Run From Fear (39 page)

When there was no response, Sutherland knocked again, then nodded for Elvia to unlock the door.

There was a beep and a muffled click and Nolan opened the door.

The smell hit him like a physical force, and he knew someone was dead before he even saw the body.

“Shit,” he whispered, as one look at the battered face verified that the body belonged to Sutherland. Nolan was no coroner, but based on the smell, the blood soaked into the carpet, and the fact that rigor had set in, Sutherland had been dead for at least four hours. Nolan checked his watch. It was 6:00 p.m. Sutherland had been released on bail shortly after eleven. For Sutherland to be in this condition, he had to have been killed shortly after he was released this morning.

“Shit,” Nolan said again, his jaw clenching as he remembered his phone call to Jack Brooks earlier that morning. He nodded at one of the uniforms. “Call homicide.”

He stepped out into the hall and took out his phone, questioning the wisdom of what he was about to do. He dialed, his spine tensing when Jack Brooks answered on the second ring.

“What’s going on, Nolan?”

Technically, what Nolan was doing could get him in deep shit. But Sutherland had been a piece of shit for hire, and if he was the one who raped those girls, this was a better death than he’d deserved. If Jack was the one who took him out, he deserved a chance to get his shit lined up before the heat really came down on him. “You tell me. I’m at Sutherland’s hotel and was just about to execute a search warrant on his room.”

“You find anything?”

Nolan tried, but it was impossible to read anything in Brooks’s tone. Did he know damn well what Nolan had found and was doing a good job of hiding it, or was he really clueless? “I found Sutherland, dead, and it was definitely a homicide.” He deliberately didn’t say how.

The silence stretched several seconds. “I didn’t do it,” Jack said finally. “You have my word.”

Nolan wanted to believe him. “Unfortunately, it won’t be me you have to convince if it turns up you were anywhere near here today. You’ll be dealing with Palo Alto Homicide.”

Jack’s laugh was sharp and mirthless as it crackled over the line. “If the hotel surveillance system is working, it’ll show that I was there about twenty minutes after you called me this morning.”

Nolan’s stomach sank. “Goddamn it, Jack, I told you to stay away from him.”

“I didn’t kill him,” Jack said. “If I did, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to let the surveillance cameras catch me paying him a visit.”

Nolan ran his hand through his hair, frustrated. “Whether you did or not, best not leave town any time soon. And get yourself hooked up with a good lawyer.
A lot of witnesses saw you beat the shit out of him and threaten him the other night. I’m not going to point them in your direction, but if they see you on any recording, you can be damn sure they’ll be coming after you.”

Jack’s call came at around 7:30, shortly after she got home after dropping Rosario off. The sight of his number on the caller display so soon after Rosario had raked her over the coals was enough to make her eyes burn with tears.

No way could she handle talking to him now, she thought as she let the call go into voice mail. He followed immediately with a text.
Please pick up. Really need to talk to you. Don’t want to say this over VM.

The phone rang seconds later and she selected the
ANSWER
button with a finger that shook as she wondered what he needed to say that was so important, especially after he’d already texted with the news Sutherland had been released on bail earlier in the day.

Please don’t tell me you love me again. Please don’t beg me for another chance. Because right now I’m so worn down, I don’t think I have the strength to push you away.

But to her relief—at least that’s what she kept trying to tell herself—he said none of those things.

“Sutherland is dead.” He barely gave her a chance to say hello before he dropped the bomb.

Horrible as it was, the first thing she felt was relief. “How?”

“He was murdered. Nolan found him in his hotel room earlier this evening.”

She took a few moments to digest the information.

At her continued silence, Jack asked, “Aren’t you going to ask me if I did it?”

She weighed his words carefully and thought about what she knew about Jack. Killing someone during an act of war in the army? Jack would have no hesitation to do whatever was necessary to complete his mission.

But she never would have pegged him as a deliberate, cold-blooded killer. Then again, she never would have pegged him as a liar who would sneak behind her back and spy on her either.

Yet her initial instinct on this was unwavering. “Do I think you have it in you to kill someone with your bare hands if they threaten someone you care about? Yes. But premeditated murder? That requires a level of coldhearted-ness I don’t think you’re capable of.”

He let out a chuckle that sent a shiver of warmth all the way to her toes. “Well, at least you don’t think I’m completely evil.”

Tears stung the backs of her eyes. Jack was the furthest thing from evil on the planet.
Do you know how many women would kill to have a guy like Jack love them so much he’d pay fifty grand to get them a job?
She felt herself weakening and knew she had to get off the phone quickly before she did something stupid. Like beg him to come over, take her to bed, and help her lose the turmoil of the last few days in mindless sexual pleasure. “If that’s it, then—”

“Wait,” Jack interrupted. “I don’t know many details—the cops are keeping it pretty quiet, and out of respect for Nolan, I’m resisting the urge to enlist Toni’s help in hacking into the police network. But the most obvious answer
is that Margaret sent another flunky out to do him in before he could dig her in any deeper.”

Talia scoffed. The crazy old bitch had to know the police would look at her. “She’d have to be stupid to try anything with me. She’d be the first one the police would look at—”

“Or desperate,” Jack said quietly. “This could mean the difference between her going back to prison and for how long. And if she gets someone who can make it look like an accident, no one would ever know.”

A shiver ran through her, and she automatically went to the front door to double-check the alarm and the dead bolt.

“I’m doing whatever work on my end that I can, trying to run through Margaret’s contacts for any possible leads, but you need to be careful.”

She ran her fingers over the brushed nickel surface of the lock. “I’m always careful.”

“I want someone on you,” he said. “I know you don’t want to see my face anywhere near you.”

More like she was dying for one last glimpse…

“But I can get Moreno and Novascelic to take shifts for the next few days, just until this gets cleared up—”

“No.” She cut him off before he could finish. “I don’t want to be followed. I don’t want to be watched anymore.”

“I know you’re mad at me about what happened, but don’t put yourself at risk just because you’re pissed.”

“Don’t try to make me sound stupid,” she snapped. “Look, this is all speculation. You have no idea if this is true. For all we know, it was someone he pissed off or owed money to. Or, hell, if he was the psycho rapist, maybe one
of his victims tracked him down and had the revenge she deserved.”

“I seriously doubt it was any of those things,” Jack said, the irritation in his voice palpable.

“Please, Jack, you tracked me for the past two years without telling me. Who knows what kind of paranoid conspiracy theories you can come up with just to wheedle yourself back into my life?”

She was lashing out unfairly, she knew, but she couldn’t stop herself. That tight, panicky feeling was taking hold again, that feeling she’d been trying to escape. The one she thought had disappeared oh so briefly with Sutherland’s arrest and subsequent admission that he’d been harassing her at Margaret’s behest.

“Fuck me for trying to help you then,” he said, but the bitterness couldn’t totally conceal the hurt in his voice.

It sent an answering pinch to her own chest. “If it will make you feel better, I’ll think about going away for a couple of days. Rosie’s out of town, and it’s not like I have job to go to,” she said, unable to resist delivering one last jab.

Predictably, Jack tried to convince her to go to one of the safe houses Gemini Securities had scattered around Northern California.

“No way. Unless they have one overlooking a vineyard or somewhere on the coast, no dice. If I’m lying low, I’m doing it in style.” Which was utter horseshit given the current state of her bank account and its future prospects, but she wasn’t about to confine herself to an ugly, nondescript house in an ugly, nondescript neighborhood.

“Fine,” Jack bit out. “But wherever you go—”

“I know. I’ll take public transportation and pay cash. I’ll even use one of the old fake IDs you gave me.”

“And let me know where you’re headed and when you get there.”

“Wouldn’t it be more of a challenge if I made you find out yourself?”

He didn’t take the bait, but she could practically hear his blood coming to a boil.

“Fine,” she relented. “I’ll let you know if I can figure something out.”

“What have you done?”

His mother’s screech jerked Gene from a sound sleep. He sat up, disoriented, his mother’s slap bringing him to full wakefulness.

“What have you done?” she repeated.

He looked around his room, dazed. What time was it? He had no idea how long he’d been sleeping. The clock by his bed said 7:15. But it was impossible to tell if it was morning or evening.

“What day is it?”

“It’s Friday, you idiot. What the hell is wrong with you?”

His heart thudded in panic. Friday morning! Shit! He’d slept for over twenty hours. He’d missed the window to drop off the bloody clothes for the hazardous-waste pickup. He leaped out of bed, scrambling for his clothes, ignoring his mother as he muttered to himself in English and Estonian. “Stupid,
loll
, how could you be such an idiot?”

Oh, Christ, he remembered, this was the morning that Rosario was leaving on that goddamn camping trip.

He staggered to the bathroom to splash water on his face, hoping to jump-start his brain. What time was she leaving? Had she mentioned it in the text she’d sent yesterday right before he collapsed into sleep? Oh, God, where was his phone?

He went back into his room and started flinging things around as he looked for his phone. Maybe it was in the car.

“Where do you think you are going?” His mother’s fingers dug like claws into his back and her voice in his ear nearly pierced his eardrum.

“I need to get to campus,” he shouted back. He shoved her away, and for a moment, his look of shock must have matched her own. Never in his twenty-three years had he laid a hand on her.

She recovered quickly, her face twisting in a mask of rage. Her hand lashed out, the blow to his cheek hitting him with enough force to send his head whipping around. “You will go nowhere until you explain where you have been and what you are doing! First you stay out all night, ignore calls, then come home and pass out like you are drugged.”

“I was working at the lab. And I’m not taking drugs, I swear,” he said, and he wanted to tear out his own throat at how pitiful he sounded trying to defend himself.

Ignoring his protests, she said, “And then I look through your bag, and this I find!” She was shaking something in his face that looked like a bundle of clothing. He felt the blood drain out of his face as he realized it was his sweatshirt and jeans, the ones that were covered with Sutherland’s blood. The clothes he’d left wrapped in a plastic bag, stuffed in his duffel bag and locked securely in his trunk until they could be disposed of.

His mother had gone snooping around and found them.

“What is this, covered with blood? Is yours?”

Cold sweat broke out on his skin, and he felt himself start to shake. “It’s… it’s not mine,” he stuttered, his mind totally blank in the face of her anger, unable to come up with a single plausible explanation for the bloody garments.

“What have you done, Eugene?” She stared at him hard, and he knew the instant she saw the guilt in his eyes. “You have done bad, I know it! I always know you are bad seed. I’m going to call police, have you locked up like you deserve.”