Zeitgeist Read online

  Why would anyone want to kill someone that warm, that understanding? Fiona remembered Valencia talking about online searches. She should have listened more closely when the woman explained her desire to meet with, in truth, to kill, her father, but she hadn’t been interested. Her thoughts had been with Chad. Fiona’s stride faltered when she realized he too believed she was dead. He’d be heartsick. Once she’d finished confessing all to Whitley and before she turned herself in, she must call Chad.

  Fiona approached the house from the rear, skirting the detached garage and glancing up at the second- and third-story windows, noting they were dark. Lowering her eyes, she examined the first floor. A dim light illuminated one of the downstairs rooms. Whitley was home. He would have come home after learning about the explosion and would now be sitting alone and grieving in the formal sitting room, the one guests saw, not the sunroom she’d used when serving tea to her father and her dolls.

  I am so sorry, Daddy. Fiona paused at the French doors, choking back her sorrow before keying the security code into the keypad, grateful for Daddy’s insistence on all electronic locks. Given that her car keys had blown up in the airplane, she’d have had no way of entering her childhood home without an electric keypad.

  At the sound of the click indicating access, she slid the glass door wide enough to slip through. After closing it, she entered the lock code. The last thing she needed was an interruption while confessing all to her brother. Only after telling Whitley what she’d done would she call the police and turn herself in. She imagined his reaction: first, delight she’d been spared and then anger at the role she’d played in their father’s death.

  She couldn’t blame him.

  She stepped into the room but froze at the sound of the front door opening, a murmur of voices, the front door closing, and the voices drawing near. Whitley had company, probably a condolence call. No, that wasn’t right. Only strangers used the front door. What if his guest was the police? The voices were quite close now. He was bringing the person or persons here, to the room Daddy called his “office away from an office.” Fiona’s pulse began to race. She couldn’t see anyone but Whitley, not yet, and especially not the police.

  Cautioning herself not to panic, Fiona glided to her father’s desk and dropped to her knees, crawling into the cavernous space enclosed on three sides by heavy wooden panels and pulling the wheeled chair in after her. Her head again ducked low, this time to prevent banging it on the desk’s center drawer, Fiona eased her legs before her and crossed them while holding her breath at the sound of the door opening.

  “. . . two interviews, one with Homeland Security, the other with the FBI. The National Transportation Safety Board wanted a piece of me too, but I stalled them, saying I needed to be alone and would answer their questions tomorrow morning.” That was Whitley’s voice. He was speaking softly in an empty house. That’s what unexpected death did to one, generating a hush when none was necessary. She remembered the way they’d all spoken before, during, and after Mommy’s funeral.

  The door closed behind his guest, and Whitley spoke again. “You said you have video.”

  “From boarding the plane until the explosion. It’s all there. Look at it.”

  At the sound of the second voice, Fiona felt first elation and then confusion. What was Chad doing here? He hadn’t mentioned he knew her brother. A more pressing question concerned his motive for taping the takeoff and crash. Had he come to the airport, hoping for one last sight of her and inadvertently wound up taping her death?

  Five minutes passed while Whitley viewed the footage of the boarding and explosion, long enough for one of her legs to begin to cramp. She considered stepping out to relieve the cramp and was almost in the process of doing so when Whitley spoke.

  “And you’re sure that’s my sister boarding the plane?”

  “Yes,” said Chad, and Fiona knew his next words would haunt her for the rest of her life. “I watched her board, and it could be no other. I put an altimeter bomb in her purse while she was sleeping last night. It was set to go off when the plane achieved a certain altitude. Her purse. Her presence.”

  For the second time that day, Fiona went completely numb, losing the ability to feel or sense or so much as cry. When sentience returned, it did so with a rush of sorrow threatening to mow her down. Whitley was speaking now. She must listen. She must concentrate.

  “You slept with her?”

  “It wasn’t a hardship. She’s quite limber and enthusiastic. I enjoyed myself.”

  “She’s a slut!” Whitley snapped.

  This wasn’t happening. This was a bad dream. Any minute now, she’d wake up.

  When Whitley spoke again, his voice was farther away. She wondered whether he was leaving. “You’ll need to make certain you’re current on your shots.”

  After grieving in the airport parking lot, she’d thought she had no tears left to cry, but maybe she was wrong. Then she heard the beeps of a keypad—the safe—and the metallic click of a door opening. Seconds later, Fiona heard a sound like cards being shuffled. “It’s all there, but if you’d like, you can sit down and count it.”

  Tears began to roll down Fiona’s cheeks, and when her nose began to run, she let it trickle, wiping off streams of mucus with the back of her hand and then scrubbing the hand on her blue jeans. She focused on maintaining regular, shallow breaths through her mouth.

  Chad spoke next. “The woman, the one asking to meet with your father. The same amount for her?”

  “Yes. I’ll need video.”

  “Do you have a location?”

  “No. Only a phone number and a name. I’ve got those here. It’s a Massachusetts area code.”

  Fiona stiffened, almost banging her head against the drawer. In their hurry to exchange outerwear and purses, they hadn’t thought to keep their own phones. As far as she knew, Valencia’s phone was in the purse sitting by her side. What if he decided to call her now?

  “I’ll need expenses on that one.”

  “Don’t tell me what you’ll need, Farley, just do it.” Her brother’s voice was annoyed. She knew that voice. Whitley had tired of the transaction. He wanted to relax, to put a long, difficult day behind him. Having one’s father and sister killed was hard work.

  Fiona heard the office door open and then close. Confined in her wooden chamber, which increasingly felt more like a coffin, she couldn’t hear anything after that, no voices or footfalls far or near. She couldn’t be certain both men were gone. Her brother may have held the door for Chad and remained, maybe to have a drink from Daddy’s wet bar, his wet bar, now that he’d killed his only living relatives. She sat, weeping silently while listening to the front door opening and closing, wiping mucus from her nose, taking shallow breaths through her mouth, and waiting.

  Fiona didn’t know how long she sat there, numbed by anguish, frozen with terror. Finally, the cramp in her leg exceeded her pain threshold. Only then did she crawl from beneath the desk, rising and limping to the door, keying in the code, stepping out, relocking the door, and stumbling to her car, her vision blinded by tears.

  Why, Whitley? What had she and Daddy done that was so wrong he’d wanted them dead? Her, she could see. She now knew, based on what he’d said to Chad, that Whitley hadn’t been listening to her in a nonjudgmental manner when she’d shared with him her experiences with men and love. He’d been disgusted by her actions, perhaps disgusted enough to want her dead, but why their father? None had lived a more righteous life than Daddy. None.

  She sat in the car and tried to decide what to do. She could go to the police with what she knew, but it would be her word against his, and who would they believe? A pillar of the community, a man who not only assisted his father in running a multi-million–dollar company but also served on two charitable boards while volunteering as a girls T-ball coach once a week; or a party-girl teenage sister who had a reputation for volatility and, according to Whitley, promiscuity? Even worse, if the police didn’t believe her, whic
h they wouldn’t, she’d have announced to both Whitley and Chad they’d missed.

  They wouldn’t miss the next time.

  She had no one to turn to. Her brother wanted her dead. Her lover wanted the job. The police would never believe her. Her father was dead. What did she do?

  She ran, that’s what she did. Anywhere but Saint Paul, Minnesota, should work, but she needed clothes and toiletries, her suitcase having been blown up with her father and Valencia. She could hardly visit her living quarters to pack a new suitcase. She couldn’t go shopping, either, not with her own charge cards. As long as Whitley believed she was dead, she was in no danger. Nor could she shop with the charge cards of a woman targeted for termination, not without alerting Chad to her location. She had no choice. She had to continue being Valencia McDermott, which meant wearing Valencia McDermott’s clothes.

  Fiona turned the car toward the Doubletree Hotel and then pulled over, powering off the woman’s cell phone. She stared at it, wondering whether she should toss it out the window.

  No. The woman’s family didn’t know. Somewhere in Massachusetts, people would soon be wondering where their sister, mother, or daughter was.

  Once she’d taken care of her immediate concerns and was well away from Whitley and his hitman pal, she needed to call Valencia’s family and inform them her brother had killed the woman by mistake. “Whoops, I’m sorry. My brother meant to kill your sister, mother, or daughter after he killed me, but that’s Whitley for you, always putting the cart before the horse.”

  The prospect of that conversation filled her with dread. Shoving the phone into the purse, Fiona pulled back onto the street.

  Chapter 4

  Nothing in Fiona’s life had prepared her for the experience of riding upward in an elevator to a dead woman’s hotel room, knowing the hitman hired by her brother could be lurking behind a door, hoping for the opportunity to kill her. The closest she’d ever come to this degree of mind-numbing fear had been on carnival rides designed to elevate adrenaline levels while preserving a reassuring belief the rides were safe. Always the carnival-goer knew the ride would end with no greater misfortune than a throat made raw from screaming.

  Unlike carnival rides, a hitman’s goal was to kill, not thrill, and Chad appeared to be talented at his craft. She wondered how many victims had preceded her father, and her skin crawled at the thought of his hands touching her last night. Was it her imagination, an imagination lent hindsight by her new awareness, or had his hands lingered in the region of her throat?

  Fiona fought the adrenaline-spawned flight instinct rising in accordance with the elevator. The simple act of watching the illuminated numbers above her head count upward had never felt so portentous, generating the ominous feel of a steady progression toward death. She’d tried to talk herself out of this journey, telling herself she should risk using Valencia’s charge cards, but she knew this expedition was about more than collecting clothes. Like a voyeur, she wanted to know more about the woman who’d died in her place and was now slated to die again.

  What threat did Valencia pose to Whitley that he’d pay to have her killed?

  Before stepping from the elevator, Fiona held the doors open with one hand and poked her head through, peering from one side to the other. The brown-and-rust carpet stretched for a mile in both directions, a diamond-patterned road, deceptively welcoming for a route fraught with danger. Satisfied no assassins lay in wait, she stepped out, shifting left and then right while studying the numbers on the doors. Had Valencia said room 538 or 583? The lesser number seemed more realistic, so she tried the key card on 538 and breathed again only when she heard a click and saw the light flash green. After another quick glance to both sides, she stepped inside, inspecting the interior for thugs and cutthroats and lovers before closing the door behind her.

  A simple, functional hotel room, with the ubiquitous bed, nightstand, armchair, ottoman, end table with lamp, writing table, and chest of drawers formally arranged on tan carpet and backlit by a curtained wall of windows, lay before her in expectant silence, beckoning her inward that it might satisfy its purpose of providing respite for temporary residents. Her gaze fell on the telephone reclining on the nightstand, its red light flashing a honing beacon for the returning occupant. Walking to it on her toes, she hit the button to play messages.

  “Valencia, this is Chad Farley, Vice President of Public Relations at Delaney.com. Whitley Delaney asked me to meet with you about the concerns you expressed in your recent telephone call. Please call me at 651-555-6942 to arrange a meeting.”

  Fiona caught her breath on a hitch. Chad didn’t want to arrange a meeting, well, not the kind of meeting Valencia would have walked away from. He was either checking to see whether she was in or, as had been the case with their “accidental” meeting last night, he was setting the scene for her murder. It surprised her to learn he’d already found Valencia. It had been less than two hours since he’d accepted the job.

  She must hurry! Fiona made a rapid survey of the room, jogging to the chest of drawers, bathroom, and closet.

  Either the woman hadn’t unpacked, or she’d packed her belongings in preparation to leave; Fiona suspected the latter. Valencia had said she’d been here a week, yet one large, wheeled suitcase, black leather, and a small suitcase, silver metal, both packed and ready for travel, rested side-by-side in the closet. She must have doubted her ability to persuade Daddy of the threat to his company. Prepared to give up if her last-ditch attempt to speak with him failed, she planned on returning and collecting her luggage. She’d followed him to the airport and then, panicked at the thought of a lost opportunity, decided to approach his self-centered daughter as a means of gaining the father’s ear.

  For the first time, Fiona saw the woman as the crusader she’d been. She’d given her life for a cause, for something Whitley was doing to the company’s search algorithm.

  After wheeling out the leather suitcase and grasping the handle on the metal one, Fiona hurried to the door, cracking it open to peer both ways down the hallway. Chad knew his prey was here, a matter of minutes from his hotel room. Fiona stifled a once-sweet memory of sweaty limbs entwined. She wondered whether Chad would charge Whitley for the cab fare. That’s the only expense he’d incur.

  Holding her breath, as though that would help in the least, she dived out the door and trotted to the nearest elevator, pushing the button for down and waiting. And waiting. And wondering whether the door would open to Chad. She wasn’t cut out for the role of fearless heroine. Decisive action in the face of peril went beyond her skill set.

  She should have taken the stairs.

  Fiona eyed the door at the end of the hall with “Stairs” emblazoned on it, shifting toward them when the ding from the elevator sounded and the doors hissed wide. She tensed while watching them open and relaxed at the sight of empty space. Barely in with a suitcase on each side, Fiona heard the second elevator ding. She’d have a heart attack if the doors on this elevator didn’t close soon. Maybe she needed to push a button. She reached for the L and flinched backward, flattening herself against the elevator side when the doors began to close on their own. With six inches of space remaining, she saw Chad stride past on his way to 538.

  Had he seen her?

  No, Fiona. He was striding past. He was not stopping and putting one hand in the six-inch gap while using the other hand to draw a gun or a knife. She wanted to weep. After hitting the L for lobby, she concentrated on the floors passing, ready to hit the ground running when she reached the bottom.

  When the elevator stopped on the third floor, she wanted to scream at the young parents with their revolting son, a boy with sticky hands clutching at her coat while inviting her to smile down at him. Years from now, she knew she’d remember how much a maternal smile cost her and how it elicited similar smiles from a man and a woman not much older than she but certainly old enough to know no one but a woman running for her life could possibly want to smile at such a hideous child, a child wit
h ears that could send him skyward, a human kite during one of Saint Paul’s brisk March winds.

  When the L for lobby lighted and the elevator doors whispered open, Fiona felt tears of relief sting her eyes. All this stress and high intrigue would eventually break her. Now, for a dignified exit. Fiona speed-walked to the exit, the metal suitcase slapping against her thigh. After a near collision at the door, she sucked in gulps of brisk, early spring air. While racing down the sidewalk—why had she parked so far away?—her heart assumed a life of its own, attempting to pound its way upward, into her throat and out her mouth.

  Had Chad been able to break into 538? If not, how long had he waited after knocking? Not long. He could even now be walking through the doors, standing in uncertainty on the sidewalk, his green eyes sharpening at the sight of a woman fleeing down the sidewalk.

  Fiona slowed her pace to a dignified walk. Not quite a stroll, but definitely a walk. A nice, hurried but professional, late-for-a-meeting but won’t-lose-my-job-because-I’m-sleeping-with-the-boss walk. Reaching the car, she tossed the suitcases in the back seat and hopped in the front, grateful for the tinted windows enabling her to see the Doubletree entrance without herself being visible. Once again, indecision plagued her. Should she drive past the front doors, the logical route given the direction her car was facing, and take a chance Chad would walk out and see her, or should she risk a U-turn on a busy street so there was no possibility of being seen?

  Whitley’s contract killer took the choice out of her hands by emerging from the hotel, walking to the curb, hailing a cab, and climbing in. Even though she knew he couldn’t see her, she ducked low until she saw his cab turn right at the corner. Starting the engine, Fiona pulled into traffic. She glanced at her watch: 2 PM. She’d packed a lot of living and dying into one day. She had transportation and clothes. What came next?