Point of Attraction (33 page)

Just as she looked over at him, their
eyes met and he quickly turned away, breaking the tie.

“Are you sure? How about the plates?”
His voice was very low, but she was able to make out the words.
“Did you check them out.” There was a pause. “There’s no doubt? Oh,
man. Where?” Another pause. “Damn it!” His wide shoulders dropped
with a deep sigh. “Let me know if you find... you know.”

He flipped shut the lid, took a moment
before he came back and sat down. He lips pursed, but those jaw
muscles twitched, and Georgie felt sick.

“Please,” her voice cracked. “Not one
of the kids.”

He shook his head.

“Cassie and April?”

He took hold of her hands and held on
tight. “A Harley was smashed on the Steel Bridge.”

“No!” She pulled, but he refused to
release her.

“It didn’t go completely over. The
front wheel jammed into the railings. A witness claims a big dark
car sped along side and just rammed into it. The driver was thrown
into the river as the front wheel caught the railing.”
“There are thousands of Harleys,” she argued, finally jerking free.
Her body shook, screams were choking her to get out.

“The plates were registered to Cantell
Electronics.”

There was a sharp pain at her lips and
teeth as her hand hit her mouth to stifle the scream. “But...” she
tried to force the words out between trembling fingers, “Cantell
must have other...”

“It was registered to Cantell, but its
number was issued to Nicholas Underwood.”

She muffled her cries, her eyes pinched
shut, but when Mason said, “They found a helmet in the river,” she
ran from the kitchen to the place behind the couch where Nick
always tossed his jacket. Staring at the crushed carpet nap, she
dropped to the floor, hugged her knees, and buried her
face.

Chapter twenty-seven

There was no sense of time until
Georgie felt a presence beside her, drawing her toward comforting
warmth, a circle of strength and protection.

“He always leaves his jacket here,” she
said, each word taking a drop of blood from her heart. “Just tosses
it down. It would just... clunk it was so heavy.”

The vision of its weight taking an
injured, perhaps unconscious, Nick straight to the bottom of the
river wounded her through the scars of all her losses, leaving a
cavern of loneliness to echo her cries. The arms tightened their
circle, rocking her gently.

“I need to see where it happened,” she
heard herself say, yet the voice was an alien sound, small and
childlike, not her own.

“George.”

“Please. I need to... to...”

“Okay,” Mason said, kissing the top of
her head and a quick reassuring hug. “I’ll call Roberts and talk to
Blake outside. Come on.”

His arms slipped beneath hers and
against her tired limp body’s complaint Georgie let herself be
lifted from the floor. They slowly made their way through the
kitchen, strength returning to her legs, arms, and to that which
makes us all go on no matter what. He took her coat from the peg
and she began to slip it on as he went out the door.

“Blake,” he called out, as her phone
rang.

There was an odd
zztt zztt
and a muffled
grunt out in the garage just as the second ring pealed. Georgie
tossed her coat over the chair and picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Georgie...” Heavy static broke up the
voice. “G...Girl...” Again, the static cut up the already raspy
voice.

Georgie gasped, and fought the cruelty
of deluding herself, yet... “Nick?” she whispered, and pleaded with
God to let it be him, to let her hear Nick laugh at the huge
mistake.

“The print...”

“What?”

“The finger... p...
print...”

The phone was wrenched from her hand.
With a half scream, half gasp, Georgie jerked back, stood there
gaping, hand empty.

It was Tonie.

“What are you doing?” Georgie asked,
and half-reached for the phone, but something made her take a step
back instead.

Tonie was dressed in uniform, face
bland, eyes pale. Without speaking, Tonie held the phone to her ear
a moment then very gingerly placed it back on its
cradle.

The
not-quite-right
of this scene hit
Georgie. It wasn’t a policemen’s uniform, but the dark gray Instant
Reply Security outfit. A cold blast of air struck her and Georgie
looked to the still open kitchen door. Where was Mason? Then she
remembered the zztt, zztt, the grunt, and noticed the weapon at
Tonie’s waist. Had it been the blasts of a silencer on a throw-away
gun? Was there such a thing?

“
Mason!” Georgie screamed,
and Tonie reached out to stop her, fingers spread in a plea for her
to calm down. The hands were unnaturally pale and instantly Georgie
realized why. Tonie was wearing plastic gloves.

“It’s you?” Georgie asked, stunned by
the madness of it. “You’re the one doing all this?”

“It was never supposed to go this far,”
she said, each word coming out slow as though it pained her to say
them.

“What?”

“No one was supposed to get
hurt.”

“What are you talking about?” Georgie
demanded.

“Shut up!” Tonie ran gloved her hands
over her hair. “I have to think,” she mumbled, must have felt the
tug of the plastic grip because she stared at her hands, her face
ashen, puzzled.

“Why? What did I ever do to you?”
Georgie wanted to know. “What...”

“Shut up! Just... just shut the fuck
up!” The gloved hands became fists, the knuckles straining against
the plastic.

Like drapes being jerked opened,
Georgie remembered the lure Tonie had tried, and she charged at
Tonie. “You were going to hurt Paula! You b...”

The sting to the side of her face, the
exploding lights behind her eyes, and the edge of the kitchen table
jamming into her side, happened before Georgie realized Tonie had
struck her in a quick back swing. The food and platter lay strewn
around her as Georgie looked up from the floor, trying to catch her
breath and deal with the erupting pain.

Tonie held out her hands for Georgie to
calm down and hear out her plea. “I would never have hurt her, I
swear.”

Georgie dragged in air as she watched
Tonie glance about. The woman seemed to be looking at nothing, yet
searching... empty eyes finding nothing. Each breath hurt, but
Georgie had to get her wind back quick while Tonie was
distracted.

“It was never suppose to turn out like
this,” Tonie argued. “It was just supposed to be a simple theft...
to scare you. That’s all.”

“Scare me? Why? For what?”
Georgie asked, keeping her eyes on Tonie yet trying to concentrate
on her peripheral image of the open door. There was no movement, no
sound.
Mason, where are you? Please, God,
let him be alive
.

She began to struggle her way up from
the floor to chair, to table, each level painful. A throbbing rib
made her catch her breath.

“It’s all about you, Georgie.” Tonie
half laughed, and looked at her as if she should somehow know this
joke’s punch line. “All about you.”

Clenching her teeth to bear the pain,
Georgie leaned on the open frame to the hallway. “What did I do to
you?”

“Didn’t you hear me?” There was a
shrill in Tonie’s voice, and she reined herself in with a swallow.
“He wanted to be your hero with his little rose,” she added with
over-done patience, “your protector, gallant knight coming in to
the rescue; be there to save you.”

My protector?
No
! The denial went off in Georgie’s
head.
It couldn’t be Mason.
No
. The taste of bile nearly made her
retch. Not Mason.

“He would find Raggs for you,” Tonie
was saying, offering her upturned hands in a presentation motion.
“And that would do it. You’d fall into his arms.”

Georgie shook her head, but no denial
would come to her lips.

Tonie’s ugly plastic-pale hands curled
into fists again as she pulled them toward herself, mouth
tightening, working to hold back an eruption. “Then you had to go
and bring in the police, and the little weasel backed down. God, he
shook like a frightened rabbit. How pathetic.” Her lips pressed
then curled back in disdain. “He was supposed to be the one to pull
you clear of the car.” She snorted a laugh. “But he wasn’t quick
enough, and once again, yet another hero in your life did it
instead. You didn’t even notice the little weasel, and he backed
away into the shadows. Such a...”

“Weasel?” Georgie murmured, then... oh
my God, she thought. It had to be. “Jeffrey? Jeffrey had you scare
me? But why?”

Tonie bent at the waist, arms out at
her sides then brought them forward to indicate Georgie. “All for
the love of Georgina Gainsworth. He even had me come in for a
haircut so I’d know where Raggs was. But the moment you brought in
the cops, he turned tail; wanted out, and insisted I return Raggs
immediately.”

“You did that to Raggs!” Georgie lunged
for the glass napkin holder on the table and threw it at Tonie.
When Tonie ducked, it smashed into the wall, the shattered
fragments clanging to the countertop and floor. Georgie tried
dashing passed her, but Tonie easily caught her and swung her back.
The refrigerator handle jabbed into Georgie’s back as she was
slammed into it.

“He was so scared, he wanted me to
throw her in the dumpster,” Tonie explained, “I wouldn’t do it.
Unlike him, I knew what she meant to you. I kept her clean,
protected. I did that for you. You know that, don’t you? Then he
wanted to tell everybody he suspected it was me. Who would believe
me, right? My word against Mr. Upright. I couldn’t let him do that.
Just the fact I helped him would mean the end of my badge. I was
not about to lose my badge. I worked too fucking hard for it,
putting up with their bureaucratic bullshit, their tender male
egos.”

All Georgie could do was stare,
watching a surreal play, Tonie’s soliloquy with an invisible
person.

Tonie shook her head with a
disbelieving smile. “I had to straighten out the mess, make it look
as though some crazy ass did it all, and it would have worked too,
but once again, he panicked. So I asked him to meet me so I could
calm him down, make him see it could still work.”

“Upper State Park,” Georgie
murmured.

Tonie nodded. “The little
worm let me in the car and tells me how he’s going to save
himself.” She laughed. “He showed me his
I’m sorry
note he wrote to you,
certain you would forgive him. And you would have, wouldn’t
you?”

Georgie bit her lip... she probably
would have.

“See?” Tonie smirked, tossing up her
hands. “I can see it in your eyes. You would have. When I told him
he was crazy, he pulled a gun on me. Can you believe that? He
didn’t even have the smarts to know he had the safety on. Well,
that note gave me the best idea. It worked well as a bye, bye
suicide. All over a fucking hoax to get you in his bed!”

“Wouldn’t that be self-defense? I
mean...” She had to keep Tonie talking. First rule... keep them
talking until you find something you can use as a weapon. The
knives in the wooden holder, she thought, and her stomach
tightened.

Tonie’s pale eyes narrowed. “I’m not
stupid, okay? I put a fucking bullet in his head at point blank
range! That’s not self-defense. So don’t play me. You’re not good
at it.”

“But...”

Tonie wasn’t hearing her. She shrugged
matter-of-factly and continued with her monologue. “The rest was
easy. The added touch was the dog. I felt bad about
that.”

Anger replaced fear. In one lunge and
swing, Georgie reached for a knife from her set and swung wide.
Tonie easily bolted clear of the swipe, and vise-like fingers
wrapped around Georgie’s arm. The room spun a second before Georgie
found herself in the midst of a boa-strength hold, crushed into
Tonie’s chest, while her toes barely scraped the floor. Tonie’s
other hand was at Georgie’s wrist, twisting and jerking, trying to
wrestle the knife free.

“Let it go!” Tonie hissed in her
ear.

Just as Georgie felt her numbing
fingers loosening their grip, she leaned her head down and thrust
it back into Tonie’s face. Tonie yelped, and Georgie gained her
freedom. She ran to her bedroom and dropped to the floor at the
head of her bed.

Tonie laughed as she too entered the
room. “Christ. Trying to hide under the bed. I expected better,”
she said, reaching down for her with a sharp snort.

From under the bed, Georgie grabbed
hold of the Slugger Bat and swung it. It was a weak swing, but it
hit Tonie at the anklebone. A cry of anguish erupted from Tonie as
she jerked back, and Georgie rolled away. When Tonie came after
her, Georgie swung the bat again, aiming for the knees. Tonie fell
like an axed tree, but the bat slipped out of Georgie’s grip. She
didn’t dare take the time to get it. It landed too close to Tonie,
and Georgie ran down the hallway looking for another place to make
a stand. As she ran through the kitchen, she yanked at the table to
tumble it behind her, but it was too heavy, and she ran to the door
leading to the garage.