Chasing Venus (42 page)

That time she flinched.

“I also think he’s
fucking Annette Rowell.
 
That’s what
I think.”
 
Simpson edged right up
next to her.
 
“You, he had no time for.
 
Not like that.
 
But Annette Rowell?
 
I bet he’s fucking her this very
minute.
 
And I bet you think he is,
too.”

*

He’s baiting you.
 
Don’t let
him get away with it.

Sheila shut her
eyes.
 
This was a nightmare Monday
morning after a nightmare Sunday night.
 
Not a speck of sleep.
 
Incessant worry, about the feds coming after her and about Reid.
 
The feds had.
 
And Reid?
 
She had no idea.
 
Was he dead?
 
Alive?
 
When would he come to his senses?
 
When would she?

She couldn’t believe
she was still lying for him.
 
And
why?
 
To keep his lady love out of
custody?
 
A woman he’d known for
mere weeks, who could well be a killer.
 
A woman to whom he’d proposed marriage, from what she could tell.
 
Half the time, she thought he’d taken a sabbatical
from his sanity.
 
The other half,
his words, his pleas, pounded her brain like a jackhammer.
 
Trust
me just a little while longer.
 
We’re close to catching the person who’s been killing these
authors.
 
Don’t lose faith now.
 
Not when we’re so close.

She pivoted to face
Simpson.
 
“I don’t appreciate your
language.
 
This is a place of
business, not a gutter.
 
And
besides, you can swear at me till kingdom come and it won’t make a damn bit of
difference.
 
You’re wasting your
breath.
 
I don’t know where Reid
is.”

Simpson shook his head
as if in regret.
 
“You baffle me,
Sheila.
 
You’re an intelligent
woman.
 
Why are you being so stupid
about this?”

“I am being nothing of
the kind.
 
You’re the one who’s
obsessed with ideas that have no basis in reality.”

“Do you understand the
trouble that protecting him will get you in?
 
I understand that Reid’s your boss and
that you feel a certain loyalty.
 
But how is he repaying you?
 
By putting you in jeopardy to protect him?”

She steeled herself
against his words.
 
It was uncanny,
Simpson’s ability to get her where she lived.
 
He preyed on one emotion after the next,
probing for a weakness.
 
Jealousy.
 
Pride.
 
Fear.

And she had plenty to
be afraid of.
 
Felony criminal
charges, like aiding and abetting.
 
Obstructing justice.
 
All
because Annette Rowell’s DNA was spewed all over her family’s cabin.

But if she kept her
mouth shut, they wouldn’t have proof.
 
They might suspect, but they couldn’t know for sure.

“May I say something
here?”

She spun around.
 
It was the bad-boy-looking cop, with the
mussed dark hair and the five o’clock shadow.

“I’m Sam Trotter with
the LAPD.
 
I was tailing your boss
last night until he slipped me.
 
There’s something else you should take into consideration, Ms.
Banerjee.”

“Enlighten me.”

“We think Reid
Gardner’s in serious danger.
 
We
think he doesn’t understand what he’s dealing with.
 
Annette Rowell has already killed four
people and may be plotting to kill more.
 
If he’s with her, he could be next.”

“He can take care of
himself.”
 
It slipped out before she
could stop it.

Sam Trotter rested his
fists on the conference table and leaned closer.
 
His dark eyes bored into hers.
 
“Are you saying he is with her?”

“I’m saying I am not
his keeper and I am not his protector.”

Sam Trotter didn’t
blink.
 
Apparently he’d acquired
that talent, too, just like Simpson.
 
“Are you his friend?”

“That’s hardly a news
flash.”

“Then tell us where he
is.
 
You don’t want him dying.
 
But you need help to keep him
alive.
 
That’s where we come in.”

She held Trotter’s
stare.
 
“You’re all so convinced I
know where he is.
 
I’m telling you I
don’t.”

Simpson spoke this
time.
 
“So that’s your story and
you’re sticking to it?”
 
She didn’t
like the sound of that.
 
He kept
talking.
 
“You and I both know that
you’re impeding a serial-homicide investigation.
 
It’s unprofessional.
 
It’s unethical.
 
And may I remind you, Sheila …”
 
He paused as if for effect.
 
“It’s illegal.”

She refused to
tremble.
 
She wouldn’t give Simpson
or anyone else in that conference room the satisfaction.

“You’ve got one last
chance,” Simpson said.
 
“Is there
anything you want to tell us?”

One last chance before
what?
 
She found out in the next
heartbeat, when Simpson nodded at the man called Higuchi.
 
He approached her from around the
conference table, bearing a set of handcuffs.
 
“You have the right to remain
silent.
 
If you give up that right,
anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
 
You have the right to an
attorney—”

She’d heard the Miranda
warning a thousand times.
 
She’d
edited hours of videotape in which a cop cuffed someone’s hands behind his
back.
 
In fact, whenever she saw it,
it was a triumph.
 
It meant that a
Crimewatch
tip had helped snare a
fugitive.
 
Yet this time it was a
whole different story, this time when she felt that cold steel encircling her
own wrists.

She held her head
high.
 
She ignored the shocked
stares of her coworkers as Higuchi paraded her down the studio’s narrow
halls.
 
She pretended she didn’t
hear the gasps, didn’t notice the frenzy as people tumbled out of editing bays,
exited cubicles, fell over each other craning for a look.
 
She maintained her composure as she
walked out of the studio into a waiting black-and-white.
 
She got a flash of Sam Trotter’s
face—brow creased, mouth grim—as he slammed the cruiser’s door shut
after her.

She sat ramrod straight
on the cracked
Naugahyde
seat.
 
Her life had become like a jail cell in
these last weeks, and the only warden bearing a key was Reid.

This merely formalized
the arrangement.

*

Dripping wet, Reid
pushed open the shower door.
 
He
grabbed a towel off the rack, draped it over his head and began to rub his hair
dry.

He was back in the
cabin after a sleepless night trolling the hills.
 
One question screamed over and over in
his head.
 
Where is she?
 
Where is
she?
 
Where is she?

He’d covered acres of
terrain and seen no sign of Annie.
 
No hint of her.
 
She’d headed
east when she fled; he could tell from the tracks that led away from the
bathroom window.
 
He saw no reason
why she would have changed direction.
 
Eventually she would have stumbled upon Ojai, the town nestled in the
valley.

If she got that far.

He jerked the towel off
his head, bent to rub his legs.
 
The
truth was that she might not have gotten far at all.
 
The killer might have gotten her.
 
Her body could be out there.
 
Reid knew he could easily have missed
it; in fact, it was most likely he had.
 
He was a one-man search party, with one pair of eyes.
 
He was searching a wooded area, with all
the underbrush that entailed.
 
And
most of the time he’d been searching in the dark.
 
Not that his dawn perusal had turned up
anything, either.

The skin on his legs
burned from the roughness of his rubbing.
 
He twisted the towel around his back, made the skin there burn, too.

What did he do
now?
 
Not go back to LA.
 
LA be damned.
 
Crimewatch
be damned.
 
He wouldn’t leave these
hills until he found her.

He wrenched the towel
around his torso, tucked the edge in so it would stay put, and stepped out of
the shower.
 
She’s alive
, he informed his reflection, blurry in the steam-fogged
mirror that fronted the medicine cabinet.
 
He raked his fingers through his damp hair and reached for the .38 he’d
balanced atop the shower stall.
 
He
jammed the gun in his makeshift waistband and half-wished the killer would show
up so he’d have an excuse to use it.

Come and get me, you bastard
.
 
He set his jaw and stomped down the short hall toward the main
room.
 
Let’s have this out.
 
You
and me
.

He bent over the
computer and for the umpteenth time went on-line.
 
His eyes ran down the
Crimewatch
message boards.
 
There were both his postings, with
plenty of replies from people he didn’t give a damn about.
 
But there was no response from Annie,
nothing using the code words they’d agreed on.

Tap.
 
Tap.
 
He spun around.
 
His heart thumped in his chest.

There in the front
window, finger poised against the glass.
 
Wide-eyed.
 
Pale.
 
Annie.

He ran to the front
door, pulled it open.
 
She collapsed
onto his chest.
 
She looked like an
urchin and felt like a dream.
 
Her
fingers dug into his arms; her breath was hot and moist against his skin.

“You’re all
right.”
 
It took him a second or two
to realize he was the one who’d spoken.
 
In those few heartbeats he hadn’t been quite able to tell where he
stopped and she began.
 
He clutched
her tighter.
 
“I looked for you all
night.
 
I was about to go out and
look again.”

“I saved you the trouble.”
 
She stepped back, managed a wan
smile.
 
“I came back here when I saw
you’d posted on the boards.”

“I almost gave up hope
that you’d see it.
 
You got onto a
computer somewhere?”

“In Ojai.
 
At the library.”

He was amazed.
 
“You made it that far?”

There was a long story
in those green eyes of hers.
 
He
took her hand, tried to pull her inside the cabin.
 
She halted on the threshold.
 
“It’s okay,” he told her.
 
Still she didn’t budge.
 
Finally she spoke.
 
“I don't like how it feels to be back
here.”

“You’re safe now.”
 
True, as far as that went.
 
Yet would she be safe in an hour?
 
Two?
 
He couldn’t promise that, not for either
of them.
 
He tugged on her hand and
she stepped forward another pace.
 
It was like pulling a child into pre-school on the first day.

“I was in the bathroom
when he got in,” she said.
 
“Brushing my teeth.”

Her comment was apropos
of nothing and everything at the same time.
 
Reid stilled.
 
He tried not to visualize the scene, but
his imagination spooled out the picture in excruciating detail.

“He was all in
black.
 
Ski mask.
 
Gloves.”
 
She looked away and Reid knew she was
conjuring the image of the killer in her mind.
 
“I slammed the bathroom door shut and
locked it but he was still here.”
 
Her eyes moved toward Reid then, and there was a memory in them he would
have given anything to erase.
 
“He
broke down the door.”

Reid was still holding
her hand.
 
He squeezed it.
 
“I know.”

“He wanted to kill me.”

Reid was silent.
 
He
followed us here to do it.
 
He
watched us.
 
And he waited for his
opening, for me to leave.
 
That
meant the killer had watched them in LA, too.
 
He had his eyes on Annie from the moment
she fled Corona del Mar.