“What’s happened?”
“Looks like a heart attack.”
“Will he pull through?”
“Don’t know. The doc’s on his way.”
Wickers turned to the guard who held the woman in place. “Take her to the secure room in the basement.”
“Yes, sir.”
The man hustled Karen out. After they were gone, Wickers addressed the room at large, his voice clipped and commanding. “Archer, zip up his fly.”
One of the bodyguards kneeling over the unconscious man unceremoniously maneuvered his limp penis back inside his underwear and zipped up his pants.
Wickers kept talking. “Mr. Ridgeway was alone when he had a heart attack. I’m not going to have a scandal cloud the reputation of the consortium.”
“Yes, sir,” came a chorus of agreement.
From her hiding place in the next room, Grace watched the unfolding drama, her heart thumping. When her knees threatened to give way, she leaned back against the wall, grappling with her own disbelief.
It had all happened so fast. Too fast. She should have done something. But what?
Her brain threatened to shut down. But she forced herself to take deep breaths and stay cool.
One salient fact leaped out at her, grabbed her by the throat and wouldn’t let go.
A cover-up.
She was a witness to a cover-up of major proportions. They’d hauled Karen Hilliard off to the basement and made it look as if John Ridgeway was alone and working late. What was going to happen to Karen Hilliard now? And what would these ruthless men do if they discovered another woman had seen everything? Heard everything. Would they let her live to tell about it?
Feeling as if she was standing on quicksand, she pressed her hand against the hard surface of the copy machine. If only she’d left the building when her research job was over, she’d be home by now.
The medics brought a stretcher and loaded the unconscious man onto it.
“Will he make it?” Wickers asked.
“He’s already dead. Like Michael Jackson,” the doctor answered.
After all the frantic activity, the room and the hallway were finally empty. This might be her only chance to get away.
The security man who had seen her earlier had forgotten about her in the confusion. But when he started thinking clearly, he would remember there’d been a witness.
She wanted to run. But she forced herself not to panic. Two years ago she’d turned her life upside down and come to Washington on her own. If she could do that, she could get through this.
At least she’d caught one lucky break. She’d gone shopping with a coworker on her lunch hour at a couple of the boutiques on Seventh Street. Fumbling in her briefcase, she pulled out a black jockey’s cap and jammed it onto her head, pushing her sable-colored locks out of sight.
She thought about hiding her blue eyes with sunglasses. But that would look strange at night.
Keeping her head down so the security cameras wouldn’t pick up her face, she stepped out of the copy-machine room.
But she couldn’t stop the death scene from playing out in her mind. She’d known Ridgeway had heart problems. And hidden them from the public. He was arrogant. And secretive. And he’d thought he could operate outside the laws of God and man.
She started to turn away. Then from under the sofa, she caught the glint of something that sparkled. As she stared at it, she remembered the split second when Karen had looked at her—then to her right. Toward the couch.
Every self-protective instinct screamed at Grace to get out of the building before it was too late. But instead of running in the other direction, she took a quick step toward the couch, then another. Reaching underneath, she felt something that wasn’t part of the office equipment. It was Karen’s beaded evening bag.
Had it gotten kicked there during the emergency? Or had Karen deliberately hidden it?
Why? As proof of what had happened?
Or maybe she’d understood Grace’s dilemma—and handed her a kind of insurance policy.
With shaking fingers, she shoved the evening bag into her briefcase. Conscious that she had to get out before they locked down the consortium complex, she stood and walked into the hall, striding to the exit as if she’d only been working late.
“See you next week?” the security guard asked, and she knew he wasn’t in the loop.
“Yes,” she managed to say in a cheerful voice as she turned in her badge, signed out and walked toward the gate that opened onto Pennsylvania Avenue, praying it was still open.
BRADY LOCKWOOD bent his muscular six-foot frame so that he could stare into the unpromising depths of the refrigerator, eyeing a red-and-white carton of kung pao chicken and half a Philly cheese steak.
How old were they, exactly? Probably old enough to send his digestive system into spasms.
He tossed the takeout containers into the trash, then grabbed a bottle of ginger beer and took a swig, wincing as the sharp bite of the potent soft drink hit his mouth.
For the past three years he’d lived in Washington, DC, in La Fontana, one of the grand old apartment buildings that lined upper Connecticut Avenue.
Better get back to work, he told himself, heading for the office down the hall. He’d taken a new case this afternoon. Typical P.I. deadbeat-dad stuff. Not like the interesting assignments he’d gotten from the Light Street Detective Agency.
But that was then. This was now.
He’d just started thumbing through the files, when the phone rang. Although the ID didn’t give the caller’s name, the number told him it was the Ridgeway residence.
He braced to hear his brother asking for help with his latest mess.
Instead, John’s wife expelled the breath she must have been holding. “Brady, thank God.”
“Lydia, what’s wrong?” he asked, picturing her delicate aristocratic features stiff with tension but not a strand of her dyed auburn hair out of place.
“I can’t talk over the phone,” she said, her control almost slipping. “Just come over here. I … need you.”
I need you.
In the twenty-five years they’d known each other, she had never uttered those words. In public she could look friendly. But she’d never asked for his help. What was going on over there?
“I’m on my way.”
Hurriedly, Brady changed from sweats into dark slacks and a button-down shirt. As an afterthought,
