“Oh, good God,” she said as the car behind her laid on the horn. “What am I going to do?”
Margaret drove around New Circle Road. Ten months it had been and she still hated this place. Her princess stayed in the compound, hardly coming out at all. And there was so much to see, so many things Margaret would have liked if her princess had been happy. No, she might as well been in Atlanta or Chicago or Cincinnati for all she had been out in Lexington.
Margaret had taken on housekeeper duties, not wanting anyone else around Diana. Diana ran her businesses by computer, by phone, leaving on her monthly trips to do personal checks. And other things. Sometimes she took Margaret along and sometimes she didn’t. The times she didn’t were the times Margaret worried. And then there were the times Diana just disappeared. Margaret would come home and Diana would be gone. Margaret had no idea where she was. She wouldn’t answer the phone. Discreet inquiries revealed nothing. Diana would come back, brooding, silent, uncommunicative, depressed, angry. This was the dark part in Diana, it was growing since she had come to Lexington.
And Diana wasn’t the only strangely acting one. Her papa. A girlfriend at his age. Margaret had carefully tried to sound Diana out, but Diana would say nothing. Her only change toward her papa was she was more cooperative, doing favors for him that she usually would have argued with, challenged. Like this one for Waldo. Waldo was a piece of garbage from way back that Diana would have nothing to do with until now. And this was even after Margaret had heard that rumor about his vendetta against some local cop. She didn’t understand. She just knew all this was going to end badly.
***
“I’ll drive,” Pete said as they came out the door.
“Fine with me.” Jessie got in the passenger side.
They had been assigned to investigate a body found in an abandoned house on Georgetown Street.
“You okay? Things going any better?”
“About as well as I can expect.”
“Julie?”
Jessie shook her head. She still wasn’t ready to talk about Julie. Even after three months, she still couldn’t quite take in Julie’s announcement that they were over. All the counseling, her feeling they were working things out. How could she have been so wrong?
They pulled up in front of the house, looking around. Once a prosperous area, now the narrow street was showing its neglect. There were three houses boarded up, obviously abandoned houses across the street, another one two doors down from the one they were looking at, but the remaining houses on the block looked maintained well enough, cared for.
“Looks harmless, doesn’t it?” Pete said as they got out.
The single patrol officer came down off the front porch. “Glad to see you,” he greeted them, looking first Pete and then Jessie over as they showed their badges.
“Anyone come around?”
The officer waved a hand at one of the houses across the street. “Neighbor came over earlier, he was home for lunch. Mr. Stoaks. He said there’s been some squatters staying here lately. He sees them leaving in the morning when he goes to work. He works at the university, will be home about four thirty.”
“Anything else?” Pete asked.
“Haven’t seen you around before,” Jessie commented, looking at his name plate. Vanderpool.
“Just started, ma’am, about a month ago.”
She nodded as she and Pete went up the steps and opened the door. They ducked under the yellow tape.
The house was empty, their footsteps echoed across the wooden floor. Scattered litter and trash were around the edges of the living room and there was a stack of firewood by the fireplace.
Pete was looking through his notes. “The body was found in the back, through the kitchen. There’s a bedroom in the back.”
They went through the house carefully. Just as Pete was turning to say something to Jessie, there was an explosion. She was knocked down by the force. She saw Pete down, heard yelling, more than one voice, then she was grabbed, felt a blow to her head.
She struggled to get her feet under her as she was dragged away. Sunlight briefly as she was dragged out the back door and thrown through the open door of the van in the alleyway. She still struggled and another blow to the head brought total darkness.
***
“What’s on the agenda?” Diana asked that morning. More and more she was letting Margaret do all the day-to-day duties. She was focused on another project and Margaret didn’t like being shut out. But she never said a word, never complained.
“Waldo Tompson.”
“Damn, I’ll be glad when he’s gone.”
Margaret made no comment. She had only a vague idea why Diana had taken this one on other than a favor to her papa. Tompson was a piece of garbage.
Traffic was terrible—not that she thought it was ever really truly terrible. Lexington was a small city in comparison to some places they had been. What was disconcerting were all the police cars moving around. That always made Margaret nervous and was something she had not noticed before. She saw the news headline in a kiosk when she stopped for gas, and she picked up the newspaper. She read it quickly as she walked back to the car. Now she understood all the police activity and it gave her an uneasy feeling.
When she walked in to where Tompson was holed up, waiting, the sight was not unexpected. Never one to express emotion, Margaret made small talk with several of the men before she walked over to the woman tied in the chair. She noticed the table in front of the woman with the badge, the ID, the gun resting on it, like a taunt. Waldo had a streak of cruelty in him.
Without emotion, Margaret lifted the woman’s chin. Her eyes were blackened, her cheeks cut and swollen. She was cuffed and tied to the chair. Her clothing was torn, she was bruised. She looked like she had been sick. Her hair was matted. Without much interest, Margaret picked up the ID, read it and put it down. She wasn’t sympathetic but she was concerned. She took out her cell phone.
“Princess,” she said when Diana answered. “You need to get down here.”
“Is there a problem? I really don’t want to deal with him.”
“There is a problem.”
“He’s changed his mind, doesn’t want to go?”
“We should be so lucky. No. You need to come.”
“Margaret,” Diana started.
“You need to come,” Margaret said quietly, firmly. “And pick up a paper to read before you get here.”
There was a moment’s silence. “If he’s screwed this up,” Diana said in a low voice.
“We’ve got big problems,” Margaret reiterated. She broke the connection, looking down at the bowed head. She sincerely hoped she was wrong, but she was afraid she wasn’t. This was going to be ugly.
Diana came in the door in what Margaret called her kick-ass, take-names-later mood. She glared at Waldo, who was sitting at the table, his chair tipped back on two legs leaning against the wall. Several of his faction were around the table playing cards, killing time. Two of them had jumped to their feet when the door hit the back wall. She looked around the room until her gaze fell on the woman tied to the chair. Margaret was standing to one side and she nodded slightly.
Diana stalked over, flipped open the paper she had carried in under her arm, and with her other hand pulled the woman’s face up by the hair of her head. The woman gasped and Diana held the newspaper beside the woman’s face as if comparing her to the picture. “Detective Galbreath, I presume?”
Jessie swallowed and Diana’s grip tightened. “Yes,” Jessie gasped. Diana tapped the paper under Jessie’s chin in a warning not to say more. Jessie’s eyes widened, as much as they could as swollen as they were, and she clenched her mouth shut. Diana glanced behind her at the badge, gun and ID on the table and turned back to the woman.
“Well, well, well.” Diana bent down so they were face to face. “Imagine seeing you here.” Jessie’s eyes were wide with surprise, with fear and if possible, she went even paler than she had been. Diana impersonally searched her face, although her adrenaline had shot up sharply when she realized it really was Jessie.
Diana released Jessie with a movement that looked much harsher than it really was. She whirled on Waldo with every bit of her papa’s temper she could muster. She’d always thought he looked like a rat, so skinny as to be anorexic, with thin, slicked back hair, pointed features.
“You son of a bitch,” she said in a voice so harsh he brought the chair down solidly on all four legs. “Where the hell was your brain? Or should I even bother asking? You get this close to getting out of here and you pull some goddamn stupid stunt like this?” She threw the newspaper at him, a picture of Jessie on the front page. “Bad enough to nab a cop, you have to nab a female cop? Her picture’s been all over the paper for the past week! And you expect me to ghost you out of the country?”
“No one knows it’s me that’s got her!”
“I do. Now. And you know it’s been in my rules all along. No cops. None here. No friends. No sightings. Never mind dragging them along for the ride.”
“Then I’ll get rid of her!”
“Fuck that idea! You think of taking her out and wasting her, I’ll cut you lose so fast you’ll break the sound barrier. The only thing worse than nabbing one is killing one, and I will not be a party to that!”
“You don’t have to be involved!”
“I already am!” Diana shouted as she pounded the table in front of him. “I’m here! She’s here! Eye to eye!” She made violent gestures pointing to Jessie, pointing to herself, tapping her temple. “What part of that can’t you understand, you imbecile?”
“You weren’t supposed to show up.”
“Well, son of a bitch, I did!” Diana glanced around the room.
Waldo’s errand boys were lined up against the wall trying to look invisible. She still wasn’t sure what she was going to do. The most pressing problem was to get Jessie out of there alive. Damn, she should have moved faster on getting Waldo out of the country. She shook her head as she walked back over to pick up Jessie’s badge, her identification as well as her revolver in her shoulder holster. “Son of a bitch,” Diana repeated, glancing at Waldo as if she wanted to vaporize him.
Diana finally turned back to Waldo’s table, even as she stuffed Jessie’s badge and ID into her hip pocket. She slung the holster over her shoulder. “I’d love to be able to cancel this whole operation, let you hang by your heels, but unfortunately we’re too far along the pipeline. It would be noticed if things got changed. But that’s the only reason, you bastard. And you’ll still pay for all this, this, this
mess
I’ve got to clean up because of your actions. I swear to God, you can screw up a wet dream!”
Waldo only reacted to her words about canceling. He came out of his chair and around the table. “You cancel this and you’ll live to regret it!”
She laughed at him. “From who? From you? Hell, I cancel this and you’ll be doing eighty years in an eight-by-eight isolation cell, a walk in the yard for an hour a day, maybe what? Ten-by-twenty? High walls, solid, can’t see through them. Only thing to see is sky, overhead. Little boxes of bricky brick,” she taunted, her hands up, her fingers wiggling at him.
Waldo broke out in a cold sweat before her eyes. Diana had heard rumors he’d developed a bad case of claustrophobia when he had been in prison before. Now he was due for sentencing, was likely to get a long stretch, and he was sweating like a stevedore. She guessed the rumors were true.
She contemptuously turned her back on him, glancing at Margaret. She was reasonably sure his need to escape the country would keep him from doing anything to her but it was still nice to have someone at your back. She returned to Jessie, standing over her a moment as if deciding what to do with her. She hated that she had to play this part, but now it wasn’t just Jessie’s life at risk. It was her own and Margaret’s.
“Untie her,” she ordered finally.
No one moved. Diana slowly turned her head to Waldo. “I
said
,” she started, and he gave a quick look at one of his men. Two of them jumped to untie Jessie from the chair.
“Keys to her handcuffs,” she demanded next. The keys to Jessie’s handcuffs were immediately handed over.
As soon as Jessie was untied, Margaret came forward. Between the two of them, they half-dragged, half-walked the still cuffed Jessie to the bedroom in the back. As Diana took Jessie to the foot of the bed, Margaret shut the door.
Jessie barely made it to the bed. Diana turned her around and got her set down before she fell. Dropping her angry attitude, Diana half-knelt before her, lifting Jessie’s face to look at her. Jessie’s gaze slid over her.
“Let me see,” Diana muttered as she gently felt along Jessie’s jaw. She noted the dilated eyes and wondered if there was a head injury, or if she had been drugged, or it was just plain fear. “Did they rape you?” she asked as soothingly as she could with no idea what she would do to Waldo if the answer was yes.
Jessie shook her head. “No,” she answered in a croak of her former voice. She moved away from Diana’s touch. “Please, don’t touch me.” She looked down into her lap.
“Why? Because you don’t want to be touched? Or because you don’t want me to touch you?” She gently turned Jessie’s face so she could see the cuts across the high cheekbones, the dark bruises, some already turning an ugly shade of yellow. Jessie lifted her chin off Diana’s fingers and turned away without answering. “You didn’t mind the last time I touched you, Jessie,” Diana said softly.
“That was different. We were lovers then.”
“Ohhh.”
So she really doesn’t remember
, Diana thought. “And now I’m on the other side and that’s hard to deal with?” Jessie made no response. “Sorry, sweetheart. I am going to touch you. For various reasons, but I won’t presume on our past relationship.” She turned Jessie’s face to her, wondering if there were any broken bones. No, he wouldn’t have done that yet but she really looked bad. “Do you need something to drink?”
Jessie made no response, but Diana brushed a finger over Jessie’s dry lips. She got up and went over to the small fridge in the corner, opened it to find an assortment of drinks, pulled out spring water. She retrieved a straw from the drawer and opened the bottle.