The Gray Zone (29 page)

Gillis snorted. “I know that, and you know that, but thanks to my dear old homicidal friend, Stacy Steingart, it was also the murder weapon.”

Kelly spoke softly, urgently. “Todd. Let the kids and me go. Lay off us, and we’ll disappear. You’ll never hear from us again.”

Gillis squeezed her hand. “But I
like
seeing you. You’re my naughty little angel.” She tried to pull her hand away, but he held it tight and continued as if she hadn’t interrupted. “Stacy Steingart. Now there’s a sad case. I had to pay her a shitload of money to off your boyfriend. But I think she was quite happy to do it. It’s expensive to run a survivalist compound in the desolate wilderness these days. She would have done it for less. She’s been loyal to me for a long time. But I didn’t feel like haggling through a long, drawn-out negotiation, so I arranged for a deposit to an account for her in my bank and—after her unfortunate demise—all that money came back to me after all.”

Kelly felt the old familiar desperation start to well up inside of her. “What do you want from me, Todd?” But she already knew the simple answer: He wanted her back. He wanted to win.

“You have two choices,” said Gillis. “Go away for murder—you may even be the first female execution in Nevada in a long
time—or come back to me. All I want from you is to stick with me for a while. I need to look like a stable family man for a year. And then you’ll be free.”

Kelly knew better than to believe him. As his wife, she’d never be free.

“Besides, it will give us a chance to catch up. And you know how I love being close to you,” said Gillis.

“You want me close to you like you want sand in your bed. This isn’t about me. I’m just like all the other toys you have a love/hate relationship with.”

“How can you think like that? You’re the mother of my children.”

“Surprise, surprise! You remember you have children? Having children with me was your way of making sure I stayed put.”

Gillis waved his hands irritably. “Alright, alright. But as a businessman, I need a wife and family. Here’s your choice. You and the kids come back to the house by tomorrow night, or a hotel clerk finds the knife in the laundry chute of the hotel where Garrett died. Take it or leave it.”

Kelly nearly gasped.
By tomorrow night?
Gillis opened his door, and the car pinged gently in protest. Time seemed to have slowed. Kelly heard the elaborate, multi-pitched whine of cars accelerating, the
thwap
of tires on asphalt, the pulsing bass rhythm coming from behind the closed black windows of an Escalade. She saw an older woman and a younger one—a grandmother and her granddaughter?—passing on the sidewalk, the
click-click-click
of one’s heels syncopating the
clock-clock-clock
of the other’s. She saw a pigeon take flight vertically, like a Harrier jet, and she felt Gillis’s breath on her neck like a sirocco. The hair follicles along her scalp tingled.

Gillis was leaning over her. His hand slipped into her blouse and curved around her breast. It was just the sort of public display he got off on. Kelly saw the two women on the sidewalk avert their eyes.

“So you see,” said Gillis, pressing her nipple with his thumbnail, “it’s not really much of a bargain after all.”

“I see,” breathed Kelly, terrified. “You want me back where I belong.”

“Mmm-hmm,” murmured Gillis, looking into her eyes. “You keep me intrigued.”

“You win,” she said softly.

“That’s more like it,” he murmured back, smiling as he slid out of the car. “See you tomorrow night, then.” He walked swiftly away from the car as Kelly watched him in her rearview mirror. Once more, the hyena was on the trail of his prey.

Brigante got out of a Mercedes limousine parked half a block behind them and held the door open for Gillis. Kelly’s heart sank. She had been so scared, she hadn’t even noticed they’d been followed.

As the limo passed Kelly’s car, Gillis waved from a rolled-down window.

Kelly took three deep breaths, then put the car back into drive. She focused her mind on one thought: She had to get back to Jake.

JAKE AND KELLY HUDDLED CLOSE TO EACH other under a blanket on a couch. Besides the moonlight streaming in through the picture windows, the only light in the room came from Jake’s laptop computer. Kelly pressed a few keys.

“He’s taking in money from a lot of different sources, and it’s going toward his portion of the funding for the group home. But look, here again is a payout to a specific family.”

Jake nodded. He saw the pattern too. That the money would go to residential group facilities made sense; that Gillis would be funneling money to a few specific foster homes—on top of what they received from the state—did not.

He let his gaze drift up from the computer. On the other side of the dark picture windows, the Malibu surf pounded the sand in front of the house, the moon whitening the spray into whipping cream. Jake had been in this house many times. Porter and Suzanne had bought it after her father had died; it was their California touchstone and their
getaway. It had been redecorated since Jake had last been there. Fussy window treatments had been replaced by sleek blinds, and the ornate, gilded coffee table was now a chunk of marble supporting a slab of glass. The cushy sofas had become low platforms covered in leather, while the Persian carpets had given way to rough sisal.

Although Jake had never liked the artificiality of the house before, he found that he missed it a little. It seemed as sterile as an operating room, a too-permanent reminder of Porter’s absence. Porter had liked warmth and comfort, and to any situation he invited conversation and hospitality. He must have hated the coldness of this room.

Suddenly Jake heard Kelly gasp.

“Look here,” she said.

Jake looked at the columns of numbers on the screen. Kelly highlighted a row. He looked across to the right of the screen and in the final column saw whom the payout had gone to: Gary Gordon. He checked the date. Six months earlier. The Gordons were still taking money from Gillis.

“Bastards,” he whispered. Kelly double-clicked on their name and the record of all their payments came onto the screen. Gillis had been paying them, roughly every six months, in installments of $20,000. The records went back four years. The Gordons had received $160,000 from Gillis just in that time, not counting all the years Kelly and Stacy had been in their home.

Jake grabbed Kelly’s hand. “We can do something with this,” he said.

Kelly shook her head, frustrated. “I have less than twenty-four hours. This isn’t going to do it. No proof of anything that can put him behind bars.” She groaned, covering her face with her free hand. “What
am
I looking for?”

“Let’s keep at it,” said Jake with a brightness he didn’t feel. When Kelly had told him what had happened in Beverly Hills, he’d
felt sick. He had wanted to go with her to the Gillis Foundation, but she had insisted otherwise. She always worked alone. He would blow her cover. Jake knew that this was true, especially because he was a public figure, so easily recognizable. But now he wished he had sent one of his investigators with her. He didn’t want to acknowledge the sinking feeling that Gillis could have gotten to Kelly no matter what defenses he’d thought up.

Now Gillis had imposed a deadline, and Kelly believed he meant business. Jake couldn’t understand why Gillis would ever set Kelly free—but he fully understood how Kelly operated. She took things as they came. In her world, planning far ahead was a luxury she couldn’t afford. She evaluated her best options in each moment, took them, and then dealt with the consequences down the road.

Right now, assuming they couldn’t find something solid to incriminate Gillis in the next twelve hours, she believed that her best option was to go back to him and figure out another way to leave him as soon as possible. A wave of anger swept over Jake. That would happen over his dead body.

“We’re going to Las Vegas,” he said decisively. “You said Gillis has called an Executive Committee meeting. Maybe we can learn something. Something we can use. I can arrange to have a plane at Maguire Aviation. It will be ready by the time we get there.”

Kelly closed the laptop. “Okay.”

Jake looked at her and was surprised by the depth of the love he felt for her. She was so game, so willing to say something so outrageous in the face of terrible odds. He grabbed her shoulders and kissed her.

“It’s going to be alright,” he tried to assure her.

“Why do people always say that?” said an angry voice.

Jake and Kelly wheeled around.

Barely visible in the hallway, her hand shaking, stood Suzanne Garrett. She was holding a gun.

KELLY STARED. OF ALL THE PEOPLE SHE HAD feared might find her, Suzanne Garrett was at the bottom of the list. How had she known they’d be here? What was she doing waving a gun around?

“Joyce told me where I could find you, and I knew you had a key,” Suzanne said to Jake, forcing her voice to sound reasonable, while fraying at the seams.

“She wouldn’t,” said Jake.

“Maybe not in most cases, Guv, but it’s hard to resist spilling the beans when you’re staring down the hole of one of these.” She flicked her wrist to indicate the gun.

“Joyce has seen enough of those to know who is—and who isn’t—capable of actually firing one,” said Jake. And with that, something clicked in his head. He pulled out his cell phone. Sure enough, it was an unread text message from Joyce, staring him in the face.

Kelly studied Porter’s widow. Her customary sleek bob was
disheveled. She wore a black Windbreaker with jeans and sneakers. She looked shorter in the casual clothes and, as Jake was trying to get her to admit, fairly ridiculous holding the gun. But when she moved swiftly toward Kelly and stuck the gun in her face, it didn’t seem quite so ridiculous.

“You’re the whore who did all this. Everything was fine until you came along.”

Kelly could see the rage building in Suzanne’s eyes and tried to hold her gaze. Jake was moving slowly to get behind her. Suddenly Suzanne whirled on him.

“Hold it, Jake!” Suzanne backed up so she had both of them at bay once more. “You both need to listen. I don’t know what you’re up to, but I know it will end up keeping me out of office. And I want you to know how serious I am about serving in Porter’s stead. Nothing is going to keep me out of that seat. Not you, Guv, and certainly not your little whore here.” She looked them over with a derisive sneer. “Jake, you never could keep your hands off Porter’s things.”

More calmly than he felt, Jake reached out an arm and picked up the phone. He held the receiver in front of him.

“Suzanne, I’m ten seconds away from calling the press and telling them you just threatened us with a gun. How long do you think your political career would last after that revelation? An hour? Or you can shoot Kelly and me now, and obviously you’d be kissing your political career good-bye. Go home and play politics like a good little girl.”

Suzanne looked from Jake to Kelly, with the gun still leveled at their heads, but Kelly could see that her will had already left her. Suzanne knew Jake was right. She dropped her arm to her side and collapsed onto the hard, planklike, white leather sofa.

“Jake, I’ve been an idiot,” she said sadly. Kelly thought her voice actually sounded sincere. “I suppose I could have found a different
way to talk to you. But this is your fault … making me crazy with your phone calls.”

“What phone calls?”

“Don’t do that, Jake. I’ve acted stupidly, but don’t patronize me.”

“What phone calls, Suzanne?” Jake shook his head and looked at her blankly.

“All day long I’ve been getting messages: ‘The governor wants to know about Kelly Jensen. We know about some of the stunts you pulled.’”

Jake shook his head in disbelief. “Suzanne, why would I leave you a message like that? Was it even my voice? Or coming from my number?”

“It wasn’t your voice, no. But you could’ve had someone else do it.” Suzanne continued, “You couldn’t stand that I’m going to pick up where Porter left off. You’ve never been able to handle competing with Porter, so you took or co-opted or stole everything Porter had or said or did.”

Jake anger overtook him. “Why would I care if you ran for Porter’s seat, Suzanne?”

“My point exactly,” said Suzanne acidly. “You disappeared from the campaign immediately after the funeral. You dropped off the face of the earth. All to chase after Porter’s …
cunt.
”

Jake looked over at Kelly to see her reaction, but saw only a distant look on her face, as if she had already checked out of the conversation. He spoke levelly. “I’ve been trying to find Porter’s
killer.
And we did.”

Suzanne snorted. “
We
did? You had nothing to do with that investigation. The only reason you were anywhere near it was because you had my permission to be there. Without me, you’d have been out on your ass faster than it takes you to pick up a hooker.”

Jake clenched his jaw and looked again at Kelly. She had listened
intently to this last exchange of his with Suzanne and now had a strange look in her eyes. He felt a sudden plunge of fear. Did Kelly have a stake in haunting Suzanne with these phone calls? He hated Suzanne for planting a seed of doubt. He hated himself for wondering.

Kelly was still trying to figure out what it was that Suzanne really wanted. She clearly hadn’t wanted to kill them. And if she had wanted to find out whether Jake was making harassing phone calls, she could have traced the calls. That left the possibility of something more complicated going on here, something that went back a long time. Did Suzanne feel some sort of unrequited love for Jake?

Either way, Kelly also knew the likely explanation for the phone calls, and she knew she was running out of time.

“Gillis is behind this,” she said quietly.

“Gillis?” said Suzanne, wheeling on her. “What are you talking about?”

“Todd Gillis,” said Kelly. “He’s my husband.”

Suzanne laughed. “That’s the best joke I’ve heard all year.”