Bait (3 page)

“Hello?” If she'd just suffered a complete and utter nervous breakdown, her voice at least gave no hint of it. Never let them see you sweat: The mantra had been drummed into her at a hard school. Nice to know that it was still automatically operational.

“Did I wake you?”

Jon.
He'd nearly sent her into cardiac arrest.

“Actually, I wasn't asleep.” Maddie hitched herself up against the pillows. As she did so, she wiped her sweaty palms one at a time on the tastefully earth-toned comforter in which she was swaddled.

“Me neither. Hey, maybe we could keep each other company.”

Maddie could almost see his smile through the phone. Jon Carter was a good-looking guy, blond, blue-eyed, tall and trim, oozing charm through his pores. It was one of the reasons she continued to employ him.

“Not a chance.” Her voice was tart. Of course, the fact that he was still regularly hitting on her despite the change in circumstances that had turned her into his employer could not be considered a point in his favor.

He sighed. “You're a hard woman, Maddie Fitzgerald, you know that?”

“Believe me, the knowledge keeps me awake nights.” Her heart rate was almost back to normal. “You want something?”

“I just had a thought—maybe we should try to work Mrs. Brehmer into the spot. You know, have her be the face of Brehmer's Pet Chow, or something.”

“She's ninety years old and she looks like she died about ten years back.”

Again, she could hear his smile. “So what's your point?”

Mrs. Brehmer was also worth about ninety billion, and her account, currently held by J. Walter Thompson, an advertising agency so huge that it was tantamount to sacrilege to mention Maddie's own fledgling agency in the same breath with it, was worth upward of ten million a year. The thought practically made Maddie salivate. She'd sunk her life savings into buying Creative Partners when the firm for which she and Jon were working had gone belly-up eighteen months before. Unfortunately, so far the company's finances hadn't exactly turned around on her watch. If something good didn't happen soon, this time when Creative Partners went down the tubes she was going down with it.
Not a happy thought.

“I suppose we could coat the lens with Vaseline,” Maddie said with a sigh. “Or put pantyhose over it. Something to soften the visual.”

Jon chuckled. “See, I have good ideas.”

“Sometimes.” Maddie was thinking. “Maybe we could put her in a rocking chair in a long black dress, get her to look sort of like Whistler's mother. Just get a long shot of her. She wouldn't have to actually say anything. She could be like the company logo.”

“There you go. Put a whole bunch of animals around her. Cats draped across the back of the chair, dogs at her feet. That kind of thing.”

“Wouldn't hurt to pitch it.” Cradling the receiver between her shoulder and ear, Maddie reached for the hotel-issue notepad and pencil by the phone. With a few economical strokes, she made a quick sketch of Mrs. Brehmer as logo, complete with slight smile, shoulder-perching cat, and oval frame, then examined it critically.

“Could work,” she admitted.

“Want me to come up so we can put something together?”

“No.”
Maddie glanced at the bedside clock. It was not quite midnight. “Our appointment's not until ten. How about if we meet for breakfast at seven-thirty? That should give us plenty of time to go over everything. Remember, right now we're just floating this logo idea as sort of a trial balloon. If she likes it, we can go from there.”

“Whatever you say, Boss.”

“Get some sleep.” Because being called
Boss
was still fresh enough to give her a thrilled little tingle, Maddie's voice was gruff. Then she bethought herself of something and pulled the receiver back. “Jon—good thinking, by the way.”

“I try. Hey, if you change your mind, I'm only two floors down.”

“Good-night, Jon.” Maddie hung up. For a moment, she simply stared at the sketch she had made as various ways to work Joan Brehmer into the ad campaign they were proposing revolved through her head. The elderly widow was still sufficiently involved in the company her husband had founded in St. Louis fifty years before that Creative Partners had had to fly to New Orleans, where Mrs. Brehmer now spent most of the year, to pitch their ideas to her personally. Given that the old lady felt that strongly about the company, maybe including her in the spot was the way to go. Maybe it would even be the deciding factor.

Okay, so Jon's perpetual come-ons were annoying. The man still had some decent ideas. If Creative Partners landed this account ...

The phone rang again. This time Maddie didn't jump. With the light on, she was as cool as a cucumber.

“What?” she said into the receiver.

“If this works, I want a Christmas bonus.” Jon again, as she'd known it would be.

“We'll talk.”

“Damn right we'll talk. I ...”

“Good
-night,
Jon.” But Maddie was smiling as she hung up. The idea of being in a position to give Christmas bonuses to her five employees was irresistible. If they got this account...

But getting the account would require a dazzling presentation, and a dazzling presentation would be greatly facilitated by a decent amount of sleep. Which at the moment she wasn't even close to getting. If she got up an hour earlier than she'd planned, there'd be plenty of time to work on the Mrs.-Brehmer-as-logo idea before she met Jon for breakfast. Right now, she needed rest.

Maddie returned the pad and pencil to the bedside table, then frowned at the lamp. It bathed all four corners of the standard-issue room in a warm glow. She could see her reflection, tinted gold and only faintly distorted, in its shiny brass base. Chin-length coffee-brown hair tousled from the amount of tossing and turning she had already done. Slender shoulders, bare except for the spaghetti straps of the silky pink shorty nightgown she was wearing, tan against white sheets. High-cheekboned, square-jawed face, complete with wide mouth, delicate nose, and dark-lashed hazel eyes, staring back at her.

She looked worried. And tired.

Maddie almost snorted. Big surprise. By now, worried and tired were practically her middle names.

But if Creative Partners managed to wow Mrs. Brehmer ...

Phobia-busting was going to have to wait. The reality was that, for her, sleep required light. But the bedside lamp was almost too bright. Feeling a little like Goldilocks
—this porridge is too cold; this porridge is too hot—
she slid out of bed and padded barefoot to the bathroom. Flipping the bathroom light on, she closed the door until it was just barely ajar. Then, shivering as she inadvertently stepped right into the arctic slipstream that blasted from the air conditioner, she succumbed to the final temptation and stopped at the closet to pull Fudgie, the ancient, floppy-eared stuffed dog that was the sole surviving reminder of her misspent youth, from the suitcase on the floor. Clutching him, she bounded back into bed, pulled the covers up around her neck, and, with Fudgie tucked beneath her chin, turned off the lamp.

Ahh.
The sheets were still faintly warm, warm enough to soothe the shivers away. Fudgie's familiar aroma and well-worn softness provided the illusion that she was no longer alone. The slice of light provided just enough illumination to induce sleep. A glance around verified that everything from the armoire at the foot of the bed to the small armchair in the corner was dimly visible, despite the fact that the room was now shrouded in a kind of grayish twilight. Not too much, not too little, just right.

'Night, Goldilocks,
she told herself, and snuggled her head deep into the pillows. Her lids drooped. The bed was suddenly surprisingly comfortable. Even the growl of the air conditioner seemed companionable rather than obnoxious now. Fear shuffled off deep into the furthest reaches of her subconscious as images of Mrs. Brehmer in various increasingly ridiculous poses flitted through her head: the old lady standing with a pitchfork and a Great Dane in a takeoff of
American Gothic;
in close-up (with the help of much lens-softening Vaseline), sporting an eyepatch and a Mona Lisa smile while a parrot perched pirate-style on her shoulder; sitting with a black cat on her lap and a yellow canary in a cage by her side, rocking away like Granny in a Sylvester and Tweety cartoon ...

The pounding of her own heart woke her. At least, that's what Maddie thought at first as she surfaced what could have been minutes or hours later. Even as she blinked groggily, trying to get her bearings, she could feel the gun-shy organ knocking against her rib cage, feel the racing of her pulse, the dryness of her mouth, the knot in the pit of her stomach that told her she'd had a bad dream.

Another
bad dream.

The good news, she thought as she wet her dry lips, was that she hadn't had one for a long time now. More than a year. Actually, not since she'd taken over Creative Partners and given herself a whole rash of new worries to keep her awake at night. Which, believe it or not, was actually a positive development in her life. Better to worry about being jobless, homeless, and broke than being dead.

The room was pitch-dark. The bathroom light was off.

Realization hit Maddie like a jolt from a cattle prod.

The bathroom light is off.
Unless there was a power outage—no, that was out, the air conditioner was still doing its window-rattling roar—someone had turned off the light.

Someone
had turned off the light.

Wait, her rational side cautioned, even as panic seized her by the throat. Stiff as a concrete slab now, she strained futilely to hear or see as she deliberately ticked off various
un
terrifying possibilities: The bulb could have burned out; there could have been a short in a wire; it ...

There was someone in her room. He was stepping out of the narrow corridor between the bathroom on the left and the rows of closets on the right and moving toward the bed. Maddie didn't see him; the room was pitch-black. She didn't hear him—the air conditioner was making too much noise to allow her to hear anything so stealthy as a creeping footfall on carpet.

But she sensed him. Felt him. Knew with unshakable certainty that he was there.

Her heart leaped. Goose bumps raced along her skin like a rush of falling dominoes. The hair at the back of her neck shot straight up.

A scream ripped into her throat; instinct made her swallow it just in time.

If she screamed he would be on her like a duck on a june bug. If she screamed, who, in this cheap, impersonal hotel with its noisy, sound-blocking air conditioners, would be likely to hear—except him?

Making a split-second decision, she moved, sliding as quietly as possible off the side of the bed, suddenly grateful for the air conditioner's racket to cover her movements. Flat on her stomach on the musty-smelling carpet, she discovered that there was nowhere to go: The window wall was maybe a foot away on her left, and, to her right, a quick, questing hand encountered the carpeted platform that supported the bed.

A couple of heartbeats passed before the true horror of her situation sank in: She was trapped. Her throat closed up and her stomach knotted as she faced the fact that she had nowhere to go. The only way out was the door—and the intruder was doing whatever he was doing between her and it.

Maybe he was nothing more than a garden-variety burglar. She'd left her purse on the floor beside the armoire. Maybe he would just take it and melt away into the darkness from which he'd sprung.

Yeah, and maybe she'd win the lottery too, but the way her luck had been running for the last few years, she wasn't going to hold her breath in anticipation.

Where was he? Her every sense was on quivering alert, but the darkness was impenetrable: She literally couldn't see the hands splayed flat on the carpet in front of her face. Hearing anything was equally impossible over the air conditioner. Her heart threatened to pound its way out of her chest. Fear quickened her breathing until, afraid he might somehow hear the fast, shallow pants even over the rattling air conditioner, she deliberately deepened and slowed it. Her fingers, still hopelessly probing the scratchy carpet barrier that prevented her from going with her first instinct, which was to hide under the bed, encountered a smooth wooden stick: the pencil she'd been sketching with earlier. They closed around it convulsively. It wasn't much, but it was the closest thing to a weapon she had.

The darkness lightened fractionally. Glancing up, her gaze widened on a pinpoint shimmer of light that was reflected in the lamp's base. He had switched on a flashlight, one of those small ones with the tiny beams. It was moving over the bed.

Her stomach clenched like a fist.

Move,
she told herself fiercely. Scrambling into a low crouch, shivering with cold and fear, Maddie scuttled as soundlessly as possible toward the foot of the bed.

The light went out. That could not be good.

The bed shuddered twice in quick succession. Her shoulder was just touching the mattress, using it as a guide to get where she needed to go, and she felt the twin jolts. Maddie almost yelped with surprise as she jerked away. Pulse pounding so hard that she could barely hear the air conditioner over the panicked beat assaulting her eardrums, she backpedaled until she came up against the wall. Sucking in air, she gaped toward the bed without, of course, being able to see a thing. The sounds made her think of a fist slamming hard into the mattress. Once. Twice.

Then, with sudden icy certainty, she realized that those sounds hadn't been made by any fist. The acrid smell drifting beneath her nostrils told its own tale: a gun. A gun with a silencer. Someone possessing a gun with a silencer had just fired two shots into her bed.