A Murderous Game (38 page)

"What would have worked
out?"

"Your arrest
for Dick's murder.
I expected the police to do it a couple of weeks ago,
but they're taking too long."

"You're not making sense. I
didn't kill Dick. And what does any of that have to do with you being
here?"

"I'm making perfect sense. You
just don't get it."

No, she didn't get it, and whatever
it
was didn't feel comfortable. She was also afraid if she didn't get
out fast,
it
was going to get a whole lot worse.

"Give me a hint," she
said, wondering what the chances were she could overpower him. Not likely. Too
bad she wasn't telepathic. Then she could send someone a mental message to send
in the troops.

"Evidence, Abigail.
Evidence."

Evidence
?
"That's the hint? I'm sorry, I still don't understand."

He gave her a long-suffering sigh.
"You're the leading suspect. Everyone believes you did it. Once Simms has
the evidence proving you killed Dick, they'll arrest you, and the case will be
closed."

"I didn't kill him! They can't
prove I did because I didn't do it. There is no evidence."

His grin became lethal as he
dangled the gun by two fingers. "There is now," he said chillingly.

Abby slowly raised her eyes to the
gun and stared at it. It couldn't be the murder weapon. If it was, how did
Billings get it? The only way he could have—

Something close to terror seized
her. She didn't want to accept her mind's suggestion. She jerked her gaze back
to his.

"You…you?"
She shook her head.
"You k-k-killed Dick!?"
Her tongue tripped over the words, the notion too horrible to believe.

"
Ahhh
, the light dawns."

Abby went cold inside. He'd killed
Dick.
Murdered
him! She felt
lightheaded, wavered on her feet. She thought for a moment she might be sick
and covered her mouth with her hand. Swallowing, she looked at him again.
Struggling beyond the shock, she realized her situation was much more dangerous
than she could have imagined. She wrapped her arms under her suit jacket and
around her waist. She needed to buy time until she could think of a way out.

"Why?" she asked, hoping
he'd take some kind of morbid pride in what he'd done, or in the least have an
urge to unburden his soul. She didn't care which. She just wanted to distract
him long enough to come up with a plan. "You were friends."

He shrugged. "It was an
accident," he said and started to tell her what happened.

Abby mentally calculated the
distance to the kitchen. If she caught him off guard, was she fast enough to
make it to the backdoor and get out before he caught her? She shot him a
glance. He seemed absorbed in the telling. Any sudden movement on her part
would alert him, though, and he might actually shoot her. Making a dash for it
was too risky. There had to be another way.

"I told him I'd give him the
developer's information if he agreed to cut me in. We had a deal.
Sixty-forty.
I thought it was more than fair. Dick never
would have known if it hadn't been for me, and the developer would have
eventually discovered you held the deed to the property."

Billings seemed to get more agitated.
"If he hadn't gotten greedy, he'd still be alive, and we'd both be rich. I
wasn't going to let him double-cross me, though. I did my part."

"So you killed him?"

"Like I said, it was an
accident. I told him if he didn't give me the cut we agreed on, I'd expose his
role in the investigation into Faraday's company."

"How did you expect to get the
money if you killed him?" she asked to keep him talking.

"He was the one who pulled the
gun. He went ballistic, threatening me, saying I wouldn't be talking to anyone.
I tried to get the gun away from him before he could use it. It went off during
the struggle."

Abby shook her head. "Why
didn't you just tell the police it was an accident?"

"Like they would have believed
it?"

"They might have; they still
could," she said, hoping to convince him.

"Not now, it's too late. And
I'm not taking the chance I could get hung with a murder rap." 

She could see by his expression he
wouldn't listen to reason. Her situation was no better than before, and she was
running out of time.  

"Of course, you realize I
won't be able to let you live now that you know what happened," Billings said.

She'd already figured that out on
her own. She wouldn't just sit down and die easily, though. If it came to it,
she'd fight him tooth and nail. Make sure she gave him a few souvenirs to
remember her by.

"Just what do you
intend?" she asked, not that she really wanted the details, but she needed
to stall for more time.

"You're going to help me
convince Simms of your guilt."

"I don't think I'm interested
in helping you."

"But you will. You're going to
write a nice note explaining how you murdered your cheating husband. Then
you're going to explain how the guilt drove you to take your own life."

"You're crazy." Abby
hugged herself tighter, wrapping her arms around her waist, her left hand
nervously fingering the cell phone clipped to the side waistband of her skirt.
Her pulse jumped.
Her cell phone
.
Was there a
way she could use it to get help? She'd heard about a kidnap victim who'd used
their cell to send a distress signal. Her heart started to race. God, was it
possible she could do the same without alerting Billings?

"You'll do it, though," Billings said. "You
don't have a choice. I'm the one with the gun, remember."

Play along, she told herself. Let him
think you're cooperating. Buy more time. She had a plan. She may not be
telepathic, but perhaps telecom would be just as good. She knew it was a long
shot, but at the moment it was all she had. She had to try.

"How can I forget when you
keep waving it in front of me?" She ran her index finger over the face of
her phone until she found the top key for the number three and pressed the
button.

"You always did have a smart
mouth, Abby. I used to imagine you pleasuring me with it. Did you know
that?" He ran the gun down the front of her blouse and circled her breast
with it. His eyes flared

Bile rose to her throat. Abby
swallowed.

"Oh yes, I've imagined doing a
lot of things to you, sweet little Abigail."

She was trapped with a
sicko
who would kill her if she couldn't get away.
Hopefully, he wasn't going to try and rape her first.

"Would you scream for me the
way you do for Faraday?" He laughed when she flinched. "Too bad we
won't have time to find out."

Had enough time passed for the call
to go through? Maybe it hadn't been too smart to send her call to the same man
she'd driven from her life a week ago. If he checked his caller ID, he might
not even answer. She had to believe he still cared enough not to ignore the
call. He had to. She'd just put her life in his hands.

"You'll never get away with
this, Billings,"
she said over-loudly. "It'll only be a matter of time before you get
caught."

"I won't get caught. Now
you're going to get some paper, and we'll write that note." He trained the
gun on her chest. "And don't try anything cute."

"I've got paper in my
briefcase." She inched slowly closer to the club chair where she'd dropped
it earlier. She stooped down on one knee in front of the chair.

"I don't think Simms will
believe I killed myself," she said clearly as she reached into her
briefcase. "You already said he was getting too suspicious. He'll figure
out you killed me and Dick both."

"Shut up and get the damn
paper," he said with a growl from right behind her.

Abby pulled it from the case, her
fingers shaking. She moved as slowly as she dared, prolonging every second. She
planned on dragging this out as long as possible. The Declaration of
Independence was written in less time than she intended to take with this damn
note. She wasn't ready to die.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO

G
age shifted the phone to
his other ear and held it in place with his shoulder. "There's no way I
can get there before the end of the month to do an interview, Brett," he
said as he paged through the proposal Grace was waiting to get a final approval
on before she left for the evening.

The intercom buzzed and he put
Brett on hold.

"Detective Simms is on line
two," Grace said.

"Tell him I'm just wrapping up
another call. If he wants to wait, I'll be with him in a minute." He
switched to the other line. "I'm back. Listen, if she's that good just go
ahead and make her an offer. We need to fill Henderson's old position, and I trust your
judgment."

"She's that good and then
some," Brett assured him.

"Fine, then we
don't
want to risk losing her, do we?" Gage wrapped up
the call and glanced at the blinking light on his desk phone. What did the good
detective want now? Had there been a break in the case? Christ he hoped so. The
longer it dragged out the wider he feared the chasm between him and Abby would
grow.

He closed his eyes a moment. It all
came back to Abby. He'd reached for the phone a hundred times over the last
week and driven past her house almost every night fighting the battle between
honoring her request to leave her alone or giving in to his desire to be with
her. In the end he'd given her the space she wanted. He'd been so sure she
would have called by now. But there had been no calls. Now he wasn't sure of
anything where she was concerned. And with the doubt, his optimism had begun to
fade with each passing day.

He reached up and rubbed the back
of his neck then took the detective's call. "This is Faraday. What can I
do for you, Simms?"

"I'm trying to get in touch
with Abby Carpenter. Her boss said she already left the office, but she's not
answering her home line. I thought she might be with you or if not, you could
tell me how to reach her."

Gage closed his eyes. "She's
not with me." He glanced at his watch. "She usually meets Rachael
Gooding for dinner on Tuesdays."

"Do you have her cell
number?"

"Yes."

"What is it?" The urgency
in Simms's voice set off an alarm in Gage's head.

"Tell me what's so important
you can't wait for her to return your call, and I'll consider giving it to
you." Gage waited through several seconds of silence before Simms spoke
again.

"I don't have anything
concrete to go on, but there's a chance she may be in danger. I thought we
should—"

Gage shot out of his desk chair.
"What danger?" he demanded as the icy fingers of fear clawed his gut.

"I don't know yet. It may be
nothing more than—"

"Hold on." Gage pulled
the cell out of his pocket when he recognized the ring tone he'd programmed
into the phone to identify Abby's calls.
Fur Elise.
S
he'd told him it was her
favorite Beethoven concerto. He glanced at the ID and confirmed the incoming
call was from her. "She's calling on my cell right now," he told
Simms and flipped the phone open to connect the call.

"Abby?" All he heard was
dead air. "Abby, it's Gage, are you there?" He furrowed his brows.
There didn't seem to be anyone on the line.

He was about to disconnect and call
back when he picked up voices in the background. He listened closer and
recognized the tone of Abby's voice but wasn't able to make the words out
clearly. She probably still had his number programmed into her phone and had
accidentally hit the speed dial button. He'd done that a couple of times
himself.

He cocked his head. Was that a
man's voice he'd just heard?

You'll never get away with this Billings,
he heard
Abby say quite distinctly; and then something about
time to get caught
. If she wasn't at the office, where was she that
she would be talking to Harold Billings?

Billings,
at least he assumed it was Billings,
responded, but Gage couldn't quite get it. It sounded like he said something about
paper and being cute.

I don't think Simms will believe
I killed myself.
Gage's heart thudded to a stop.
He'll figure out you
killed me and Dick both.

"She's with Harold Billings.
He's threatening to kill her." Gage informed Simms in a rush.
"Somehow she got a call out to me without tipping him off, and I can hear
parts of their conversation."

"Do you know where they are
they?"

"I can't tell. They could be
at her place, or he could have kidnapped her and taken her anywhere."

"I'll send units to both of
their houses. Do you still have an open line?"

"Yes."

"See if you can pick up
anything that could clue us in to their location."

"Hang on; I've got an
idea." Gage put Simms on hold. He pressed for another line and dialed
Abby's townhouse. As he listened on the cell, he heard a phone ring in the
background. When Abby's machine came on, Gage started recording a message.

"It's Gage." He could
hear his own voice on the other end. It was faint but definitely his. He knew
where they were.

"Sorry I couldn't get back to
you sooner. Just wanted to let you know I got your message." He wanted her
to know she'd gotten through, and he understood she needed help but needed to
be careful not to tip Billings
off. "I know you're concerned about the timeline," he said, making it
sound like business. "I've already got people on it. Trust me, everything
will be fine. We'll talk soon."

He switched back to Simms.
"They're at Abby's townhouse. I just called there and heard myself leaving
a message on her machine through the cell."