Shell Game (20 page)

It was definitely Alan. He was alive.

She reached for the door handle and pushed down, the door opening and a second later her foot hit the pavement. Then she stopped, frozen in her tracks. She watched them walk down the road and around the corner, out of view. She sat on the seat with her right foot on the road, staring at the empty sidewalk, her heart beating like a strobe light.

What had just happened? Was it really him? Yes, she was sure of that. It was Alan. He was alive. Why didn't she run after him? Her initial instinct was to hesitate. What had held her back?

Shock? That certainly could be part of it. She had watched Alan plunge over a cliff in Mexico—had seen the car swallowed by waves crashing violently on the rocks far below the cliff. Alan had died on that desolate stretch of road. There was no chance he could have survived the crash. Or was there? What she had seen seconds before was a testament to the fact that he had not died. Taylor remained motionless, her mind a kaleidoscope of whirling thoughts. Slowly, a band of clarity pushed through the jumble, and she began to see with some degree of order. The picture wasn't pretty. If Alan were alive and he wasn't with her in San Francisco, then it was because he wanted it that way. This was no accident. He had staged his death. There was no other answer. The anger began to swell, replacing the initial shock and disbelief.

Slowly, in response to the blaring of horns behind them and the driver's insistence, she pulled her foot back into the cab and shut the door. “Could you drive around the block please?” she asked. “Turn right at the corner.”

“You know those people?” the driver asked. “You want to see if we can find them?”

“Yes, please,” she answered.

They spent the next twenty minutes trolling up and down the streets bordering Rue Mazarin, but to no avail. Alan, and whomever he was with, had disappeared, probably into one of the many shops or restaurants, or perhaps into an apartment. A city like Paris can swallow someone up very quickly. And it had. It was just after six when the cabbie dropped Taylor at her hotel. She paid the fare, then doubled it for the tip. The man smiled, but it was forced. He looked concerned.

“You are okay?” he asked her.

She nodded. “I'll be fine. But thank you for asking.”

She walked through the lobby and took the elevator to her room, every footstep an out-of-body experience. The door closed behind her, and she walked through the darkness to a chair near the window. She sat in the silence, her mind now focused and sharp. He had betrayed her. He had set her up. Nothing else made sense. She had never seen the one-point-six million dollars of Alan's money physically change hands. If Alan didn't have a cent invested in NewPro, then it had been all her money—the cash, the loan levered against her company. No risk to him. And then there was his degree. There had never been any alumni mail to their house from Stanford. The degree must be a fake as well. His job with Angus Strang at the corporate security company. All fake?

She rolled over on her back and grabbed her head. It was pounding from the stress. She closed her eyes and the pressure diminished slightly. Things kept flooding in, her memory uncovering the magnitude of how he had deceived her. That night in Mexico City. When Alan had broken into Fernando Dominguez's antique shop and rifled through the computers. When he had learned that Edward Brand had a villa in Cabo San Lucas. The superficial scrapes on his arm and hand. All part of the setup.

But Cabo San Lucas. He had gone over the cliff in the car, crashing into the violent sea at the base of the rocks. How had he survived? And the hand that the police had found in the car, ripped from his arm. When she had seen him on the street earlier he still had both hands. How? She racked her brain. Why had they left the hand in the car? If it wasn't Alan's, it didn't make sense. The DNA had matched perfectly. It proved to the police and the insurance company that Alan was dead. And then it hit her. That was exactly what they had wanted.

A million-dollar policy, payable to her, would ensure she was financially okay. It would keep her from delving into his death any further, trying to prove to the insurance company that he had actually died. She would take the money, shut up and go away. It had been Alan's idea to visit the sperm bank. Her insurance rep had said Alan's sperm count was fine, not as low as he had professed. So the real reason Alan had insisted on depositing the sperm was so his DNA would be accessible. That meant someone in Mexico had altered the DNA sample taken from the hand in the car. Not surprising. Police could be bribed. And the hand. The one caught in the dash of the destroyed car. The police had shown her a photo of it, and now she was positive that it wasn't Alan's. The nails were chewed almost to the quick. Alan filed his nails and never bit them.

It was all adding up. The “chance” meeting, when they saw Brand at the golf course. What a fool she had been. Right after they had agreed it was their last day at the course, Alan had excused himself to use the bathroom. He must have used the opportunity to call Brand and let him know it was time for him to make an appearance.

Nothing left to chance. Nothing but her poking through his golf bag one day and taking out a picture. A picture he didn't know she had. A picture that had led her to Paris, where Alan was quite obviously at home. He must have an apartment close to the intersection she had sought out. That was the only answer. Seeing him there was too much of a coincidence for any other explanation.

He had inadvertently left her one clue. The photo. And now she knew.

He had deceived her. He had courted her, married her and made love to her all to get her money. His very being was a lie. Nothing about the man was real. Nothing. She raised her hand to her eyes to wipe away the tears, but her eyes were dry. She stood and walked into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror. The tiny bit of makeup she wore was smudged, but that wasn't what she noticed. It was her eyes. She stared into her pupils, amazed at the intensity of her own gaze. These were not the eyes of a woman ready to lie down and die. They were the eyes of a woman who had been used. Used in the most unthinkable way.

Used by her husband.

She returned to the main room and picked up the telephone, dialing a number from memory. A man answered.

“Kelly, it's Taylor. I'm coming back to Washington in a day or two. And I'm going to need a bit more help if that's okay.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY

Paris had lost its luster. What had always been the most beautiful city in the world to Taylor was now just a jumble of crowded streets and muddy sidewalks, bordered by imposing stone buildings. Perspective was everything. People were rude, prices were ridiculous, and the cold cut through to her bones. The only time she felt any semblance of warmth was when she was sequestered in the bathtub at her hotel. By Wednesday evening, she gave up on the idea of finding Alan and booked a Thursday afternoon flight back to Dulles.

Taylor wheeled her bag to the lobby three hours before her flight was to depart, and the bellman called a cab. She tipped him and slid in the backseat, wanting to be alone with her thoughts from the past two days.

First thing Tuesday morning she had rented a car and spent the daylight hours driving the streets of the East Bank, concentrating mostly on the vicinity of Rue Mazarin and Rue Dauphine, where she had seen Alan on the sidewalk the day before. Her flaming red hair was tucked up inside the tam, as it had been when she had seen him. Lucky thing, she thought, as Alan probably would have caught the color flash and recognized her. Women with striking red hair were not that common.

He was there somewhere, amidst the tangle of ancient cobblestone roads and historic buildings. He lived there, of that she was now certain. Anything else was just too coincidental. That meant he was either French by birth or had relocated to Paris later in life. She leaned toward the latter, as he had absolutely no trace of a French accent, nor did he drop his h's when he spoke. At dinner, he switched the fork to his left hand to slice through the meat, then back to his right hand to eat. A North American trait not practiced in Europe. There were other details as well, all leading to the same conclusion—Alan was an American living in Paris. But where?

She wasn't ready to spend any more time on what was a long shot. She had been very lucky to see him on the street Monday, but the chances of a repeat performance were slim to nil, and the longer she trolled the streets, the more she was convinced counting on sheer luck twice was not the answer. There were other ways to attack this problem. And to Taylor, that was exactly what this had now become. A problem. Something to be solved. She had always excelled at circumstances that involved logistics and creativity. And what could be more apt than trying to piece together exactly how Alan Bestwick and Edward Brand had worked together to pull off the scam. They had taken her for a lot of money, but Alan had taken something far more valuable. He had reached inside her soul and stolen her trust. The money she could live without, but the deception was too much. There was one word that summed up what she wanted. It wasn't a pretty word, but it was the one.

Revenge.

How to get it was another story. She wasn't sure. But she felt that the first step toward that goal was to involve Kelly Kramer. Whether he could empower the resources of the NSA was doubtful, but Kelly was an intelligent man who thought outside the box. The kind of person she needed on her side right now. On her side. What a way to think. Almost as if it were a battle. Or a war for that matter. But in some ways, it was. Alan had infiltrated her life, wooed her, married her and lived with her as her husband for almost three years. All of it, every minute, a lie. She felt the anger rising again, as it had so often over the past forty-eight hours.

Her driver pulled into the airport and stopped in front of the Delta entrance. She paid him, wheeled her bag to the counter, checked in and immediately went through the gate to the waiting area. It was cold in the airport, and she kept her jacket on, shivering as she sat alone in the crowded terminal. They announced the boarding for her flight, and she waited until most of the passengers had checked through before getting on. The plane departed about six minutes off schedule, and once it reached cruising altitude, she pulled a blanket over her, tucked her head into the pillow and slept. When she woke they were about an hour from landing at D.C. It was the best sleep she'd since bedding down in Kelly's guest room.

He was waiting for her when the plane arrived, just after six on Thursday afternoon. She had departed Paris at four in the afternoon, and the time change had almost wiped out the flying time. Since she hadn't eaten on the plane, she was hungry.

“Perfect,” Kelly said when she told him she needed to eat. “I thought you'd be hungry so I made reservations at the Dupont Grille. You'll like it. Great atmosphere, very good food.”

“Need both right now,” she said, staring out the window at the snow as Kelly drove. A low-pressure front had passed through, dumping about six inches of snow on the city. Plows were out, and the main streets were clear, but the side streets were a mess, with cars sitting under huge mounds of ice and snow, useless until the plows made it through. “My God, look at this. It's like the North Pole.”

He laughed. “This is nothing. Boston is at a complete standstill.”

They made it to Dupont Circle and through some stroke of incredibly good luck found a parking spot less than a block down Nineteenth Street. The snow had been cleared from the sidewalk and walking was easy. They reached Jurys Washington Hotel and cut in the Nineteenth Street entrance to the restaurant, which was part of the main floor of the hotel. Inside, the décor was colorful and invigorating. Pumpkin-hued booths were framed by large blocks of white, black and yellow painted on the walls. The sidewalk café was long closed, but the bar occupying the rear wall of the restaurant was jammed with the after-work crowd. Their table was ready and the hostess escorted them in.

“So what's going on? You said you might need my help with something,” Kelly said as the drinks arrived.

Taylor tried the merlot she had ordered and nodded in approval. It seemed almost trite that it was French. “I've been scammed like you would not believe.”

“I know.” His tone was understanding.

“No, you don't know,” Taylor said. “There's a lot more to what happened with NewPro than first appeared on the radar. A lot.”

“What do you mean?” Kelly said, leaning into the table.

“Alan is alive.”

There was a full fifteen seconds of silence. Then Kelly said, “What do you mean, Alan's alive? That's impossible.”

She wanted to laugh at the conviction with which he said those words. The same conviction she would have used only days before. When she answered, her voice was rife with sarcasm. “Oh, he's alive all right. Alive and living in Paris. I saw him on the street, walking hand in hand with another woman. He had both his hands by the way.”

“Oh, my God,” Kelly said as what she was telling him sunk in. “Don't tell me . . .”

She just nodded. Then after a minute and another drink of wine she said, “It was him, Kelly. I know it was him. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that my husband is alive. And I'm equally as sure that he was involved in the NewPro scam from minute one.”

She went on to tell him about the cash Alan had never invested in the company and his antics in Mexico City. It just kept coming—the fake job working for Angus Strang, the severed hand with the chewed fingernails, the million-dollar insurance policy to keep her from digging into his death in desperation, and the sperm Alan had insisted on depositing in case they wanted to have children.

“Children,” she said. “The bastard. He had no intention of staying with me one minute longer than he had to. Get the money and run. And that's exactly what he did.” The tears wanted to come, but she wouldn't acquiesce. Not now. Not over him. “I lived with him as his wife for almost three years, Kelly. Do you know how that makes me feel?”