The Gray Zone (32 page)

“All three of them,” the campaign manager replied. “But the shots of Henckle will be most, shall we say, useful.” She moved her head to indicate the police car that held Henckle, still shirtless, with a blanket around his shoulders, looking wild-eyed. “The networks will be peeing in their pants when they see these pictures.”

Jake, exhausted, could only smile as he accepted the cup of coffee Sutter held out to him. Kelly took one too. Suzanne would do well in the Senate after all. She was already much more cutthroat than Porter had ever been. Work on her likability factor a little, and she could be legendary. Of course, after tonight, she would skate into office. She must have used her connections at the governor’s office to get the cops there on a hunch.
However she did it,
thought Jake,
thank God she did.
He knew he and Kelly would be dead—or worse—if they hadn’t shown up when they did.

Jake looked around the scene. Farse, Henckle, and Brigante were each in the back of separate police cars. The three girls were being carefully helped into the rear of a paramedic’s truck; a female officer with a kind expression on her face was questioning them. Some of the SWAT team was still inside, and light was pouring out of every window of the house. Bright lights illuminated the outside, too, where officers in suits and in uniform shouted to one another, spoke in small groups, and guarded the police cars. A few neighbors in bathrobes stood, dumbstruck, at the darkened fringes of the scene. Jake shook his head. How Suzanne had managed to marshal this show of force was truly impressive. What had she told the governor?

All of a sudden, Jake felt Kelly nudge his thigh under the blanket. He followed her eyes to one of the suited cops, leaning into one of the cruisers. The detective stood up; his identity was unmistakable. His white-blond hair glowed almost blue under the sharp police lights. Jake couldn’t see them, but he knew if he were close enough to the man, his eyes would be pale and his eyelashes almost albino.

Sipping their coffee, both Jake and Kelly watched Cooper, deep in discussion with two uniformed officers and writing in a notepad.

From around the corner, a black Mercedes pulled up to the curb. In the commotion, no one seemed to notice it, but Jake heard Kelly gasp.

A tall and trim man in a dark suit calmly got out of the car and strode up to Cooper. Jake heard him ask, “Are you in charge of this investigation?” and saw Cooper nod. The men fell into deep conversation. Jake could feel Kelly starting to shake under the blanket.

“He’s going to get out of this,” she whispered.

The man was Gillis. His nose, where Kelly had kneed him, was clearly broken, but it was not bleeding. His hair was smooth; he was breathing evenly. There was absolutely no trace of the pimp he’d been just a half hour earlier in the house.

Jake leaped to his feet and marched over toward Cooper and Gillis.

“The house is rented by my foundation,” Gillis was saying, “but I wasn’t on the premises this evening. It was made available to some of my board members. I was in town and came out the moment I heard there was trouble.”

Jake walked up to the men and stood very close between the two of them, saying nothing. He thought he saw a glance pass between them.

Cooper rolled his eyes. “Brooks, you pop up in the strangest places.” He eyed the cut on Jake’s face.

Jake’s mind was flying, intercepting every legal trap Gillis was about to leap over.

No DNA samples because he was not physically engaged in the act.

No witnesses except for Kelly and Jake—whose testimony might not be corroborated.

The girls, when they came down from their drug highs, were the only solid link. And they were all underage—easily intimidated.

“Nice friends you keep company with, Mr. Gillis,” Jake uttered. “Detective Cooper, this evening was organized entirely by Mr. Gillis. I’m sure phone records will show that. Airport staff and others could be persuaded to testify.”

“Perhaps in court, Mr. Brooks, but those losers in the cars? They’re getting booked tonight—pandering, possession of illegal substances, providing illegal substances to minors, discharging of firearms, child endangerment, rape, molestation. And yet they all insist that Mr. Gillis knew nothing about this.”

“What my board does on their own time is their business,” said Gillis with a maddening smile. “They don’t share it with me. And they don’t involve me in their sordid dealings.” Jake quickly glanced over to where Kelly was sitting, her face in her hands. He was almost surprised to see her still there, half expected her to be gone.

“How’d you break your nose?” said Jake.

“Save your rhetoric for the courtroom, counselor,” said Gillis with derision. Turning to Cooper, he asked, “Do you need me tonight?”

“It’s late,” agreed Cooper. “We’re going to ask you a few more questions. But there’s not enough evidence to inconvenience you tonight. You’re free to go, but do us a favor? Come into the station tomorrow with your attorney.”

Gillis grinned and shook Cooper’s hand. He turned to Jake.

“Tick, tick, tick,” he said.

Jake felt the air go out of his lungs. Gillis wasn’t giving up Kelly. The deadline was still on. Jake nearly screamed in frustration; there was nothing he could do here. His power existed in the courtroom, but the crime scene wasn’t his territory. He would do everything he could to bring Gillis to justice, but he knew it would be a long, losing
battle. For the first time, he truly understood what Kelly had endured her whole married life. They were trapped. Gillis would play by his own rules—rules he was rich enough and smart enough to make up. Rules he could bend when he needed to get exactly what he wanted.

“See you tomorrow, then, Detective Cooper. And thank you.” Gillis gave Cooper a little salute, and with a steady gait he walked back to his Mercedes, fired the engine, and drove off.

Jake’s brain went into overdrive. He had to think of a legal way to get this guy off Kelly’s back.

“This isn’t over,” growled Jake to Cooper. “And I’m bringing you down with him.”

He staggered back to Kelly. The enormity of what he had just seen and experienced in that house was hard enough to bear. His realization of Gillis’s reach and power further deflated him. He sank down next to Kelly and gathered her into his arms. He felt her body shudder, then her warm tears pooling on his shoulder. At that moment Jake felt as though the sole reason he had been put on earth was to find a way to protect Kelly Jensen. How many other men in her life had felt that way about her? He didn’t care. He loved her.

“I’m going to find a way out of this for you,” Jake murmured into Kelly’s ear.

She had nothing to say in return.

They sat there holding each other while a cop came over and asked them a few questions, dutifully writing their answers in a notebook. The paramedics’ van drove away with the three young girls. Finally the police cars left, too, and Jake and Kelly had nothing else to do but limp back to the driveway where they had left their car what felt like weeks before.

KELLY, WEARING A RED BIKINI, WAS COMPLETELY in her element, as though she were a princess and Lake Tahoe were Lake Como. Her shiny hair fell in loose waves around her face as she leaned back in a chaise lounge. A book lay open in her lap, but her eyes were on her children in the water. Sunglasses shaded her eyes. Her brown legs stretched out forever.

“Come on, Mom,
throw
!” shouted Kevin, insistent and excited.

Kelly leaped up and began heaving plastic weights into the pool. Kevin noisily threw himself into the deep end to retrieve them, sending Libby flouncing out of the churning water to a nearby flower bed where she began stabbing at the dirt with a small spade. A couple of dogs raced by, nearly knocking Kelly into the water. She hammed it up, windmilling her arms until the children were shrieking with glee. She staggered over to the lawn and collapsed on her back. Kevin and Libby piled on top of her, and she wrestled them gently to the ground.

Jake watched from the house, hesitating before joining them.
He wished he could freeze this moment, bottle it for Kelly to keep in her small collection of good memories.

Eight months had passed since that night in the Las Vegas suburb, and so much had happened since then that it seemed like a lifetime ago. Senator Henckle had been destroyed by the scandal, of course. The video Alana Sutter had shot and given to the media clinched his ruin. Although there hadn’t been time to remove his name from the ballot, he had been defeated soundly by Suzanne Garrett. Technically, Porter had won—his was the name still on the ballot. But after the voters elected a dead man rather than vote for Henckle, Suzanne had been appointed to the seat by Governor Glen Green. Jake had to admit that, for all her faults, Suzanne would do a good job in the Senate. He sent her a congratulatory note after the election, but they hadn’t spoken since the night in Malibu. He wondered if they ever would again. They were deeply in each other’s debt, but after what they’d been through, he never wanted to acknowledge it to her. He was sure Suzanne felt the same way.

Henckle, Farse, and Brigante were all still awaiting trial, but they might as well be awaiting execution. The media and public had already tried and condemned them. They would do hard time somewhere and wouldn’t fare well. Jake had questioned the victims—the girls who had been prisoners in the house that night—which only confirmed Gillis’s meticulous control over the incident. The girls had sworn under oath that Gillis had been their savior.

And Gillis? Jake, with Kelly’s welfare foremost in his mind, had managed to box him into a corner. A small, temporary corner, but a corner nonetheless. Using every shred of acting ability he possessed, Jake had groveled at the feet of Law Boy in Los Angeles. He threw it all on the table: expense sheets of private plane trips, the lease on the Vegas house, questionable entertainment bills—the works. He had at last persuaded the U.S. attorney, the morning after the Las Vegas
incident, to arrest and charge Gillis with charity fraud. It had kept Gillis off balance enough that he hadn’t called in Kelly’s debt. The knife had not surfaced. It had bought Kelly a few more days.

A quick arraignment gave Gillis a choice: a laughably short sentence (nine months in a minimum-security country club) or a protracted trial during which not only the FBI but also the IRS—two runaway federal agencies that operated like vicious little dogs, grabbing hold of a cuff and not letting go—would turn over every stone in his life. Gillis had decided to get the prison time over with, Martha Stewart–style, rather than face the maggots that would turn up if the law started digging too aggressively in his garden. Gillis was now seven months into the nine-month sentence. In a few short weeks he’d be out.

Jake flinched as he stared out the window at Kelly and her kids. He hadn’t seen her for those seven months. After what they’d been through, they had agreed that Kelly needed time alone with her children. She’d been living at Jeanette Pantelli’s estate through the winter and spring. Now it was summer, and Kelly had called Jake to come up for a visit.

Jake was uncharacteristically nervous about their meeting. Truth was, he was enticed and alert. He was glad he’d gotten Gillis out of the picture for a few months, knowing he’d bought Kelly this time to heal, but he was haunted by the look on Gillis’s face when he had walked away from the house that night in Las Vegas. Getting into his Mercedes, Gillis had looked Jake straight in the eye and winked, the smirk on his lips unhidden and unashamed.

And Jake remembered Cooper’s oily obsequiousness toward the powerful man. Gillis was a man totally accustomed to buying attorneys, juries, politicians, freedom. Even the cops who had led him into the van that took him to prison seemed to defer to Gillis’s authority. Both Jake and Gillis knew that after a few months away—somewhere
gentle—followed by a little probation and a tiny media flap, it would all blow over. This was nothing for a man of Gillis’s power and reach. Soon enough Gillis would be out, ready to set up business again, ready to go after Kelly, ready for revenge.

The thought that he had gained only the smallest reprieve for Kelly brought an acid taste to Jake’s tongue. He held up a hand against the sun. Kelly and her children glistened with happiness. Jake was glad they’d had these months to be alone together before he’d offered himself into their threesome as a permanent fixture. Steeling his nerves, he forced his feet outside and waited to be noticed.

Kelly looked up right away. “Jake!” she called gaily, running toward him and kissing him lustily on both cheeks. “Libby, Kevin, get your little behinds over here! Jake!”

Jake’s stomach flipped hearing her smooth voice around his name again.

“Hello, Mr. Jake,” said Libby in her squeaky munchkin voice.

“Hi, Jake,” mumbled Kevin, looking at the ground.

Jake caught his breath. The boy was a miniature replica of Gillis. The same dark hair, the same cut jaw. Intelligent eyes. But the boy had a gentleness his father lacked, a softness that came, Jake knew, from Kelly. Completely atypically, Jake was seized with a sudden shyness in the face of this shining, happy family. He could not think of a single thing to say to these children but “Hi, guys.”

He caught Kelly grinning at him and relaxed. “I’m glad you’re having a good time,” he uttered. His stomach flipped again at the sight of her radiance.

“Okay,
muchachos
, lunchtime!” Kelly cried. “Go see what Serafina’s got for you. After that you can do some more swimming. I’m going to have a little chat with Jake.” The children tore into the house and tumbled into the arms of a round housekeeper, chattering like baby birds. They ran off in a little group, laughing, toward the kitchen.

“You let them swim after eating?” poked Jake.

Kelly watched the children disappear into the house. “Between air pollution, global warming, terrorism—I can’t imagine how low swimming after eating rates.” She peered at Jake over her sunglasses. “This setting has been so great,” she said, indicating the surroundings. “Jeanette has made us feel so welcome. Thank you, Jake.”