Hannah was a little unsteady as she rose to her feet and began her nightly ritual to shut down the big house. First, she checked the alarm. The steady red light on the master console mounted in the wall of the foyer comforted her.
Walking through the quiet house, checking the doors and turning off the lights, it occurred to her that in a way it was a good thing that Sam had returned her call. At the time she had been put off by his greed-induced tactics, but she now realized that she had to be rid of this millstone. She just wanted a little place, something that was really hers. Not a house that fairly screamed out loneliness and isolation. Even with John here, the sheer size was sometimes overwhelming. Especially the upstairs with its empty bedrooms. Hannah made it a practice to go up there as rarely as possible.
By the time Hannah had completed her circuit and was at the edge of her bed, she was beginning to wonder if maybe she wouldn't pass out after all. She looked at the bed and thought of how soft it looked. She wanted to fall across it, but forced herself to take off her robe and crawl in correctly, covers up, everything neat and secure.
Lifting her head from the pillow to turn off the light set the room into a slow spin. Damn, she hated that. Hannah extended her leg from out of the covers so that her foot on the floor would stop the room from moving.
As she slid into unconsciousness, she felt a yearning need for the same simple solution in her life. She needed somehow to stop her whole world from spinning. She needed to put her foot down and control her situation. Her last conscious thought was about Doctor Jenkins. Her session today had barely opened the door to her past but it was enough. What she had tried so hard to bury and ignore was returning. She fell asleep hearing the tortured screams of the small child she had once been.
Neeley was cramped and uncomfortable. She’d assumed that a successful attorney would have a bigger car. Maybe Howard Brumley wasn't so successful. Neeley wondered if Hannah suspected that Howard knew more about John's disappearance than he should. Neeley didn't know the answer to that question. She only knew that Howard's eagerness to put distance between John and Hannah was very suspicious. One thing she had learned traveling in the shadow world with Gant was to question every word, every action. Something was wrong about the way Brumley was acting toward Hannah and it didn’t take a rocket scientist in Neeley’s opinion to figure the person behind that something was John Masterson.
The time to be discreet was past. Neeley knew the clock was ticking and time was not on her side.
Neeley tried to straighten her shoulders but it was impossible. Her hope was that Howard would not work overly late. However, it seemed like he was in no rush to get home to his loving wife.
Howard’s arrival at the car in the back of the practically empty underground garage was hours after most of the other workers had left. He unlocked the door, which had taken Neeley less than five seconds to open without a key. Not looking into the shadowy backseat, he slid onto the black leather. Before he could completely insert the key, Neeley reached around and pushed the barrel of her Glock pistol against the side of his head.
"Let's make this easy. Where is John Masterson?"
"I don't--"
Neeley pressed the tip of the muzzle against the skin, a persuasive argument to the uninitiated.
"Where is John Masterson? Answer or you die in three seconds," Neeley said in a flat voice. “Have you ever seen what a bullet to the head does?”
Howard may have been a foolish man in certain business associations, but he tended to be practical when the stakes moved from money to survival. "Across the river. The Cloverleaf Motel. Room twenty-seven."
"Does Hannah Masterson know where he is?"
"No."
"Does she know anything about this thing John has set up?"
"No."
"Why is John doing this?"
"I don't know. He didn't tell me."
“Why is he disappearing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit,” Neeley hissed.
“I really don’t know. Please! I’d tell you if I did.”
She believed that. "Why are you helping John?"
"He's paying me."
Neeley was impressed how quickly the answers came. Howard wasn’t very loyal. Which triggered her next question.
“What else?”
The momentary silence told her there was indeed more. Neeley waited, noting the drip of sweat from his temple around the tip of the gun. She’d have to clean it after this. There were oils in sweat that were not good for gun steel.
“I was told to tell her to see her psychiatrist.”
Neeley frowned. “Doctor Jenkins?”
“Yes.”
“Who told you to make sure she saw Jenkins?”
“I don’t know. I got an envelope with a thousand in cash and a note with Jenkins card attached. The note said make sure Hannah Masterson made an appointment with Jenkins right away.”
“Was it John, her husband?”
“I don’t think so—I mean, why would he do it that way?”
Good question, Neeley thought. Maybe Howard wasn’t totally stupid. "You know, Howard, if you tell anyone about this little chat, I will have to drop everything in my life and spend the remainder of my days hunting you down. You don't seem to be hard to find so I'm not reluctant to commit the time because I don’t think it will take me more than a day or two. Do we understand each other?"
The lawyer's whisper was hardly audible. "Yes."
Neeley rapped the barrel hard against Howard's temple. "Good," she said to the unconscious body.
Walking out of the garage into the night, Neeley looked like any of the other late-fleeing secretaries of the downtown business district. Her simple kit dress was neither stylish nor well-fitted and the loose jacket did little for her figure except to hide the shoulder holster. Even her tennis shoes on stocking feet drew no notice since pumps had become passé. Neeley remained alert to her environment but allowed the majority of her thoughts to formulate the next step.
**************
The Cloverleaf Motel was in Alton. It was on the east side of the Mississippi River, north of the Gateway Arch. Neeley drove her truck across the Eades Bridge and pulled over at the first gas station. She got the key and unlocked the door to the filthiest toilet she had ever seen. Neeley hadn't been this repulsed in Morocco when she’d gone there with Gant.
She quickly pulled some more practical clothes from her backpack and put them on the cleanest spot on the counter she could find. She only kept the sneakers on, putting the Glock and its holster on top of the clothes. After stashing the other clothes in a zippered pocket of the pack, she reached into the pack's main compartment.
She retrieved a second gun, this one a Model 59 Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistol with a MOD O silencer attached. She slid a magazine of Gant's specially made 9mm, subsonic rounds into the handle and pulled back on the slide, chambering a round. She let the slide go forward, and then locked it down so when she fired it wouldn't jump back and make noise. She would only be able to fire one shot at a time like this but the gun would be almost perfectly quiet when she did so. She put the pistol on top of the new clothes.
She strapped a thin, double-bladed Fairburn knife to her right calf. Another, even smaller knife, went in the exact center of her back, clipped to the top of her panties, a spot Gant had told her police often miss in searches.
She slipped on a pair of comfortable jeans, then made sure the thin wire garrote was still in place on the inside waist, held there by single loops of thread along its length. She pulled on a loose fitting t-shirt and then the shoulder holster for the Glock. On top of that went a sports jacket with large pockets. She slipped the Model 59 into the right pocket.
When she was done, she looked in the mirror. The woman staring back was calm and determined. Satisfied, Neeley returned to her truck.
The motel was in a dingy industrial area. Not exactly top of the line and a long way from the South Seas. She drove around the block once until she knew what was the area was like.
Room 27 was on the second floor. It opened onto a walkway and was about twenty feet from the outside stairs. The parking lot was nearly empty but there were two cars next to the stairwell. One was a rental and the other was a heap.
She drove to the payphone across the street and checked the page she had torn from the phonebook at the gas station. She punched the numbers and was put through to room 27. There was no answer, but that didn't mean anything.
Neeley moved her truck as far away from the motel office as possible yet still be in a position to see the room’s door. Darkness had slid over east St. Louis and the area looked even more forlorn. Neeley sat in the shadows and waited. After a few minutes she could see the glow of a light come through the fabric on the inside of the window in 27.
Neeley quickly got out of the truck and moved up the stairwell, her hand on the grip of the Model 59 in the coat pocket. She stood to the side of the door and knocked. She mimicked the voice as well as she could, hoping the door provided a muffler. "John, it's me, Hannah. Let me in! Hurry, please, John!"
She heard rapid footsteps and the locks clicking. She had the silenced gun in his chest, pushing him back into the room before he could say a word. She kicked the door shut behind her.
John Masterson looked haggard, as if the despair of the room had broken his spirit. "Where's Hannah?" he choked, barely registering the gun.
Neeley shoved him back to a chair and he fell into it with an audible plop. He was at least twenty pounds overweight and had that soft, pinkish exterior that Neeley had always associated with weak men. She couldn’t believe he had ever known Gant. When she didn't say anything, he began to stammer.
"Who are you?"
"Gant sent me," Neeley said.
"How do I know you're not from the Cellar?" John asked.
"You don't," Neeley said.
"Where's Gant?"
"He's dead."
John nodded. "He called me fifteen days ago and told me he was dying. He told me someone would be coming from him."
"Is that why you ran?" Neeley asked.
John gave a strangled laugh. "Hell, yeah. Who knows what Nero's going to do now? And how did I know I could trust whoever Gant sent?" John cocked his head and looked at her more closely. "If you're from Gant, then you have the videotape," John said. "Let me see it."
Neeley paused at this unexpected development. "I didn't bring the tape with me," she said. "That would have been stupid." As she said these words she caught the shift of John's eyes to a metal briefcase lying on the cheap wooden table.
"But you know where it is?" John was growing nervous again.
"Of course," Neeley answered.
John licked his lips. "Maybe we can get things back to normal then. Maybe Nero will deal."
"What do
you
have to deal with?" Neeley asked. She regretted the question as soon as she asked it.
"Gant didn't tell you shit did he?" John didn't wait for a reply. "No, that son-of-a-bitch wouldn't. He always played everything close to the vest and didn't trust anyone. And he
couldn't
tell you. We promised Nero we would never tell anyone. And Gant, oh boy, he sure was one for doing exactly what he was supposed to do."
"I've got the tape," Neeley said, trying to keep him talking.
"Maybe," John said. "But then again, maybe not. I shouldn't have hung around. I should have left town right after Gant called. God damn Nero, pulling strings. God damn it."
“Who is Nero?”
“The head of the Cellar,” John said.
"Why did you leave your wife like you did?" Neeley asked, her head spinning from John's words, trying to make sense of it all.
John now focused on the gun. "Look, my wife is out of it, OK?”
“Out of it?” Neeley felt the sliver of metal under her finger and she forced herself to ease off the trigger. “You leave her high and dry and she’s out of it? Because you say so?”
“I wish you'd quit pointing that gun at me. Those damn things are dangerous. Hannah knows
nothing
," John insisted.
“Why did you have Brumley send her to that shrink right away then?”
The confusion on his face was real. “What are you talking about? Jenkins?” His face crumpled as if hit. “Oh shit.”
Neeley felt the floor almost shift under her feet as she realized there was another layer to all this, but she knew she didn’t have the time to get into it right now. "Why did you run if Gant told you I was coming?"
John was trying to regroup. "Did Gant tell you about 'dead time'? About living with knowledge that others want buried? Always being afraid that someone is going to show up in the middle of the night and kill you and everyone you love if something changes? Or if someone gets a bug up their ass and just decided to tie up a few loose ends?
“When Gant told me he was dying, I knew I had to get out of sight. I'd tried to make a new life but I always knew it was hanging by a thread and his phone call brought everything crashing down around me. Hell, I knew Nero didn’t give a damn about me. It was Gant that kept the peace. Gant and his brother. Jack. Without Gant, I was nothing. I've been trying to close everything out."
She wondered how the brother fit in, but she didn’t ask that right now. “Why did you stay here?”
John shrugged. "I guess there was a part of me hoping you would show up from Gant and have the videotape and maybe we could deal with Nero and get things back like they were."
"So you decided to take all your money and leave your wife dangling without a clue?" Neeley asked.
John lowered his eyes. "I had to. I had to convince whoever came from the Cellar-- if they got here first-- that Hannah knew nothing. That she was out of it."
"Do you think the Cellar and Nero will buy off on that?" Neeley asked. Gant had never mentioned Nero. She already knew more now in five minutes with Masterson than she had in a decade with Gant. The cowering man in front of her was right about one very important thing—Gant had to have been the one holding things in balance.
"Not really, but it's her best chance," John said. "That is until you showed up here," he added. "Like I said, maybe we can make a deal now with Nero and reestablish the status quo."
Neeley shrugged. "Maybe." She wanted to know what was in the briefcase and more about this videotape Gant had supposedly left her. The only thing she could think of was Gant's second request: that she climb the route in Eldorado Canyon. She waved the gun. "Let's go back to your house and talk this over with Hannah."
"Hannah's out of it," John said.
"Jesus Christ!" Neeley exclaimed. "She's your wife. That means she's involved. She has the right to know what is going on and to make her own decisions." The muzzle of the weapon allowed for no argument. John reluctantly stood and picked up the briefcase.
*************
Howard Brumley couldn't sleep. It was 1:30 in the morning and not only was he wide awake, but he had enough adrenaline going to finish an Ironman competition. It had been hours since the gun was pressed to his head but it seemed like fifteen seconds.
Lying in the dark next to his gently snoring wife, he kept lifting his hand to his head and feeling the spot. There was a bruise on his temple that was already darkening. He'd had to tell Celia that he hit a door. She didn't believe him but she also didn't seem to care.
He noticed a drip in the master bath and fought to ignore it. He wrapped his pillow around his head, praying that sleep would end this terrible day.
Howard took shallow breaths hoping to lessen his anxiety because if he wasn't going to sleep a wink at least he could be spared the racing heart. He kept replaying it in his head and it always played out the same way. He was stupid man. Always letting Celia buy whatever the hell she wanted and the boys, too. Just to keep some peace, because he didn't want the endless confrontations. That was a laugh. He almost got killed today because he needed the money John Masterson had offered. That was a whole new level to confrontation. What the hell had John done to him? And who the hell had left the envelope and card about Jenkins? But what was he supposed to do with a thousand in cash? Keep it and not do what the card said? There was no way to return it. Damn. And what was the big deal with Hannah going to see her shrink. Hell, she’d looked like she needed it. Howard felt a headache growing in concert with the throbbing in his temple.