A Dangerous Widow (A Dangerous Series) (23 page)

“You were brilliant,” he said.

“I was scared to death, and I still am.
 
And because of that?
 
Guess what?
 
I need to use the restroom—as in
now.”

“I’ll escort you and Catherine.”

The restrooms were in the Grill Room, which
seemed a hundred miles away from me as Ben led me forward through a crowd that
greeted me with bright smiles and congratulations.

“Kate, you were great!” Laura said as we
approached Jack and her.

“Bathroom,” I said discreetly in her
ear.
 
“I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Got it, lovecat.”

When we started down the long hallway that
led to the Grill Room, Maxine Witherhouse, of all people, stepped into our
paths.

“You were glorious, Kate,” Maxine said.
 
“So raw.
 
So powerful.”

And if you would just give me that massive
diamond choker you’re wearing, Maxine, we’d likely be halfway to our financial
goals tonight alone.

“Thank you,” I said as she gave me two air
kisses.
 
“I’m grateful that you
came.”

“Bill and I wouldn’t have missed it!
 
We were so pleased to be invited.”

“We were invited because Kate knows that we
have deep pockets, Maxine.”

“Oh, Bill—really!”

“No,” I said, turning to Bill, who was
looking hard at me.
 
“On one level,
I have to admit that he’s correct.
 
Both of you can assist us tonight.
 
But I also wanted you here for personal reasons.
 
We are friends, after all, aren’t we,
Bill?”

“That’s a curious question,” he said.
 
“Why wouldn’t we be?”

Because now I know
things about you, Bill, which I never knew before.
 
Were you so angry with Michael for
ending the takeover of StoneTech that you’d have him murdered?

I didn’t know.

“Exactly,” I said.
 
“I’d love to talk with each of you right
now, but after that speech, my team needs focus and direction.
 
Can we chat later?”

“We look forward to it,” Maxine said.
 
“And also to writing you a substantial
check!”

Well, there’s that, I suppose.
 
And I will take your money, Maxine,
because you clearly don’t need any more diamonds.

By the time we finally got through the crowd
and to the restrooms, naturally there was a line—though at least it was
short.
 
Ben said that he was going
to check in with Nick before he kissed me on the lips and stood off to the
side.

“Catherine, if you need me, I’ll be right
here,” he said.
 
“All you need to do
is say my name.”

“I will,” she said.
 
“But I’ve got Kate covered.
 
We’ll be fine.”

*
 
*
 
*

When it was my turn to use one of the five
stalls, I stepped inside the restroom, and gave Catherine a nod as she pressed
her back against the far wall.
 
I
then entered the free stall, closed the door behind me, and locked it just as
the toilet in the stall next to me was flushed.
 
I then heard the stall door open, and listened
as somebody else moved inside.

I used a piece of tissue paper to wipe down
the seat before I lifted my dress, dropped my underwear, and sat down to
relieve myself.
 
And when I did
that, for a moment, I actually felt a sense of calm in this little metal
cocoon.
 
Tonight had been more
challenging than I’d thought it would be.
 
It was strange—right now, I felt at once charged and exhausted.
 
But at least my speech had gone off
well.
 
Now, all I needed to do was
to make the rounds and let the donations flow in.
 
I wanted to make sixty million tonight,
and because of whom I’d invited, I was fairly certain I could achieve that.

When the piece of toilet paper drifted down
beside my right shoe, I watched it fall to the ground and had only a moment to
process what was written on it in bright red letters—YOU’RE NEXT,
BITCH!
 

Before I could even process it, there was a
sudden rush of movement that confused me.

I heard the door next to me smash open.

I heard Catherine cry out in pain and
surprise.

Startled, I pulled up my dress, unlocked the
stall door, and rushed through it.
 
What I saw horrified me—Catherine’s throat had been slashed, and
she was sliding down the wall with blood spurting from her neck in thick red
ribbons.
 
The three women who were
in the remaining stalls exited them to see what had taken place, and when they
did, chaos went into full bloom as they fled the restroom screaming.

“Catherine!” I said as I knelt down beside
her and used the palms of my hands to place pressure against her wound.
 

“Move aside,” Ben said as he rushed into the
room.
 
“Grab me some paper
towels—fast!
 
We can fight
this!
 
Call 911!
 
Now!”

As quickly as I could, I gave him a wad of
paper towels and then reached into my clutch, removed my cell, and called
911.
 
While I explained to the operator
what had happened and where we were, I watched in horror as Ben tried to save
Catherine, who was bleeding heavily.

“Stay with me, Catherine,” he said.
 
“Fight this!”

Her head lolled to the side.
 
Her skin was draining of color.

Nick ran into the room.

“Jesus,” he said.
 
“Catherine.
 
Fuck!”

“Kate has called 911.”

“Catherine,” Ben said.
 
“Are you with me?
 
Can you see me?
 
Look at me?
 
Oh, God.
 
Catherine, if you can hear me, can you
at least tell us what she looked like?”

But Catherine didn’t answer.

When her eyes dilated into unseeing black
globes, it was clear to all of us that she was dead.
 

It was then that the room started to spin.

And then the lights began to dim.

I sagged against the sink as the orchestra
came to an abrupt stop—and then I listened as the Four Seasons turned
into a circus of fear.
 

At that point, news of what those three
women had seen had spread far and wide, and now people were clambering to flee
the premises
en masse
to potentially save
themselves from a murderer who might still be on site.

“I did this,” I said as my vision began to
dim.
 
“This is my fault…”

Ben had warned me not to go through with
tonight, but I’d nevertheless insisted.
 
And now Catherine was dead.

It was me who had killed her.
 

When that realization struck me, I felt my
knees go weak and fainted to the floor.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

When I came to, I was in Ben’s arms.
 
Catherine’s blood was spattered across
his face and the collar of his shirt, and he was rushing me down the staircase
that led out of the restaurant and onto Fifty-Second Street.
 

With guns drawn, four of Nick’s men flanked
us as we left the building, hurried onto the street, and moved into the
limousine that was waiting there for us.

Two of the men got into the front
seat—one stepping behind the wheel.
 
The other two men joined Ben and me in the back seats, positioning themselves
so that they faced the rear window.
 
The moment all doors were closed and locked, and all of us were buckled
in, we raced east down Fifty-Second Street, and then quickly swung a left onto
Third.

“Are you OK?” Ben asked me.

“No.”

“I mean physically.”

“I’m barely holding it together.”
 
My eyes brimmed with tears when I said
that, and the moment he put his arm around me and held me close to him, it was
too much—I put my face in my hands and started to cry.
 
“That poor woman,” I sobbed.
 
“Her death is on me.”

“Kate, this wasn’t your fault,” he
said.
 
“You gave all of us a chance
to back out tonight, and it was our choice not to.
 
Nick and his team are professionals who
take risks every day.
 
That’s their
job, and believe me, they take their jobs very seriously because they know the
risks.
 
The men who are with us
right now in this car knew what they were getting themselves into tonight, just
as Catherine did, and yet here they still are—finishing the job in an
effort to get you home safely.”

“How could this have happened?” I asked him
through blurry eyes.
 
“She cut
Catherine’s throat.
 
Did she have
one of those porcelain knives you told me about?
 
She must have—how else could she
have gotten past security?
 
And how
did she even get inside?
 
Did she
bribe someone?
 
If so, who?”

Before Ben could answer, I saw the driver
glance up at the rearview mirror and say, “What is this asshole doing?”

I heard the aggressive roar of an engine
behind me and then, suddenly, the back of the limousine was filled with bright
light.

“Christ!” the driver said.
 
“Everyone hold on!”

He punched the accelerator, and the
limousine lurched forward as it picked up speed, but he was too late.
 
The first blow to the back of our car
was so strong, it sent us careening from the middle lane straight into the left
lane, where we nearly smashed into another car.
 
Our driver cut a hard right just in time
to miss it, but then the person behind us rammed into us again.

“What’s happening?” I screamed.

“Get your head down,” Ben said to me.
 
“Tuck it between your knees!
 
Stay there and don’t move!”

Terrified, I did as I was told.

“It’s her,” Ben said as he looked out the
back window.
 
“It’s got to be.
 
I think she’s in a Range Rover of some
sort—I can tell by the headlights.
 
We’ve got to lose her.”

“Easier said than done,” the driver
said.
 
“The light ahead of us is
turning yellow.”

“Bust through it,” Ben said.

“It’s going to be close!”

“She’s coming at us again—push
it!
 
She might be the one who gets
clipped!”

The driver pressed hard on his horn, and
while I couldn’t see what was happening, I braced myself for impact as I heard
an angry howling of horns and a screeching of tires.
 
In the next moment, the distinct sound
of a gun went off and the limousine’s back window suddenly exploded in a
shattering of glass.

“What the hell!” I said as a rush of air
flowed into the car.
 
“She’s
shooting
at us?”

I turned my head to my left and saw Ben
reach for the gun in his inside jacket pocket.
 
This time, I saw fresh blood peppering
his face.
 
He’d been cut from the
glass, which had covered my back and was tinkling all around me.
 
With a steely determination in his eyes,
he kept his head low behind the rear headrest and then turned to the two men in
front of him.
 
“We shoot,” he
said.
 
“All of us.
 
Aim at her windshield, but don’t empty
your magazines.
 
Just two shots
each.
 
And forget about trying to
hit one of her tires.
 
Focus on the
windshield.”

“She’s coming at us again,” the driver
said.
 
“Hurry!”

I clenched my teeth as the two men sitting
in front of me unfastened their safety belts, removed their guns from the
holsters concealed beneath their black dinner jackets, and then joined Ben as
they opened fire just as she smashed into us again.
 
I heard a series of six shots go off
almost at once as our limousine jerked to the left and scraped against what
sounded to me like another car.

“Bulletproof glass,” Ben said.
 
“We didn’t even touch her.
 
We’ve got nothing but our wits at this
point, boys.
 
Driver, what’s your
name?”

“Andrew.”

“Listen to me, Andrew—the only way
we’re going to win this is by outsmarting her.”

“I’ve got a string of green lights ahead of
me, but the traffic is moving too slow and our car is too fucking long to just
snake in and out traffic with ease.”

“You’ve already hit one car, and you’re about
to hit more—consider it collateral damage, but try to keep it minimal.”

“What do you want me to do, Ben—she’s
rushing us again.”

“When I give you the word, I want you to
slam on your brakes.”

“You want me to what?”

“Slam on your brakes.
 
She won’t be expecting it.
 
It will throw her off.”

“If I do that and she hits us, I’m not sure
how much more damage our car can take.
 
All she’s done at this point is ram against us while we’ve been moving
forward.
 
But if I brake hard and
she smashes into us, the airbags will deploy and we could be left in the middle
of the street with a car that’s too ruined to move.”

“There’s a chance that she might dodge us if
you brake.”

“And she might not.”

“We need to take the risk.
 
Because if she does hit us, we’re taking
this outside.”

“I hope you’re right,” he said.
 
“Because she’s about to hit us right
now.”

“Then hit the brakes and call this bitch
out.”

When Andrew braked hard, I hunkered down and
waited for the inevitable collision—which didn’t come.

“She jerked into the left lane,” Andrew
said.

“Then she’s not stupid,” Ben said.
 
“She backed off.
 
And do you want to know why?
 
It’s because she knows that at some
point, her luck is going to run out.
 
She knows that eventually we’re going to come upon a cop, and when that
happens?
 
She’s screwed.
 
Where are we?”

“We just passed Sixty-First Street.”

“Then we’re moving into residential,” Ben
said.
 
“Which isn’t good for
us.
 
Soon, there will be fewer cops
around.
 
She’ll know that.”

I felt our car whip to the right, and as it did,
my hair was lifted off my neck by the wind flowing through the back window.

“She’s making another move, Ben—what
do you want me to do?”

“There are five of us against her.
 
If you stop the car and end
this—and I mean really end it for each of our vehicles—then we need
to depart the car quickly, throw open our doors, stand down behind them with
our guns drawn, and take position.
 
Are we agreed on that?”

“What choice do we have?” one of the men
said.

“I’m on board,” another man said.

“Me too,” a voice sitting across from me
said.

“This is bullshit,” another man said.
 
“We can take her.”

“Andrew?”

“It’s a go,” he said.
 
“So all of you need to get ready,
because she’s about to hit us again—and when she does, shit is going to
get real.”

*
 
*
 
*

With Ben’s hand pressed hard against my back
to keep me down, he leaned forward before Andrew slammed on the brakes.
 
“I love you, Kate,” he said.
 
“Whatever comes of this, know that I
love you and that I’ve always loved you.
 
And that I’ve fallen back in love with you.
 
You’ve always been the love of my
life.
 
You need to know that.”

Before I could tell him that I’d also fallen
back in love with him, Andrew shouted out “Hold on!” before he smashed so hard
on the brakes that the car ‘W’ was driving rammed into us, and the airbags
deployed.
 
My face was struck by one
of them, as was Andrew’s and the man sitting next to him.

Almost instantly, I smelled the unmistakable
scent of smoke as the men around me unbuckled themselves and hurled open their
doors.
 

But where was the smoke coming from?
 

With my face stinging from when the airbag struck
me, and my head hunkered low between my legs, I couldn’t tell.
 
Was it just smoke from the
brakes—or was one of the cars on fire?
 
Before he left me, I reached for Ben’s
hand and gave it a meaningful squeeze as he and the others exited the car, and
used their doors to shield themselves.

Somewhere in the distance, I heard the faint
wail of a police siren, which was coming straight toward us.
 
But it seemed far away, so I doubted in
these next few critical moments whether anyone could help us now.
 

I looked over at Ben, who was hunched down
low in front of the side door at my left.
 
I’d never seen such bravery.
 
Once again, I was stunned that the man I used to know had become the
hero he was today.

“It’s your call!” he shouted out toward her
car.
 
“The police are
coming—you can hear them!
 
You
might kill one of us—but you won’t kill all of us.
 
Either we’ll take you out, or the police
will!
 
So choose, bitch!
 
Because either way, one of us is about
to kill your ass!”

“Our car is on fire,” Andrew said.
 
“At some point, it’s going to blow.
 
She knows that, Ben.
 
She’s revving her engine because of
that.
 
She knows that if she stalls
just long enough, that it could explode and finish off all of us.”

“Take aim at her tires,” Ben said.
 
“We’ve got a lock on them now.”

“She could charge at us,” one of the men
said.

“She already plans to.
 
So brace yourselves.
 
Shoot!”

When they started shooting, I heard a loud
pop and then was catapulted forward as she rammed her car into ours, which
changed everything.
 
In horror, I
saw that Ben had been knocked onto his back.
 
I looked to my right, and saw that one
of Nick’s men also had rolled onto his side and was fighting to get back into
position.
 
There was more gunfire.
 
The sound of the police car grew closer,
and perhaps because of that alone, I heard a loud thumping noise as ‘W’ pulled
away from us and shot forward with a flattened tire, blowing off the two doors
to my right just a moment after Nick’s men had leaped inside to safety.

“She’s gone,” I heard Ben say.
 
“And the fire is growing.
 
Kate, give me your hand—hurry
before it blows!”

When I gave it to him, he pulled me out of
the car, swept me into his arms, and carried me to the sidewalk just moments
before a flame erupted from the exhaust pipe and curled beneath the car as if
it were a venomous snake poised to strike.
 

When he put me down, I looked over my
shoulder, saw that traffic on Third had come to a standstill, and then started
to run with Ben from the car just as a massive explosion shook the ground
beneath us.