To the Edge (38 page)

"Jillian, listen to me and listen carefully. I want you to get your gun. I put it—" The line went dead.

"Nolan?" Propped up against her new pillows in her new bed, Jillian frowned at the phone and foolishly repeated his name even though she realized they'd been disconnected.

Willing herself not to panic, she clicked the receiver a couple of times for a dial tone. Nothing.

OK. Regroup. The line was dead. It happened. Construction workers sometimes hit cables. Power outages were caused by many things.

Like cut wires.

Where the silence of her penthouse had been a welcome change from the constant disruptive noises of the hospital, it suddenly felt sinister.

Gun.

He'd mentioned her gun.

Wincing as pain bit into her arm when she moved, she sat up and checked the top drawer in her bedside table. Everything was in there
but
her gun.

First things first. Call security. Her cell phone was in her purse. That was the good news. The bad news was that her purse was on the kitchen counter.

Light-headed, a little off-balance, she stood, then gave herself a minute to get steady legs under her,

"Hey, what are you doing out of bed?"

Startled, Jillian's good hand flew to her throat. She let out a breath of relief when she looked up and saw who was standing in her bedroom doorway.

"OK. Heart attack's over. You scared the bejesus out of me. God, Lydia, I'm glad you're here." And glad she'd given Lydia her new security code.

"What about me? Glad to see me, too?"

Diane poked her head in the door and held up a huge bouquet.

"Absolutely." She managed a smile and eased back down on her bed.

"Hey, what's up?" Lydia walked to her side. "You look rattled."

"Good call." Jillian steadied herself with a hand on the mattress. "Nolan just phoned. He told me to tell security not to let anyone in."

Diane stepped up by the bed. "Why?"

"I don't know. Just like I don't know why he told me to get my gun just before the line went dead."

Lydia went pale. "Holy cow! What do you think's happening?"

Jillian shook her head. "Again no clue. Maybe John Smith escaped? Is that possible?"

Diane frowned. "Doesn't seem likely."

"That reminds me. Could one of you get my purse from the kitchen? My cell phone's in there and I'd better make that call to security."

"I'll do it," Diane volunteered. She turned to Lydia. "Don't you have to get going?"

"Yeah," Lydia said, her voice filled with regret. "I have a class. I wish I could stay, but I had to see for myself that you were back in your own bed." Lydia crossed the room and hugged her carefully.

"Better scoot, kiddo." Diane walked toward the door urging Lydia to follow.

After a final hug, Lydia followed Diane out of the room.

"Be right back with that phone."

Restless, on-edge, Jillian sank back against the pillows, angered by her physical weakness, more than a little spooked by Nolan's call.

She heard the front door open and close, then the sound of Diane's footsteps tracking back toward her bedroom. "Find it?"

"Actually, no. But I found this."

Jillian looked up to see Diane standing in the bedroom door, a strange, serene smile on her face, the butcher knife from Jillian's chopping block clutched loosely in her hand.

25

It was taking too fricking long to get
there. Three blocks from the police station, Nolan cranked the steering wheel hard to the right. The Mustang skidded around the corner on two tires as he buried the gas pedal. Behind him, Laurens followed, siren screaming. A half-dozen other units joined the parade a block or two behind them.

"Sonofabitch," Nolan swore, and stood on the brakes, his back end fishtailing. He barely managed to avoid rear-ending the BMW directly in front of him. In front of the Beemer, a dozen other cars clogged lanes as a freight train creaked slowly across the intersection. A long fucking train.

He shoved the Mustang into park, hit the button on the glove box, and pulled out his Beretta. Then he shouldered open the door and ran toward the moving train. City Place was less than three blocks away on the other side of the tracks. Three blocks and several hundred tons of rolling steel and rusted iron were not going to stop him.

The freight train slowed, clanked to a shrieking, skidding stop, then reversed direction with a lurching grind of metal to metal. Gut check time. Nolan watched, counted out the rhythm, and timed his jump.

He was airborne before Laurens, skidding to a stop behind him, could scream for him not to do it. He landed on, then jumped from the coupling linking two boxcars in one well-timed and miraculously lucky leap. When he hit the pavement on the other side of the tracks, he rolled as he'd been taught to roll on a parachute landing, taking the brunt of the fall on his shoulder.

Grunting through the pain, he shoved himself to his feet and flat-out ran toward City Place. He burst through the door before his shadow caught up with him. Eddie's substitute, a retired police officer who filled in on an as-needed basis, looked up from his magazine as Nolan sprinted across the foyer to the bank of elevators.

"Who's visiting Jillian Kincaid?" Nolan demanded, punching the button.

"Ms. Kincaid? Why ... a young woman. What—"

Nolan didn't wait to hear more. He had to get up there. He had to get to her before it was too late.

"I never should have counted on John to take care of you."

Jillian sat perfectly still. Her mind, however, ran sprints. Her stomach turned somersaults. "What... what are you talking about?"

"He was supposed to kill you," her producer said casually as she walked to Jillian's dresser, examined a bottle of perfume, then opened it. "Your father buy this for you?"

Jillian blinked, beyond confused.

In a mercurial fit of rage, Diane hauled back and threw the perfume at the wall above Jillian's head.

Jillian ducked, eyes wide as the bottle shattered. She felt the prick of a glass shard nick her forehead, smelled the sweet musky fragrance of French perfume spilling down the wall and seeping into the newly installed carpet.

"Scared, Jillian? Oh yeah. You're good and scared. The thing is, you should be good and dead. I should have known Smith didn't have the guts to get the job done. And leave it to that simpering little lapdog of yours to muck things up. What, do you pay Lydia to step and fetch for you? Must be a trip to inspire such loyalty and devotion."

Hatred and sarcasm seeped like toxic waste from every word.

Jillian stared at her producer. She shook her head, her brows furrowed in abject bafflement, her pulse thrumming with the cadence of fear. "John Smith was supposed to kill me? You... you wanted him to kill me?"

She had to be dreaming. Or delirious.

Diane? All along it had been Diane Kleinmeyer? Quirky, all-business, fly-off-the-handle Diane? Whose wild eyes were now filled with hate?

This couldn't be real. This couldn't be happening. None of it made any sense.

"Diane? I don't understand. Any of this. Why?" She lifted a hand, swallowed back a wave of nausea, as Diane absently prodded her own palm with the tip of the knife. Blood trickled down her wrist, dripped in slow, steady drops to the floor. She seemed as oblivious to the pain as she was to the overwhelming scent of the perfume that consumed the air.

Insane.

"Why?" Jillian asked again, a plea this time. "I don't understand?"

"You don't have to understand. You just have to die. But hey, I'm a team player. And in the end it's only fair—more pleasurable for me, too—that you know what you're going to die for."

Jillian said nothing. Couldn't put together a thought that wasn't shrink-wrapped in terror to make any sense of Diane's hatred.

"I like that. I like that look," Diane said, nodding in approval. "Scared shitless, aren't you? Good. Now you know just a fraction of the fear I felt growing up. You'll know a lot more before I finish this. I think I'll take my time with you."

Jillian dug deep, pulled herself together. "Diane... whatever you think I've done to you—"

"Shut up," she snapped, then smiled, her eyes brimming with maniacal rage. "And don't call me Diane. My name is Mary. Mary Gates. Ring any bells?'

Jillian searched her mind, came up blank. "Did we go to school together?" she tried, attempting to make any kind of connection.

"No, we didn't go to school together. Interesting. But not a surprise that Daddy dear didn't tell you about the Gates family."

"Did... someone in your family work for my father? Is that what this is about?" Had her father fired Diane's father or something? Was she taking it out on her?

"God, without a full complement of written copy you can't come up with a single original thought, can you? No. No one in my family worked for your father. But your father did work over my mother. Fucked her good. Literally," she said, venom spewing from her eyes as well as her mouth. "And then he walked away. God damn him, he got her pregnant and then he walked the hell away!"

The words registered through a fog. No. None of what Diane was saying could be true.

"And now you're going to pay for what he did. And in the process, he'll pay, too."

Her voice rose with her words. So did the knife. She sliced it through the air in front of Jillian's face. Laughed gleefully when Jillian flinched.

"Diane.... Mary. I still don't understand. But whatever needs fixing... whatever's wrong, I can help you sort it out."

Diane shook her head, contempt and sarcasm coloring her smile. "Of course you can. As a matter of fact you've already helped me by being so gullible. Did you really think you were hired because you were the outstanding applicant for the anchor job?" She laughed, an ugly serf-satisfied sound. "You're good, Jillian, but you got that job because I made sure you did. I had it planned for years. I followed your career, made sure our paths crossed. Made sure I ended up at KGLO when you hired on, then made sure you ended up on my team.

"Oh, I know what you're thinking. Why go to so much bother? Why not just kill you one night when you walked to your car? Or run you off the road?

"There's no skill in that, Jillian. No finesse. No way to show your father that there was someone more clever than you. Someone smarter than you. Just" like my baby sister would have been."

Jillian had to steel herself to keep from going numb— with shock, with disbelief.

"And now you want to help me," Diane restated with a twisted smile. "Sweetie, you can. You can help me by dying. The time is finally right. Then your darling daddy will know what it's like to lose something he loves." Her voice rose again, fluctuating between little girl lost and hate-filled demon.

"Diane, please. Let's talk about this."

"It's way too late to talk. It's time to show your darling daddy," Diane screamed, "how life can be a living hell. Just like he made mine!

"She's dead now, you know." Spittle flew from the corner of her mouth as she moved closer still. "My mother. He killed her! Oh, not with a gun—but just as effectively. He knocked her up, walked out on her, and left her with a new baby. My little sister. My beautiful baby sister! He should have loved her. He should have loved my mother! Lived with us! Tucked
us
into bed at night. Told us nursery rhymes! Not you! Never you!"

Jillian's eyes widened as she tried to make sense, any sense at all, of what Diane was saying. But there was no sense to be made here. There was only madness.

If she was going to live through it, she had to find a way to calm Diane. At least until Nolan got here. He was on his way. She was sure of it. More sure than she'd been of anything else in her life.

"You think I'm crazy?" Diane asked, her eyes narrowed and mean. "Yeah. You do."

Jillian shook her head. "I don't think that at all."

Diane smiled. Then laughed and moved closer to the bed, the scent of Jillian's perfume drenching the air. "When your darling daddy finds you, and he smells this perfume he bought for you, he'll see you dead every time he smells it. And he'll grieve. He'll feel my pain when my mother died and took my little sister with her. And the best part? He'll never know why."

She sank down on the bed, poking the tip of the knife deeper into her palm, over and over and over until blood ran in a thick river onto Jillian's thigh. "Do you understand now? This is about redemption. This is about paybacks."

Jillian understood only one thing. She had to dilute the hatred. Had to get Diane thinking about something else.

"You... you hurt yourself," Jillian said. "You're bleeding. There are supplies in the bathroom. Maybe you should get them."

If she could get Diane out of the bedroom, maybe she could get out, too. Maybe. If she didn't pass out first. She'd lost a lot of blood from her stab wound. Her head still pounded from her concussion.

In the end, it didn't matter. Diane was as oblivious to her suggestion as she was to her own blood.