To the Edge (34 page)

He stood like a tree. Rigid. Unyielding.

OK. Fine. He wasn't ready to consider it. And he wasn't going to talk about it anymore. She knew him well enough by now to understand his moods. The one he was show her now was stubborn defiance.

She hadn't reached him. She wasn't going to.

They were in the Mustang, on the way to Golden Palms, when Nolan's cell phone rang. Probably Kincaid again. When he'd finally turned on his phone to call KGLO and tell a very concerned Diane Kleinmeyer that Jillian wasn't going to be in today, there had been at least ten messages from Kincaid. Most of them had something to do with wanting his head on a platter.

"Yeah," he said, and braced for the barrage.

"Got the old ER report on Rachael Hanover." It was Ethan.

Nolan checked his rearview and changed lanes. "OK, shoot."

"Sexual abuse."

He almost rear-ended the Mercedes in front of him. "Say again?'

Ethan repeated the stunning news. "Seems the family managed to bury it. Not deep enough, though."

"Did it name the perpetrator?"

"Negative. Supposedly, someone broke into her bedroom, did the deed there. She never saw his face."

"And the investigation just got dropped?"

"At the family's request. Apparently they didn't want to put her through any more trauma."

Interesting,
he thought after Ethan rang off,
that it never made the papers.

"How long have you known Rachael?" he asked his silent, brooding passenger.

Jillian whipped her head toward him, tugged a flyaway strand of hair away from the corner of her mouth. "Rachael, Rachael Hanover?"

He nodded, averting his gaze back to the road. He couldn’t look at her without remembering last night. Couldn't think about last night without wanting her.

"Why do you want to know?"

"Just passing time, OK?"

"No," she said. "It's not OK. You don't engage in idle conversation. Wait... don't tell me you think Rachael's a suspect?"

He ignored her question and fired his back at her. "How long have you known her?"

"Since we were in diapers, and so help me God, if you involve her in this—"

"She ever say anything to you about being assaulted?"

That gave her pause. "Rachael was assaulted? Oh, my God. When?"

"She was twelve."

She stared into the passing traffic, brows furrowed in disbelief. "I would have known."

"Not if she'd been traumatized. Or if she was told not to tell."

"Not to tell? What are you getting at? What kind of assault? Oh no. No," she repeated, incredulous when she read the look on his face. "Not sexual. Oh God."

"What kind of relationship did she have with her father?"

Shock. Denial. It brimmed in her expression. "You can't be implying that Mr. Goddard... I can't even say it."

"What kind of relationship?"

"Fine. As far as I know, it was fine. He was an involved parent. I liked him. But I don't like this. Even if it happened, what does it have to do with what's happening to me?"

"Just covering my bases."

He still wasn't sure what this new revelation about Rachael Hanover meant, didn't know if it had any bearing at all on Jillian. But it started him thinking about the messages the stalker had sent. Most of them had used children's nursery rhymes. One had alluded to the king's men calling Jillian's father.

Nursery rhymes plus child plus childhood trauma plus the father reference.

If there was a connection, it was a stretch, but at this point nothing seemed like too much of a reach. Still spinning it around in his. head, he dialed Kincaid's number. It was time to face the music. They'd been incommunicado since he'd brought Jillian aboard the
EDEN
last night

"Goddamn
it, Garrett!" Kincaid roared. "Don't you
ever
cut off communication with me again! Where's Jillian? How is she?'

"She's with me. She's fine. And we're about two miles from Golden Palms. We'll be there in under five minutes."

Nolan hung up—but not before Kincaid hit him with a few choice words and ripped a strip off his back. He'd gone from golden boy to vermin in ten easy steps. It also seemed that the moment he delivered Jillian he was out of a job.

That was fine, too. Nolan didn't want to play this game anymore. Or think about why he'd spilled his guts to her. Or how she'd looked at him with love in her eyes and hope in her heart and made him feel like he might just deserve both.

He didn't. And she didn't love him. She just thought she did. And he wasn't going to turn into one of her lost causes.

He dragged a hand through his hair. Damn the woman. She pushed and pushed until she backed a man up against a brick wall, and then she took a wrecking ball to the damn wall.

Well, she could push all she wanted, but he was taking her to Golden Palms and dumping her there. Putting her under lock and key if he had to. She may have forgotten what her penthouse had looked like, but he hadn't. This lunatic was running on a small reserve of sanity. It wouldn't be long now before the final scene played out, and he wasn't taking any chances with her life.

"I'm not staying with my parents," she said, defiance oozing from every pore.

"You can't stay at your penthouse. Even if it wasn't trashed, you aren't safe there."

"What's wrong with staying on the boat?"

Everything, he thought. Everything was wrong. Everything would be wrong until he could get the scent of her out of his sheets and the taste of her out of his system.

And he wasn't going to have this argument with her about it.

Driving through the security gate at Golden Palms again, Nolan knew he'd been right to bring her here. And he would be right to walk away.

"Jillian!" Clare, stylish as ever but looking a bit frazzled and haunted around the eyes, greeted them at Darin's side. "Darling, we've been so worried." She drew her daughter into her arms, the first honest show of affection Nolan had seen.

"I'm fine, Mother. Daddy, you can quit glaring at Nolan. I asked him to take me somewhere quiet last night. I'm sorry. I just wasn't up to dealing with anyone."

"Laurens wants you to call him," Kincaid said, none of the steel leaving his eyes. His look defied Nolan to butt heads with him again.

The Kincaids hustled Jillian toward the east wing of the house while Nolan stayed in the foyer and dialed Laurens's number.

It didn't take long to figure out they hadn't found anything more to go on. Whoever had destroyed Jillian's penthouse had known what they were doing. No prints. No fiber. Nothing to connect the dots and lead them to the stalker. "What about the blood?"

"Same as the blood planted on Jillian at the press conference. It's animal. Lab's on it, but they haven't come up with anything yet."

Nolan relayed the information on Rachael Hanover. Laurens was of the same mind: it was interesting, but it was a stretch. Still, the detective said he'd follow up on it.

Nolan disconnected and followed raised voices to the library. The Kincaids—all three of them—were deep in a debate about where Jillian would be staying until this thing played out.

"Make it three to one," he said, siding with Darin and Clare against Jillian as he walked into the room. "You're staying here. And you're not leaving until this is over."

"Over? Don't be ridiculous. It could go on for months."

"Then you stay here for months."

"I have a job. And at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm not going to let this maniac run my life. You're hired to protect me, Garrett. So protect me."

"Sorry, princess. I'm officially off the case."

"What?" She looked from Garrett to her father.

"I fired him," Kincaid said.

That was the least of what Kincaid had done or said in the voice mail messages he'd left. The word
lawsuit
had come up several times.

Nolan flashed Jillian a hard smile. "Problem solved. You're staying here." Where she was safe, not only from the killer but also from him.

"Your mother needs you, Jillie," Kincaid put in.

"Mom has you," Jillian insisted. "And I have a life."

"You do if you stay put." Nolan took one long last look. "Take care, princess."

He turned to go.

"OK. OK."

Her adamant tone stopped him.

"I give up. I'll stay here tonight, all right?"

The library rang with silence in the aftermath of her reluctant concession. Then she dropped the bomb.

"On the condition I get my bodyguard back."

Her mind was set. He'd never seen such stubborn determination in her eyes.

"Come again? Thought you'd be jumping for joy." She ignored him and addressed Kincaid. "Garrett stays, or I go, too," she said, daring her father to test her. "The Palm Beach County Civic Awards banquet is tomorrow night. I'm going—with him, without him. It's your choice. But I
am
going. This person has stolen my sense of security, stolen my peace. I'm not going to let him steal everything I've worked for. I want this award. I deserve it. And I'm going to be there when it's presented."

22

The dull razor abraded his skin as
John drew it across his jaw. The cheap motel soap provided little in the way of reducing the friction. A sharp, quick jab of pain stilled his hand. With disconnected fascination, he watched as a thin trickle of blood oozed from the fresh nick on his flesh.

How... odd that he bled, that his heart still beat, when for all practical purposes he was little more than a ghost. An apparition.

If not for Jillian Kincaid and her endless questions, that ghost would have been laid to rest long ago and he would have finally found some semblance of peace.

Her questions had finally pushed him to the point where he now had but one of his own: Had he ever hated anyone as much as the woman who insisted he mattered when nothing in his life confirmed that he did?

He wanted relief. He craved it.

As he wiped the last of the shaving cream from his jaw and prepared for what must be done tonight, he had never felt less like a human.

After tonight, he would have relief. Mary assured him it would be so.

"Ready?" Mary asked gently from behind him.

He stared past his reflection to see her face behind him in the mirror.

She smiled, and he nodded. And set his mind to what must be done.

The place might be spectacular, but the setup at the Breakers was a security nightmare.

Nolan sat beside Jillian at one of the tables reserved for tonight's Civic Award recipients. He tuned out the industry chatter around him, routinely checking every one of several sets of double doors leading in and out of the room.

The Venetian Ballroom was located at the back of the hotel, on the ground floor, overlooking the Atlantic. It was the largest of many such banquet rooms where these types of functions were routinely held. And similar to the shindig at Mar-A-Lago a week ago tonight, it was packed with a who's who list of Palm Beach notables. They'd turned out in droves wearing their glittering finest to see and be seen and to pay homage to the carefully chosen recipients of awards presented by the richest county, per capita, in the good old capitalistic USA.

Black-and-white-dressed hotel waitstaff scuttled about during a lengthy seven-course dinner, faultlessly professional, catering to every need. Pricey sterling clinked delicately against patterned china. Ice tinkled in fragile crystal. In the background a string quartet played some highbrow music that could have been Mozart or one of those other dead composers. Jillian, no doubt, knew who it was and the name of every piece.

Nolan would rather have heard a little Aerosmith. A little hard-driving rock to match his mood and the crash of the breakers slamming against the beach no more than twenty yards from the east windows. Not that he could hear them tonight. The noise made by three hundred plus people bounced down from ceilings over twenty feet high; the windows with their spectacular view of the Atlantic wearing away at the pristine sand beach were at least half that. Even a blue-collar like him could appreciate the elegance and history of the hotel. Another night, another time, he might even have enjoyed some snooping around.

But not tonight. Tonight was all about one thing: keeping Jillian alive.

He had a bad feeling that tonight was the night he was going to earn his money.

He tugged at the collar of his dress shirt, wished to hell he could lose the black tie. The back of his neck itched— another sign to support his instinct that things could get dicey before the night was over.

He'd taken every precaution possible on short notice. Ethan had provided security for other events at the hotel, so the blueprints were on-file at E.D.E.N. Nolan had spent a good part of the day at the office studying them and knew the location of every exit There were too fricking many of them in the rambling landmark hotel. Hell, there were five banks of public elevators and the damn things were spread all over the place. Even with hotel security on alert, it was impossible to seal them all off, let alone screen in excess of one thousand overnight guests and only God knew how many others attending one function or another on a balmy Saturday night.