Tina Whittle_Tai Randall Mystery 01 (24 page)

Chapter 47

I did as she said.

“Now put your hands up.”

I did that too. Trey hadn’t moved, and it was too dark to tell if he was even breathing. “What did you do to him?”

“Dumped a couple of those tranquilizers in his drink.” She moved to stand over him, nudged him with her toe. “Took a water pitcher to the head to take him down, though.”

“So he’s alive.”

“Yeah, but I probably fucked up his last normal brain cell.” She kicked at him. “Of course there’s always the chance he might not wake up this time.”

Anger bloodied my vision at the edges, and I suddenly understood why people describe rage as red. I felt the weight of the purse on my hip—Trey’s old gun, fully loaded, heavy with possibility.

“I swear to God, if you hurt him—”

“Shut up. Get on your knees.”

I sank. From that angle, I could see Trey better, and I didn’t like what I saw. He was on his stomach, his face toward me, eyes closed, and there was blood right at his temple. I was suddenly mad at him—God, he was SWAT-trained, how could he let a creature like Charley Beaumont get the better of him?—but then the anger burned clean.

I suddenly had this wild hope that he was just pretending, that any minute he would jump up and wrench that gun from her hand and crack her upside the head with it.

He didn’t move. I still couldn’t tell if he was breathing.

Charley lowered the gun and stepped forward. I saw that it was Trey’s, the new P7M8 I’d found for him. She probably had his wallet too, maybe his car keys. And she was agitated. Whatever she was trying to do, she hadn’t planned it very well. I lowered my hands a millimeter.

She raised the gun. “Don’t try it. I’ve got no problem blowing a hole in your head. His either.”

“Just like Eliza.”

“Shut up! You don’t know anything!”

“I know you cared about her. Very much.”

Charley stared at me. The gun wobbled.

“And I know that you didn’t want to kill her.”

She tightened her grip. “If she’d just taken the money and kept her damn mouth shut, none of this would have happened. I told him to put a stop to it, but he beat her instead. It’s how he solves everything.”

The bruises where someone had banged Eliza up three days before she died. Everyone blamed Bulldog, but that scenario was fast dissolving. No way Charley would have had anything to do with that pathetic loser, especially not sending him to take care of a problem like blackmail.

“Who beat her up?”

Charley was still talking, more to herself than to me. “He said it would teach her a lesson.”

“It did—it scared her into trying to tell my brother what was going on.”

Charley didn’t reply. The gun shook harder, and her eyes skittered from me to Trey to the door. She was ready to bolt, but I knew I had to keep her in place until one of the damn rent-a-cops noticed something hinky was going on.

I dropped my voice, as if we were in it together. “You used Gabriella’s as the drop off point, didn’t you? You’d tuck the money somewhere inside and then leave, and Eliza would pick it up later—that way the two of you were never seen together. But Gabriella noticed. She told you Eliza was stalking you, which meant you had to find a different way of paying her off. She got restless in the meantime, didn’t she? Called up Dylan Flint, got some pictures taken so that you couldn’t deny knowing her.”

Charley breathed harder. The gun wavered.

“I know some other things too, like Phoenix had Eliza’s place bugged. I know somebody heard her call Eric and say she was on her way over, and I know that somebody killed her right after that and cleaned all the surveillance equipment out of her apartment.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be that way. He said—”

“Who said?”

She let out a sob, cut it short with another sharp inhale.

“Who, Charley? Who did it? Who killed Eliza?”

She looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. And then she swung the gun in Trey’s direction. “He did, you stupid bitch!”

I froze. “No, Trey would never—”

“Of course he did, you idiot! That’s why he’s here now, to kill me too!”

My eyes were now accustomed to the dark and I could see her better. Trey too. I shook my head. “I don’t believe you.”

“Of course you don’t, you think he’s some kind of hero.” She laughed, but it was caustic. “He beat her up, but that didn’t stop her, so he killed her instead, and Landon had to cover it up. Stupid little dyke, it’s all her fault, if she’d have just shut the fuck up…”

Charley continued to rant. I wasn’t quite sure what I was hearing anymore—he this, Trey that, Landon this. She kept using the word “dyke” and other slurs, which didn’t make any sense for the scenario I’d constructed, the one I was sure Jake Whitaker had constructed too.

The one where Charley and Eliza were having an affair.

And then suddenly I got it—South Carolina and Tennessee, so close, and Eliza’s fascination with Charley, with Charley’s history, and though it all, Janie’s refrain. Flesh and blood, flesh and blood.

“You’re her mother,” I said.

Charley breathed in rapid shallow shudders. I thought for a second she was going to shoot me. But she didn’t move to pull the trigger. She just stared.

“You’re the girl from out of town,” I said. “You abandoned Eliza with Janie’s brother, and he abandoned her with Janie’s family. Jake knew Eliza was obsessed with you. He snooped in her apartment, probably in her e-mail, and thought you were having an affair with her. That’s what he told you at the reception, isn’t it? But he had it all wrong.”

She was shaking harder now. “Eliza found me in Miami. She was barely sixteen, looking for money.”

“How did she know where to look?”

“Her idiot father. She tracked him down first in some halfway house and he spilled the beans, the bastard, right before he died. She just typed my name into some directory, she said, and there I was—my address, my phone number, everything. But once she saw I was as broke as she was, she didn’t want anything to do with me. Which was fine by me—I didn’t need a kid, especially not some teenage brat. But then I became somebody, and suddenly she wanted plenty.”

The mystery of the cash-stuffed shoebox and the bank account. “She got greedy.”

“She started coming to my parties, bringing her stupid friends. Then she came crying to me, said this photographer had pictures he was threatening to sell to the tabloids along with the whole story. I told her if that happened, she’d go to jail for blackmail.”

Which explained all those questions Eliza had asked my brother about confidentiality. Eliza wasn’t as dumb as everyone assumed.

“But I didn’t care if she told or not—I’d had it with her—but he said it couldn’t get out, that it would ruin us.”

There was the word “he” again. Not Bulldog, and not Trey, no matter what she said. She’d wanted the secret to come out, and “he” had said no. And I had a pretty good guess who “he” was.

Mark Beaumont. I wondered where he was, if he had any idea that Charley was fleeing and leaving the whole mess in his lap. I hoped he didn’t, because I was in double trouble then.

“Why didn’t you talk to the cops?”

“Because they wouldn’t understand.”

“But you have no money, no way to—”

She let loose a high acidic laugh, and I realized my mistake. Of course she had money. She’d probably been socking it away for years. Unfortunately, there was one problem, or two rather. And she had them both at gunpoint.

She waved the gun at Trey. “Where’s Landon?”

“I don’t know.”

“Liar.” She swung the gun up. “You tell me where he is and how many men he’s got and where they are, or I swear to God, I’ll blow your head off!”

Something snapped inside me. “You will not. You don’t even know what you’re doing with that thing.”

She aimed dead center at my chest. “We’ll see.”

We were only fifteen feet apart—even she could hit me at that distance. But I saw her hands shaking, her tiny weak hands, and I knew she couldn’t do it. Hell, it had taken me almost an hour to get the hang of the H& squeeze cocker, and it took strength and know-how to pull it off.

She couldn’t do it.

Probably not anyway.

I edged my hands a few inches downward. Then I heard a rasp of breath, and Trey moved his head. Charley heard it too, and swung the gun in his direction. I saw her elbows tense, saw her close her eyes and brace herself for the blast, and I screamed just as Trey looked up.

The shots came from behind and caught her in the chest—one and then two—and she snapped like she’d caught on a tripwire. And then she went down, eyes wide. And then she fell forward. All I’d heard was the pneumatic pop pop of a silencer.

I whipped around to see Landon stepping out of the shadows. He had the gun still trained on Charley. It didn’t wobble at all.

“Are you okay?”

I tried to nod, but the nausea swelled and crested. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

And then I was on all fours, retching, but nothing was coming up. I heard Trey stir, saw Landon swing the gun his way, smoothly, with no hesitation.

“Stay where you are, Trey.”

Trey stood, but he obeyed. He had blood on his forehead and moved slowly, unsteady on his feet. I started to stand up too, but Landon put a hand on my shoulder. “Do it easy.”

Trey watched from across the room as Landon helped me up. I started to move toward him, but Landon caught me by the elbow.

“Stay here with me, Ms. Randolph. Do you understand?”

I shook free. “I need to—”

“You need to stay still. No sudden moves.”

There was something in the way he said it, like Garrity had.
Lay off brandishing that weapon, you do not want to trigger that Special-Ops training
. My heart pounded, my head emptied, but I was calm, so calm.

Trey wasn’t the killer. He couldn’t be.

Landon lowered his gun. He seemed calm too, as did Trey, who waited at the other end of the room, head cocked, the dead woman sprawled at his feet. He didn’t seem to notice. He was watching us intently, steady now.

Landon exhaled slowly. “I want you to check her pulse.”

Trey knelt at Charley’s side and laid two fingers on her neck. He examined her chest, watching for the rise and fall. There wasn’t one. He shook his head. “No pulse, no respiration. We should—”

“First, get the gun.”

Trey frowned. “That’s not—”

“Get back your gun, Trey. Now.”

“Why?”

“You don’t get to ask why, you just follow orders!” Landon’s voice rose. “I don’t know how she got your weapon, and I don’t want to know, but we’re taking care of this mess right now! I want you to wipe that gun clean and put it back in your holster, and if anybody asks, I want you to deny it was ever anywhere else, do you understand?”

Trey stood. “I do now.”

And then suddenly, in a rush of understanding, I knew too. I took one tentative step away from Landon. He caught the movement. “Don’t.”

But I stayed where I was. “No, he’ll play it as it lies. I’ll vouch for him. And you, I’ll vouch for you. That Charley was going to kill Trey, that you had no choice.”

“Except that he did,” Trey said.

And I was thinking, shut up Trey, just shut up. But it was too late. Landon’s expression switched into something predatory. But still calm, very very calm. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“She had my gun,” Trey replied. “You knew that. You have the same gun. So you knew that she’d have no idea how to work the squeeze cocker.”

Landon listened with interest. Then he sighed, loudly, dramatically. “All you had to do was keep Charley from doing something stupid until I could figure this mess out, and you couldn’t even manage that.”

And before I could scream, he had one arm around my neck, snatching me off balance. He yanked the purse from around my neck and dropped it to the floor, then kicked it aside. Trey took a step forward, and I felt the gun against my temple, so hot it burned.

“Don’t even think about it,” Landon said.

All I could see was Trey, not twenty feet away, but he wasn’t looking at me. He had his eyes locked on Landon. He took another step forward. Landon pressed the gun harder against my skin, and Trey stopped.

“Kick the gun over here,” Landon said.

Trey hesitated. My knees went weak, and the shaking started, violent and uncontrollable. Landon dropped his voice. He sounded friendly, conspiratorial.

“Listen to me, Trey—I don’t want to kill you, or Tai.”

“No, you don’t want to. But you have no choice.”

Landon considered the remark. “You know what? You’re right. No point in lying about it, is there?”

“There never was. You have to kill us. It’s the logical end to every scenario. You wanted my prints on a weapon. You wanted me holding that weapon when you shot me.”

I imagined what Landon would say, how he’d spin it now that Trey had refused to play along. Would he plant his own weapon on me, say I’d killed Charley, that Trey and I had been working together, that he’d had to take us both down? Landon the hero, saving the day from the psycho ex-cop and the crazy girl detective.

Landon gripped my throat tighter, and I pried at his fingers, but it was no use. I wasn’t getting out of his clutches, and even if I did, it was a sure bullet to the brain. I had to get him off guard.

Off balance.

Trey cocked his head. “Why Eliza?”

“Charley came to me. It was just business, just like this. This isn’t personal. You understand that, Trey, I know you do.

Trey nodded. I imagined the wheels turning in his head, behind the flat gaze. “How?”

“You were the one who pointed out how much of a safety breach that wall was at Beau Elan. Everybody worried about who might get in. Nobody gave a damn who might get out.”

I remembered then, the trees along the end of the wall, how simple it would have been to hop right over it that afternoon, hop right into Phoenix. Where Landon’s car was parked. How easy it would have been to find Eliza at my brother’s, kill her, then drive back to Phoenix, hop back over the wall. Thanks to Jake, Eliza’s security camera was focused on the sunbathing area at that time. Nothing would have shown up on the exit gate cameras, and nothing on the cameras in the Phoenix garage, not after they got smashed anyway.