Twisted Hunger (45 page)

Luke recognized the senator’s brother, but it took him a second to realize he was standing tall and speaking clearly. He didn’t understand what that meant, but he was certain it wasn’t good. Unfortunately, his apprehension showed.

“Relax,” Teddy continued in a more pleasant voice as he inched a bit closer. “Ellery is resting. Just come with me.”

Luke’s entire body told him that he and Ellery were both in serious trouble. Doing the only thing that came to mind, Luke yanked Vivian in front of him, whipped out the gun and pressed it against her neck. “One more step and I’ll kill her. Where are Ellery and the senator?”

Teddy smiled. There wasn’t a hint of menace in his expression, nor did he seem at all concerned about the gun in Luke’s hand. “Don’t worry about Ellery. As I said, she is resting. As to my brother, well, coincidentally, he is resting as well.”

“Where are they?” Luke repeated sharply. “I came here prepared to pull this trigger, and it doesn’t matter to me how many bullets I have to use to get Ellery away from him.”

Teddy’s eyes took on an evil glint. “And if you persist in threatening my sister-in-law, you will never see Ellery again. I believe we have what is known as a Mexican standoff. How would you suggest we resolve it?”

Luke felt perspiration oozing from his palm around the grip of the gun. He was desperate enough to shoot both of them if he had to, but that wouldn’t ensure his finding Ellery. “There is only one solution. You bring Ellery to me or tell me where she is, and we walk away.”

“No harm, no foul?” Teddy asked sarcastically. “Are you implying that if I turn Ellery over to you, you won’t continue with your foolish notion about my brother being The Eye Doctor?”

“Abraham Jones
is
The Eye Doctor. And there are others who suspect it besides me. But I’m willing to destroy all the evidence I’ve uncovered in exchange for Ellery.”

Vivian thought his offer was quite humorous. “I think he means it, Teddy. He does seem to be a trustworthy young man. Perhaps you should agree to his terms.”

“Perhaps I will. After he tells me the names of those
others
he referred to.”

Despite the fact that his heart was quivering with raw fear, Luke kept his gaze glued to Teddy’s. “Ellery first.”

Teddy shrugged. “As you wish. She’s downstairs. I’ll take you to her.”

An alarm went off in Luke’s head. Ellery’s mother saw something downstairs that ultimately scared her to death. “You go and bring her up. I’ll wait here… ready to shoot your dear sister-in-law if you try anything funny.”

“Go on, love,” Vivian said smoothly. “I’ll be perfectly fine. Mr. Madigan isn’t going to hurt me and risk your hurting his precious Ellery.”

* * *

Diane had been on the verge of forgetting her plan to wait for everyone to be together when Madigan showed up… and pulled a gun on Vivian. Another unexpected complication, but his actions seemed to have solved the problem of locating Ellery. In a minute or so, she would be in the front room with the others, which meant Diane had that much time to take care of Senator Jones.

No longer concerned about staying quiet or invisible, she raced to the master bedroom.

The senator was momentarily confused at the sight of Diane standing beside him, but when he saw the large gun with a silencer aimed at his head, he just closed his eyes and accepted his fate.

* * *

The bright light coming on awoke Ellery even before she felt the movement of the door opening behind her. She jumped to her feet with the knife gripped in her hand and moved to the side of the door, so that whoever came in wouldn’t see her until they stepped inside.

“Guess who decided to join our party—” Teddy stopped when he didn’t see her on the couch. “Ellery?”

She held her breath and prayed he would go into the other room in search of her. The moment he did, she intended to run like hell.

He got halfway there and turned around with a wicked smirk on his face. He had seen her reflection in the mirror!

Instantly, she poised the knife to strike and took a sideward step toward the open door. “Stay where you are and I won’t hurt you.”

He laughed. “You wouldn’t dare.”

As he lurched forward, she bolted out and pushed the door closed, but he had it open again before she reached the stairs. Her heart nearly burst from fear as he caught her sleeve and, without thinking, she slashed the knife at him.

They were both momentarily stunned by the blood gushing out of his upper arm, then she took off again. But she only got to the third step when he grabbed her broken wrist and jerked her off her feet.

Wildly, she hacked at him, not trying to kill, only trying to escape. He was bleeding profusely, yet he seemed unaffected by the multiple wounds as he pummeled her with one fist and tried to gain control of her knife-wielding hand with the other.

Ignoring her own pain, she managed to pull her injured arm free again, and quickly scaled a few more steps before he captured an ankle and dragged her back.

As his fingers closed around her throat, she knew she no longer had a choice. With all the strength she could muster, she raised the knife and slashed his jugular vein.

* * *

Luke heard the cries and sounds of a struggle, but it was impossible to tell whether it was from a man or woman or both. “Move,” he ordered Vivian, nudging her forward. With his mind on rescuing Ellery, he was stunned by the vicious blow to his genitals as his captive swiveled around and kneed him. She grabbed for the gun, but he held onto it in spite of the searing pain.

With surprising tenacity, she clung to the weapon with both hands while slamming her body into him. Shoving aside any concerns he had for her gender, he kicked her feet out from under her. She fell but pulled him down with her. They grappled on the floor, rolling back and forth, but she held on no matter what he did.

Suddenly, there was an explosion of sound between their bodies and Luke felt as though he’d been hit in his thigh by a sledgehammer. He’d been shot!

More than pain, he felt rage—blinding, amoral rage. It gathered and funneled into his gun hand until it turned and fired again.

* * *

Ellery heard the two shots and recovered her wits enough to move again. Teddy had implied that someone had arrived. Was it Brevowski? Or Luke? Who shot who?

Teddy’s bloody form lay sprawled on the stairs, one arm still draped across her stomach. With a shudder, she pushed it off then quickly inched up the remaining stairs backward. Even though his head tipped back from where his throat gaped open, she didn’t trust him not to surge back to life and attack again.

She staggered into the front room in time to see Luke trying unsuccessfully to rise to his feet. Vivian was motionless on the floor beside him with a growing bloodstain on her chest. Ellery’s concern, however, was focused on the stain on Luke’s pant leg.

“Oh my God, Ellery,” he whispered, scanning her from head to toe.

“I’m all right,” she said, rushing to him with the bloody knife still in her hand. “It’s Teddy’s blood. He’s—”

“What the hell’s going on here?”

It took Ellery a moment to believe what her eyes registered. “Diane? What are
you
doing here? I mean, I
am
extremely grateful to see a friend but—” She stopped when she noticed that Diane was pointing a very large gun at her. She was more than she’d let on after all. “Do you work for Jones or Brevowski?”

“Set the weapons on the floor, nice and easy, then slide both of them toward me.” She said it with such calm authority that they obeyed the order.

Ellery came to the conclusion that Diane must be with some branch of the government, and realized how bad the scene must appear to someone who wasn’t in on the whole story. She must think
they’re
the guilty parties. “It’s not what it looks like. I can explain everything. The senator is The Eye Doctor and his brother murdered several witnesses, while Vivian protected them both. The proof is all downstairs, in a secret room in the wine cellar. He kept all the eyes in jars, and there are journals—”

Diane cut her off with a wave of her gun. “The victims’ eyes are all downstairs? And he kept journals?”

Ellery nodded.

“Where?”

“In a secret room hidden behind the wine racks. They locked me in there and—”

“
Shit
! What about the brother?”

The fact that Diane had not lowered her gun was beginning to frighten Ellery all over again. “He’s… dead. On the stairs. He was going to kill us, just like all the others. Diane, please stop pointing that thing at me. I’m telling you the truth.”

She nodded. “I have no doubt about that. But deciding who are the good guys and who are the bad is not my problem. In fact, for me, it would just get in the way. All I do is make problems go away. But if it’s any consolation, I wish I hadn’t accepted this job.”

As Diane’s finger moved on the trigger, Ellery finally understood that Diane was there to kill them. “
Wait
!” Ellery cried, and Diane angled her head curiously. “At least tell me why.”

Diane let out a dry laugh. “What do you think this is? A movie, where everything gets explained at the end?” Her finger moved again, and a shot was fired—but it was Diane whose body was slammed backward by the force of a bullet to her chest. As she raised her arm to return fire, a rapid succession of five more shots caused her body to jerk convulsively then crumple to the floor.

Ellery whipped around. Brevowski had finally come to her rescue… at least she
hoped
that’s what he was there for. Just in case it wasn’t, she didn’t completely let out the breath she’d been holding. “Should we be glad to see
you
?”

“I’ll let you know after you tell me what you found.”

“Luke needs medical attention first,” she said, kneeling beside him and taking his hand. “Mrs. Jones shot him.”

Brevowski bent over and peeled back Luke’s blood-soaked pant leg. “It’s barely a scratch. He’ll live until I can figure out what to do with this mess.” He took off Luke’s belt and proceeded to create a tourniquet above the wound.

“I was sure you knew I was on my way here. But I’ve got to admit, I was starting to get worried,” Ellery said.

“Sorry. I left right after I heard where you were headed. But I had a few arrangements to take care of first and it took me longer than expected to get here.”

Ellery thought she saw a shadow move past the front window. “I think someone’s out there.”

Brevowski nodded. “Just a few old friends from the FBI. There’s another agent upstairs. I had to call in all my markers, but they’ll make sure the locals are kept away. Considering all the gunfire, I’m surprised we’re not swarming with police already. Okay. Let’s hear it.”

As quickly as possible, she filled him in on the highlights. Details could wait until after Luke was taken care of.

When she was finished, the agent who had been upstairs reported that he had found the senator.

Brevowski said, “So it looks like Diane had already gotten to the senator before she came for you. The bottom line is, we’ve got an unholy mess in the basement and a body count of four.”

“We would have been dead too if you hadn’t stopped Diane,” Ellery added.

“The people who hired Diane don’t want you to be able to tell anyone else this story.”

“Do you know who they are?”

“I have a pretty good idea. I understand the logic, but I just couldn’t make myself look the other way this time.”

Ellery smiled softly. “Thank you. Maybe what I’m going to say now will help you explain to them why you didn’t let her kill us.”

He was clearly interested in anything that might cover his ass.

“Luke and I each wrote letters to five different people, telling them that if anything happened to either of us in the next twenty years, they were to go to a certain place—all different—where they would find documentation about one of the biggest government cover-ups of the century. I’m sure you know very well that we both disappeared for a while yesterday. We were taking care of our insurance policy.”

“Twenty years?” Brevowski queried, raising his brows. “A lot could happen to you in that time that would have nothing to do with us.”

She shrugged. “We’ll take our chances. And oh, by the way, that goes for Detective Harris too. In return, we’re willing to give you some insurance as well. If you let us live in peace, none of us will ever breathe a word of this to anyone. I’m going to be running for a congressional office soon, and no one is going to vote for a murderess, no matter how blameless she was. And as for Luke…” She glanced at him and noted that his eyes were closed. “Well, as soon as we get out of here, he’ll be promising to love, honor and obey my every command for the rest of his life.”

* * *

It was the top story on the news that night. “Shocking. Tragic. Unbelievable,” one reporter began.

The newscaster went on to explain that the FBI had received an anonymous tip that several shots had been fired in the Sausalito residence of Senator Abraham Lincoln Jones. When they got there, the senator, his wife and brother were all dead. Full details had not yet been disclosed, but preliminary evidence suggested that the senator shot his wife and brother then turned the gun on himself. A quantity of the drug ecstasy and various items used for sexual enhancement were found near the bodies. An inside source revealed that the three may have enjoyed an unusually close relationship throughout the marriage.