She had an insane urge to call her own number and see if Pascal answered. She wanted to rage at him. She wanted to swear she would hunt him down and get revenge.
Pascal had left the motel, but he wasn’t heading toward Farmdell, not yet. He must have just fled the scene, worried that his gunshot would draw the cops. What with packing up his gear and clearing out, he might not have had time to check the call log yet.
She could wipe the phone remotely, turn it into a brick. Her account had an emergency feature—
Even as she had that thought, the blip disappeared.
Crap.
He’d either turned off the phone or deactivated the app that allowed remote access. Hardly surprising. He knew she’d tracked him via a cell phone once before.
Okay, she couldn’t keep tabs on him, and she couldn’t erase the call log. All she could do was speed to 133 Old Road. The house was only a few miles inland, not a long run from here. With any luck she would beat him to it.
And then ...
As dispassionately as possible she calculated the odds. She knew the territory better than Pascal did. She was a good shot, and she reacted quickly in an ambush, as she’d proven with Jacob Hart. She’d killed before, and she had no doubt she could kill Pascal if she got the drop on him. And she was sure as hell motivated.
Balanced against all that was Pascal’s undoubted competence and experience. It was safe to assume that a globetrotting assassin had gone up against tougher and more seasoned adversaries than Bonnie Parker of Brighton Cove.
So what were her chances? Maybe one in two. Oh hell, be realistic: one in three.
Which meant there was a high probability she would end up dead tonight, defending a client who’d lied to her, fighting a battle she didn’t even understand.
Well, she wasn’t in it for the glory. She was in it for the money—except she’d lost that.
Okay, then. She was just in it. That’s all.
She was in it, and there was no getting out.
CHAPTER 18
A mile north of the motel there was a Kmart, closed for the night. Pascal pulled the SUV around back, out of sight of the highway. He got out of the car and found a stack of moldering corrugated boxes by the dump bins. Though he never smoked, he did carry a lighter, and he used it to set the cardboard on fire. He stood before the flaming pyre, warming his hands in a soft mist of rain.
The spasticity of his fingers had hampered him as he threw his possessions into his suitcase. The pain had quickly progressed from a dull ache to an electric burn. Fortunately there had been very little to pack. He had taken the girl’s purse, his iPad, and the jacket and robe he had hung in the closet, and he had retrieved the stun gun after tugging off the wires.
The first squad car had entered the motel’s parking lot only seconds after he had pulled out. It had been a close-run thing.
The girl had outmaneuvered him. He respected her for that. She was not his equal, but she was better than she had any right to be. In her own way she was a knight errant like himself, a fellow combatant on the field of battle, an almost worthy adversary.
She was also a corpse. Oh, she might not know it yet. But she had bought herself only a little time. The small-town detective had cost him trouble and pain, and soon he would put her in the morgue.
First he needed to find her client, the newly minted Mr. Kirby. Parker would get to the Kirbys first, of course, and perhaps move them to a new location—send them out of town, even out of state, and advise them to lie low. Conceal them and cover their scent so the bloodhound could not follow. That would be the smart, safe play.
Or she might set a trap for him and lie in wait. That was the more reckless move. A less foolhardy individual would not risk it. But it was what he would expect of her.
When his hands had recovered and the fire was mostly out, he returned to the Lexus and took out his iPad, pinpointing Alan Kirby’s address on a map. It was four and one half miles from his present location.
The rain, he noticed, was falling harder now. He disliked rain. He had to exercise caution to prevent trickles and rivulets from leaking under the cuffs of his gloves, freezing the skin of his wrists and palms and fingers, incapacitating him. But the weather, like the girl’s escape, was only a minor setback. Nothing could truly impede him now, not when he was so close.
His hands were trembling suddenly, and not from pain. He was so near to his quarry. In another ten or fifteen minutes he could conclude this business. True, he would have to deal with Bonnie Parker, but she was an inconsequential detail.
He found himself whistling. This was quite extraordinary. He never whistled. Yet there it was, a series of high, clear notes decorating the air around him. The tune was an aria, “Le veau d’or.” One of his favorites.
As a boy he had been known for his fine full-throated voice. His family had thought he might sing professionally. This would not have been scandalous. His parents were affluent, cosmopolitan, and quite open-minded about such things. They were patrons and connoisseurs of the arts, always encouraging him in his piano lessons and watercolor classes.
But he had known, even then, that he would never be a singer. Even as a child, he lacked the necessary lightness of heart. And half the time, when his parents believed him to be attending theater rehearsals or choir practice, he was prowling the streets of Santiago, making his acquaintance with the whores and pimps, the bootleggers and black marketeers, and the more powerful men who profited by them.
Eventually he disgraced his family once too often, and even his broad-minded parents were compelled to disown him. He was sixteen, living on the streets of Santiago, carrying out kills for petty drug dealers and gang leaders at a few thousand pesos a head—sometimes literally, when delivery of the victim’s head was required for final payment.
His skills brought him to the attention of bigger men, men who paid more than a few thousand pesos. He acquired a passport. He began to travel, expanding his knowledge of the world one cadaver of the time. He learned craft and cunning. He learned patience, and the inner calm born of the mastery of emotion. His reputation grew. He was offered permanent positions, which he politely declined. He styled himself as a consultant. No longer was he paid in rapidly depreciating pesos; he insisted on American dollars. He invested his money in Krugerrands and Credit Suisse notes and his mountain hideaway in San Alfonso. He had grown wealthy. He had earned respect. More than respect—he inspired fear.
But he never whistled anymore. Until tonight. Now he was a child again, making birdsong, and happy. Happy.
The phone rang.
He did not recognize the ring tone. It startled him, because it was not his. Then he realized Bonnie Parker’s phone was ringing.
Might she be calling her own number, trying to get through to him? To work out some sort of deal? He checked the display but it disappointed him, reading Caller Unknown.
Curious, he pressed the screen to answer the call, but said nothing, merely listened.
“Hope I didn’t wake you, Bonnie.”
A man’s voice.
“Hear me, bitch? You think you can hang up on me and not get a return call?”
The words slurred. Drunk. Angry.
“Not gonna talk? Who’s scared now, huh? Who’s the fucking coward now?”
Pascal cleared his throat. “I am afraid Miss Parker has become estranged from her phone, my friend.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“A recent acquaintance of hers. I am beginning to suspect that our Miss Parker is not very popular.”
“You could say that,” the man said warily.
“You hold some grudge against her, I take it.”
“She tried to fucking kill me.”
“Ah.”
“Now I’m going to return the favor.”
Pascal laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“I merely find it amusing that so many people want to eliminate this one girl.”
“What
other people? You tell them to lay off. She’s mine.”
“Of course she is. Have you killed before?”
“None of your goddamned business.”
Pascal was sure the man was a novice at killing. More than that, he was a drunken fool.
“If you have not,” he said quietly, “I would advise you to set your sights on a different target. Miss Parker is a professional, and she is not without skills.”
“What are you, her bodyguard?”
Pascal smiled. “Hardly that.”
“She’s no threat to me. Not the way I got it worked out. Next time you see her, you let her know I’m going to take her down.”
“Next time I see her, my friend,” Pascal said, “she will already be dead.”
CHAPTER 19
Speeding west, Bonnie groped in her fanny pack and took out a pack of Parliament Whites and a lighter. She tamped out a cig and fired it up. Her hands were still shaking, and the first hungry inhalation made her cough.
Damn, she’d needed that. She hadn’t been completely kidding when she’d asked Pascal for a smoke.
She switched on her wipers. The rain was coming harder—not yet a downpour, but more than a drizzle. It was a good thing Pascal’s shot had gone so far wide. If he’d blown out one of her windows, she might be getting wet right now, and she’d had enough water for one night.
It occurred to her that this was the second time she’d been shot at in the Jeep within the past six months. First Jacob Hart, now Pascal. Did that make the Jeep lucky or unlucky? Hard to say.
The circumstances had been totally different, of course. Pascal had been acting on pure adrenaline and rage, while Jacob had planned his move and lain in wait. Maybe she could have avoided the confrontation with Jacob if she’d played things smarter. She couldn’t see how, though. If she could have done it over, she would probably have done it the same way.
She had taken care of Kurt Land in the woods—well, she thought she’d taken care of him, anyway—then returned to his townhouse to search it. She’d turned up a safe deposit key. No surprise. He would have needed a secure place to stash the blackmail documents, not to mention his loot; dumping a big pile of cash into a checking account would raise too many questions. Retrieving the money for her client wasn’t strictly part of her job, but she was a full-service PI.
She went to the bank, opened the safe deposit box, and found herself looking at bricks of thousand-dollar bills in neat bundles. The money went into her backpack. At the bottom of the box she discovered an envelope. The financial documents, she assumed. Wrong. Photo printouts. Night shots taken with a camera phone. They were vague and indistinct, but she could make out enough detail to see Jacob Hart’s profile and the slim figure of a girl.
On a January evening she again met Mr. and Mrs. Hart in her office. She handed over the money—all of it. She might be a killer, but she wasn’t a thief. Then she dealt out the photos like a hand of poker, only these cards were face up, and she watched Jacob’s face as she said, “You lied to me.”
She expected a denial, but there was none. He nonchalantly admitted the truth. He really had dismissed Kurt Land for embezzlement, as he’d said. But the blackmail attempt had nothing to do with Hart & Hawthorn’s business practices. It involved a personal matter.
“This girl.” Bonnie tapped the nearest photo.
“Yes,” Jacob said, while his wife closed her eyes and looked away.
It seemed Kurt Land had become obsessed with Jacob after his dismissal and had staked out his house. One night when Jacob left, Kurt followed him. He saw Jacob pick up a girl in Brighton Cove and drive her to an apartment in Maritime. Later he saw Jacob drop her off a block from her home. He followed her to her house and got her address. Using a reverse directory, he identified her as the only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Wright. Her name was Sienna, and she was fifteen years old.
“Fifteen?” It was the first time Bonnie had heard Gillian Hart speak above a whisper. “My God, she’s still a child.”
“There are no children in this town,” Jacob said complacently. “They grow up fast. The girls, especially.”
“I’ve overlooked a lot ...” Gillian said in a warning tone.
Jacob gave her a hard stare. “And you’ll overlook this.”
Bonnie figured he was right. His wife wouldn’t leave him. She would do anything to avoid a scandal that would wreck her image and her perfect life.
“There’s nothing you can do, Miss Parker,” Jacob said in his unruffled way. “Yes, I misled you about the details of my blackmail problem, but you are the one who removed Mr. Land. You’re in it with me. If you bring me to justice for abusing a minor, I’ll tell the authorities about the work you’ve done for me. With my reputation ruined, I would not care about saving my own skin.”
“I’m not real big on working through the system,” Bonnie said.
He leaned forward, his eyes glittering and cold. “Perhaps you’re thinking you can dispatch me, as you dispatched Mr. Land. I wouldn’t do that. The details of our arrangement will come out postmortem in the event of my demise.”
“That’s probably bullshit.”
“Don’t test me, Miss Parker. One way or the other, if I go down, you go down. You may count on that.”
Bonnie figured he had her pretty much by the balls, metaphorically speaking. There were a lot of nasty things she would have enjoyed doing to him, but she couldn’t risk the repercussions. And yet she had to do something. Though Jacob had promised his wife that the affair was over, Bonnie assumed it was only a matter of time until he resumed seeing the girl. She bugged Sienna’s room and started keeping tabs on her. A month passed. Nothing happened. She was beginning to think Jacob might keep his word.
But evidently he’d never had any intention of doing that. He had held off from seeing Sienna only because he knew that Bonnie was sure to find out about it. He didn’t want word getting back to his wife. His course of action was clear: eliminate Bonnie Parker, and then there would be no obstacle to his love match.
Jacob could not have killed Kurt Land, because their known acrimony would have made him an obvious suspect. But he had no known connection with Brighton Cove’s only PI. Their relationship was completely off the books.
He lay in ambush in the alley behind her office. When she left late one night, he took his best shot. It wasn’t good enough.
There had been no postmortem exposure of their arrangement, though the prospect had cost her a few sleepless nights at the time.
She hit Highway 35 and turned north. Within a mile she saw the Roach House coming up on her left. Couple of cop cars in the lot. Some lookie-loos standing around. She cruised past without slowing. In another mile she would hit Branch Avenue and head inland. Away from the highway, away from the motel. That was good. She didn’t like being near it, didn’t like the feelings it brought up.
The camper in front of her was obeying the speed limit, which meant it was going way too slow. She was thinking about passing on the shoulder when red and blue lights flared in her rearview.
Crap.
She pulled over, worrying about the carbine in the rear storage compartment of the Jeep. She’d tossed a blanket over it, but she wasn’t sure it was fully concealed. The unregistered Glock in her fanny pack could be trouble too. Luckily she’d pulled on a rain poncho before leaving her house. It was a big floppy sheet of black vinyl with an attached hood and snaps at the sides, and it was loose enough to conceal the bulge around her waist.
She took a closer look at the car in the mirror and recognized it as Dan Maguire’s Buick, his personal ride—the one she’d trashed a few hours ago. He’d stuck a portable light bar on the roof. This was getting better and better.
She adjusted the mirror to see if Dan was alone in the car. He was. Then she noticed a ragged strip of duct tape on her wrist.
Hell. She’d never removed the tape. Bits of it clung to both arms. If Dan saw it, she’d have some ’splaining to do.
In the mirror, he climbed out on the driver’s side, wearing civilian clothes.
She clawed at the tape on her right wrist, tearing it free, and tossed the scraps on the floor.
Dan approached the car, moving quickly in the rain.
There was still tape on her left wrist. No time to get rid of it. She lowered her arm, wedging it between herself and the car door. With any luck he wouldn’t see it.
He rapped on the window. With her right hand she rolled it down. Glancing down, she saw the discarded tape on the floor mat and nudged it under the seat with her foot.
“Surprised you’re doing traffic stops, Dan. They bust you down to patrolman?”
He wiped a smear of raindrops off his face. “That’s funny, Parker. You’re a riot.”
“Whoa, what’s with the attitude? You seem more constipated than usual. Getting enough fiber in your diet?”
“Maybe I just don’t like it when people mess with my personal property.”
“Somebody TP your house?”
“An unidentified party dumped a pile of dogshit in my car.”
“Kids these days.”
“I’m not so sure it was kids.”
“Mischievous raccoons?”
“I’m thinking it was you.”
“Jeepers, Dan. What do you think I am, some kind of sociopath? Oh, right, you do.”
She didn’t know why he was wasting her time. Pascal must have determined the Kirbys’ address by now. He could get to them at any moment.
“So tell me,” Dan said, hunching his shoulders against the rain, “why exactly are you tooling around at midnight?”
“Got a yen for some Taco Bell.”
“Where were you before this?”
“On the beach.”
“In the rain?”
“It hasn’t been raining long.”
“What were you doing on the beach at night?”
“Meditating.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “You?”
“What, I can’t be spiritual? I was opening my friggin’ chakras.”
She was glad she had the cigarette. It steadied her, gave her something to do with her hand. Her right hand, anyway. The left was still wedged out of sight.
“No witnesses?” Dan pressed.
“Why would I need witnesses? I’m not a suspect in anything, am I?”