But there was something in her face, some hard determination. The hell with the police was right. She
wanted
to stay.
Before he could probe why, Chip waved Ray’s observation away. “We don’t want her to leave. We’ve made that clear. Whoever this lunatic is, he could follow her. At least if she’s here, we can keep an eye on her.”
“Then the security net we’re recommending is crucial,” said Carlson. “Including at least a two-man team, double that if you can afford it.”
“I’m not walking around with four bodyguards,” she said to Carlson. And to her grandfather, “And you’re not cutting down trees and installing video cameras. I won’t let you.”
“It’s not up to you,” Chip said. “Your grandmother—”
“Will be a nervous wreck no matter what.”
“Gillian, I’m not going to argue with you—”
“Well, you can’t force me—”
“I have another idea,” Ray said, silencing them both. He peeled himself off the sideboard, turned to Carlson, knowing he was about to burst his boss’s bubble. Not to mention his own. “We can put her in a hotel. Confined space. Easy to guard. Off-duty PD as stationary guard. One man to handle security inside and in transit.”
It was a simple solution, as elegant as a wraparound against the opposing goalie. And just as tricky.
“But we’d feel better if she was here,” Chip said with a plaintive note.
Ray looked into the older man’s eyes. He hadn’t noticed how rheumy they were. Saw the loss and the fear. The slight tremble around his mouth.
“She’ll be safer somewhere else,” he said gently. “Everyone knows this place. And even if we got started on a security perimeter today, it would take the better part of a week to install all the equipment. In the meantime, your granddaughter would be vulnerable.”
Chip sank into a dining room chair and nodded.
“Look, fix the gates and use the alarm you have until we can set up something more sophisticated,” Ray said.
“And let us leave a car here. Two men to keep an eye on things.”
Chip sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know—”
“A small precaution,” Ray said. “Just in case. They’ll stay out of sight. Won’t bother you.”
Gillian put a hand on her grandfather’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay.”
He grunted. “Tell that to your grandmother.”
Ray booked them into the Lowe’s across from Vanderbilt. It was halfway between the house in Belle Meade and downtown, was in a heavily trafficked area that didn’t attract too many strays, and he had no trouble getting a two-bedroom suite with a connecting room for him. He made the reservation in his name and paid for it with his own credit card. One of the top ten commandments in security was never let the clients go public with their whereabouts.
He left Carlson on guard at the house while he went to grab some clothes and check in. Twenty minutes later, he came back with keys, and Carlson left.
He found Gillian and Maddie upstairs, packing. Or rather, Gillian was standing in front of her bedroom window, brooding on the view, and Maddie was flinging clothes into a battered duffel.
“There isn’t a single piece of clothing here that doesn’t have holes in it,” she said. “Why don’t we just buy what you need at the hotel?”
“Because the clothes in hotels are for people like Genevra.”
Ray crossed to Gillian. “Stay away from the windows.”
She startled, whirled, saw who it was. “Jesus, Ray. Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
He drew the curtains closed. “Don’t drift off. Pay attention to your surroundings.”
“My surroundings? I’m in my own bedroom, for crying out loud.”
“In front of an open window.”
“If someone is trying to get at me, it won’t be with a sniper rifle. Not if that picture of Detective Burke’s says anything.”
“You like being a target?”
She and Maddie exchanged glances. There was something in Maddie’s face. Something challenging and know-it-all. As if she were saying, see, someone else knows your craziness.
Then, as if to change the subject, she held up a scrap of cloth. Unfurled it. A T-shirt, so thin he could practically see through it. “This is from tenth grade,” she said.
Gillian gasped. “It is.” She swiped it out of Maddie’s hands. “I forgot I had it.” She buried her face in the cloth, like a kid with a favorite teddy bear.
“Here,” Ray said, and held out a keycard to Maddie. “If you’re sure you’re staying.”
Gillian looked up from the shirt. “She’s sure.”
“Be better for you to leave town,” Ray said to Mad-die, making the argument one last time. “Less to worry about.”
Gillian bounced off the bed, dropped the T-shirt over the duffel. “She’s not going home. I need her here.” Gillian put an arm around Maddie, who frowned and stepped away, picked up the T-shirt, and folded it into the bag.
“You just want someone to eat the cheese off the pizza while you snarf all the pepperoni,” Maddie said.
Gillian smiled. “Don’t forget the chili fries.” She looked at Ray. “Maddie’s a sucker for chili fries. And all the little things they put in the minibar.”
“We’re not going on vacation,” Ray said.
“You take your pleasure where you can,” Gillian said.
Maddie sighed and clawed the hair back from her forehead with those sharp purple-black nails. Ray could hear the scrape of the tips on her scalp. “You don’t need me,” she said quietly. “I’ve got things to do back at the studio.”
“What things?”
“Things, stuff. Business.”
“I’ll let you take me shopping,” Gillian said.
Maddie quirked an unimpressed brow.
“I’ll let you watch Ray while he’s asleep.”
“The hell you will,” Ray said.
Maddie pursed her lips, crossed her arms, and cocked a bony hip. “You really know what buttons to push.” She looked over at Ray. “You’re lucky you’re so cute.” She stabbed a long-nailed finger at Gillian. “But I’m holding you to the shopping.”
Gillian grinned. She zipped the duffel and threw it at Maddie. “I’ll meet you over there.”
Maddie caught the duffel and staggered. “Meet me? Why? Where are you going?”
“I’ve got something to do.”
“What?” Ray and Maddie both said at the same time.
“An appointment.”
“No, you don’t,” Maddie said firmly. “I don’t have you scheduled for anything until tomorrow.”
“Set it myself.”
“Gillian—” Maddie’s voice held a warning note.
Ray looked between the two women. “What? What’s going on?”
“You’re going fishing, aren’t you?” Maddie said, and the way she said it didn’t make it sound like fun. “No one’s going fishing,” Ray said. “Not
fishing,
fishing,” Maddie said, still gazing hard at
Gillian. “Not for fish at least.” “Okay.” Ray held up two hands. “Would someone please tell me what the hell you’re talking about?” “We’re talking about murder,” Maddie said. “Gillian’s going fishing for a killer.”
The fishing expedition proved to be a trip to visit Harley Samuels. Detective Harley Samuels, retired. The same Detective Samuels who had been a vet when Ray had joined up. The one who’d retired the year Ray left the job. And the one who’d led the investigation into Holland Gray’s death.
They went in Ray’s pickup, and he drove. Should he have waited for an armored car and driver? Debatable. Armored cars could stop a bullet. Sometimes. But everyone in protective services knew about Leaman Hunt, who was killed in an armored car when a round slipped through a rubber window grommet around the bullet-resistant glass. Freak accident, maybe. But also a cautionary tale. Protection was relative. No matter how heavy the armor, how strong the glass, there was always a weapon that could pierce it if the bad guy wanted to passionately enough.
Plus, armored cars tended to draw attention to themselves. Ray came down on the side of blending in, especially in this instance, where a public appearance and crowds weren’t going to be an issue. Besides, getting a car and driver would have taken hours, and Gillian was halfway out the door.
So he shucked his suit coat, rolled up his sleeves, loosened his tie, and drove her to Center Hill Lake while Mad-die took their bags to the hotel. On the way out, he stopped by her room, offered to drop her off, but she declined.
“I have a couple of things to do,” she told him.
Her room was a smaller version of Gillian’s, cramped but equally dolled up in gilded mirrors, rose wallpaper, and curlicue furniture. An open suitcase lay on the bed. She was packing.
He wandered in, checked the view from the window. A good drop, facing the wooded slope on the north. “How’d you know where she was going?” he asked, curious about the relationship between the two women.
She shrugged. “I’ve known her since we were fifteen. We were roommates at Hadley.”
“Hadley?”
“Boarding school in Pennsylvania.” She struck a pose. “I was the smart but poor scholarship student. She was the troubled rich girl. Very Frances Hodgson Burnett.”
He quirked an eyebrow at her.
“
The Secret Garden, A Little Princess.
You know, Shirley Temple . . .?” She bent over the suitcase, whipped her black hair over her shoulder, and tossed him a look. “You need to spend more time on the Turner Classic Movie Channel.”
“Yeah, Shirley Temple or
Monday Night Football.
Tough choice.” He paused. “So. High school girlfriends.”
“We published a newsletter called
Sneer.
We didn’t like anyone.”
“Except each other.”
“Misery loves company.”
“And you’ve been keeping company a long time.”
She straightened. Shot him a pointed look. “So?”
He shrugged. “I’m not friends with any of the guys I knew in high school.”
She laughed, but it was cool and knowing. “How many of the guys you knew in high school offered you this?” She waved an arm, indicating the luxurious room.
Maddie still remembered the first time she visited Nashville during Christmas vacation, the year after she’d met Gillian. The sheer size of the Gray house had awed her. The way the rooms echoed when you walked through them. The huge bathroom, which she had all to herself, the tiny, rose-scented soap and soft, monogrammed hand towels. She’d been what—sixteen—and impressed. Shaken. Not only because it was a far cry from the tiny row house she lived in with her parents and three brothers in Juniper, West Virginia. Not even because no one came home with sweat and coal dust blackening their faces. Because it was all so big and plush and spacious. She hadn’t known real people could live that way.
“Gillian gave me a job and a lifestyle,” she told Ray. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing.”
His silent perusal made her narrow her eyes. “You think I’m a mooch?”
“I think you shouldn’t care what I think.” He wandered toward the bed and the suitcase on it, but she quickly stepped in front of him.
“I don’t,” she said.
He looked over her shoulder, but she closed the lid before he could see what was in it. Gave him a pointed look to mind his own business, but he didn’t take the hint.
“Never wanted to set out on your own?”
The suitcase was vintage Roberto Cavalli and had cost a small fortune. She leaned, one-handed, on the top, enjoyed the creamy, soft leather. “And if I did? Who’d make sure Gillian didn’t carry out one of her pictures for real?”
“Someone else. Gillian herself.”
She hefted the suitcase off the bed and set it on the floor. “And what would become of poor little me?”
Their eyes met briefly, his expression veiled and reserved, but with suspicion lurking behind it. A small chill ran up her back. What did he know? How could he know anything?
Before her panic set in, he lightly tossed a set of car keys in the air and caught them. “Sure you don’t want me to drop you at the hotel?”
“Oh, yeah, cowboy.” She smiled. “Real sure.”
Ray thought about that conversation as he wound his way around Center Hill Lake, looking for Harley Samuels’s cabin. Thought about Maddie Crane’s suitcase and what she might be hiding there. And about the bonds we create. The invisible ones we don’t even know are there and the ones we carefully construct to keep others weak. Dependent. Either way, those ties constrict and suffocate the way a boa constrictor does. Eventually they swallow you whole.
“You ever think about letting Maddie go?”
In the seat beside him, Gillian shrugged. “Why should I? She’s my friend.”
“You pay her enough to say so.”
She laughed. “Is that what you think?”
“It’s what she told me.”
She shook her head, still amused. “It’s what she tells everyone, Ray. It’s her way. Especially after someone accuses her of living off me.” She shot a sly glance his way. “You did accuse her, didn’t you?”
He didn’t reply, but silence was answer enough.
“Uh-huh. You know, she stood by me during some of the roughest times of my life. Now she needs me, and I’m not cutting her loose.”