogany legs snapped like matchsticks and the heavy piece collapsed right on top of him, spewing its contents across the room as drawers flew open from the fall. Scales did not move after that.

Sidney jumped up, ran through the kitchen, grabbed her purse off the counter and fled down the stairs to the garage. A minute later the garage door splintered and erupted outward and the Land Rover careened through the savaged opening, did a 180-degree spin in the driveway and disappeared into the snowstorm.

As Sidney looked in her rearview mirror, she saw a pair of headlights.

Her heart skipped a beat as she watched the big Cadillac pull into the driveway of the house she had just left. The blood drained from her face. Omigod! Her parents were finally here and the timing could not have been worse. She swung the truck around, plowing through a snowdrift, and raced back toward her parents' house.

Then her problem was suddenly compounded as she caught sight of another pair of headlights coming down from the direction her parents had come. She watched in steadily growing fear as the black sedan moved down the street, its tires slowly crunching over the path just left by the Caddie. The people who had dogged her parents from Virginia. With everything else happening, she had forgotten about them. Sidney slammed the Land Rover's accelerator to the floor. Slipping in the snow for a moment, the four-wheel drive system kicked in and the massive V-8 took hold, propelling the little tank forward like a cannonball. As she bore down on the sedan, Sidney saw the driver react. His hand went inside his coat. But he was a millisecond too late. She flew past her parents' house, veered across the road and, with a crush of metal, slammed into the smaller vehicle, pushing it across the slippery road and depositing it in a steep ditch. The air bag in the truck inflated. With a furious effort, Sidney ripped it off the steering column and slammed the truck into reverse. The sound of metal wrenching free was clearly heard as the two vehicles uncoupled.

Sidney turned the truck around and then stared in disbelief. Her swift attack had taken care of whoever was following her parents. It also had another result. She watched in dismay as the Cadillac turned off Beach Street and roared off back to Route 1. Sidney rammed the accelerator down and headed after them.

The man struggled out of the car and stared in shock at the rapidly disappearing truck.

Sidney saw the taillights of the Cadillac just ahead. At this point, Route 1 was a two-lane road. She pulled up behind her parents and blew her horn repeatedly. The Cadillac immediately accelerated. Her parents were by now probably so scared they wouldn't even stop for a state trooper in a marked car, much less a lunatic blowing her horn in a smashed-up truck. Sidney momentarily held her breath and then careened onto the wrong side of the road, mashed the gas pedal to the floor and pulled alongside her parents' car. She saw her father react to the Land Rover appearing on his left. The Caddie shimmied from side to side as it sped up, and Sidney had to keep the accelerator close to the floor to keep up, as the damaged Land Rover was son planted the bulky Caddie squarely in the middle of the two-lane road, daring their pursuer to overtake them. Sidney rolled down her window and steered her vehicle halfway onto the dirt-and-gravel shoulder. Thank God the roads hadn't been plowed yet or she would have had no shoulder to travel on. As she inched up to the passenger side of the Cadillac, her father swung back onto the right side, forcing Sidney to go off the road entirely. As the Land Rover bounced and swayed over the rough terrain, Sidney looked at her speedometer; it hovered near eighty. Fear rattled through every nerve in her body. She looked up ahead� They were coming to a steep curve. She was about to run out of road. She smashed the accelerator flat to the floor. She only had seconds left. "Mom!" She screamed over the fury of the wind and the wall of pouring snow. "Mom!" Sidney leaned as far out the driver's window as she could while maintaining some control over the truck. She took one deep breath and screamed as loud as she ever had in her life. "MMMOOOMM!"

She saw her mother peering through the whipping snow, her eyes wide with terror, and then Sidney finally saw recognition and then relief in them. Her mother quickly turned to her father. The Cadillac slowed down immediately and allowed Sidney to move back onto the road ahead of them. Her face and hair covered with snow, Sidney motioned with one hand for them to follow her. In the near-blinding swirl of white, the two cars raced down the road.

About an hour later, they veered off at an exit. Within ten minutes the Land Rover and the Cadillac pulled into the parking lot of a motel. The first thing Sidney Archer did was jump out of the truck, race to her parents' car, throw open the rear door and grab up her daughter in her arms. Tears were pouring down Sidney's face as fiercely as the snow. She gripped her sleepy daughter with fingers that promised never to let go again. Amy had no way of knowing how close she had come to losing her mother this night. If the blade had veered one inch the other way? If Sidney's mother had recognized her daughter a second too late? But the little girl would never know that. Sidney Archer certainly did, however, and it made her squeeze her daughter to her breast as tightly as she possibly could the car and planted a bear hug around his daughter. The big man was shaking severely too after this latest nightmare. His wife joined them and they stood in a small circle, clutching each other tightly, each of them silent. Though the snow soon covered their clothes, they didn't budge; they were just holding on.

The man had managed to free his vehicle and then ran over to the Pattersons' house, where it was still quiet. A minute later the house was quiet no more as the sideboard was slowly raised off the floor and then violently hurled away with another crash and splintering of wood. Scales painfully stood up with the aid of his colleague. The look on his battered face made it abundantly clear that it was indeed fortunate for her that Sidney Archer was not presently within his deadly reach. As he went back to retrieve his knife he noticed the piece of paper Sidney had dropped--Jason's e-mail message. Scales picked it up, studying it momentarily. In another five minutes he and his associate had made their way to the damaged car. Scales picked up his cellular phone and punched in a speed-dial number. It was time to bring in reinforcements.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

At two-thirty in the morning, a highly agitated Lee Sawyer drove to the office through a snowstorm that threatened to hit blizzard status by that afternoon. The whole East Coast was being assaulted by a major winter storm system that threatened to hang around until Christmas.

Sawyer went directly to the conference room, where he spent the next five hours going over every aspect of the case, from the files, his notes and memory. His main goal was assembling the case as he now understood it into some semblance of logic. The problem was that not much made sense, chiefly because he was not certain whether he was confronted with one case or two: Lieberman and Archer together, or Lieberman and Archer separately. That's really what it boiled down to. He jotted down some new angles that occurred to him, but none of them seemed all that promising. Then he picked up the phone and dialed the lab asking for Liz Martin, the technician who had performed the Luma-lite exam on the limousine.