Unbreakable Bond (20 page)

So who did?

I tried to make out the decor around the two gyrating bodies. There was the brass bed, a plain wall behind, hard to tell the color in the dim lighting. The pillowcases were stripped, and a floral comforter bunched itself at the end of the bed.

I sucked in a breath.

The floral. The brass. I knew this room.

This was Dakota’s guest room.

A million questions swirled through my head all at once, jumbled thoughts vying for space as pieces slowly dropped into place.

The answer was on the tip of my brain, when a faint reflection in the monitor caught my attention.

I spun around.

A moment too late.

Light exploded behind my eyes as a resounding whack filled my skull.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

_____

I grabbed my head and groaned. The ringing and pounding sounded like a marching band, out of sync. Every inch of my body shivered, including my bones. I was on a hard, cold surface. The ground? It smelled and felt damp, musty, and old. Was I back in Veronica’s basement?

Images came flooding back to me: sitting in the man cave, finding the sex video, getting whacked on the head. I rolled onto my side, and another groan leaked from my mouth.

I opened one eye first then the other. It was dark but not as black as when I was down here earlier. A source of light emitted from behind me—a casement window.

The moon.

It illuminated the center of the room. The corners remained dark, but I still made out a large object draped with a sheet, an old sewing machine, and some boxes. Definitely a basement, but not where I waited earlier today. If this even was the same day. There were no stairs, but I noticed a door with a shiny, gold knob.

It called to me like a beacon.

Palms on ground, I pushed up into a sitting position. The room swam, gentle ripples of concrete and moonlight. I wanted to lie back down, close my eyes, and fall into a blissful sleep.

Instead, I rose onto my knees and moaned. My knee still felt sore. In fact, all of my bones felt achy, as if I'd rolled down a flight of stairs.

On unsteady feet, the room swayed again, like a leaning ship. I put out my hands and wobbled into the wall beneath the window. Back and palms pressed against it, I shut my eyes and gulped deep breaths of air.

Nausea rose from the pit of my stomach into my chest. I didn’t know a lot about concussions, but I vaguely recalled these were the signs. I took a couple of deep breaths; then I ventured off the wall and headed to the door.

Put one foot in front of the other, Jamie. You can do this. It’s like riding a bike
.

Except that I sucked at bike riding. Oh, I knew how, and coordination was never an issue. For some reason though, I never enjoyed it. All gangly legs and arms, it always felt unnatural, like crawling after you learned to walk.

I reached the door, grabbed the knob, its metal cold, and twisted.

Nothing.

It was locked. Damn.

My first instinct was to bang my fists on the door and cry for help. But I had no idea who had hit me, or if he was still nearby. As much as I'd love a swift rescue, I needed the element of surprise.

I pressed my ear to the door, listened for footsteps or any sounds. There weren’t any. Just complete silence. Then I turned and headed back to the window.

There weren’t any sounds from outside either.

No traffic, no animals, nothing.

On tippy-toe, I peeked out the window. All I could make out was grass and the bottom of a bush.

So where the hell was I? And more importantly, who had put me here?

I strained through my aching brain. It would have had to have been someone with access to the Waterston estate. The maid? Why would she knock me out, though? Call the cops and have me arrested? Yes. But resort to violence and then lock me up? Doubtful.

Was this the work of Dakota and her partner?

Sweat broke out along my back, despite the chill. No. Danny may have set me up, but he wouldn’t hurt me. I knew this. Dakota... her I wasn't so sure about.

I pushed on the glass window, trying to pop it out, but it didn’t budge. I briefly contemplated trying to break it and climb out, but it looked loud, and I didn't know how far away my captor was. If he heard it shatter, there was no telling how quickly he'd come running.

If it was a he.

Instead, I surveyed my surroundings for anything I could use as a weapon when he came back. I walked to the item with the sheet and ripped off the cloth. It was a full-length mirror on a wooden, swivel stand. I tried not to gasp at my sight, hair matted at the sides and sticking up on top, complexion the color of ash, sunken eyes with dark rings, as if I’d been in a boxing ring. Not pretty. I moved on.

The sewing machine was too heavy to be of much use, especially in my condition. The boxes were partially empty with only old fabric and spools of thread inside. Nothing sharp, dangerous, or menacing.

Okay, if I couldn't fight him, I had to outsmart him. I looked from the window to the pile of junk again. I could break the glass in the widow, then hide. Behind the mirror. Then when my captor ran out to look for me, I’d sneak out the door.

It was flimsy as plans went, but it was the best I had.

I pulled off one of my stilettos and wobbled to the window. With my left hand covering my eyes, I used all my might and swung. The pointy heel made contact with the glass but only left a nick.

Great, I’d be doing this all night. The aim was difficult too. I had to balance on my toes. Too bad I hadn’t taken ballet lessons. And with one shoe off and the state of my head, it made balancing almost impossible.

I struck out again and again. Sometimes I’d hit the sill, or scrape my knuckles on the cement. Finally, the heel cracked the glass. Hope jumped into my throat. One more whack, and I'd have it. I cocked my arm back.

And the door swung open, hitting the back wall with a thud.

I jumped and twisted, nearly stumbling forward.

The doorway stood dark, but a figure took a step toward the moonlight. The scent of perfume and cigarette smoke trickled in.

Another step, and I spotted brown slippers, thick calves and the hem of a skirt.

"What do you want?" I asked, squinting to make out a face in the darkness.

She took another step, and my breath hitched, making my chest burn.

"You annoying twit," she said.

Bathed in a whitish glow, Veronica Waterston pointed a gun at me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

_____

I gripped my shoe so tightly the buckle dug into my palm. I ignored the pain and focused on the lunatic in front of me.

The wife.

As I stared at the barrel of her gun catching the moonlight, pieces fell into places with sudden clarity. I'd spent so much time looking at the
fake
Mrs. Waterston, that I'd never considered the
real
one.

"You couldn’t just be as dumb as you look, could you?" Veronica’s tone was raspy, deep, with an undertone of anger bubbling just beneath the surface.

I paused. The key ingredient to staying alive in a hostage situation, at least according to television, was to keep the person with the gun talking instead of shooting.

"I look dumb?" I asked, clearly not caring what she thought, but hoping to stall her.

She grinned, showing off a row of stained teeth. "A model who wears inappropriate shoes to work, and is a bleached blonde."

Hey! I took offense to that. My hair color was all my own, thank you very much.

"So, that's why you chose me. You thought the dumb blonde would be easy to frame?"

She waved me off. "Don't flatter yourself. You were a random name in the P.I. section of Yelp. A means to an end."

"The end being killing your husband," I said slowly, watching her reaction.

But if she felt anything, she hid it well. Her face remained relaxed and impassive, as if she were discussing a ladies' luncheon instead of her husband's murder. "I'd had enough. I was finished with him."

"Enough what?" I asked, trying to keep her talking, as I scanned the area behind her. She'd left the door open. A means of escape. If I could catch her off guard, there was a chance I could slip past her to freedom.

Her eyes narrowed. "You know very well, enough what."

"Women?" I asked, hazarding a very educated guess.

She grinned again, a flat thing that held no actual humor. "Well, he certainly wasn't giving a lesson on court proceedings to the bimbo on the video, now was he?"

No, he wasn't. And the fact that she knew that, meant she had seen the video.

"Alexa White," I said.

The wife nodded, the gun bobbing up and down in her hand as well. "Just the latest in a long line of bimbos over the years."

"How did you get the video?" I asked, genuinely curious this time.

"It's what I'd call a fortunate accident," she informed me. "His niece, Dakota, was putting a strain on our finances. Always calling, looking for money. I told my husband not to give in to her outrageous demands, but he spoiled her. Even to the point of turning a blind eye to her less than legal activities."

"Such as?"

"I suspected she was using drugs."

Good guess.

"But my husband wouldn't believe it," she continued. "So I had someone set up cameras around her apartment. I figured if I caught her in the act, my husband couldn't ignore her shortcomings any longer, and he'd cut off her money supply."

"But you didn't catch Dakota," I prompted, remembering the floral sheets in the judge's homemade porn.

Her mouth drew into a tight line, her eyes darkening. Here was the emotion I'd been expecting earlier. Betrayal, hurt, and pure anger.

"No. I caught him using Dakota's apartment as his personal love nest. How dare he betray me! How dare he humiliate me like that. It was one thing to suspect what he was really doing all of those late nights he spent on 'committees,'" she said, doing air-quotes with her fingers. Which, incidentally took the gun off of me for a second. I paused, feeling a chance for escape in my future. The more she talked about her late cheating husband, the less she focused on her current captive.

"But it was another thing entirely," she went on, "to watch it myself."

"You must have been so angry," I said.

"Damned right I was angry!" she shouted, bubbles of spittle forming at the corners of her mouth, making her resemble a rabid dog.

"So you had to do something."

"Exactly. I couldn't let him get away with that. Not with rubbing it in my face like that."

"Why not just divorce him?" I asked. "You had solid evidence."

She laughed, her eyes blazing. "I was humiliated enough. I was not going to give him the satisfaction of publicly humiliating me again by raking my name through his sleazy affairs. Playing out a public divorce in the press was out of the question."

"So you decided to kill him."

She didn't answer, her eyes just looking past me, into some moment I couldn't see. Possibly the one where she'd shot the life out of her husband.

I took a small step to the left, my eye on the open door. But the movement snapped Veronica back to reality, the gun going straighter in her hand.

"And that's where I came in," I said, trying to steer back to friendly conversation as I eyed her trigger finger. It was scary tense.

She nodded. "Yes. I needed to make sure I had a perfect scapegoat."

"But why me?"

"You make a living off of adulterers like my husband," she said, very matter-of-factly. "I found that ironically satisfying."

I didn't point out that I made my living
catching
cheating men to benefit women like her.

"So you hired Donna to impersonate you? Why go through the trouble?" But even as I asked the question, I knew the answer. Deniability.

"While she was at your office, I was at a luncheon for the Rose Society committee. In case she botched it, I’d have no idea why that fool was impersonating me."

How clever.

"How did you convince her?" I asked, moving to the left just another inch.

"It wasn't hard," she bragged. "I found the letters she'd written to my husband, urging him to overturn his ruling in her husband's case, at first. Later they blamed him for the man's death. She hated my husband as much as I did, and I'd dare say she loved money almost as much. She was happy to play a role for me without asking too many questions."

"So, you had her hire me, giving yourself an alibi and planting evidence against me."

Those yellow teeth made an appearance again as a smile stretched across her wrinkled cheeks. "You have to admit, it was rather clever of me. I had Donna wear oiled gloves during your first meeting, remember? When you shook her hand, your fingerprints were transferred onto them. Then it was a simple job of applying them to the murder weapon. Coupled with the surveillance video, it was a perfect setup."

I had to agree; it was ideal.

"So why kill Donna?" I asked,

She gave me a hard look. "You think years of being a criminal court justice's wife has taught me nothing? I had to tie up lose ends."

"So you stole your niece's pills?"

"
Stole
? She lied to us to pay for those. She stole that money from me."

An interesting take on it, but I let it go.

"You thought of everything," I said, throwing a compliment her way instead.

She nodded. "Yes. I did." Then a frown creased her forehead. "But you had to get in the way. You couldn’t just play along like the little puppet you were. No. First, you find Donna, then you finally get arrested and do what? Escape." She threw the word out with disgust.

"Guess I’m not so blonde now after all, huh?" I couldn't help pointing out.

Which, in hindsight might not have been the smartest move.