You Can't Hide (22 page)

Aidan’s spine was tingling. They were a step closer. “Do you know where we can find Nicole?”

Oldham looked over his shoulder again. “Any of you know where Nicole hangs?”

“She used to wait tables in a cafй near the Sears Tower,” the goateed man said. “I don’t know if she still does. I haven’t seen Nikki around in a few months.”

82

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

Aidan’s cell phone rang. “Excuse me, I’l just be a minute.” He moved a short distance away as he looked at his caller ID. Tess Ciccotelli.

“What?” he said, skipping salutation.

“I need you to meet me.” She was breathless, her voice just shy of frantic. “I got another call.”

“Murphy,” Aidan called sharply. “We need to go. Who this time, Tess?”

“Malcolm Seward.”

Aidan stopped abruptly in the theater’s lobby, Murphy right behind him. “The football player?” Not just any football player. He was a legend. Malcolm Seward was one of her clients?

“Yes. Please, Detective, please hurry. Here’s the address.”

Trapping the phone between his shoulder and ear, Aidan scratched the address on his notepad, below the names of the four women. It was a high-priced address, not too far from Ciccotelli’s. “Where are you now?” He heard a car horn and tires squeal and something that sounded like Ciccotelli saying “asshole.” “
Tess?
Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, I’m all right. I’m running into his apartment building now. It’s on the seventh floor. Hurry.”

“Tess,
wait
. Wait for us.” But she was gone. “Let’s go, Murphy,” he said and started to run. Her heart was pounding. Pounding. Its pace set hers as she hurtled through the glass doors of Seward’s apartment building.

The astonished doorman was a few seconds too late to catch her. “Stop. You can’t go up there!”

“I’m a doctor,” she gasped over her shoulder. “Medical emergency.” An elevator door was just sliding open and after a split second of hesitation, she jumped in and hit the button for the seventh floor. The faint wail of sirens pierced the pounding in her head as the doors slid closed. The police were almost here. Just a block away.

Only seven floors. Now six.
She fastened her eyes on the digital display, counting her heartbeats as the elevator rose.

Malcolm Seward, a football player with so much pent-up rage. She dragged in a breath, her lungs burning. He was sent to therapy by the team doctor when he pounded another player’s face in an off-field and thankful y off-camera dispute. She’d seen his problem quickly, although it had been weeks before he’d been ready to say the words.

The elevator doors slid open and Tess stumbled into the hall. Seward’s apartment was easy enough to detect from the rabid cursing, broken only by the terrified screams that chilled her blood.

“No, God, no. Malcolm, please.” A woman’s screams.
He says he’s going to fucking kill her.
But she wasn’t dead yet.
I’m not too late
.

The steel door hung on its frame, battered. She stared at it for a moment, gathering her wits. He’d broken the door down.
Where are the cops? They should have been here before me.
But they weren’t here and the screaming had stopped. Now there was only terrified whimpering, which was even worse.

“Please, Malcolm.” The woman’s whisper was strained, hoarse. “Please. I won’t leave you. I won’t tell.”

“You
lie
. You fuckin’
bitch
. Don’t you
lie
to me.”

“I’m not lying. I’m not-” A muffled shriek.

Unable to wait any longer, Tess pushed the door open and froze. Three feet inside the door stood Malcolm Seward, six feet five inches of solid muscle and boiling rage, holding his petite wife off the ground, his forearm crushing her throat. A gun to her head.
Her name,
Tess thought desperately.
What is her name? Gwen. Her name is Gwen.
Tess made herself breathe, settle. Hard to do as Gwen’s eyes popped from their sockets, wide with terror. Her small hands clawed at his arm, to no avail. She was looking straight at Tess, her frantic pleas utterly noiseless.

“Malcolm.” Tess said his name calmly. “Let her go. I can help you if you let her go.”

83

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

Gwen was gasping for air now, her legs thrashing against his. But the man was a rock, capable of running the ball with three two-hundred-fifty-pound men hanging off him. His tiny wife was as much a threat as a bug.

Seward looked up, his eyes wild. Accusing. Sweat poured from his body, soaking the shirt he wore. “You
told
her. You promised you wouldn’t, but you
told
.”

Tess held her hands up, palms out.

Her heart was pounding again, this time in fear. The woman again. The woman who had left the message on Cynthia Adams’s voice mail had imitated her once again. “Let Gwen go, Malcolm.”

“No.” He shook his head, his movements frenetic. “No. She’s going to leave me. She’s going to tell.” He tightened his hold, jerking Gwen higher off the ground. “Nobody leaves me.”

“Nobody’s going to leave you, Malcolm.” Tess made her voice soothing, melodious, and watched him start shuddering. “Nobody’s going to tell.”

He was shaking now, tears running down his face. “You told her. You called and told her. You promised you’d never tell, but you did.” He sobbed, jerking his wife high then bringing her back solidly against his chest. Gwen’s struggling had stopped. She simply dangled like a limp doll.

“No, Malcolm. I didn’t tell.”

“She knew. She knew.”

Tess’s heart stopped. Knew. Not knows.
Knew.
“Don’t hurt her. Please.”

”She said she was going to leave me and tel . I’l lose it. Everything.” He stilled. “Nobody leaves me. Nobody tells.” He uttered the words careful y. Precisely. Then he pul ed the trigger. The scream froze in Tess’s throat as Gwen Seward’s body jerked, then went limp. Malcolm tossed his wife to the floor and, shocked into immobility, Tess’s eyes followed her down. Blood was seeping from Gwen’s head, soaking the vanil a Berber carpet. Gwen Seward didn’t move. She was dead. He’d killed his wife and now she was dead. Sanity returned with a jolt.
Get out. Run.
She turned on her heel to run, but he was faster and in less than a heartbeat he had her. Tess thrashed and kicked, but his forearm came around her throat and the gun ground into her temple. She could hear his voice at her ear, calm now.

“Nobody tel s,” he said. “Not her. Not you.”

Aidan clenched his fists at his sides. Damn elevator was like molasses, his stomach like water. Murphy said nothing at all, but his hands were steady at his sides. His eyes, however, told a different story. Gunshots. Hostage situation. Tess Ciccotelli. What if we’re too late? Aidan thought.
Dear God, don’t let us be too late
. Finally the elevator slid open and it was all Aidan could do to approach the scene with calm caution. The layout of the apartment building was like a hotel, its corridors nearly as long. Six uniforms lined the hallway outside an open doorway, weapons drawn. One of the cops walked toward them, his face grim. “I’m Ripley. My partner and I were first on the scene.”

“What’s the status?” Murphy asked, his voice low and urgent.

“He’s shot his wife in the head and won’t let any of the EMTs in to check her out. But we didn’t see any sign of her breathing.”

“And the doctor?” Aidan asked and held his breath.

Ripley’s eyes flickered. “He’s got her by the throat with a gun to her head.”

Aidan flinched, the picture flashing before his eyes all too real. Murphy swal owed hard. “Like before.”

Ripley tilted his head. “Excuse me, Detective?”

“She’s been attacked before,” Murphy said harshly. “By an inmate she was evaluating.” They started walking toward Seward’s apartment. “Have you called a hostage negotiator?”

“We called for him but he’s a half hour away.” Ripley stopped several feet shy of the door, pitching his voice low. “There’s a big window behind him. If we could get a sniper in one of the apartments across the street, he might be able to get a decent shot. We’ve evacuated everybody on this floor and the floors below and above us.”

84

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

“I’l call Spinnelli,” Murphy said and walked off to the far side of the apartment floor where he couldn’t be overheard.

Aidan took off his overcoat. “Let me try to talk to him.”

The officer shook his head. “I don’t think it’l do any good. He’s high on something.”

“We can’t wait a half hour for the negotiator. He’s already killed his wife. There’s no reason for him to keep the doctor alive. Does anybody know why he’s doing this?”

“When we came off the elevator we heard him saying something about how the doctor called his wife and told, that she’d promised not to tell. His wife had threatened to leave him. He shot his wife.” Ripley’s jaw clenched. “Your doctor was stunned. She turned to run and he… grabbed her. There wasn’t anything we could do.”

Aidan looked over his shoulder to the far end of the hallway where Murphy stood, talking on his cell phone. His partner’s head raised, his eyes wary. Finally he gave a nod and Aidan moved to the doorway. The steel door hung on its frame. It would have taken two men to kick it in. Or one very enraged football player. Who at this moment held Tess Ciccotelli in a stranglehold, his gun at her temple. It was a.45 caliber, but still looked like a toy pistol in the man’s big hand. Her eyes were closed, her body still, but her chest rose and fell with the even breaths she drew through her nose. Her hands clenched Seward’s forearm, pul ing herself high enough to breathe. Her toes just touched the floor. One of her shoes had landed in the hallway, the other next to Mrs. Seward’s body.

She’d fought him, but now she stood in strained repose.

Seward himself was staring right at him, his eyes unfocused. The man swayed slightly as if to a rhythm only he could hear.

“Seward,” Aidan said quietly and the man’s eyes immediately focused. “Let her go.”

Tess’s eyes flew open and in them Aidan saw control ed terror. And pleading. And trust. He had to hold his spine straight to keep his own knees steady. Her life was in his hands.

“No,” Seward said. “She told. She broke her word.”

There was a shift in Seward’s expression and Aidan made a snap judgment. Malcolm Seward was coherent enough to hear the facts, too far gone to accept platitudes and promises. “She didn’t tell. Someone else called your wife, Seward, posing as the doctor.”

His eyes flicked down to look at his dead wife for just a moment before rising again to meet Aidan’s. “You’re lying,” he said unsteadily. The enormity of what he’d done had begun to sink in.

“You read the papers, Seward? Watch the news? You hear about the two suicides this week?”

Something moved behind his eyes. “Yeah. So?”

“They were her patients, too. Somebody called them. We have evidence that it wasn’t Dr. Ciccotelli. Just someone imitating her voice.” It wasn’t the exact truth, but at this point Aidan didn’t care.

Seward’s gaze dropped to the floor once again, to his tiny wife who now lay in a pool of her own blood. His hand trembled on the trigger of the gun and Aidan saw Tess draw a deep breath. But her dark eyes stayed focused on him, just as they had this morning as she’d sat in the sound booth, imitating the words of a killer.

“She knew,” Seward rasped. “She was going to leave me.”

“I’m sorry, Malcolm,” Aidan said, still quietly. “But Dr. Ciccotelli didn’t tell. Let her go. Do the right thing and let her go.”

He closed his eyes. “I kil ed her. My Gwen.”

Aidan said nothing and the big man started to sob brokenly. His hold on Tess tightened, and she grimaced in pain as he ground the gun harder against her temple. “I killed her and it’s your fault.” He pul ed harder against her throat and Tess gasped for breath, straining to get higher on her toes. Unable to. Still Seward sobbed, the tears cutting through the layer of blood and grime on his face.

Aidan fought back the panic, his throat closing. “One innocent woman is dead, Seward,” he said sharply. “Don’t make it two.” He had Seward’s attention now and he softened his voice. “She wouldn’t have wanted it this way, your Gwen. Please, Malcolm. Let her go before it’s too late.”

85

Karen Rose

[Suspense 5]

You Can't Hide

Abruptly Seward straightened and in one motion shoved Tess away and dropped to his knees next to his wife. Tess stumbled forward, gasping, and Aidan grabbed her hand and yanked her out of Seward’s reach. She came hard against his chest, shuddering, trembling, shaking like she would shatter.

Or maybe it was his own body shaking. Aidan’s arms wrapped around her and he held on as she struggled to get her breath just as Seward lifted his wife in his massive arms and rocked her like a baby. His sobs had quieted, but tears still ran down his face. The cops behind Aidan had moved into position. Guns trained on Seward who knelt, rocking his Gwen, still clutching his gun in one hand.

Murphy appeared at Aidan’s side and by unspoken agreement the baton was passed. Aidan moved out of the way, taking Tess with him, and Murphy took his place in the doorway, his own gun drawn. “Drop the gun, Mr. Seward,” Murphy said, his voice level. Aidan wasn’t sure his own voice would ever be level again.

Malcolm Seward careful y laid his wife down and with one hand gently arranged her arms at her sides. Then turned the gun to his own mouth and pul ed the trigger. In Aidan’s arms, Tess flinched, grabbed the front of his shirt, and held on. For a long moment nobody said anything. Then Murphy careful y reholstered his weapon and sighed. “Fuck. Goddammit.”

The hallway exploded into motion, EMTs rushing into the Seward apartment. But just as quickly they stood, shaking their heads. “Both dead,” one said. “Cal the ME.”

Tess pul ed away and leaning against a wall in the hallway, slid bonelessly to the floor. She looked into the apartment at Seward, then up at Aidan, her face drained of color. Her pulse beat hard in the hol ow of her throat, under which ran a wide red scar. “Thank you,” she whispered. Not trusting his voice, he could only nod.