Or had the police arranged that?
A woman with pale green feathers circling her neck tapped the mike. “Our totals are starting to move, so make sure you don’t miss out. In the last ten minutes, the
Red Grooms
piece has had two new bids. It’s all going for a great cause—”
“My living room,” someone said from the floor, and everyone laughed.
“Not if I beat you to it,” the MC said. More laughter.
The sound felt alien, threatening, its complacency disastrous. Around her, smiling faces stretched into distortion, like in a fun-house mirror. Stupid people. Didn’t they know that tragedy was laughing, too? But not with them.
The band began again, another Lawrence Welk tune.
“I’m taking a walk around,” Gillian told her grandparents, the announcement also for her invisible watchers.
“Really, Gillian, dear, it would be so much better if you stayed here.”
“You mean hide my notorious face?”
“What your grandmother means is—”
“I know what she means,” Gillian said softly, and with uncharacteristic warmth, squeezed Genevra’s shoulder. “I’ll be fine. No scenes. No public displays. I promise.”
“Genevra, honey, don’t you look a picture.” A pudgy woman in a spangly top descended on the table, and before anyone could protest further, Gillian slipped away.
No way could she just sit there. Besides, people were watching out for her. It was creepy not knowing who or where they were. She never thought she’d want the Carleco guys back, but at least they were the devil she knew.
She crossed to the rim of the ballroom. The paintings and sculptures were displayed at the edges, giving the room’s dark middle a furtive glow. She’d heard the committee had drafted someone from the Gray Center to help. This kind of thing was often put together in slapdash fashion that didn’t show the art off at its best. But someone had done a decent job here.
Her own photograph was adequately lit and spaced between other pieces. She stared at it. It was a private piece, one she’d done years ago, that Genevra had always liked. It showed a corner of the estate in fading summer twilight. Grass and trees in fairy light. It had no point of view, except glossiness, was pure pabulum as far as Gillian was concerned, an interesting exercise at best. But it was always the one Genevra brought up to rebuke her with.
“Why can’t you do more pictures like that?” she’d ask.
When Genevra had twisted her arm about donating something to the auction, Gillian had dug it out from the back of a storage cabinet in her studio.
The chair of the art committee had been relieved when Gillian had pulled the picture and unenthusiastic about accepting it back. In the end, Genevra’s standing or Chip’s dollars must have won out because she reluctantly agreed to include it without the police getting involved.
Gillian checked the bid books. Each piece had one associated with it. At the top was the starting bid. Below, dollar amounts rose in predetermined increments, with room for bidders to sign their names, thereby “outbidding” the name prior to theirs.
The piece next to hers started at five thousand dollars and rose by five hundred. Bids on her photograph began at fifteen thousand and rose in increases of five thousand. Nothing like infamy to hike up the price of gas. Four names were listed. No accounting for taste. But it was a nice chunk of change for the hospital.
Someone bumped into her, and she started, her heart racing. But it was only a woman looking at the photo. Geez, she had to stop jumping like that.
“Sorry,” the other woman said. And in the next moment, she colored. “Oh—you’re Gillian Gray.”
Though she shouldn’t be, Gillian was always a little surprised when people recognized her.
The woman was a few years older, her expensively highlighted hair smoothed beneath a black velvet and diamond band. She wore a cocktail dress, a strand of seed pearls, a thin gold watch. Private school sorority sister.
Gillian shot her a tight smile. “That’s right.”
“And this is your—”
“Right again.”
The woman looked from her to the picture and back again. She clearly didn’t know what to say.
Gillian helped her out. “Not what you expected?”
“It’s very, uh . . .”
“Boring?”
The woman gave an embarrassed laugh. “Pretty,” she supplied, then excused herself.
Gillian let out a breath. She would have settled for boring. At least it was honest.
Her eyes swept the room. Everyone seemed equally nonthreatening. Then why the film of sweat coating the back of her neck? Why so jittery?
“Gillian.”
Another jolt of her heart, which she rapidly quelled.
She turned to find her grandmother approaching. “I saw you talking with Bailey Fawcett. You didn’t say anything—”
“Dirty?”
“Provocative.” Genevra frowned. “She’s on the board of the Junior League. When I was sick last year, she brought over a casserole.”
“Cook it herself?”
“Really, Gillian, I have no idea.”
Gillian sighed. She hadn’t known her grandmother had been sick. She didn’t know Genevra could get sick. She wasn’t human that way. The thought of it, of Genevra in bed, weak enough to need someone else’s poppy seed chicken, shook Gillian’s world a little. “I didn’t know you were sick,” she said, her voice smaller than she would have liked.
Genevra waved her concern away. “It was nothing. A little . . . a cold.”
Gillian looked at her suspiciously. “A cold doesn’t merit a casserole,” she said. “Even if you do buy it. Or have the cook prepare it.”
“Have it your way.” Her lips compressed into a thin line. “You always do.” Genevra left, and Gillian watched her retreat. Spine straight, shoulders back. For the first time in—well, for the first time ever—she imagined a universe without her. And it was like a wall had suddenly collapsed. Something solid and hard that had kept the world at bay, all at once, was gone.
She hurried after her. “Grandmother. Grandmother!”
“What is it?” The sharp question was a hissed reprimand, her gaze making sure no one else had seen her granddaughter break decorum in such unladylike fashion.
But now that she had her, Gillian didn’t know why she’d stopped her. “You’re all right now?” she asked. Lamely.
Genevra’s gaze narrowed. Briefly, her eyes softened, then iced over again. “It was pneumonia,” she said crisply, “and I’m perfectly well.”
Gillian swallowed. “I’m . . . I’m glad.”
“Thank you.” She nodded regally. Their eyes held for a moment longer; then she was gone.
How strange to find out she cared for her grandmother on the same night she might never see her again.
Through the wide picture windows across the street, he watched the ballroom shine. Up where he was, the night air was dark and cool, but behind the hotel windows the light gleamed warm and golden.
He knew she was there. Everyone knew. Like them, he’d seen the newspapers, the news clips. He thought her brave to show her face at all, let alone at such a fancy party. He pictured her there, small and chastened. Withered in humiliation. He’d heard her enemies declare victory. They all hated her. All but him.
How could he hate her? He wanted to be her. Wave to the cameras. Nod to reporters. See his face on
Entertain-ment Tonight.
It would happen. He’d already got the whole city talking about him. Got them to take down her pictures. That was strength. That was power.
Soon, he’d free her from her disgrace. Immortalize her, like he had the others.
He smiled at what he was going to do for her, his eyes stinging from staring so hard. But it was like TV, watching the party through the window. Real and not real. If only he could reach out and feel her skin beneath his fingers. So pale. So soft. The thought of touching her sent a hot shiver through him.
Soon, he would have her.
Soon, he would know what she felt like.
Mouth dry with anticipation, he felt an urge he couldn’t resist. Through his pants, he began to stroke himself. And watch the people in their pricey clothes yammer and fawn.
He was always watching. It was what he did. What he liked doing.
Thinking about them. All those useless pretty people who thought they ran things.
But he ran things. He made it happen. Life. Death. It was in his hands.
Excitement hardened him, and he reached inside, licked his palm, made himself wet, then wetter, and stroked harder.
He would wait until she stopped kicking. Stopped struggling. They all struggled at first. Until they saw what a release it was to stop. That it was so much easier when they stopped.
She would stop, and he would place her. Frame her.
He stroked faster, panting at the images in his head.
He would frame her in his own design.
He would stand over her and shoot her. Over and over again.
And then, when he couldn’t help himself, when it felt too good to help himself, then he’d come. All over her. All over that pale, soft skin. He gritted his teeth. Fuck, he said in his head. F-f-fuck her.
And with a grunt, he climaxed in his hand.
In the shadows of the ballroom, Ray tensed as Gillian circulated around the room.
Out of professional courtesy, or maybe for old times’ sake, he told Burke he’d be there. And when his ex-partner made the standard protests—you don’t work here anymore, you’re a civilian, you’ll get in the way—Ray called in his marker.
“I never asked a thing from either you or Nancy when it came to taking care of your father. He shows up in the middle of the night, I drop what I’m doing and handle it. So I figure you owe me, Jimmy, and now you can pay up. If there’s trouble, I’ll be there. If there isn’t, I’ll still be there. You know damn well I won’t get in the way. And one more pair of eyes can’t hurt.”
So he put on his spare monkey suit and drove to the hotel, parking three blocks away in a tight squeeze between a lemon-yellow Beetle and a van from a window-washing company.
He arrived an hour before the gala’s scheduled start time and half an hour before Burke’s team showed. It would have been nice if this bash was at the same hotel he’d stayed in with Gillian. But it wasn’t. So he’d memorized the new hotel’s floor plan from blueprints Carleco had on file and used the extra time to scout the layout in person. He plotted escape routes from four different angles, then found a corner that gave him access to most of the room but would keep him hidden. And he spotted Burke’s people—two men and a woman. The guys in rented tuxes, the woman in a long blue thing with puffy sleeves. All three looked like rejects from last year’s prom.
At some point they caught each other’s eyes, the only sign of acknowledgment or accommodation they made to each other. Truth was, they came at this from opposite sides of the same coin. They were there to catch the bad guy, and if Gillian got hurt in the process, they were still a step ahead. He was there to keep her safe, and if the bad guy got caught, that was gravy.
When Gillian finally entered the room, she looked her own offbeat, sexy self, and despite his promise to keep the emotions at bay, he felt winded when he caught his first glimpse of her in a week.
She looked healthy enough. Fuck it, she looked beautiful. The back of her hair was pinned up, as it had been that first time at the museum—blowsy and tangled, like she’d just got up from a wild round of sex. Like she’d looked after the wild round of sex with him. Eyes glittery, cheeks flushed.
Not like she was pining away for him. No way, no how.
He cursed under his breath and wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. Not if he was going to ensure she survived the night. It sucked having to stare at her, sucked and took his breath away, but there it was.
He maintained his post for the entire opening meet and greet, while the men drank their scotch and the women their white wine. He saw Gillian move to the room’s perimeter to check the art display and scuttled along the wall to keep her in sight. Saw the blonde bump into her, saw the interchange with Genevra. Moved back when the band stopped and people sat down for dinner. Kept a suspicious eye on the servers coming and going from her table. Salad. Entrée. Dessert. Someone he’d never heard of, but who was announced as a CMA newcomer of the year nominee, performed a half-hour set, reminding the room in between songs to bid, bid, bid.
By the end of the evening, sweat was dripping down the back of his neck, but no one had approached Gillian or her table. He was beginning to think the night would be a bust when the MC for the evening returned to the stage to give the auction totals. She wore some kind of sparkled top with feathers at the neck, and he wondered about the rich and how they managed to walk out of the house like that. But the MC made a special point of introducing Gillian, who rose, a spotlight catching her.
Ray groaned silently at the way the light pinpointed her. Anyone in doubt as to where she was would have no trouble finding her now.
As if the universe read his thoughts, at that exact moment he spotted a blur of vertical movement among the seated crowd. He refocused his sight line and blinked for half a second, his mind telling him what he saw was impossible, but his eyes making it true.