Vendetta

The nausea, thankfully, had subsided. She hadn’t thrown up even though she’d felt she would have once she’d reached the privacy of the bathroom.

You’re okay, she reminded herself. Everything’s going to be all right.

But Keller’s words haunted Marion. She knew she wasn’t going to be directly responsible for the woman’s death. Her actions, the physical evidence at the scene and the testimony of the witness were going to do that.

She was just going to try the case.

Not try it, she amended. Hopefully you’ll get to be part of it. She opened her blouse front and looked at the bruising across her neck and collarbone. After this, Turnbull had better let me on as co-counsel.

She placed her purse on the sink and took out her emergency makeup. Her hands grew steadier as she fixed the damage done by the struggle. While her hands and eyes worked automatically, her mind concentrated on her questions.

When she got out of the bathroom, a deputy directed Marion to Keller. She found the big man standing at the observation window looking into one of the interview rooms.

The female prisoner sat at the small rectangular table inside the featureless room. Her hands were cuffed behind her back and manacles secured her ankles. Cotton balls filled her nostrils.

Keller looked up as Marion entered the room. “How do you take your coffee, Counselor?”

The question took Marion aback. Then she noted the percolator on a small hot plate on the table in the corner. The aroma of the coffee made her hungry.

“It’s fresh perked,” Keller said. “But that’s about the only thing it has going for it. I’d advise disguising the taste a little.”

“Cream. Two sugars.” Marion felt odd watching Keller get her a cup of coffee. “I can get that.”

“I know you can.” Keller poured coffee into a ceramic cup, then poured in cream and dropped in two sugar cubes. He looked around and finally found a saucer to serve it on.

Marion took the coffee gingerly. She’d hoped her hands would be steady, but they weren’t. They shook and the cup and saucer clattered just a little.

“That was pretty scary back there.” Keller didn’t look at Marion when he spoke. His attention was riveted on the woman.

“Yes.” Marion sipped the coffee. It was still so hot she barely tasted it.

“I talked to Whitten before she went to the hospital.”

“How is she?”

Keller nodded. “She’s gonna be fine. Whitten’s one of the toughest women I’ve ever met.”

“What about the other jailer?”

A frown tightened Keller’s face. “Ambulance guys said she probably had a concussion. Maybe a cracked skull and a dislocated jaw. They also said she was lucky she wasn’t dead.”

Marion remembered how smoothly the woman had moved during the fight. “If she’d wanted anyone dead, she would have done it.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

There was no maybe to it. Marion knew she was right. “She chose not to kill them.”

“The same way she chose to kill Marker?” Keller looked at Marion. “Don’t go getting soft on her, Counselor. Whatever else that woman is, she’s a cold-blooded killer.”

On the other side of the one-way glass, the woman sat unmoving. Blood dripped down her face to the jumpsuit. Except for the steady drip of blood, she might have been carved of stone.

“Did Whitten tell you about the fight?” Marion asked.

Keller nodded. “Said she used some kind of karate or something.”

“It wasn’t jujitsu.” Marion sipped her coffee and found it a little cooler. “But it was something organized. Something dangerous.”

“Something like Bruce Lee in The Green Hornet?” Keller smiled mirthlessly.

“Yes. Where would she get specialized training like that?”

“Who said she was trained?”

“Do you think she wasn’t?”

Keller’s eyes narrowed as he regarded the woman. “Oh, I think she was trained. I’ve been contemplating the possibility that the Russians trained her.”

The Russians? Then Marion grasped the meaning behind the suggestion. “You think she’s a spy?”

“The kind of training that woman has? The cold-blooded way she killed Marker?” Keller nodded. “I bet when we figure out who she really is, we’ll find out she’s a Communist spy.”

Although the newspapers and television media kept the threat of a nuclear war in the public eye, Marion didn’t buy into the thinking as much as many others did. She chose to believe the Cold War would defuse itself before international annihilation manifested.

“You think she killed Marker as part of her assignment?” she asked

“Don’t know yet. But I know she intended to leave a message for somebody.”

“Why?”

Keller slipped two fingers into his shirt pocket and took out a thin rectangle covered in clear plastic wrap. “Because she left this at the murder scene.” He held the object out. “Careful when you handle it.”

The evidence was a playing card. Specifically, it was the Queen of Hearts. Dark smudges of fingerprint powder marred the card’s surface and gave the queen a dirty face.

“These are her fingerprints?” Marion asked.

“And Marker’s.”

“That doesn’t mean that she brought the card to the murder scene. Since Marker’s prints are on it, he could have just as easily brought the card.”

“So while she’s pointing a gun at him, with her foot in the middle of his chest, he asks her to take a look at a playing card? Or let’s say Marker did that. Why would she take the card while she’s holding a gun on him?”

Marion handed the card back. “I don’t know.”

Keller tucked the card back into this shirt pocket and buttoned the flap. “I think she used the card because it meant something to Marker. It was something he’d recognize. Since they’ve got a history—”

“You can’t prove that.”

“You don’t just break into a stranger’s motel room, put your foot on his chest and shoot his face off,” Keller said gruffly.

Marion winced.

Keller sighed. “Sorry about that. Sometimes I’m a little too plainspoken.”

“That’s all right.”

“But the fact of the matter, Counselor, is that those two people— Marker and that woman—knew each other before they came here. We’ve just got to figure out how.”

“What do we do now?”

“We talk to her,” Keller said. “See if she’s ready to tell us why she killed Marker.”

Looking at the woman, Marion sincerely doubted that was going to happen.

Someone knocked at the open door. A deputy leaned into the room. “Sheriff Keller? There’s a man in the lobby who says he’s that woman’s attorney. He’s demanding to see her.”

That surprised Marion. She looked at Keller. “Has she called anyone?”

Keller shook his head. “Did the attorney give you a name?”

“Yes, sir. Even gave me a card.” The deputy entered the room and handed it over.

Keller took the card. Marion looked over his shoulder.

Adam D. Gracelyn

Attorney-At-Law

A mild expletive escaped Keller’s lips. He looked at the deputy and nodded. “Bring Gracelyn to me.”

Marion knew the name. The Gracelyns were part of the old money families in Phoenix. She’d never met any of them, but she’d read about them in the Phoenix Sun society pages. There had been something about Adam Gracelyn passing the bar exam a few years ago.

The deputy left.

“This isn’t good,” Keller said quietly.

“Why?”

“Adam Gracelyn’s a real firebrand when you get him riled. With all his daddy’s money, you’d think he’d just settle down to a nice long stay as one of daddy’s corporate lawyers. Instead he signed on with the public defender’s office. He specializes in representing minorities and the disenfranchised. He’s going to be trouble.”

Chapter 6

Gracelyn Ranch

Outside Phoenix, Arizona

Now

David stared at the picture in his sister’s Athena Academy yearbook. His younger sister Allison lived in Washington, D.C., these days, but she kept most of her personal things at the family home.

Besides, knowing Allison, she probably had another yearbook with her. She had two copies of everything. She was the most thoroughly organized person David had ever seen. She currently worked for the National Security Agency in a job so secret she never talked to anyone about it.

Allison had been best friends with Lorraine “Rainy” Miller. But that relationship had been troubled. Even though Allison wouldn’t have admitted it then—and might not even admit it now—she’d been somewhat jealous of Rainy’s successes at the academy. Allison’s own student group, the Graces, had constantly vied with Rainy’s team, the Cassandras, for top honors but had often come out second-best.

The competition had been fierce, and it had also been good for both groups. But the competitive edge had never truly gone away.

Later, when circumstances required Rainy to live with Allison at the Gracelyn home for a while, David had fallen in love with Rainy like he’d never fallen for a woman before.

But that didn’t work out, did it? David chided himself. And you’ve certainly got more to do than spend your morning moping over old yearbooks and wondering what might have been.

Still, he stared at the picture of Rainy and the group of girls she’d mentored through the academy. All of them were there: Kayla Ryan, Tory Patton, Alexandra Forsythe, Josephine Lockworth, Samantha St. John, Darcy Steele and Rainy at their center.

The picture had been taken somewhere in the hinterlands of the White Tank Mountains where the academy was located. The Cassandras had to have been on a team-based excursion. All of them wore climbing gear.

David thought he could remember the story. Allison had told him one version of it, and Rainy had given him another.

In the picture, Rainy was young. She had to have been seventeen, maybe eighteen. She’d only gotten more beautiful and more defined as she’d gotten older.

For a while, David and Rainy had been close. Then something happened. He still hadn’t been sure what. But while he’d been away at college, Rainy had grown distrustful of him. Then she’d left the Gracelyn home.

The next time he’d heard about her had been when she’d enrolled at Harvard as he was graduating. They’d just never connected again. Then she’d gotten married.

Now she was dead.

Silently David cursed Winter Archer’s presence at the house for bringing up all the old memories and pain. He cursed Christine Evans as well, but he was equally certain that Christine was right. The answers to the puzzle of Rainy’s death, the genetically mutated children and the kidnappings lay in his mother’s past.

He just didn’t know how he was going to handle Winter Archer’s investigation without going crazy thinking about what could have been.

Winter walked through the big, silent house to David’s office. During the last three days, they’d seen each other very little. She had the distinct impression that had been because David wanted it that way.

If she hadn’t reached an impasse in her research, or if the story about the woman who had murdered Colonel Thomas Marker hadn’t been so compelling, Winter knew she wouldn’t have sought David out now.

The sooner you get out of here, the better off you’re going to be. You need to be back home in L.A. working on another book. You’re at your best when you’re working.

If it hadn’t been for Christine—and now her own curiosity— Winter knew she’d have been gone in a heartbeat. But Christine was involved, and she couldn’t walk away from that story without knowing the rest of it.

News about Marker’s murder had gradually subsided. In the end, it had disappeared. There were only a couple of footnotes that let her know Marker’s body had been shipped back to distant family members.

Of course, given what had happened in 1968 at about the same time, losing sight of one unexplained murder wasn’t a big thing. The assassination that had taken place at around the same time had shaken the world.

David’s study door was open. Winter crossed to it and lifted a hand to rap against the door frame. The sight of him sitting so grim and silent at the desk gave her pause. He was a beautiful man. He sat with his shirtsleeves rolled nearly to his elbows and his tie at half-mast. He had one hand against his head with his fingers threaded through his hair.

There was something wounded and innocent in his posture. All those feelings she’d felt back when she was a girl echoed within her.

You’re still crushing after all these years? Winter couldn’t believe it. Get over it. You don’t have time for this. And if he wasn’t interested back then, he’s definitely not going to be interested now.

Then she saw he was staring at a book lying open on his desk. As she watched, he carefully thumbed through pages filled with pictures.

A photo album? Winter wasn’t sure. But the possibility made her feel badly. Her presence there, in the house where he’d known his mother, had to have made that absence even sharper and more empty. Oh, Christine, you can’t have known what you were going to trigger.

Winter knocked.

David looked up immediately. Guilt made his movements jerky as he closed the book and slid it to one side.

“Yes?” he said.

“I need more information.”

David leaned back in the chair. “You have everything.”

Slightly irritated that he didn’t ask her in, Winter crossed the threshold and entered the room anyway. She wasn’t a vampire. Withholding an invitation wasn’t going to keep her out.

“I have most of everything,” she said. “I’ve noticed an obvious discrepancy but have been too tactful to mention it.” She folded her arms over her breasts, then noticed she was in a defensive posture and grew angry with herself. David Gracelyn wasn’t going to make her feel threatened.

He held her gaze for a moment. “What do you think you’re missing?”

“Your mother journaled extensively. Some of her work is used in Athena Academy curriculum. I’ve read it. A few of her books, mainly collections of essays and speeches, are in the library. In all of those books, she referred to journal entries—sometimes even printing them in their entirety—that dealt with those writings.”

David didn’t say anything.

“Therefore, I submit that those journals she referenced have to exist somewhere,” Winter said.

Clasping his hands before him, elbows on the desk, David settled his chin on his thumbs. “My mother’s personal writings are—well, they’re personal.”

“I’ll keep them that way. No matter what they are, I need to take a look at them. Some of them.”

Frowning, David leaned back in his chair and crossed his own arms. Then he noticed the unconscious behavior and gripped the chair arms.

“You’ve found something,” he said.

Winter hated revealing anything before she was certain of its validity. Unfortunately she was certain David was resolved not to let her have anything unless he knew what she was looking for.

“Possibly,” she answered.

“What?”

For a moment Winter considered holding her ground and refusing to answer. She knew that David would fight, though, and she didn’t have the energy to argue. Besides that, she was eager to know if she truly had something or if she was following a false lead.

“Did your mother ever tell you how she met your father?” Winter countered.

“During the course of their work.”

“She never mentioned any mitigating circumstances?”

“Were there any?”

Winter drew a breath. She hated when interviewees tried playing cagey with their answers. Things usually got much harder than they had to be. “Yes.”

“What?”

Taking out her iPAQ/phone, Winter checked the time. It was 12:43 p.m. “Have you had lunch?”

David frowned again.

Even his frowns are sexy. Winter gave herself a mental shake. Do not get derailed. Focus on getting the journals.

“What difference would my having lunch make?” David asked.

“If you hadn’t eaten, I thought I could tell you the story over lunch.”

“I’ve got too much to do to leave here.” David gestured at the desk.

“Surely this big house has a kitchen. If you don’t know the way, maybe we could ask Gary.” Winter resented the sarcasm at once, but it was far too late. The genie was out of the bottle. She scrambled for something to say that would take the sting out of her words.

David pushed up from the desk. “I know the way to the kitchen. But you’re going to have to produce a strong argument to get at my mother’s journals.” He strode through the door without a backward glance.

Curbing a response, Winter silently watched him walk away. The khaki pants fit him well, and it was obvious he kept himself in great shape. After a moment, she followed.

“You know how to cook?”

David resented the question. He pulled his head out of the massive refrigerator and glared at Winter. She sat demurely at the island and looked as if the question was more casual curiosity than a thinly veiled insult.

“Yes, I know how to cook. My mother taught me. So did my father.” David took a deep breath as he looked around the spacious kitchen. “This is one of the places where I miss her most. When she was at home, she often spent part of the day in here. On good days, Allison and I got to prepare a meal with her.”

Winter had the decency to look contrite. “I apologize. I didn’t mean—”

“I know you didn’t mean to hurt me, and you didn’t. But you did intend to be crass, and you were.”

Winter looked as though she were going to say something, then thought better of it. She broke their gaze and looked down at her P.D.A.

And you’re not exactly the charming host, either, are you? David could hear his mother remonstrating him over his manners.

Marion Gracelyn had always believed the kitchen was a safe haven for everyone. He’d seen her entertain belligerent dinner guests over steaming pots and pans. Most of the time she’d managed to reach some accord right there in the kitchen.

“Look,” he said finally, “maybe we’re both getting on each other’s nerves a little.”

“You think?”

The reply was smart-ass, but David sensed there was no malice attached. “Yeah. So what are you in the mood for?”

Her hesitation surprised him. As he recalled, Winter Archer had always had an answer for everything.

“Surprise me,” she replied finally.

“I missed breakfast this morning, too. Maybe we could have a really late brunch.”

“All right.”

“While I cook, maybe you could talk.”

By the time Winter finished reiterating what she’d learned about Colonel Thomas Marker’s murder and the strange woman who had briefly taken Marion Hart prisoner in the county jail, David had prepared blueberry waffles from scratch, omelets, spicy diced potatoes and onions and bacon and link sausage. He’d even prepared the link sausages by boiling them in water in a covered frying pan instead of frying them.

“Not exactly what my nutritionist would have recommended,” Winter commented as she finally surrendered and pushed her plate away.

“Maybe next time you could cook,” David growled.

For a moment Winter was so lost in the idea of a next time and the possibility of cooking breakfast she forgot to be slightly insulted. That had been the intention, though.

“I can cook,” Winter replied.

David glowered at her doubtfully.

“I didn’t mean that as an insult. I enjoyed breakfast. It was good.”

Slightly mollified, David nodded. He finished the last bite of blueberry waffle and pushed his plate away.

Without a word, Winter got up and started clearing the dishes.

“What are you doing?” David asked.

“You cooked. The least I can do is clean up the mess.” Winter opened the taps at the sink and looked around for dishwashing liquid.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I don’t want to leave it. Gary probably has enough to do.” Winter looked under the sink.

“There’s a dishwasher.”

“There aren’t that many dishes.” After finding the dishwashing liquid under the sink, Winter squeezed some into the sink and turned the water on.

“Are you always this pigheaded?” David growled. His chair scraped as he got up.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.