Passion (52 page)

This
was scary as hell.

T
hey were back in familiar territory: a shabby motel in a shabby part of town. But the situation had changed this time, John
thought, standing at the window, watching the parking lot through a narrow slit in the drapes. Instead of heading toward a
confrontation with Simon Tremont, they were running away. The bastard had almost gotten them tonight, had come within minutes
of succeeding. If Teryl hadn’t been on the phone, if she hadn’t heard the chimes, he
would
have succeeded.

John owed his and Teryl’s lives to D.J. Howell, he acknowledged with a wry shake of his head. Sweet damnation.

They had left the Grayson estate through a back gate Teryl had directed him to and had spent the next half hour driving around
Richmond, making certain they weren’t being followed. Finally they had ditched the Blazer in the parking lot of a nightclub,
caught a cab, and come here. He had half expected the clerk to balk at renting them a room—they had both been soaking wet
and reeked of gasoline from the jar they’d knocked over, they’d had no luggage, Teryl had no shoes, and they must have looked
pretty damned desperate—but the guy hadn’t given them a second look. A customer was a customer; as long as they had the means
to pay—thank God he hadn’t yet taken his wallet or his car keys from his
pockets when Teryl had come racing up the stairs—the clerk couldn’t have cared less how they looked.

As soon as they had gotten to the room, Teryl had made two calls. She had awakened her parents, telling them about the explosions,
downplaying them, making it sound as if it had been a freak accident and not an attempt to kill them. She had called D.J.,
too, leaving a message on her machine.

Now she was lying in the double bed that stood in the center of the room, stripped naked and scrubbed clean. She hadn’t realized
she was barefooted until the odor of gasoline had pervaded the Blazer. At first she had found it amusing that she had run
through gasoline and rain puddles, across rough rock and paving stone, without noticing that she was shoeless, but then amusement
had turned to laughter, which had come too uncomfortably close to tears before she had regained control. Once her phone calls
were completed, she’d retreated to the bathroom, where she had showered away the odor of gasoline. Finally, after hanging
her clothes to dry, she had crawled between the sheets. She was quiet, but he didn’t think she was asleep.

As if prompted by his thought, she broke her silence. “You haven’t apologized.”

He glanced at her. The lights were off, but enough illumination came through the curtains to allow him to identify the shadow
on the bed that was her. “For what?”

“Getting my house blown up. For almost getting us killed.”

Turning so that his back was to the wall beside the window, he faced her even though he couldn’t really see her. “I
am
sorry. Don’t you know that? Or do you need to hear the words?”

“I know it.”

“Then why did you bring it up?”

She sat up, drawing the covers with her. “It’s just a nice change. In the beginning, you apologized for everything. You were
sorry you kidnapped me, sorry you bruised my wrists, sorry before you tied me to the bed, sorry after you did it. You’ve been
that way all your life, haven’t you? You’ve always felt guilty, always accepted responsibility.
Everything that ever went wrong was always your fault.” She broke off, and he saw a faint shrug of movement. “It’s nice to
know that you don’t feel any guiltier or any more at fault for what happened tonight than I do.”

She was right, he reflected. Of course, if he hadn’t dragged her into this mess, she wouldn’t have become one of Simon’s targets;
her house would still be standing, and she would be safe. He regretted that he’d gotten her involved and that he hadn’t been
prepared for Simon to strike again, but the actual attack wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t take all the blame for what Simon
had done, the way he had always taken all the blame for his parents’ actions. This time he would have to be satisfied with
just a little of it.

“We need to go to the police,” she said quietly.

“I called them while you were in the bathroom. I spoke to a detective named Marcus.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That we got out okay. That no one else was in the house.” He paused. “I told him I didn’t know what caused the blast. He
said they’ll find out, but it’ll take some time. He wants us to come in tomorrow—” He thought about how late it was and amended
that. “Later this morning and give a statement.”

“Why did you lie to him? Why didn’t you tell him about the bombs?”

“Remember when I told you that the fire at my house was caused by bombs?” His chuckle was dry and unamused. “You should have
seen your face. You thought I was crazy. If I tell some cop over the phone that the world-famous author, Simon Tremont, blew
up your house in an effort to kill us,
he’s
going to think I’m crazy. If I tell him that Tremont’s trying to kill us because he’s an impostor and
I’m
the real Tremont, he’s likely to get me locked up for observation instead of going after Tremont.” He sighed wearily. “I’ll
tell him the truth when we go in, face-to-face. I’ll ask him to call Sheriff Cassidy, and I’ll show him the affidavit…” His
voice trailed off. The papers from the Denver bank had been delivered early in the afternoon. He had shown them to Teryl the
moment she’d walked in the door, had given them to her
to read, and then had returned them to their envelope on the kitchen counter. If they hadn’t disintegrated in the blast, they
had turned to ash. “I’ll ask him to call Zarelli at the bank.”

Silence settled over the room, and John resumed his stance at the window, his gaze on the parking lot and the street beyond
but his thoughts on a pile of smoldering rubble and ash a half dozen miles away. From the moment his house had been destroyed
in Colorado, he had expected a second attempt on his life, but Simon had to find him first, and that, he had figured, wouldn’t
be an easy task. But he’d been wrong. Simon had found him, all right, apparently with little difficulty. How? How had he tracked
John to Teryl’s house? Only three people besides Teryl herself knew that he was staying with her. Her mother, of course, was
above suspicion, which left D.J. and Rebecca.

For his own satisfaction, he would like to lay the blame on D.J., but the agent seemed a likelier suspect. Rebecca was troubled
by the discrepancies, especially by the fact that John knew her private joke, but she didn’t believe his story. She didn’t
want to. It was entirely possible that she had called Simon and warned him, that in delivering her warning, she had mentioned
that the man challenging him was temporarily living with Teryl. She wouldn’t have realized that she was putting their lives
in danger, wouldn’t have considered for a moment that Simon might try to kill them. She would have simply believed that she
was doing what every good agent was supposed to do: looking out for her client.

Her voice soft in the darkness, Teryl spoke again. “Aren’t you tired?”

“Honey, I may never sleep again.” He was still wired, still running scared.

“The police will pick him up for questioning, won’t they? They’ll find some proof against him. He must have made some mistakes,
left some trail. After all, he’s a writer by profession, not a criminal. The pros can’t plan perfect crimes; surely Simon
can’t, either.”

“Maybe he can. Crooks don’t tend to be the brightest guys in the world, while writers have to be reasonably intelligent. More
importantly, a good writer has to be able to weave together
complex plots with no loose threads. He has to understand motivation. He has to know human nature. Plotting a good book bears
a striking similarity to planning the perfect crime.”

“But Simon’s ‘perfect crime’ failed in Colorado. It failed here. Maybe he’s not so good a writer.”

He stared at her shadow. “You told me in New Orleans that his
Resurrection
was the most impressive work you’ve ever read.”

“I’m not talking about the actual writing. I mean the plotting. You outlined
Resurrection
for him. The outline was so detailed that all he had to do was follow along. He didn’t have to deal with the plot. He didn’t
have to make things fit together. He didn’t have to make sense of anything but the writing. I don’t have any talent at either
one, but I’ve read a ton of published books and two tons of unpublished ones, and I think the writing would be the easier
of the two tasks. Maybe Simon’s a better writer than he is a plotter, and that’s why you and I are still alive. Maybe that
will help the police to catch him.”

With a yawn, she slid down into the bed again, snuggling under the covers, and, after a moment, he turned back to the window.
He was watching traffic on the street out front when she spoke again, her voice soft and forlorn. “Everything I own is gone.”

“I know. I lost everything, too.” He sighed wearily. “I don’t mind the clothes or the furniture or the videos. I don’t care
much about the office stuff, either, but I’d give five years off Simon’s life to have the diskette and the hard copy of my
own
Resurrection,
and I’d give ten years off my life to get back the pictures of Tom and Janie that were in the office. They were originals.
Even Janie doesn’t have copies.”

“She never did call me, you know,” Teryl said with another yawn. “I left a message on her machine Sunday asking her to please
call me about you, and she never did.”

This time he left the window and went to sit beside her on the bed. She automatically snuggled close to him. “You called my
sister?”

“Hmm.”

“How did you get her number?”

“Called information for Verona, Florida. Got all the J. Smiths.” Another wide yawn. “There were seven, and she was number
six. ‘Hi, this is Janie. I can’t take your call…’ I knew it was her because at the end she said,
‘Adios, amigo,’
and you said she teaches Spanish. But she never called.”

That was definitely Janie’s message; on the rare occasions he had traveled into Denver, he’d always called her, and he had
talked to the machine more times than he’d cared to. Teryl had no talent for writing or plotting, she’d said, but she hadn’t
done badly on this little bit of detective work. “That’s because she’s out of the country. Every summer she and some friends
of hers who teach in other towns take some of their kids to Mexico for a month. The kids get school credit and some new experiences,
and the teachers, according to Janie, get a great vacation. This summer they left the day my house burned down, and they won’t
be back until sometime in July.”

“So she’s safe.” Her voice was soft and fading quickly. In another minute or two, she would be sound asleep.

“Safe from what?” John shook her a little. He was more than willing to let her have all the rest she needed, but first
he
needed an answer to his question.

“Safe from Simon. He has to kill you because of who you are, and he has to kill me because I
know
who you are. If he knows about Janie, he’ll need to kill her, too, because she surely won’t sit quietly and let him claim
her murdered brother’s life.”

A chill crept over John. A fine writer—and brother—he was. He’d been too single-minded, concerned only with reclaiming his
rights to Simon Tremont and the first twelve books. He hadn’t considered any of those loose threads—beyond himself—that he’d
been talking about earlier. Teryl was right.
She
was one because she had spent so much time with him, because she had come to believe him, because she had spoken to Rebecca
on his behalf. Janie was another, because she knew the truth; while she might not be able to prove it, she could stir up some
suspicions. She could certainly cause Simon some problems.

They were all three major liabilities to a man who undoubtedly was insane. They were all three in danger.

Was Simon even aware that Janie existed? He would like to believe the answer was no. Following John’s wishes, she had never
told anyone about her relationship to the author, and
he
had certainly never discussed his sister with anyone other than Teryl. There had never been any mention of her anywhere in
connection with his career.

But there had been evidence of her all over his house—photographs and letters, her name, address, and phone number in his
Rolodex—and Tremont had been there. Some of the framed photos had been yellowed newspaper pictures from her track days; one
had even included him, along with a caption to the effect of Janie Smith being congratulated by brother John upon winning
some race or another. He’d been hugging her, his back to the camera, so proud of her that day. It was the same way
she
had felt, she’d told him, years later when she’d held her autographed copy of his very first book in her hands.

He knew Tremont had been inside his house; the third bomb had been placed somewhere inside his bedroom. Had Tremont simply
broken in, chosen the location for the bomb, set it, then left again, or had he taken the time to look around? Had he taken
the time to notice the photographs on the walls? John had to assume he had. He couldn’t imagine going to the trouble Tremont
had gone through to track him down, traveling to Colorado, renting a car, and driving the narrow mountain roads to his house;
he couldn’t comprehend Tremont being that close to the man he was so obsessed with and not snooping through his belongings.
Not sitting at his desk, going through his papers, fondling his awards—hell, maybe even
taking
his papers and his awards. Not finding out everything he possibly could about John before putting into effect his plan to
destroy him.