For Love of Money (28 page)

Chapter Forty-seven

Sunday morning

Holly opened her front door and peeked outside. On the upside, no one was lurking on her front steps. In the not-so-much category, it was one of those gray mornings with fog blanketing the rivers that reminded her winter was coming. It was shaping up as a day she’d ordinarily laze in bed, except today she couldn’t sleep. In the few short hours since JC had left, she’d climbed in and out of bed a dozen times, checked the locks, and watched the Richland cops cruise past.

Unlike Friday night, she’d been relieved by their presence.

She locked her front door and headed for the rental car. With a quick twist, she stuffed the Bluetooth device into her ear and dropped her phone in her pocket. She settled behind the wheel and stared at the unfamiliar controls. Where were the lights and seat adjustments?

As soon as she pulled out of the driveway, she tapped the Bluetooth. “Mother.”

At her mother’s groggy, “Hello,” Holly glanced at the clock and winced. It was earlier than she’d realized. “Can you meet me at the office later this morning? We need to talk about Stevens Ventures.”

“Sure.” Her mother sounded more awake. “Anything I need to know right now?”

She rolled the stop sign at Leslie, headed toward Gage. “It’s a mess, but it’ll be better if I show you. Oh, and in case there’s anything on the news, there was another, um, incident last night, but I’m fine.”

“What?”

Like her mother would let
that
slide past. “I’ll tell you about it at the office.”

She disconnected before her mother could ask any questions.

Holly tested phrases for reassuring her mother until she reached her favorite espresso shop. “Double-shot latte, skinny, please.”

She’d just climbed back into the car when a tap at her window sent her heart rate into the stratosphere and her hands into the air. Coffee surged over the rim of the cup and landed with a scalding splash on her jeans-clad knee. “Ow! Dammit!”

Nicole Stevens stood beside the passenger door. She tapped on the window again.

Holly sucked in a deep breath, and put the coffee into the cupholder. Damn. She should’ve gone for Spudnuts.

She poked at the buttons on the console, figuring one of them controlled the windows. The central lock clicked and released. Nicole opened the door, slid into the passenger seat, placed her Kate Spade bag on her lap, and said, “Let’s go.”

Holly did a complete double-take. “Damn, you scared me.” Not to mention burned the crap out of her knee. “Go where? What’s going on?”

Nicole’s Jaguar was parked two slots away. Holly couldn’t remember if it had been there when she arrived. “Do you have car trouble?”

“I need to talk to you—privately—about Tim.” Nicole’s fingers tightened around her huge purse, but her face remained expressionless.

Good Lord, had Nicole just found out about the fraud? Marcy? “Do you want to sit here? Or go inside?”

“We need privacy.”

It was an A or B question, but whatever.

“Just drive.”

“I need to go to the office. We can talk there.” Holly put the rental in reverse, backed out and headed down Steptoe. She’d hand Tim the resignation letter when he came to get his wife. “Tim can give you a ride back to your car.”

“I don’t want to see him.”

Wow, Nicole must be seriously pissed at him. “What’s on your mind?”

“I warned you. You didn’t listen.”

With a keep-your-temper-under-control sigh, Holly turned onto Columbia Trail toward Highway 240. “I don’t know what your problem is, but can we skip the mysterious routine? I really don’t feel that great today.”

“Morning sickness?” Nicole snorted derisively.

It took a second for the words to register. “I’m not pregnant. I’ve just had a couple of…accidents in the past few days.”

“They weren’t accidents.”

A finger of concern ran up her spine. She gave Nicole a sharp look, but the woman was again staring straight ahead. How did Nicole know they were or weren’t accidents…unless Tim was responsible and he’d told his wife.

Or...was Nicole part of it? Was she having second thoughts, bothered by the violence? “You said you wanted to talk about Tim. What’s wrong? You look a little…”
Weirded out
probably wasn’t the best thing to say under the circumstances. “Tired.”

“Nothing’s wrong. I have the perfect life. The perfect marriage.”

Okay, then.

Nicole had always been a little out there, but somebody needed some serious medication. Holly wanted this whack job out of her car. Now. She stopped at the entrance to the roundabout and thought about saying, “Get out.”

But if Nicole wasn’t part of the fraud, that made her a victim, too. Finding out about it, or having Tim tell her he was planning to divorce her, could’ve driven her over the edge.

Holly took a deep breath and made a decision. She’d play along, at least until they got to the office. “You’re right. You’re beautiful and you do indeed have a perfect life.”

Hopefully, Nicole missed the sarcasm.

She had no idea how to handle the loony tunes woman. “I can tell you’re upset. Do you want me to call one of your girlfriends? Tim?”

“Stay away from him.” Nicole reared up in the seat. Her eyes were the kind that came with fangs and violence. “You couldn’t leave things along. At first I actually thought you were like that tramp—making a play for him. I’ve seen you. Every time I turn around, you’re all over him.”

“I’m not interested in Tim. I swear. You can ask JC. That’s who—”

“I should’ve known he’d never be interested in someone like you.”

Holly let the insult slide without comment.

“Then I realized you weren’t trying to ruin my marriage. You’re trying to ruin Tim.” Nicole opened the designer bag and pulled out a pistol. Neither the gun nor her hands were shaking.

Oh shit oh shit
oh shit
.

The diminutive woman lifted the pistol and pointed it directly at Holly’s chest.

She’d read the thrillers, seen the movies. When the too-stupid-to-live heroine climbed into the villain’s car, she always wanted to yell, “Run for it. Don’t get in the car!”

Yet here she sat, already strapped into the driver’s seat, while Nicole flipped a lever on the gun.

The pistol looked huge in the petite blonde’s fingers, but even if she was the world’s worst shot, from two feet away she’d hit a critical body part if she pulled the trigger.

A car horn sounded behind them. Holly’s gaze darted from the gun to the mirror and back. Could the driver see it? Could she signal them?

Could she make a run for it?

“Uh, uh, uh.” Nicole poked the pistol against Holly’s ribs. “I will shoot you if you even try to open your door. Drive.”

Holly actually felt the slide, the mental disconnect. Just as with her M&A analysis, distance from the scene let her assess odds. She considered and rejected options.
Jump from the car? Risk a wreck? Nicole shooting her in the close confines of the car
?

Anyway she looked at it, the cold glare of reality said she wasn’t coming out of this alive.

That was not acceptable, so she searched for a better reality.

She pulled into the dumb-as-hell roundabout some idiot traffic planner had plopped into the middle of the busiest intersection in the city. She passed the Highway 240 connector, looping around the circle for a second pass.

“What are you doing?” Nicole shoved the pistol into her face. “Get on the highway.”

Holly said a quick prayer that the gun didn’t accidentally go off while Nicole was waving it around. “We need to talk about this. You know Tim loves you. He isn’t having an affair with me.”

She had to make Nicole see reason. She made another loop around the roundabout. “This is a big mistake. Tim loves you. He cried about your baby. He was distraught about losing it.”

“I didn’t lose my baby.” Red, angry blotches mottled Nicole’s porcelain skin.

Way to make things worse
.

Panic pushed forward and Holly gave a wild look around. Why hadn’t one of the other drivers noticed the crazy woman with the gun? Where was the highway patrol when you needed them? Maybe as long as she kept driving, spinning around the circle, Nicole might not notice they weren’t going anywhere.

“Marcy was pregnant.” Nicole spat out. She shifted in her seat, and leaned closer. “The whore.”

Holly fumbled for the right words to diffuse her. “Um…”

“Why were you at that house where Tim takes his whores?”

She
knew
someone had been outside the Yakima office. “It was for work. I had to get papers from the office. Tim wasn’t there.”

Something flickered in the depths of those china doll eyes. Maybe Nicole believed her, but in the alternative reality she currently inhabited, it didn’t compute. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I swear, I didn’t do anything. I don’t want him.”

“No, you’re a vindictive bitch.”

The pistol pressed into her temple. She was afraid to breathe. If Nicole’s finger jumped just a fraction, if they hit a pothole, she was a goner.

“I heard you claim Tim’s committing fraud. He rejected you, so you’re trying to ruin him.”

Holly’s voice emerged in a croak. “I’m not going to ruin him.”

Tim did that all by himself
.

“I won’t let you take away everything I’ve worked for. I am
never
going to be poor again.” Nicole’s hand didn’t move. Neither did the gun. “Get on the highway.” Her voice had that dead calm quality again.

There was a long silence while Holly’s brain scrambled, trying to catch up and get ahead of the psycho in the next seat. With stunning, belated clarity she realized she’d been looking at the wrong Stevens. Tim may be a thief, but Nicole had killed Marcy.

Holly lifted her left hand from the wheel and pushed back her hair. As nonchalantly as she could, she tapped the Bluetooth device, activated it, and murmured, “JC.”

“What did you say?”

The phone made the connection and rang. “JC Dimitrak. You should talk to him.”

“Why would I talk to him?”

“Because he could lock up your crazy ass”
probably wasn’t the right answer. “He’ll tell you I’m seeing him. We’re dating.”

After last night that was sorta true—it
better
be true—but who cared at this point what she said as long as they kept talking?

And breathing.

And not shooting.

She heard the rings through the earpiece.
Come on, JC. Answer the phone. Don’t go to voicemail
.

The phone rang again and then JC’s voice said, “I’m busy right now. I’ll call you.”

“Nicole, put the gun down. Please.”

The voice in her ear shut up.

Nicole’s expression said she wasn’t paying the least bit of attention. Which would have been a good thing if it weren’t for the damn pistol. She’d prefer the woman be in this time zone as long as her finger was on the trigger. “Nicole, could you at least move the gun? It’s hard to drive with it in my face.”

“You’re doing great, Holly. I understand. You’re in a car. Tell me where you are.”

JC’s calm cop voice reassured her. She was terrified if she blurted out, “Come get me,” Nicole would shoot her before the cops could even turn their patrol cars in the right direction.

“Take the Kahlotus highway,” Nicole said.

“The Kahlotus highway? Why do you want to go there?” she asked.

The small sigh of relief gave JC away.

Oh God, don’t be worried. Be calm and strong for me, JC. Please
.

“I’m notifying Washington Patrol,” he said. “I’ll see if Pasco has anybody near the highway.”

Nicole gave her an irritated look. “You know where we’re going.”

“Why don’t we get off here at 20th? We can get some coffee and talk this over.”

“Good job, Holly. I got it. You’re passing the college. Patrol is on the way.” She could hear him puffing, like he was running. “Franklin County’s heading in. Pasco’s sending units, too. I’m getting in my car right now.”

Nicole ignored her, but at least she’d lowered the pistol.

It still pointed at Holly’s ribs.

Maybe Nicole’s arm was getting tired. If Holly could just hold on until the police caught up…

They blew past the railroad yard on the outskirts of town. The Kahlotus exit was just ahead and she still didn’t see a single police car. For one crazy moment, she thought about crashing into the underpass. The seatbelt and airbag—
did the rental have an airbag?
—would protect her, but as long as Nicole had her finger on the trigger, she wasn’t going to risk a bullet to the heart.

The off-ramp looped back over the freeway. She craned her neck, hoping to see the cavalry roaring to the rescue, but all she saw were a few more econoboxes like the one she was driving plus several of the ubiquitous trucks and sport utility vehicles.

Farmland stretched to the horizon on either side of the road, flat and fallow for the winter, unrelieved by a building or people. Irrigation equipment like giant fallen Tinker Toys lay atop the brown stubble of harvested crops and along the ridges of plowed fields. Nothing for even a pheasant to hide behind, much less a desperate woman.

“What’s happening, Holly? Figure out a way to tell me. You can do it.” JC’s voice was an anchor.
A lifeline
.

She recognized the growing blue-and-white shrink-wrapped rolls of hay piled off to the left side of the highway, the modern version of haystacks. “Have you ever visited a dairy?” she asked Nicole. “Silverstone Dairy is a client. I’m not much into cows, but I’ve always thought those rolls of hay look like they’d be fun to play on.”

Nicole didn’t respond, but JC said, “Got it. I’m a few miles behind you.”

“
How many miles?
” she wanted to scream.

The crazy blonde stared out the window, focused on something, probably the voices in her head telling her to shoot the interloper—
that would be me
—who was after her man.

But if Nicole planned to shoot her, there were a few loose ends Holly wanted cleared up. “Do you know a guy named Lee Alders?”