I know you prefer to keep the spotlight all to yourself. I know—”
“You just keep your nose out of my career, Harry. None of it has anything to do with you.”
He shook his head as if she were being ridiculous, then faced her squarely. “I need fifty thousand this time. Cash.”
Her throat tried to close, and she felt tears burn her eyes. Angry tears. Outraged tears. “You’re fucked, then, because I only brought twenty.” She yanked a fat wad of cash, bound in a rubber band, from the inside pocket of her coat, showed it to him.
“You’re fucked, then, ‘cause I can start the rag sheets’ bidding at seventy-five, and it’ll only go up from there. Come on, what happened to all that cash you stole from Mordecai?”
“It’s gone, Harry. I bought a house, a new identity, got an education. All I have now is what I earn at the station—”
“Which you’ll lose—if I share your secret with the world.”
“You wouldn’t dare…”
The look on his face told her that he would dare. God, she had to stop him. She held the cash out to him, silently pleading with him to take it and leave her alone. But he only looked at it as if it were something that smelled bad and then looked away. Julie stuffed the money back into her coat pocket and began to shake. She’d already paid him more than two hundred thousand dollars over the last six months. Her 401K was drained, and she’d had to sell stocks at a loss to get this additional twenty thousand for him.
“Well? Can you get another thirty or do I place a call to The Exposer?”
“I…don’t know. I…I don’t know how I can get another thirty. I don’t know.” She got up, paced back and forth. She was hot, sweating with it, so she peeled off her coat and hung it over a chair near the door. She needed to think, to clear her head. “I need to use the rest room,” she told him.
He shrugged. “It’s over there,” he said, nodding toward the door on the far side of the room. “Don’t be long. Time is money, babe.”
So she went into the bathroom….
“And when I came out, he was dead,” she whispered.
Blinking back to the present, she gave her head a firm shake. “The keys were on the coffee table. Dammit, why didn’t I see them when I was cleaning up?”
Because there were a dead man and a pool of blood in the room with you, some cynical voice inside her taunted. You may have been a little distracted.
“No. That’s not it. Maybe they got knocked off the table. Onto the floor. They must have. They were probably right there, on the floor, or maybe under the edge of a chair, or…” She shivered as her mind raced on. Maybe they were under that blood-soaked chair where she’d left Harry. Maybe they were on the blood-soaked carpet. “Oh God, oh Jesus.”
She had to go back.
The idea of walking back into that room sent her heart racing. Her knees felt weak, and she leaned on a support column to keep from falling over. This was idiotic. She didn’t hyperventilate, and she didn’t faint. It wasn’t in her to faint. But she felt goddamn close to it right now.
Just figure out what to do. Think, dammit!
Dawn. She could call Dawn. Have her bring the spare keys from the rack in the kitchen. She shouldn’t really be driving on her own. She only had her learner’s permit. But in an emergency…
Yeah, that’s the answer, Julie. Bring your daughter into this mess.
No. She couldn’t call Dawn. She didn’t want Dawn within a million miles of this nightmare. Dawn needed to be protected at all costs. Dawn was everything to her.
So think of something else, then.
But there was nothing else to think of. If the police found her keys in that room, that put her there. She had to go back. She wanted to argue with the calm, cool voice in her head. The news anchor voice. But she couldn’t. It was right.
She took a steadying breath, straightened her spine and took another. She’d been standing here, fighting panic and racking her brain, for twenty minutes. She could stand here all night, and it wouldn’t change the facts. She had to find a way to get back inside that room and get her keys before the police did. There wasn’t really a choice here. Turning, she walked firmly, steadily, to the elevator, stuffing the small garbage bag from Harry’s room into a large overfilled Dumpster on the way. Once again she used her coat sleeve to hit the elevator button.
The elevator went up, but not far. It stopped on the lobby level. The doors opened, and two men in police uniforms got on. “What floor did he say?” one was asking.
“Twelve. The manager who called it in is up there with the fellow who found him.”
Like a flash, Julie’s hand shot out to hit a button. Any button besides 12, because these two were cops, and they would damn well notice if 12 was the only button lit, and then they’d want to know why she was going there.
The doors slid closed, and one of the cops, a solid looking man with a face like a road map, hit the button marked 12, noticed it was already lit and glanced her way. The other one stood back. He was taller, leaner and younger. But if anything, he looked even meaner than his partner. Neither was familiar to her, and she considered that a lucky break. But the shorter one glanced at her briefly, then, with a frown, looked at her again.
The car stopped on the third floor, and the doors slid open. She left the elevator as if her feet were on fire, acting as if she were looking for her room key as she did.
When the doors closed again, she stopped, braced her hand on a wall and tried to stop shaking. The police were here already. Now what the hell was she going to do?
A door opened somewhere further down the hall, so she moved in the opposite direction, spotted the stair door ahead of her and headed toward it as if it were a haven.
It was cool and dark in the stairwell. Every breath echoed. But at least she was alone. She could think. She had to get back into that room before the cops found her keys. But how?
Sean MacKenzie didn’t like looking at dead people. You never really got used to it, he supposed. According to his police scanner, there was one waiting for him at the Armory Square Hotel. He’d been up. Lately, sleep was not an option. And trying to sleep when he couldn’t was sheer hell. So he spent a lot of time cruising the city, scanner on, looking for stories.
He had no idea how much it had paid off until he stood outside the door to room 1207, staring in at the body in the chair. His throat was slashed, and there was blood everywhere, and it was goddamn creepy the way the eyes stayed open and seemed to stare right at him. And then he recognized the stiff, and his heart skipped a beat.
“Jesus Christ, isn’t that Harry Blackwood?” he whispered to himself.
“My God, I think it is.”
He damn near jumped right out of his skin when that answering whisper came from so close beside him. He jerked his gaze to the side and saw his nemesis standing right beside him. Julie Jones.
“What
