True Vision (34 page)

How long ago? Was Mac
dead
? She relived the impact of the weapon, felt an answering, sympathetic burst of pain in her own skull. The son of a bitch had hit him so hard.

And then she noticed that that son of a bitch, resting on his knees in front of her like a religious man before an altar, had his head back and an expression of pure bliss on his face. What the hell?

Everything snapped into shocking, clear focus. His hand, oh, God, his hand . . . it was pressed to the front of his navy work pants, rubbing, massaging the bulge at his crotch.

Her shoes scraped the floor as she frantically tried to back away from him. But the wall stopped her, forced her to stay right where she was, chained and helpless, with a front-row seat as this guy jacked off. And when he was done? What then?

He drew in a breath through his nose, then released it on a trembling sigh. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been hard like this?”

She didn’t dare breathe, didn’t dare blink. This isn’t happening. It’s
not
happening.

He opened his eyes, pierced her with an oddly nonthreatening glare, as though angry but not at her. “She totally fucked up my head. She made me do things in return for . . . her attention.” He paused and swallowed loudly, his breathing getting rougher, uneven. He stilled his hand, forming a fist that he pressed to his thigh, and seemed to concentrate until his breathing settled. “Not yet,” he said through his teeth. “I don’t want to come like this. I want it to be perfect.”

Charlie’s aching brain stalled. She refused to imagine what would make it perfect for him. Didn’t
want
to imagine. Couldn’t. I’m not here.
I’m not here.

He tilted his head, and his gaze fixed on her face: You are here, better deal with it.

His Adam’s apple bobbed, and sweat gathered at his temples. “Before I killed her, I tried to fuck her, for old times’ sake. I couldn’t get it up. That bitch emasculated me.” He paused, smiled in a way that indicated his sanity had slipped, was still slipping by slow degrees. “She was surprised that I knew that word. She called me stupid more times than I can remember. But I’m not stupid. I’m smart. A lot smarter than her, obviously, because she’s the one who’s dead.”

He shifted toward her, all teeth again, but his friendly smile had turned psychotic. “I’m going to fuck you until I’m all better. As many times as it takes.”

The threat narrowed her vision to a long tunnel, black crowding in from the edges. Helpless. Handcuffed to a pipe. No way to protect herself. No way to fight back. A part of her wanted to pass out, escape, but when he shifted toward her, she clawed back from the slippery edge of unconsciousness and pressed back, trying like hell to make herself a part of the wall, trying like hell to ignore the ballooning pain in her temples. Not a migraine now.
Please.

She needed out. Now. Before it was too late. Before she was incapacitated.

“Please don’t do this,” she said. “We can work something out. Just . . . just . . .”

He grinned at her, seeming amused. “Why would I negotiate when what I want is right here, free for the taking?”

He reached for her but paused when she recoiled. He cocked his head and studied her, concerned again. “You know, this is going to be very uncomfortable for you if you don’t relax.”

She shuddered so hard her teeth clicked together. This can’t happen. It
can’t
. Somehow, some way, she wouldn’t let it. She had to stall, keep him talking, distract him until . . . until someone, Noah, came for her. He had to be coming. He had to be. “I . . . I don’t even know your . . . name.”

Surprise raised his eyebrows. “You don’t care about that.”

“Of course, I do. We . . . we have a connection, don’t we? Isn’t—isn’t that why we’re . . . here?”

“Skip,” he said. “It’s Skip.”

She almost sighed. A good sign he’d talk, a good sign she could stall. “Is that a nickname?”

His eyes narrowed, as though he doubted her interest. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me,” she said quickly. “Like you said, I—I need to relax. Can’t we talk for a while? Please?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “I was named by a nurse after my mother abandoned me in the ER.”

She tried to give him a sympathetic smile, but the muscles in her face felt like stiff plastic. “I’m so sorry. That must have been hard for you growing up.”

He shrugged again, sullen now. “Doesn’t matter. I turned out okay.”

Uh, yeah, you turned out great. Ignoring the growing ache in her temples, she tried to think. This was an interview, she told herself. She needed to know the what, why, where, when and how. Whatever it took to keep him talking. “Will you tell me why you’re doing this?”

“You don’t care.”

“Yes, I do. I’m a reporter. I need to know the truth. It’s what I do.”

“There’s no point. You won’t be able to tell anyone.”

“Please, I’m trying here. Don’t you want me to know you?” Reasoning with a madman. It made no sense, but what choice did she have?

His shoulders sagged. “I loved her.”

Finally. “Who?”

“Donna.”

“Donna Keene? The manager of the Royal Palm.” Dead now. Suicide. Or was it? Didn’t he say something earlier about killing a woman?

“The first time she flirted with me, I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “A woman like her. Beautiful. Classy. When she invited me into her suite for a drink, I didn’t dare to hope . . .”

A deep sigh rose up out of him, and he closed his eyes, dropped his head back.

Charlie kept quiet, let him talk. Talk all night, buddy.

“It was good,” he breathed. “We were perfect. She was perfect. She made me feel things I’d never felt before . . . I fell in love with her. For a while, it was amazing.” He opened his eyes and looked at her. “And then she told me about her idea. She knew I needed money for school, said she planned to do it on her own, but I could help her and she’d give me a cut. All I had to do was set it up and take the pictures.”

Charlie felt a genuine nudge of sympathy for him. The woman had played him, manipulated him into helping her screw over her own wealthy customers. But the sympathy didn’t last long. The woman was dead because she’d tried to control a psychopath. A psychopath who was now focused on
her
.

“It worked fine for several months,” he went on. “Until Louisa found the closet where I kept the equipment. Donna accused me of leaving it unlocked. I
know
I didn’t.” He squinted his eyes tightly closed, shook his head. “I’m sure I didn’t.”

Charlie knew what happened from there. Louisa contacted her, said she knew of a local blackmail scheme but wanted cash before she’d reveal her real name or provide the details.

He opened his eyes, his gaze intense on her face. “Donna wanted me to kill Louisa, to keep her quiet. I didn’t want to. I’m no killer. I
wasn’t
a killer. But I had no choice. Donna said I had no choice. And I knew she was right. If I wanted to keep what we had, if I wanted to keep the woman I loved, keep her safe, I had to . . . to do whatever it took to protect her. So I cornered Louisa, but before I could kill her, she said she’d already told you everything.”

Ah, now it made sense, why he’d kept coming after her. He’d been told so many lies. “Louisa never told me details.”

He narrowed his eyes, his lips pressing into a thin line. “She said you were going to write a story in the newspaper about what we’d done.”

“She lied.”

“No, she didn’t. You were going to ruin everything. She
told
me.”

“Look, I’m not a lawyer, but I think I can help you.” She paused to wet her lips. The headache was growing, pain rolling toward her like a huge spiky steel ball down a steep hill. Soon, she wouldn’t be able to focus, maybe not even speak. She had to hurry. “It’s understandable what happened. Donna Keene made you fall in love with her, and then she used you, manipulated you. People will understand. You loved her, and she played you. I’ll tell your story, help you with the police. I know them, you know. I work with them.”

“Not anymore,” he said. “It’s common knowledge that you no longer work at the newspaper.”

“But that’s going to change. I might go back. I . . . you just have to trust me to help you.”

“I don’t trust anyone anymore. Only myself.” A muscle in his jaw flexed. “I’m done talking now. It’s time.”

CHAPTER
SIXTY-ONE

N
oah slammed the desk drawer shut harder than necessary. “Just a bunch of fucking bills. You?”

Logan shook his head, his flushed face showing deepening lines of stress as he surveyed the mess they’d made going through Donna Keene’s office. “There has to be
something
.”

But there wasn’t. They’d already ripped apart her Royal Palm suite on the top floor then moved on to her office here, behind the check-in desk. Noah dragged a hand through his hair. “What about the maids? Louisa Alvarez was a maid. Maybe she told one of the others what she knew.”

“We questioned them after Keene’s body was found. None of them knew anything.”

Noah started to pace. Time was slipping away, damn it. Charlie was slipping away. “What about desk clerks? The bartender in the lounge? Cocktail waitresses?”

“We went through them all,” Logan said. “We can do it again.”

“We’re wasting
time
.”

Logan spread his hands. “Then what? What do we do?”

Noah swung around, wanting to punch something, anything. “Fuck. I don’t know.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. They needed another angle, another avenue. “What about the blackmail? How’d they do it?”

Logan clenched his jaw, swallowed. “We don’t know for sure yet, but we think they targeted wealthy guests who checked into the suites on the top floor. We’ve cleared the guests out of those rooms for the investigation but haven’t had a chance to do more.”

Noah whirled toward the door. He didn’t bother with the elevator. He headed for the stairwell off the lobby and took the stairs three at a time to the fifth floor, Logan right on his heels.

Their harsh breathing synchronized, they strode down the hall to the first suite door. Logan used the master key he’d gotten earlier from the desk clerk to let them in.

Noah went straight to the bedroom, decorated with a nautical theme in teak wood and a mural of a sky with myriad birds flying overhead painted on the ceiling. A large, framed picture of a sailboat floating on serene water hung above the king-size bed. Noah lifted it away from the wall, knowing it was too easy, but what the hell. Damn it. Nothing behind it but a nail for the wire.

Logan checked behind the mirror in the shape of a sailboat steering wheel above the bureau. Nothing.

Noah examined the walls, looking for peepholes, while Logan went to the window, where he drew aside curtains made to look like billowing sails and scanned the outside stucco walls.

“No cameras outside,” he said. “How the hell did they do it?”

“Maybe they didn’t use this room,” Noah said as he tilted his head back to study the sky blue ceiling covered with wispy clouds, seagulls, pelicans and some other kind of birds.

The ceiling fan caught his eye, and he moved to stand beside the bed so he could study it. Simple, white, with five wide blades. The light kit consisted of four bulbs cupped in delicate, frosted-glass globes. In the center, a decorative bronze seagull spread its wings as though coasting on the breeze created by the blades.

“You see something?” Logan asked.

Noah shoved the bed aside, then went into the next room and grabbed a chair from the table. After placing it under the ceiling fan, he hopped up onto the seat.

“Wait,” Logan snapped before he could touch anything. “Fingerprints.”

Noah dropped his hands and squinted up at the belly of the seagull. Something was off about it. A reflection? Perhaps from a lens? He squinted. No, just a shiny bird belly.

He shifted his gaze to the ceiling, registered that separate tiles made up the mural, fit together like straight-edged puzzle pieces. Removable. “I’ll be damned.”

“What?” Logan asked. “What is it?”

“False ceiling.”

Very carefully, using just the tips of his fingers, Noah lifted a three-by-three square of ceiling tile, surprised at how light it was, and moved it to overlap its neighbor. The chair wasn’t tall enough, though, to allow him to see into the ceiling. “Call the front desk and get someone to get a ladder up here.”

Logan picked up the phone on the bedside table while Noah jumped off the chair. His heart was pounding, raging, the clock ticking. How long would it take to get a ladder? Too fucking long.

He went to the bureau and dragged it away from the wall, straining muscles in his back and arms. Damn, but the son of a bitch weighed a ton. Then Logan, off the phone already, was at his side helping.

“Front desk said it might be a while,” Logan said. “Their maintenance guy didn’t show for work today.”

Noah didn’t respond. He had his own ladder now. He hefted himself up onto the top of the heavy furniture and stood up. The perfect height.

With his head in the ceiling, he could see the large piece of plywood overlaying the tiles to the left. Perfect size for a body to recline while snapping some dirty pictures.

Noah dropped off the bureau, landing with a jarring thud that vibrated through his knees and hips. “What’s next door?”

Logan followed him out into the hall, where they stopped in front of the supply closet. Logan tried the knob. “Locked.”

His master key didn’t work. Before Noah had finished swearing in frustration, Logan drew his gun and shot out the lock.

Noah laughed darkly as he pushed the door inward. “I like the way you work.”

Logan just smirked as they surveyed the narrow supply closet that held no supplies. It did hold a ladder, however. Open right under a trapdoor in the wall to the right, just inches from the ceiling. A bulky black bag sat on the floor between the legs of the ladder. While Logan zipped open the bag and peered inside, Noah climbed the ladder and swung open the trapdoor.