Zeitgeist Read online

  He pulled to a stop, parking his pickup beside the Impala, and climbed out, long, denim legs ending in tennis shoes; broad shoulders, chest, and arms encased in a short-sleeved, knit polo shirt in the appropriate color of hunter green. Striding toward the house, tall and confident, he paused at the base of the deck steps, glancing at her through the window, his eyes surprisingly grave, his mouth unusually severe. Trotting up the stairs, he rapped on the front door.

  Had it not been for the grim expression on his face, Fiona wouldn’t have answered. If flirtation was behind this unprecedented visit to her lair, she had no time for him. However, curiosity got the best of her. What had put a serious look on the face of a man who appeared to devote an inordinate amount of time in the pursuit of frivolity? After thrusting her right hand into the pocket with the gun and thumbing off the safety, she walked to the door, flinging it open with her free hand and wheeling back toward the kitchen, with its comforting array of knives, a rolling pin, and a cast iron pan. Although relishing the slick sensation of icy steel beneath her fingers, she regretted she wasn’t likely to have an opportunity to use the gun, at least not on this man.

  “State your business,” she said over her shoulder while walking. She turned toward him, bracing her back against a counter, the one topped with a knife set.

  Grant stopped in the kitchen doorway, his gaze traveling from the knife set by her elbow and back to her face. The blue eyes were wary, as well they should be. “I’m a novelist. Did I ever mention that?”

  “No, but I wouldn’t remember it if you had. I try not to remember anything you say. I find I feel less soiled that way.”

  He grimaced. “While researching one of my novels, I met a cop in Denver.”

  She stiffened, suspecting what was coming and hoping against hope she was wrong. “That’s lovely. How nice for you. How perfectly awful for him.”

  “I made a telephone call, Valencia McDermott.”

  That he knew her name should have made her quail but instead she felt the old temper rise, threatening to lacerate her self-control. She took a deep breath. “And you’ve come by to let me know you’ve killed me. How wonderfully civil of you. Now, please leave.”

  He frowned at her response. “I came here to warn you. My friend received a visit, not a friendly one, either, after he researched my query.”

  Fiona could do nothing but stare at him in fury. Had Daddy only told her what men were all about, death and suffering, she’d have become a nun. Then Chad couldn’t have planted a bomb in her purse, and her father would still be alive. When she finally found her voice, it was trembling. “You are a stupid, stupid man. Get out.” She stabbed a finger toward the door. “Get out.”

  “I’m sorry. What I did can’t be undone, but I can help you.”

  “You? Help me? With what? Committing suicide? ‘Here, let me tie that tricky hangman’s knot for you,’ or ‘Do you need any help opening that pesky prescription bottle?’” She stared at him, this time incredulous.

  His head jerked, his eyes widened, and his face went slack. Grant Haldeman, stalker, busybody neighbor, and novelist, pitched forward onto the floor. Confused, Fiona watched him fall. Had she known sarcasm was his kryptonite, she’d have tried it long before. Then she raised her eyes.

  A shorter, slighter man now stood in the doorway. Chad.

  Chapter 6

  Chad’s eyes flared briefly. He’d expected to see Valencia McDermott, not Fiona Delaney.

  Damn Grant Haldeman straight to hell. She’d wanted this first meeting to be on her terms, not Chad’s, and having hoped for something more along the lines of a sneak attack, she wasn’t prepared, physically or emotionally, for a face-to-face confrontation. Fighting her panic, Fiona forced a welcoming, grateful smile to her lips. “Chad! I knew you’d find me! Thank God you got here when you did!”

  A smile, a smug smile, crossed his lips, and she felt a surfeit of anger rise until she felt bloated with the emotion. She wanted nothing more than to grind his face into the kitchen counter, but he was too far away for an effective physical attack, especially given the prone man blocking the floor between them. He relaxed. The gun in his hand, the one he’d used on Grant’s head, was now pointed toward the floor, clearly indicating his low opinion of the woman he’d already killed once.

  She hated him more at this moment than she’d ever hated him before. That was a lot of hate to conceal.

  “I thought you were dead,” he commented, those green eyes of his inspecting her face with the intensity of a wolf his prey.

  “Everyone did. Valencia died in my place. I took her identity.” Why? What would he believe? Moving slowly so her pocket didn’t swell, she shifted her finger from outside the Ruger’s trigger guard to the trigger, wondering how much time she’d have to make her shot once she pointed the gun at him. Not much. She needed to remember this man was a professional killer. Killing and not being killed were his stock in trade. He’d probably seen it all. “After Daddy’s death, I needed to get away. I blamed myself. Valencia talked me into trading places with her. She was a terrorist, and I let her take my place. I can’t face anyone, not yet.”

  “And him?” He waved his gun over Grant’s body.

  “A stalker. I can’t get rid of him. He came by today to let me know he’d discovered my true identity. He planned to blackmail me into sleeping with him. Thank you for coming in when you did! I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t shown up!” If she phrased one more sentence as a hysterical exclamation, she’d vomit all over her stupid, idiotic stalker.

  He continued to stare at the man lying prone on the floor, a slight frown creasing his magnificent brow. “That’s not the impression I got.” He raised his eyes to her, the expression in them perplexed. “What really happened? Why did you run back then? Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I couldn’t.” Why not? Why couldn’t she have called him? “My cell phone was in my purse, and Valencia took my purse.”

  The eyes altered expression, becoming flat and lifeless, and it occurred to her that for the first time she was seeing the true Chad. “Yes,” he said, his voice reflective. “The purse.”

  The farce was over. He realized she knew the bomb had been in the purse. How? Some inflection in her voice must have clued in him, perhaps an emphasis on the word purse. She pretended confusion. “What about the purse? What are you talking about?”

  “Give it up. How did you know?” He narrowed his eyes in thought and then raised his eyebrows in comprehension. “You were in the office afterward. You heard us concluding the transaction. Where were you? Behind the wet bar? Beneath the desk?” He smiled at something he saw in her face. To think she’d once found that lazy grin of his attractive. “Beneath the desk.”

  Now what? More lies. “Yes, Chad, I was beneath the desk. I heard it all. And if anything happens to me, I’ve left instructions for a letter to be mailed to the FBI, a letter detailing your transaction.”

  And he knew she lied. She could tell because his smile broadened. “Did you? Interesting. Now, to decide how to handle this. You can hardly die twice. Or can you? Yes, I think you can. I should have what I need to implicate you in your father’s death. If I don’t, then you certainly do. McDermott’s hotel room was cleaned out. You have her possessions here somewhere. I’ll find them. You got the McDermott woman to take your place. Like you said, this man tried to blackmail you. The two of you struggled for the gun. You killed him but were injured in the process. You bled out before you could get to the phone. You do have a phone, right? No? No phone? Or course not. You’ll have to be found crawling out the door, trying to get to your car.”

  The light in the green eyes gave her chills. She’d been foolish, so incredibly foolish, not only at nineteen but again, at twenty-two. “It’s a little difficult to manufacture a struggle with an unconscious man.”

  “Oh, he’s been conscious now for at least a minute. I saw him move. We’ll give him time to come around. You really need to shoot him in the front for th
is to work.” He glanced down at Grant, his expression contemplative. “I suppose I could flip him over, but that raises a host of trajectory issues. No. He needs to be upright for this to work.”

  She shot Chad through the pocket of her jacket, hitting him in the center of his chest, like her firearms instructor had taught her. “Don’t aim for a leg or an arm or the head. Always go for the largest portion, especially with a small-caliber pistol like yours. Even if you only disable him, you’re not as likely to miss, and you’ll gain time for another shot.” Largest portion. It was too bad Chad’s ego wasn’t revealed beneath the sheep’s clothing he wore.

  He looked surprised, staring down at the spreading stain on his chest, touching a finger to it and staring at the tip. When he looked back up, the lazy grin was gone and in its place an ugly scowl. “Bitch,” he said, raising his gun toward her with lightning rapidity.

  She shot him again, knocking him back a step and spoiling his aim. The bullet from his gun thudded into the cabinet behind her, and she heard the tinkling sound of glassware shattering. When he again attempted to take aim, she shot him a third time, earning a look of bewilderment. The arm holding the gun dropped to his side. He backed up one step when she shot him the fourth time, and after the fifth shot, he swayed and fell backward, hitting the living room floor with a substantial thud shaking the small television on its stand. She followed, methodically walking on and over her stalker, taking one step with each bullet fired.

  Fiona came to an abrupt sense of her surroundings. What was that clicking sound? She was standing over a man who lay on his back on the floor, ten bullet holes in his chest, his eyes already glazing over in death. And still she pulled the trigger, again and again and again.

  Fiona dropped the gun. She stepped back. She needed to think.

  She heard a moan behind her. Chad had been right. Grant was coming to. He had no right to live, but apparently there was no justice in this world. Like that was something she didn’t already know.

  It was time to leave. She was ready. She’d prepared for this day, and she knew what she needed to do. Whether it was Valencia’s employer or Whitley’s employee who found her first, she’d always known she wouldn’t have much time before the second wave arrived.

  Fiona stooped, picking up the gun and shoving it in her left jacket pocket, the right pocket being shredded with bullet holes. Turning, she walked to her bedroom, opened the closet door, and pulled out two suitcases, laying them on the bed, opening them, and dumping the contents of her chest of drawers and closets in them. Carrying the least-full suitcase to the bathroom, she placed it on the floor, sweeping the contents of the cabinet, counter, and drawer into it. She closed it, fastened the latches, and collected the other suitcase from her bedroom. Packing couldn’t have taken more than three minutes. Even if she’d practiced, she couldn’t have bettered her time.

  When she passed the kitchen on her way to the front door, Grant was sitting up, his head buried in his hands. Chad must have hit him on the top of his head: the sandy hair was sticky with blood. The novelist-cum-stalker had a headache, poor man. Fiona resisted the urge to spit on him while plucking both sets of car keys from their pegs by the door and her purse from the end table. “I hope you’re ready to run because you just painted a bull’s-eye target on your back with your big mouth.”

  Out the door, down the stairs, across the yard to the barn—Fiona left the suitcases and purse ten yards away and swung wide the heavy barn door, bracing it open with the concrete block she’d left there for this purpose. Her next getaway vehicle, a silver Buick Lacrosse, awaited her inside, its gas tank full. She’d purchased this one in a private sale two months ago and had never registered it. The plates were still current but in the previous owner’s name.

  She walked to the rear and popped the trunk lid, staring down at Valencia’s suitcases and purse. After opening the silver case, she released the Ruger’s empty clip and replaced it with a full one, sliding the gun into her pocket and closing the trunk. Hopping into the car, she drove to the suitcases she’d left in front of the barn, throwing both in the back seat and her purse in the front. Climbing back in, she put the car in gear and braked.

  Grant stood in front of the car, both hands braced on the hood, a rivulet of blood tracing a path down his uncharacteristically angry face.

  She rolled down her window. “I’ll run you down. That’s the only warning you’ll get.”

  “And I’ll give the license plate number on this vehicle to my friend. That’s the only warning you’ll get.”

  Anger rose, seizing her by the throat, and she fought it down. Odds were high his friend was no longer living, but she couldn’t take a chance she was wrong. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you want to come with me? So you can help me some more?”

  He glowered at her, going for a fierce look suited to someone with blood running down the side of his face. “Maybe so you can help me, if you’re right about the target on my back. I haven’t a clue what you’re involved in, and I happen to enjoy living. I accept my responsibility for what happened in there, but I’m damned if I’m going to die without knowing why.”

  Who in the hell did he think he was? She owed him nothing. Less than nothing. “If you hadn’t poked your big nose into my affairs, I wouldn’t have to run again. Idiot!”

  “But I did. That’s spilt milk, and I’m not going home to sit there, waiting for the next shoe to drop. If you leave me here, you’re signing my death warrant.”

  Fiona clenched her teeth. Given his reliance on clichés, he couldn’t be much of a novelist. He was right, though. If she left him here, his life expectancy was about as promising as that of a suicidal lemming. She was torn between hating the man before her—it sure as hell wasn’t her fault he’d gotten himself involved in her problem!—and guilt at the prospect of involuntary complicity in the murder of yet another innocent. If she left him behind, she’d always wonder. “You’ll pay our way and keep your big mouth shut for a change?”

  “Yes. To both.”

  She rolled her eyes in frustration. “Get in.”

  He raced to the passenger side, and she quashed the urge to drive off without him, leaving him in her dust. She put the car in gear. “You’re a son of a bitch,” she commented.

  He nodded, his expression grim. “I am. Go to my house. It’s the nine-acre place three miles east on the other side of old 77. It’ll take me five minutes to pack and grab what cash I have on hand.”

  “Make it three minutes to pack. Any longer than that and I leave without you.”

  “Three minutes to pack, two minutes to wash off the blood.”

  Fiona glared at him. “Five.”

  * * *

  He had a flowerbed. It wasn’t a fancy flowerbed, merely a narrow strip running along the front of the house and consisting of low bedding plants like marigolds, petunias, and pansies, a flowerbed suggesting either colorblindness or a lack of taste. It bordered on pitiful, somehow humanizing its caregiver, imbuing him with a wretched vulnerability, like a puppy locked in a car on a hot day.

  Fiona looked away.

  She’d backed the car into an empty outbuilding with a gaping, doorless front, too big to be a garage, too small to be a barn, where she had a good vantage point of both the house and the gravel road. The house, set in the center of what he’d said was nine acres but had to be closer to seven, was a small two-story bungalow with cheerless white paint and dismal gray shingles. She supposed she’d be more generous in her assessment of its character if she didn’t loathe its owner, but she did loathe its owner, and the best she could say was the depressing house with its pathetic flowerbed repelled rather than welcomed.

  She glanced at her watch. He was pushing four minutes now. Another seventy-five seconds, and she was leaving without him. Unbidden, her thoughts slipped to another time, another day, when she’d glanced at her watch, waiting for five minutes to pass.

  She considered her new travel companion, hat
ing him but accepting he needed her. So far, he’d kept his promise, having spoken not so much as one word during the three-mile drive to this sorry house with its sorrier flowerbed lurking, like its owner, in the midst of rural farm country. She wondered whether he was hiding, too.

  Maybe the writer’s union had run him out of town for abuse of hackneyed phrases. Why else would a novelist live alone in a backwoods environment?

  Suspicion rose. He’d been pretty quick to offer her help, even if he hadn’t followed through, and now he was awfully quick in insisting he come with her. Why? He could run as well on his own. What did he really hope to gain from coming with her? He knew she wasn’t interested in him. She’d made this clear any number of times over the past six months. Yet, without knowing a thing about her other than her demonstrative proclivity toward overkill when shooting trespassers, he’d decided he must join her in her flight.

  She considered his motives. Did he really need her to help him, or was that another one of his cons? Maybe he knew more than he let on. Maybe he was crazy. The thought gave her pause. It would be just like her to trade a serial killer hitman for a serial killer lunatic.

  She flinched when he opened the rear passenger-side door, tossing in two suitcases and slamming it. After jumping in the front and fastening his seatbelt, he looked at her. Whatever he saw in her face made him feel the need to reassure her. “I’m not whatever you’ve decided I am.”

  By dint of reminding herself he was dead if she didn’t take him with her, Fiona swallowed her doubts and pulled out, turning the car toward the interstate.

  “Take I-29 north. We’re going to Billings, Montana. My sister owns a condo there. No one will think to look for us there.”

  How easily he bandied about the word “us,” and how readily he assumed she’d take instructions from him. “That’s the second place they’ll look after they wreck your house. You made a telephone call setting all kinds of crap into motion. He had to have followed you from your place to mine, or didn’t this occur to you yet?”