Low Pressure (51 page)

The operator launched into a series of questions, but when Bellamy saw headlights cut an arc across the ceiling she dropped the phone, rushed to the window, and flung back the curtains.

Despite the downpour, she recognized the Vette’s low profile as it came speeding through the open gate. She cried out in relief.

She returned to the bed, touched Olivia’s cheek, and was startled by how cool it was. “Don’t die,” she whispered fiercely, then left the room at a run.

The hall was darker than before, but she didn’t slow down even when she reached the stairs. She practically flew down them, tripping on the last tread and barely catching herself on the newel post before she fell.

She reached the front door just as the Corvette rolled to a stop. “Dent! Help me!”

Heedless of the downpour and the lightning that filled the sky with a blue-white glare, she ran across the porch and down the steps. She rounded the hood of the car just as he was alighting.

She launched herself at him. “Dent, thank God! It’s Olivia. She’s—”

Strong arms went around her, but they weren’t Dent’s.

“ ’Bout time we met.”

She looked up through the rain into Ray Strickland’s leering face.

W
hen Dent reached the parking space where he’d left his Corvette and found it empty, he made a three-sixty turn, thinking that the cloudburst had thrown him off and that he’d gone to the wrong space. And then for several seconds more he stood there, confounded, while rain beat down on him.

The possibility that his car had been stolen from the parking lot made him gnash his teeth. But then his heart stuttered when it occurred to him who the thief might be. Could it be a coincidence that his car had been stolen while Ray Strickland was at large? Strickland was a mechanic. He would know how to break in, hot-wire, and do anything else necessary to steal any vehicle.

All this ran through Dent’s mind in a millisecond, and he acted on his fear instantly. Ducking beneath the narrow overhang of the building, he pulled out his phone to call Bellamy and warn her. He punched in her number before remembering that Nagle and Abbott had confiscated her phone to hold as evidence in Moody’s murder. No one answered it.

Dent burst into the Starbucks looking like a man deranged, startling the customers and staff. Heedless of the fact that he was soaked to the skin, that his hair was plastered flat to his head, and that his eyes looked feral, he shouted, “Gall, your truck. Where’s it parked?”

Gall, who was still in conversation with the senator, gaped at Dent. “Where’s your car?”

“Not where I left it. Give me the keys to your truck. Call nine-one-one and tell them to send police to the Lystons’ house. The cops at the gate need to be alerted that Ray Strickland may try to get onto the property by driving my car. Bellamy hasn’t got her phone, so I can’t call her directly, and I don’t know the land line number. Now for godsake, pitch me your keys.”

Gall did as told, and Dent snatched them from the air. “West side of the building,” Gall yelled at Dent’s back as he plunged back into the thunderstorm.

He ran to the parking lot and spotted Gall’s relic of a pickup. He climbed into the cab and cranked it on, then, pushing it as fast as it would go, jumped a curb and bounced into the street.

As he drove with one hand, he dialed 911 with his other. By now Gall would have called the emergency number, but it wouldn’t hurt to put in a second call.

He gave the answering operator his name and the address of the Lystons’ house. “Bellamy Lyston Price is in danger of her life.”

“What’s the nature of the problem, sir?”

“Too long to tell. But there are a pair of cops stationed at her front gate. They should be notified to be on the lookout for a red Corvette. They shouldn’t open the gate because Ray Strickland might be driving it. And call Nagle and Abbott. They’re homicide detectives. They’ll know what this is about.” He was out of breath by the time he finished.

“Your name again, sir?”

“What?”

“Your name again?”

“Are you fucking kidding?”

With infuriating calm, she began again with the question about his name. Cursing, he tossed his phone onto the seat of the pickup so he could use both hands to steer around a slow-moving minivan. He blasted through a red light, blaring the pickup’s horn.

Ray’s luck had changed, and it was on account of him killing Moody.

There had to be a correlation, because that was when things had started going good for him.

First, he’d escaped the two cops who’d showed up at his place. One’s blood was still on his clothes, along with the splotches Moody had sprayed on him. He didn’t think he’d killed the cop, but he hadn’t hung around to find out.

Dodging the second cop’s bullet—another stroke of luck—he’d barreled his way through his duplex and out the back even as other squad cars were squealing to a halt in front.

He’d lived in the neighborhood for a long time, so he knew the twisty streets well, knew which ones were dead ends and which provided a quick way out of the maze, even for someone traveling on foot.

Yes sirree. Luck had definitely been on his side. Running between houses and going over fences, he’d made it to the back of a strip center where there was a doc-in-the-box.

Knowing that the staffs of these minor emergency clinics usually worked long shifts and figuring that this early in the morning one would be starting, he deduced that a stolen car wouldn’t be missed for hours. He’d waited behind a Dumpster until a young woman dressed in scrubs parked in the employee lot and entered through a back door. Breaking into her car had been a piece of cake.

Was he one lucky bastard, or what? Within minutes of leaving his duplex, he’d been miles away from it. Pumped. Exhilarated. Wanting to spill more blood. Bellamy Price’s blood.

Ever since her old man’s death, she’d been staying with her stepmother in the family mansion. Ray made that his destination, reasoning that she would eventually turn up there. Driving past it throughout the day also gave him an opportunity to plan how he might get through the gate and onto the property.

It was going to be doubly difficult now that a patrol car was posted outside the gate.

But, again, luck smiled on him.

He just happened to be on one of his reconnaissance drive-bys when he saw Dent’s red Corvette leaving through the gate. He was alone, meaning that Bellamy was inside and, for the time being, inaccessible.

Ray decided to follow Dent. And when he parked his car and went into a Starbucks, Ray realized that he wasn’t just lucky, he was brilliant, because he saw the answer to the problem of how to get past that damn gate.

He left the car he’d stolen earlier in an adjacent parking lot and helped himself to Dent Carter’s sweet ride. And, as if good fortune wasn’t already with him, it began to rain buckets, which would make it difficult for the policemen at the gate to see who was behind the wheel of the Vette. To make it even more difficult for them to see into the car, Ray turned the headlights on high beam.

It was so easy he’d wanted to laugh. The two cops who’d waved to Dent when he drove out waved to Ray when he pulled up to the gate, which opened even before he came to a full stop. Abraca-fucking-dabra. He figured the cops had been given a transmitter so they could control who went in and out.

Getting inside the house posed no problem. Bellamy herself ran out to greet him. He had her in an inescapable bear hug before she realized he wasn’t Dent.

She seemed too shocked even to scream, which was good. It saved him from having to hit her. He didn’t want her unconscious. He wanted her awake and terrified.

But as he lifted her off her feet and started up the front steps with her, she began to struggle. “No, please, my stepmother is upstairs.”

“I’ll get to her. Two for the price of one. But you first.”

She doubled her efforts to wiggle out of his grip and kicked him solidly in the shin. It hurt so bad that as soon as they were across the threshold and he’d pushed the front door closed, he thrust her from him so hard she went hurtling forward and landed on the stone-tile floor.

Splintering pain shot from Bellamy’s shoulder and hip, which had sustained most of the impact. But she had no time to dwell on the pain because Ray was whipping a knife from its scabbard.

He brandished it at her, and she saw that the blade was already streaked with dried blood. Moody’s? Bile filled the back of her throat as the image of his open neck flashed into her mind. That was what Ray would do to her if she didn’t prevent it.

He grinned down at her and took two lumbering steps forward.

She put a hand up. “Listen, Ray, you don’t want to do this.”

“Hell I don’t. You killed Susan and let . . .”

“No. No I didn’t.”

“I heard you. I was hiding in your closet when you admitted it. I should’ve killed you then.”

Hiding in her closet?
She didn’t take time to sort that out. Stammering, she said, “I didn’t kill my sister, but I also know that your brother didn’t, either. He was innocent. I’m going to tell everyone that he was innocent.”

“Too late for that.”

“I know,” she said wetting her lips. “There’s nothing anyone can do about what happened to him. But I want people to know that he was unjustly sent to prison. You were wronged, too. I want to tell about it. But I won’t be able to do that if you kill me.”

“I’m gonna kill you.” He reached down, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and pulled her up by it. She cried out in pain, and did the only thing she knew to do. She kneed him hard in the groin. It wasn’t a direct hit, but his grip on her hair relaxed slightly, enough for her to jerk herself free.

She ran for the staircase. If she could lock herself inside Olivia’s room only long enough for the 911 responders to arrive, there was a chance that both of them could survive.

But she was still a long way from the second floor when Ray’s arm hooked her around the waist. He pushed her face first onto the stairs and landed hard on top of her, knocking the breath out of her. Slapping his hand over her forehead, he pulled her head back against his shoulder. She felt the blade of his knife against the soft area beneath her jawbone.

“I told you you’d be sorry.”

When Dent fishtailed Gall’s pickup onto the Lystons’ street, he saw two silhouettes inside the squad car. What were they doing just sitting there?

He braked hard, leaped out of the truck, ran up to the police car, and smacked the driver’s window with both hands, startling the officers inside. He yelled, “Have you seen my Vette?”

The officer lowered the window. “Sure. When you drove it in a few minutes ago. But how’d you get—”

“Wasn’t me. It was Strickland.”

“Strickland? In your car?”

“Where’s the transmitter Bellamy gave you?”

“Right here, but—”

“Open the gate.” He ran toward it, shouting over his shoulder. “And call for backup.”

The second officer alighted from the passenger side and shouted through the rain. “Dispatch just reported a nine-one-one from the house. Said a woman’s bleeding to death.”

Dent, fear clutching him, gripped one of the iron bars and shook it. “Open the fucking gate!”

The officer retrieved the transmitter from inside the car, but as he fumbled with it, he hollered to Dent, “Stay where you are. This is a police matter.”

Dent remembered the gate code from earlier in the day, but the patrol car was between him and the column where the keypad was mounted. He made an about-face and began scaling the estate wall, using the wet, clinging vine for footholds.

“Hey! Stop there!”

“You’ll have to shoot me.”

He got a knee onto the top of the wall and, without even looking to see what was on the other side, flung himself over. He landed in a hedge of evergreens, breaking branches as he worked his way free, then sprinted toward the house, which seemed to be miles away and in total darkness.

His chest was burning with exertion and fear for Bellamy as he hurdled the steps, skidded across the rain-slicked porch, and put his shoulder to the front door as he pushed his way through it.

He couldn’t see a thing until lightning flashed, then he took in the scene at once. Strickland had Bellamy facedown about midway up the staircase. Strickland’s knee was planted in the small of her back and he had her neck arched and exposed.

“No!” Dent bounded up the stairs.

Ray’s head came around and, seeing Dent, he released his hold on Bellamy, spread his arms away from his body like wings, and launched himself down the remaining stairs, catching Dent on the fourth one.

They tumbled together down onto the floor of the foyer in a jumble of arms and legs. Dent was the first to disentangle himself and sprang to his feet, but Ray surged out of a crouch with his knife aimed at Dent’s belly. Dent bowed his back, making his abdomen concave enough to escape a fatal uppercut.

By now his eyes had better adjusted to the darkness. When Strickland lunged at him again, Dent went after his knife hand, risking his own hands in order to gain control of the weapon. His fingers clamped around Strickland’s wrist and, using fury as his propellant, drove him backward against the wall. He slammed Strickland’s knife hand into the paneling.