A Murderous Game (30 page)

"Mr. Norwell," she said,
walking into his office, "Madeline said you wanted to see me."

Her boss picked up the paper from
his desk. His puffy jowls looked blotchy, as if he had a nasty case of hives.
They seemed to quiver with rage.

"You better have a damn good
explanation for this, Carpenter."

Abby approached his desk, the palms
of her hands started to sweat. Her breathing slowed. As she got closer she saw
two photographs. In one, she was standing on the sidewalk outside her office
building. Gage was standing next to her, looking down at her.

The other picture was harder to
make out. It was of a car parked by the curb. There was a man and woman in the
back seat. She drew nearer, looked closer. It was she and Gage.
Kissing.

Her world began to spin. She
swallowed as her eyes darted to the tag line in bold letters just below the
photographs.

JUST BUSINESS?

Laughter burst in her chest,
hysterical laughter that clogged the back of her throat in its mad rush for
release. She couldn't let it loose. She was afraid if she did, she might not be
able to stop. She'd laugh and laugh and laugh until it drove her completely
mad.

~~~

Her day didn't go downhill. It
rocketed to hell, and the devil's name was Harold Billings.

She had him to thank for bringing
the article to Norwell's attention as soon as he'd arrived at the office,
out
of concern for the firm
.

Concern my ass, she thought,
fighting the pain that had settled in her left eye. Norwell probably would have
seen it eventually, but it would have been nice if she'd seen it first. She
might have had time to come up with something better than
D
amn
them, are they everywhere
?

Her phone started ringing again.
The throbbing in her eye reached out to recruit her left temple to join in the
torture. She'd taken two pain pills an hour ago, but they'd done nothing to
help. She picked up the phone.

"Abigail Carpenter," she
said, putting her elbow on the desk and cradling her forehead in her hand.

"
Ab
,
I'm so sorry. I've been trying to reach you all morning. Are you all right? The
Daily Dish is a rag. Don't let anything they print bother you. No one takes
them seriously. Oh, God, are you all right?"

"
Rach
,
please, not so loud."

"You're not all right."

"If I can make it through the
day without going postal on Billings,
I'm afraid I'll survive."

"Has that prick been
tormenting you about this?"

Abby rubbed her eyes. "Forget
it." She sighed into the phone. "Look, I don't feel like talking
right now. I'll be fine, though. Thanks for checking on me."

"Are you sure, honey? Do you
want me to come over tonight? We can play Scrabble."

In spite of her head, Abby smiled.
Rach
wasn't a game person. She needed to be moving, but
Abby was a Scrabble nerd. The offer to spend an evening sitting at the kitchen
table spelling words was a testimony to their friendship.

"Not tonight. I've got a
headache."

"I'm letting that pass because
you don't feel good. If you change your mind, let me know; otherwise, I'll talk
to you tomorrow. And
Ab
, it'll blow over; it always
does."

Unfortunately, that was part of the
problem. She'd weathered the worst of the scandal around her marriage to Dick,
and she'd thought it was behind her. Now the press had resurrected it, at first
in the guise of a by-the-way when covering the murder investigation. This
latest was nothing so innocent. And they weren't just targeting her with their
slander; they'd involved Gage.

~~~

"I'll have the stuffed
crab." Brett handed the waiter his menu and looked at Gage. "Once we
obtain all the approvals, we could have a state-chartered bank up and running
in six to nine months."

Gage stroked his chin. "We
might have to move some people to Delaware.
The feds won't look kindly on it if they think we're operating a ghost entity.
I'm not concerned about that, though. We'll hire people if we have to. The
Valley's rife with bankers."

"Are you sure this is the way
you want to go?"

"Positive," Gage said.

Brett nodded. "If we go with
your idea to open a permanent Philadelphia
office, we could have some of the corporation's officers split their time
between Center City
and Delaware."

"Precisely."
Gage took a drink of his water. "I'll inform the board about my plans for
that on Monday. We're already in agreement an east coast base makes sense, and
if we're going to apply for a charter in Delaware,
then Philadelphia
is a logical choice."

They discussed the logistics of
moving some of their operations from Chicago.
If everything went according to his plans, Gage would be able to split his time
between Chicago and Philadelphia.

When
Riv
One was completed, he'd purchase one of the four penthouses that would be
available for sale. He and Abby could live there when they were in Philly. If
she didn't like his place in Chicago,
they could buy something in the suburbs. She liked flowers. She might like
having a garden.

She might not want to give up her
job and shuttle from city to city with him.

He frowned. She'd told him she
dreamed of opening her own marketing firm one day. He wouldn't ask her to give
that up. Whatever decision she made, they'd find a way to make things work.
He'd see to it.

When they left the restaurant, the
sidewalks were wet from a recent shower. Warmer weather had moved in, escorting
fog along Madison Avenue like a parade of low slung clouds.

They caught a cab for La Guardia a
few minutes later. Their flight was scheduled to take off at five forty-five.
Gage glanced at his watch. It was three fifteen. By the time they got to the
airport, passed through security, and got to their gate, they shouldn't have
too long to wait.

Matt would be giving Abby the grand
tour right now, piles of dirt and stone, lots of steel girders, and a couple of
hundred sweaty men, with a view of the Delaware and Camden waterfront.

He grinned. He'd bet she looked
real cute in a hard hat. He pulled out his cell to check in with Grace. She
usually called to update him at least once during the day when he was out of
the office, but he hadn't heard a peep from her. He flipped open the cover.

"Damn it."

"What's wrong?" Brett
asked.

Gage pressed the power button.
"I turned my phone off at the restaurant so we wouldn't be interrupted and
forgot to turn it back on."

He called up his messages and
scrolled through them. There were eleven in total, six from Grace, all marked
urgent. He called her first.

"It's Gage," he said by
way of a greeting. "I forgot to turn my damn phone back on after Brett and
I had our lunch meeting. What's going on there?"

They turned right off of 26
^th
onto East 34
^th
and headed toward the Queens Midtown Tunnel. He
glanced out the window at the sea of people, wave after wave frothing with every
race, color and creed, and then some.

He listened with half an ear as
Grace gave him a brief update, nothing that wouldn't hold until Monday or
Tuesday.

"Did you by any chance hear
about the article in
The Dish
?" she asked.

"What's
The Dish
?"

"I was afraid of that,"
she said, and her tone made him uneasy. "It's a tabloid."

"Who am I sleeping with
now?" he asked, rolling his eyes at Brett.

Grace was quiet for a moment and
then she said, "Abigail Carpenter."

"Oh, shit." He switched
the phone to his other ear, grinding his back teeth. "Spill it."

She summarized the article.
"There are photos, too. The one's not much, just the two of you standing
on a city sidewalk. The other shot you're both in the back seat of a cab and
you're…" She paused. "It's obvious the two of you are—close."

"How is it obvious?"
Anger made his tone curt.

"You're kissing her."

He rubbed his fingers over his
eyes. "Have you talked to her?"

"I haven't been able to get
through. I left a couple of messages, but she hasn't returned my calls. She may
just be busy and hasn't been able to get back to me yet."

Or she's being deluged by the
fallout
, he thought. This was the last thing she needed right now. If he
knew Abby, she'd be putting on a good face, holding her own against the world,
and she'd be devastated by this. He had to talk to her.

"Matt Silver's supposed to be
giving Abby a site tour this afternoon. Find him and get back to me
immediately." He ended the call, fisting his hands with frustration.

"Son of a
bitch!"
 

Brett cleared his throat. "You
want to talk about it?"

Gage glanced across the seat, his
expression taut. What he wanted was to see Abby. If he could see her, he'd know
if she was all right. Tightening his lips, he shook his head and looked out the
window. Why the hell did this have to happen when he was out of town?

His phone rang and he snapped it
open.

"I've got Matt on the
line," Grace said. "I'll patch him through."

~~~

Abby wrapped her arms around her
waist and glanced toward the river. She wasn't going back to the office after
Matt finished giving her the tour of the site. If she could just hold herself
together until then, she'd go home and then she didn't care how sick she got.

Matt had excused himself a moment
ago to take a call. She turned her back to him and brought her hand to her
mouth, fighting off another wave of nausea.

A construction worker operated a
jackhammer about a couple of hundred feet from where she stood. He looked like
he was having a seizure as his lumberjack body shook against the hydraulic
drill. The concrete slowly gave way, the incessant roar punching her skull with
every reluctant inch the old parking lot surrendered.

She closed her eyes and took
several slow, deep breaths. Don't get sick, she commanded herself, and swallowed
back the saliva gathering in the back of her mouth.

"Excuse me," Matt said
from behind her.

Abby turned, too quickly, and tiny
black dots spun in front of her eyes. She blinked them away.

"I didn't mean to startle
you." He held his phone out toward her. "Gage wants to talk to
you."

Several questions raced through her
head at once. Does he know about the article? Could he have seen the paper at
the train station? Was he upset about the repercussion of being publicly linked
with her?

She hadn't called Grace back
because she hadn't had the luxury of a minute to herself to think about what to
do. She was positive the "urgent" in the woman's message meant Grace
had seen that morning's
Dish
. Maybe she hadn't told Gage about the
article. She might have decided not to upset him with it until he got back and
do whatever damage control she could until then.

"Hello, Mr. Faraday," she
said, conscious of Matt's proximity. She looked at the other man with a weak
smile. He gave a nod and then ambled over to a group of workmen. His leaving
told its own story.

"Are you okay?" Gage
sounded upset. Did he know?

"I'm fine. Matt's the perfect
tour guide." She winced and tried to force some cheerfulness into her
voice. "I took your advice and brought a pair of my old hiking boots with
me to put on when I got here. I think they make quite a fashion statement with
my suit and the hard hat. Maybe I'll start a new trend."

"How are you,
sweetheart?"

"I told you, I'm fine. Norwell
said if you were happy with the print ads, so was he. I left a message for
Cheryl Stevens to give—"

"Stop being
evasive, Abby.
I don't give a damn about Norwell or Stevens. Grace told
me about the tabloid article. I want to know if you're all right."

She rubbed her forehead. No, she
wasn't all right. She was standing in the middle of a construction site with a
roaring headache. She was at risk of puking up her guts in front of a couple of
hundred men. Her boss had questioned her professional morals, and she was
worried her job was on the line.

There were dozens of newspaper
boxes on street corners throughout the city with her face plastered on the
front page of some rag, swallowing tongue with one of her clients. At the
moment, her life sucked.

"I'm handling it," she
said. "I'm sorry you got dragged into this mess because of me. You've got
enough to worry about without being linked with a murder suspect and having
your name smeared across the pages of a tabloid."

"The only thing I'm worried
about is you." She could hear the concern in his voice, and it made her
wish he were there, holding her, loving her, taking her away from the ugliness
for a while.

"And just so we're
clear," he said as if stating a fact she should already know, "I was
the one who dragged you into my life. And it wasn't the easiest thing I've ever
done getting you there. In case no one's ever told you, you can be
stubborn."

He had pursued her, that was true,
but he couldn't have anticipated the mess he'd gotten himself embroiled in as a
result of her acquiescence.

"Well, you don't need to worry
about me. Really," she lied, "I've been too busy today to even think
about what happened." She wouldn't cry on his shoulder. She wouldn't rely
on him to fix her world. Once she got home she'd get some rest, regroup, and
find a way to get through it, just as she'd done before.

"Fly to Chicago tonight. I'll have Grace make the
arrangements, and I'll meet you at the airport."