THREE TIMES A LADY (28 page)

Templeton rolled his neck on his broad shoulders, looking like a man who’d already been beaten.  Dana knew the feeling all too well.  ‘Gotcha,’ he said.  ‘It’s just that misery loves company, ya know?  Anyway, go on home and get rested up.  I’ll give you a call if I have any more questions for you, but I doubt I will.  I’m almost certain I’ve got everything I need from you.’

Dana thanked Templeton and knelt down, pretending to tie her shoe.  Lifting up her stare, she watched Templeton’s eyes.  When he finally looked away, she reached out quickly and plucked the gold earring off the ground before tucking it into her pocket and rising to her feet, practically
running
to her Protégé.

Thankfully, Templeton cleared out a path for her, waving his arms in irritation and signaling for the squad cars and ambulances to get out of her way. 

Dana didn’t make eye contact with the scores of police officers who were processing the scene as she left.  Nonetheless, she could feel their curious stares burning into both sides of her face as she manouevred the Protégé out of the parking lot.  She could almost
hear
the thoughts swirling around inside their brains:

There goes that crazy Dana Whitestone chick again.  How is it that she’s
always
involved in this kind of weird shit, anyway?

Dana shook herself and tried her best to reason herself out of her paranoia but it didn’t work.  She was
convinced
that everybody knew what had happened to her tonight.  Still, she was much too numb to think straight right now.  Much too numb to process the horrific reality of what she’d just gone through.  And the fact that Templeton had barely even questioned her story only made her feel that much worse.  Then again, lying was something she’d
needed
to do.

Much like the woman in the black dress had told her, Dana wanted the other woman for
herself
.

Two days after he’d provided Special Agent Dana Whitestone of the Federal Bureau of Investigation with her very rude and extremely long-overdue wake-up call in order to snap the dumb bitch back to the reality of the lowly station she
actually
occupied in life, Nicholas checked into his room at the Ritz-Carlton in New York City and laid out his clothes for the night on the king-sized Tempurpedic bed featuring six matching pillows.

First there was his red dress – Armani, of course – a perfect replica of the one that his mother had worn the day she’d dragged him inside the walk-in freezer at the butcher’s shop back home in Chicago way back in 1971.  At his mother’s insistence, Nicholas
only
wore name brands.  Annabeth Preston had taught him very early on that to wear anything else would be beneath the Preston name, trashy.  And if there were one thing in this world Nicholas was not, it was
trashy
. 

To go along with his pretty red dress, Nicholas had selected six-inch-high black heels, silver Tiffany jewellery and a matching silver Tiffany clip in his hair.  His mink coat would keep him warm against the frigid winter air that had put the Big Apple into such a deep freeze it didn’t seem likely to thaw out until somewhere around mid-April.  Nicholas’s confidence was strong, his colour was good and his spirits were high.  He was
ready
for this.

Nicholas looked around his well-appointed room and sighed.  The hotel had cost a pretty penny, no two ways about it – almost six hundred bucks a night.  But he considered it money well spent.  After all, money marked the main theme of his entire trip to America’s largest and most famous city.  And while he was here in New York City, Nicholas figured that he might as well see how the other half lived for a little while.  Enjoy the good life for a change.

Moving to the window of his twentieth-floor room and opening up the curtains, Nicholas looked out at the breathtaking New York City skyline and admired the view.  Taking in a deep breath through his nostrils, he let out the air again in a satisfied rush over his teeth.  This was it.  He was here.  He’d made it.  And if he could make it here, he could make it
anywhere
.  Wasn’t that what the song said?

Nicholas checked his
Mickey Mouse
watch and stretched his neck to loosen up the muscles there, steeling himself for what would come next.  The impending heart of the storm wasn’t scheduled to arrive until later on in the night, but New York City had already been blanketed in a light dusting of white – a powdered-sugar topping for the Big Apple.  And the weather reports were calling for the worst blizzard since – well – since only the previous February, really.  Still, that didn’t mean
this
particular blizzard wouldn’t be just as historic as the last, which in actuality had been two storms rolled into one, with the second coming hot on the heels of the first.

The First North American Blizzard of 2010 had devastated the United States from California all the way to the Mid-Atlantic region, as well as having caused extensive flooding and landslides in Mexico.  In New York, it had been followed quickly by the Second North American Blizzard of 2010, a cataclysmic weather anomaly that had rivaled the Knickerbocker Storm of 1922 and the Great Blizzard of 1888 in both ferocity and duration, leading to the deaths of
dozens
of people. 

Nicholas smiled, knowing that
tonight
’s blizzard would lead to the death of at least one person he knew of.  An extremely
famous
person. 

The second name on his special little list. 

Nicholas hummed to himself as he continued to survey the wintry landscape, trying to get a feel for the lay of the land.  Once again – just as had been the case with Dinah Leach down in Atlanta – Mother Nature would act as his accomplice tonight.  She was a natural fit for the job.  Once again, law-enforcement officials and emergency responders would be stretched far too thin to stop him.  Once again, he and Annabeth Preston had planned this out
perfectly
.  And once again, Nicholas would show the world
exactly
who was in charge here.

During the blizzards of 2010, New York City officials had cancelled school well before the first snowflakes had even fallen from the heavens, sending Gotham scurrying into emergency mode while the behemoth storm systems had barreled their way toward the rotten core of the Big Apple.  Six hours later, winds of forty miles an hour had buffeted the city like an earthquake, creating whiteouts and dumping at least two feet of snow on the ground.  Stores of every stripe and colour – from Sears to Wal-Mart to JC Penney – had been overrun in the hours leading up to the storms as nervous residents rushed to stock up on such staples as food, water, flashlights and batteries.  Five thousand maintenance workers had suffered through backbreaking twelve-hour shifts while operating nearly four hundred salt spreaders and two thousand snowplows.  Commuters had been urged to stay off the city streets and instead rely on the subway system for transportation.  City buses had been equipped with thick steel chains wrapped around their shiny black tires for traction.  Both the Long Island Rail Road and the Metro-North Railroad had experienced lengthy delays.  Continental Airlines had announced the cancellation of all four hundred of its flights by ten a.m.  Southwest and all the other airlines had quickly followed suit.

In other words: they’d all run around like a bunch of chickens with their goddamn heads chopped off.  And among
that
kind of commotion, who would ever notice
one
dead woman – even one as famous as the woman Nicholas would be targeting tonight?

***

Penelope Hargrave had been born into a world of wealth, and tonight she’d die in a world of wealth.  Nicholas grimaced as he watched the socialite daughter of the most famous real-estate developer in all of New York City exit her long black limousine across the street.  Throngs of her fans rushed forward and shouted out her name while two heavily muscled bouncers escorted her past the velvet ropes lining both sides of the sidewalk and directly into the city’s hippest nightclub, shouldering back the crowd and paparazzi as they went. 

In the doorway of a shuttered convenience store thirty yards away, Nicholas trained his powerful Nikon binoculars on Penelope Hargrave’s beautiful face and brought the image into sharp focus, feeling a stab of irritation slice hard through his chest.  What in the hell was
wrong
with this country? he wondered.  Didn’t anyone have anything
better
to obsess over?   And with the economy stuck in the toilet the way it had been for the past five years now, didn’t it annoy people that this whore actually got
paid
to get her groove on, actually received
money
for partying?

Apparently not.

Still, the club’s owners knew Penelope Hargrave’s mere presence boosted the profile of the establishment, so they were willing to part with some serious coin in order to get her to show up.  Fifty grand for each appearance, according to a report that Nicholas had read recently on TMZ.com.  Penelope Hargrave didn’t even have to dance if she didn’t want to.  All she needed to do was sit there with that stupid, doe-eyed look on her face and drink the thousand-bottles that were sent to her table
gratis
.  Maybe giggle every once in a while with her vacuous hangers-on while she basked in the warm light of a fame she hadn’t done a goddamn thing to deserve.

Nicholas shook his head in irritation, remembering the troubling scene to which he’d been subjected just a few hours earlier.  Despite his very best efforts, he hadn’t been able to gain access to the exclusive club himself, had instead been turned away cold. 

The embarrassing brush-off had wounded Nicholas’s pride, of course – had wounded it
a lot
, as a matter of fact – but he’d managed to suppress his rage long enough to resist pulling out his trusty knife and slitting open the doorman’s stupid throat right then and there on the snow-covered sidewalk.  His mother would have been
very
upset had Nicholas deviated from the plan at this late stage of the game, and it was
never
a good idea to upset his mother, now was it? 

Of course it wasn’t.  Never had been and never would be. 
That
much he’d known since he’d been nine years old.

Plan B wasn’t half bad, either, though.  Not too shabby for a backup plan of attack, if Nicholas did say so himself.  And that’s exactly what he had prepared for Penelope Hargrave tonight, wasn’t it? 

A plan of
attack
.

***

After having been denied regular entrance to the club, Nicholas had been forced to wait most of the night to make his move.  At around midnight or so, the opportunity finally presented itself, just as the weather conditions
really
started getting bad, with snow-blind conditions taking the city by the throat and strangling hard. 

Just as Nicholas had known they would all along. 

His big moment finally came when Penelope Hargrave’s limo driver ducked out of his vehicle half a block away from the nightclub to suck down a quick cigarette in the frigid winter air.  Carefully navigating his way across the frozen sidewalk in his six-inch heels, Nicholas wrapped his beautiful mink coat even tighter around his shivering body and approached the limousine with a wide smile etched onto his beautiful face.

‘Hey there!’ he said to the driver.  ‘How’s it goin’ tonight?’

The limo driver looked up from his cigarette and cocked his head to one side in an effort to block out the howling, gale-force winds whipping through the city.  Lifting up his free hand, he cupped his had to his left ear.  ‘What’s that?’

Nicholas widened the smile on his face and raised his voice several decibels in order to be heard clearly above Mother Nature’s deafening cacophony.  ‘I said, how’s it goin’?  Fuckin’ freezin’ out here tonight, ain’t it?’

The driver nodded and looked Nicholas over from head to toe, taking in the full measure of his splendid charms.  ‘Yep, sure is.  Colder than a witch’s tit.’

Nicholas let his mink fall open to show off his inviting cleavage.  Every bit as inviting as Dinah Leach’s had been.  Every bit as inviting as his mother’s, too.  

‘Interested in warming up
this
witch’s tit?’ Nicholas asked.

***

In the back seat of the limousine ten minutes later, Nicholas took the horny driver into his mouth and sucked gently.  Hard enough to provide the necessary friction but not hard enough to actually hurt the man.  Hadn’t that always been the secret to giving a great blowjob? 

Moaning softly, the driver leaned his head back against the leather seat and closed his eyes, enjoying the intense sensations that Nicholas was providing with his swirling tongue.  A moment later – just as the man
really
started getting into it – Nicholas took in a deep breath through his nostrils.  In the very next instant, he chomped down hard with his sharp white teeth, straining his jaw muscles with the effort. 

A bloodcurdling scream exploded from the limo driver’s throat.  It was
deafening
inside the vehicle, leaving Nicholas’s ears ringing.  Still, not quite loud enough to be heard by any passers-by above the howling winter winds outside.