Thank God. "Yes, Nick!" Relief bubbled out of her throat and she ran toward the cabin, pushing open the door. "I didn't know what to make of--" She looked around the room, bare except for an old rickety table on top of which stood a lantern. "Nick?"
"Nick isn't here," someone said from the depth of a hallway.
At the familiar voice, Kelly let out a strangled cry. "Jonathan?"
"Wrong again." This time the voice no longer sounded like Jonathan's.
It was deeper, slightly accented.
The man stepped out of the darkness. A smile, rare for him, stretched his thin mouth. A gun was aimed at her. "Surprised,
?"
Kelly met his eyes, those dark, mysterious eyes that had never fully met hers. They did now, with a touch of arrogance.
"Yes,
She tried to control the fear hitting her from all sides.
"Or should I call you Enrique?"
Forty-Two.
Enrique met Kelly's gaze with stony dislike. "You were always too smart for your own good, Kelly. In fact, I'm surprised you didn't figure it all out sooner."
He made a motion with his hand but didn't take his eyes off her.
"Buried back there in the woods.
You'll be joining him soon."
Kelly closed her eyes in a silent prayer for the friend she had loved and lost. "Why?" she murmured.
He shrugged. "Like you, he stuck his nose in where it didn't belong and paid the price."
"He never went to
You're the one who checked into that motel and you're the one who placed that call to
Jonathan never had an affair with your sister. You set him up."
"Bravo, Brenda Starr." Enrique laughed. Cool and relaxed, he was still very proper in his demeanor, but looked nothing like the Enrique Kelly had seen in the videos. Reconstructive surgery had totally changed his facial features, even his
jawline
. "You want to know why I'm laughing, Kelly?
Because it was so damn easy."
Listening to him talk in Enrique's voice made her realize what had sounded so familiar about Nick's call earlier.
The static on the line.
Enrique had created it in order to distract her. By concentrating on what "Nick" was saying
,
Kelly hadn't paid attention to the flaws in Enrique's imitation.
"Easy?" she repeated.
"Easy to kill people?
Easy to stab them to death and watch them die?"
"I do what I have to do."
"A bum who was only too happy to have a clean room for the night."
There was no remorse in his voice, not an ounce of regret for the innocent people who had died.
He smiled at that. "No. A friend of mine did the job. The idea was to blow up the room in such a way that there would be nothing left of the body but scattered ashes, making identification impossible. The police would have believed the remains were Jonathan's and that would have been the end of a tragic story. Unfortunately, the charge wasn't powerful enough."
He leaned against the wall, the gun still steady in his hand.
"You're the one who called
"So she would realize he didn't want to come home and would ask you to drop the investigation."
"And when that backfired, you got scared and sent
He gave her a brief, chilling smile. "I'm not scared of you, Kelly. I'm just a cautious man."
"Of course you're scared. If you weren't, you wouldn't have tried to kill me. It was you the other night, wasn't it? Hiding behind a woman's disguise?"
In the gleam of the lantern, his eyes glinted with a cold light. "That was the part I liked the best, catching that terrified look in your eyes."
"
Syd's
Mercedes.
I parked it behind the house after I returned from my failed mission. And you never knew it. You were so intent on putting the blame on poor Cecily."
A Mercedes, not a Lexus.
She had never been able to tell one from the other, especially from the back. "It would have been so much better for you if you had died right there and then," he continued. "You would have had a proper burial, family and friends laying you to rest, saying wonderful things about you. But now ..."
"So you do work for
Syd
Webber."
"And for me," another voice replied.
For a moment, Kelly thought the voice was another of Enrique's imitations. It had come from the same direction, but unless ventriloquism was another of his talents, she couldn't see how it could possibly be him.
When the other man stepped out of the shadows, her heart stopped.
He was dressed to the nines, in an impeccably cut tuxedo and a black overcoat he'd left open. Gold cuff links glinted at his wrists.
There was a look of regret in his eyes. "I tried to tell you, Kelly," Ward said
ih
his quiet voice. "I even begged you to drop the investigation. You wouldn't listen."
"You."
She was too stunned to say anything more. She thought of the conversations they'd had, his concern for her, for Jonathan,
his
bold lies. What a fool she had been, so gullible, so quick to accept what he wanted her to see.
"You're disappointed in me."
"You killed Jonathan."
Ward let out a long sigh. "It couldn't be helped, Kelly. He knew too much."
"I thought he was only a threat to
Syd
."
"I wish that were true. Unfortunately, when he found out that
Syd
was running an illegal operation out of the
Chenonceau
, he also found out that I was helping him transfer the money to
A money-laundering scheme through one of
"No." Ward brushed an invisible speck of dust from his sleeve. "He wanted to warn me that he was going to the authorities. He gave me forty-eight hours to come forward and publicly admit my involvement with
Syd
Webber. If I didn't, he would go to the police."
"So you killed him."
"It was nothing personal, Kelly.
Just a matter of survival."
"Why that elaborate piece of theater in
"To detract attention.
Thanks to Enrique's contacts there, and
"We didn't. I told him I needed to discuss my press conference with
him, that
I wanted to confess but in a way that would be the least embarrassing for my family. He agreed and came to my house." Ward waved toward his accomplice. "Enrique did the rest."
Kelly's gaze shifted back to the man she and Nick had pursued so relentlessly. His eyes were cold and flat. The eyes of a killer, she thought with a shiver. She saw Ward glance at his watch and remembered he had an awards ceremony to attend. Ward Sanders, Citizen of the Year.
A man whose last five years had been devoted to the betterment of the less fortunate.
Had it all been a scam?
"Why did you do
it.
Ward? Why did you team up with a man like
Syd
Webber?"
The corners of his mouth lifted.
"Money, of course."
"You already have money."
"Wrong, Kelly. My father has money, and all the prestige that goes with it. I'm nothing but the rich man's son. You would think that after all I've done for Eastland Bank in the last thirty-six
years,
he would at least make me an equal partner. Or leave me the bank after his death."
This time the corners of his mouth turned downward in a bitter expression. "You want to know who will inherit Eastland when
My brother Sean."
At Kelly's startled expression, he gave a short, harsh laugh. "That's right.
My brother the stockbroker.
It doesn't matter that Sean doesn't have the faintest idea how to run a bank. He was always Dad's favorite and because of that, the business will go to him.
"Thirty-six years of being at the old man's beck and call. Yes, sir.
Nothing.
Ironically, the only thing I can really call my own is the award I'm being presented tonight. Even though the financing of the women's shelter came from Eastland money, the idea was mine. I'm the one, not Monroe, who saw the project to its completion. Tonight, I will finally be somebody."
A gust of wind rattled the small window and Kelly pulled her coat tighter around her. Neither Ward nor Enrique seemed to feel the cold.
"At Jonathan and
We had never met before that day, but he had done his homework. He knew how disenchanted I was with the business arrangement my father and I had, so he made me a deal I couldn't refuse, as they say. He asked me if I would be willing to occasionally transfer large sums of money to the
"Now I'm a multimillionaire, Kelly. Before long, I'll have enough money to move to the
Kelly kept watching him, wondering how long she could stall the inevitable. "What about Cecily?"
He laughed. "I only married Cecily because my father thought she'd be good for my career. As it turned out, she married me for the same reason. She never loved me. All she cared about was the Norton Trust and her position as CEO. Look what she did trying to protect it."
He didn't know about her affair with
Syd
, Kelly realized, or he would have said something. She glanced at Enrique again.
Her executioner.
"He worked for
Syd
and Tony
Marquese
in
Syd
got him a new face, a new identity and a glowing letter of recommendation as a Rumanian butler."
He laughed. "Cecily was so ecstatic when she heard about him. She just had to have him."
Kelly shook her head. "I remember how reluctant you were to hire him.
It was all an act."
He looked pleased. "I took drama in high school. Didn't you know? At one time I almost thought of becoming an actor. Then my father dangled that carrot in front of my nose and I became a banker instead."
He dragged his hand through his silver hair. "I'm truly sorry to have to kill you, Kelly. But you were getting too close. Another day or two and you would have cracked this case wide open. Breaking into the
Chenonceau's
personnel office last night convinced us we had to stop you."
He began buttoning his coat. "If it's any consolation, I liked you very much. So did
Syd
. He was quite smitten, actually. Did you know that?"
"That will be a comforting thought to take to my grave."
The small attempt at humor brought a smile to his face. "Goodbye, Kelly."
She stood in front of him, blocking his path. "You won't get away with this, you know. Too many people know I went to
Syd
and a security guard caught me searching the personnel office. The investigation won't stop just because I'm dead."
"Only one person can keep that investigation going, Kelly. Nick
Mcbride
."
"Don't make the mistake of underestimating him."
"Never.
That's why he'll be taken care of as soon as Enrique has taken care of you." Kelly suddenly realized that Nick would soon suffer the same horrible fate she was about to face. Her emotions vacillated between fear and anger.
"Won't that look suspicious? Two investigators killed within hours of each other?"
"It doesn't matter, because they'll never know who killed you. In fact, I doubt they'll ever find your bodies. This is government property. It hasn't been used in years." He spread his arms wide. "You see, Kelly, we thought of everything."
No, Ward, not everything. You didn't think of Joe
Massino
spilling his guts to Nick. Please, God, she prayed. Don't let Nick wait until morning to talk to the police. Let him do it right away, before Enrique catches up with him.
"Time for me to go."
Ward gave her one last look. "I wish it didn't have to end this way, but you understand." He nodded to Enrique. Then, without a look back, he walked out.
The powerful sound of the BMW engine filled the night. Within moments, all was quiet again. Enrique picked up the lantern and motioned Kelly outside.
Forty-Three.
By five-thirty that evening.
Nick had decided he had enough evidence to take to Captain Cross. Joe had agreed to go with him and sign a statement but not until they'd heard from Kathleen and the kids. That was fine with Nick. Webber wasn't going anywhere.
Too wound up to keep what he knew to himself until the following morning, he called Kelly on her cell phone. To his surprise, Connie answered.
"She went to
Weekstown
."
Something in the pit of his stomach turned cold. "That wasn't me, Connie."
He heard a moan, a quick shuffle,
then
Gino's booming voice. "Nick, what the hell is going on? Where's Kelly?"
"She was tricked." Someone had pretended to be him, probably the same person who had pretended to be Jonathan. Who else could it be but Enrique, the man with the thousand voices? "When did she get that call, Gino? Did she say anything? Leave any clues?"
"She looked at a map of
Something yachts, after
Weekstown
. She left right after that, so fast that she forgot her cell phone."
Nick couldn't remember a boatyard, but he knew the area.
Weekstown
was a few miles southeast of
Batsto
, the historic village in the
"A little after five."
In clear traffic, the trip wouldn't take him more than forty-five minutes, less if he really pushed it. But Kelly had a twenty-minute head start on him. Even if he barreled down there at ninety miles an hour, he wouldn't be able to catch up with her.
At the end of the line, Gino was growing impatient. "Nick, what do you want me to do?"
"Stay by the phone, Gino. I'm going after her."
"You're going to need help."
"I'm bringing it with me. And I'm calling the police. Try not to worry."
Joe, who had heard the conversation, was already out of his chair.
In the car.
Nick dialed Captain Cross's home number and filled him in.
Cross didn't say a word until Nick was finished.
"Stay on the line," he told him, "while I call the New Jersey State Police."
Within minutes, three squad cars had been dispatched to the small
* * *
"What do you like to be called?" Kelly asked as she and Enrique walked through the thick brush.
"Adrian or Enrique?"
"I don't give a shit," he replied. "Just keep walking."
She took her time, stepping over tangled laurel bushes, ducking under low-hanging limbs and trying to think of a way out. Behind her, the light from the lantern in Enrique's hand swung over the area, giving her an occasional glimpse of the deepening shadows ahead.
If only she could engage him in a conversation, she might have a chance.
She might discover a weakness, a chance to escape.
"Why did you kill Steve
Marquant
?" She started to turn, but he poked her in the ribs with the barrel of the gun.
"That's none of your business."
Had she struck a nerve? She couldn't tell. "From what I gathered from the police report, you and Steve had been together for a long time. Four years, wasn't it?" He didn't answer. "A relationship like that doesn't end because of a little tiff."
"Steve was stupid."
"What did he do?" Kelly slowed her pace, hoping he wouldn't notice.
"He used me. I was his trophy wife, the glamorous star he liked to show off at parties."