The white bed sheet danced gracefully,
billowing out with the night breeze, a lonely specter pointing
accusingly at Clarissa's tenuous refuge. She closed her eyes but
could not will it away. There was nowhere to run that Wolfe could
not see her from the balcony. She had only a few desperate moments
before they would find her. Wolfe had been right. She could not
escape from him. From the argument she had heard by the pool,
neither had Avery Roth. How many others besides the Roth brothers
had Morgan eliminated to suit his purposes?
Clarissa knew that there was no way off the
grounds on foot. The estate would be secured, the wrought iron
grille work atop the eight foot stone wall, as well as the gates,
would be electrified, and the infra-red security cameras would tell
Alex Rogers her every move. They guards would probe all of the
possible hiding places on the grounds before Clarissa could even
think of them.
Her will to resist was beginning to let her
down, leaving her defenseless and vulnerable, unable to feel
anything but defeat, unable to move. Her fear melted, the terror
moved away like a receding storm. She shivered with an inner chill
and her legs weakened. She slumped to the grass, nerve-weary and
emotionally drained.
"Mama, I'm sorry," she whispered and tears
fell uncontrollably. "You and Andy were right and I was wrong. Damn
it, Mama, how could I have been so wrong?" The memory of her mother
laying in her own blood on the ground next to the bus bench was lit
like a sudden streak of lightning behind Clarissa's tears. Caught
in the crossfire of a gang shooting, Myra Hayden's struggles to
protect her fragile daughter from the harsh realities of poverty,
came to a sudden end. It had left Clarissa exposed and helpless,
prey for the thieves of the night. Then there had been Hugo to
protect her, and the modeling agency, and finally Morgan. Clarissa
felt that debilitating helplessness now as she had felt it at the
death of her mother. The vulnerability was terrifying.
Clarissa was jolted back to reality at
Morgan's voice. He had gone back inside and was calling to Marco.
His voice drifted away and Clarissa was conscious of the stillness
and silence. She sensed rather than saw the movement across the
lawn next to the driveway. The security guard she knew as Dalton
had come out of the garage and was peering into the shadows on the
opposite side of the driveway from where she sat in the shadows.
When he moved into the light she saw that the tall black man
carried an assault rifle and was poking it into the shrubbery. She
watched him for a long moment. There was no urge to get up and run,
no fear, no feeling. There was only the man, dressed in black pants
and black t-shirt, methodically searching, prodding, and examining
each dark crevasse. If he turned slightly more to his left he could
not help notice her sitting under the guest room balcony in the
shadow of the oak tree.
Clarissa waited and watched. It would be only
a moment now. Dalton would look up, see her, and aim the barrel of
the gun at her throat. He would call out to Morgan and the
nightmare would be over. She did not move. Only her eyes followed
his movements. He moved passed her, his back turned, concentrating
on the bushes. He continued slowly on, taking the turn in the
driveway as it angled away from the house toward the gates, shoving
aside the bushes. She watched until he moved to where Byron Roth's
car, still parked in front of the house, blocked her
view.
Clarissa looked back to the garage. Two of the
doors were still open exposing the Mercedes and the Jaguar. There
was no other movement, no guards that she could see. There was a
chance, a slim one. She had to move now before the front door
opened, before Morgan found Marco and could tell him about the
sheet. She pushed away the mounting panic and took the Jaguar keys
from her purse. They felt like a lifeline in her hand, a thin
sliver of a chance at freedom. She rose slowly to her feet and
picked her way laboriously across the lawn. At the edge of the
driveway she stopped, reluctant to step into the pools of silvery
moonlight between her and the Jaguar. The only movement was the
slow sweep of the security camera mounted on the corner of
garage.
She took a deep breath and stepped onto the
cobblestone driveway. She prayed that whoever was watching the
security monitors was distracted for the next moment. A foolish,
wishful thought. Morgan's security was just too thorough, too
tight. She could never hope to get out of this alive, but now that
she saw even the slight possibility, it suddenly rasped her soul
more to give up her life without trying.
She crossed the driveway almost with her eyes
closed and not daring to take a breath. All of her concentration
was on her feet, walking on her toes so as to not make a sound on
the cobblestones. She shivered and her flesh crawled between her
shoulders in momentary expectation of a rifle barrel in her back.
She melted into the welcome darkness inside the garage.
Clarissa had her hand on the Jag's door handle
when instinctively she stopped. She was not sure if it was the
opening of the front door of the house, or the faint murmuring of
voices that sent her to her knees between the Jaguar and the black
Cadillac parked next to it. The voices were barely audible, but she
knew it was Morgan and Marco.
A quick glance over the fender of the car
confirmed the new peril and the fragile hold on her will to survive
slipped a notch. Morgan stood in the open front doorway talking to
both Alex Rogers and Marco. They were too far out of earshot for
Clarissa to hear what was being said. Three of the other guards
joined the conference at the front door. Clarissa knew that the
search for her was to be concentrated at the front of the
grounds.
"Just find her," Wolfe's angry voice suddenly
rose above the others.
Two of the guards broke off to search the wall
near the street and the gates. Dalton resumed his search of the
trees and shrubbery along the driveway. Marco, carrying a rifle and
flash light, probed the shadows under the balcony where Clarissa
had sat under the oak tree. To her horror, Alex was walking
straight toward the garage. He had shed the gray sport coat he had
worn earlier and Clarissa could see the straps of a shoulder
holster against his white shirt.
If she was going to make a move it would have
to be now. Slowly, crouched between the two cars, she slipped her
hand under the door handle and pulled. The door unlatched silently.
It would take one burst of effort to be in the driver's seat, lock
all of the doors, start the engine, and make a mad dash for the
gates. Clarissa could not move.
The twinge of panic was sudden and swift. Her
hand dropped from the door handle without her knowing why. Then she
saw the light, the map light inside the Jag. If she had opened the
car door, it have would blazed like a beacon inside the dark
garage.
She dared another quick glimpse over the Jag's
fender. Alex was closer, moving slowly, studying the ground and
bushes along the drive for any sign of her passing. Like a
bloodhound sniffing out a scent, he would stop, listen, and sort
out the night sounds for a telltale noise that would give his
hidden prey away.
Clarissa pressed back into the shadows near
the front bumper and the back wall. The shelf above her head held
spare batteries and car parts. It afforded a deeper blackness in
which to wait for the inevitable.
Escape had been so close, so fleeting. She had
waited too long to act. The narrow window of time had slammed shut
and she was caught in the jaws of its trap. Alex would find her,
bring her to face Morgan, and she would look for the last time into
the soul of a demon. She resisted the temptation to stand up and
walk out of the garage, to give in to the overwhelming sense of
surrender, and not let Morgan know her fear.
She wondered if she ever really loved him, and
her lip quivered at the realization that she did not. She loved
only the image she had created in her own mind of the mysterious,
sensuous man who had given her everything except himself. He could
never give her that. To have Morgan Wolfe meant living a small
piece of hell while mocking laughter ate away the dream.
Clarissa touched lightly the diamond necklace
around her throat. It felt heavy like an iron collar to which only
Morgan held the key. Yet, she could not tear it off. The dream that
had been ingrained in her all her life would not be so easily cast
aside. And so the trap tightened.
"Clarissa," Alex's voice was cool and
seductive like a polar wind off a glacier. "Come out. I'll do
whatever I can to help you."
She ached to let that thought provide the
comfort it so enticingly invited. That Alex Rogers could actually
protect her from Morgan was pure fantasy. If he tried, Morgan would
kill them both.
"Come out, Clarissa," Alex whispered. "Let's
talk." There was a long pause and Clarissa fought down the urge to
call to him. He was baiting her, she convinced herself. Did he
really know where she was hiding? If he did, he wouldn't have to
flush her out with his tempting, soothing voice.
"J'ai Ose," he whispered. "The perfume you're
wearing. It's giving you away like a neon sign."
Clarissa's stomach tightened and she wedged
herself deeper against the Jag's front bumper and the garage wall.
Her hand brushed something hard and cold on the concrete floor that
chilled like the touch of frost. She recoiled at first, then her
heart leapt. She lifted the tire iron slowly and carefully, willing
her hands not to shake.
Alex sniffed the air, his almost computer-like
senses separating the odors of rubber, oil, gasoline, and car wax
from Clarissa's expensive perfume. He narrowed her position down to
the driver's side of the Jaguar near the wall. He could almost
pin-point the spot just behind her ear where the perfume had been
daubed, although he could not yet see her in the dark. Slowly, he
pulled the Magnum from his shoulder holster and stepped into the
garage behind the Jag. He had to smile. His training had been
exceptional. Clarissa's purse lay next to the front wheel of the
black Cadillac.
"You dropped something, Clarissa," Alex
couldn't help grinning. He had her cornered and she was his
prize.
Clarissa saw his hand reach down for the black
beaded evening bag she had tossed over near the Cadillac's front
tire. With a quickness that surprised her, and with a blind aim,
she brought the tire iron down hard across the back of Alex's head.
With a slight groan, he slumped to the grease stained
floor.
Marco was only half listening as Wolfe gave
orders for the disposal of Byron Roth and Clarissa Hayden, her
personal possessions, and Roth's car.
"It'll be just a minute or two before we have
her," he assured Morgan. "They're closing in on her. Rogers saw her
on the number four monitor. She's down by the front
gate."
"Good," Wolfe replied. "I want this whole mess
cleaned up by midnight."
"She can't escape, Mister Wolfe. Two of the
guards are wearing these." Marco held up a pair of night vision
goggles. Wolfe nodded his satisfaction.
Marco stood facing his employer on the bottom
step of the small front porch but his attention was distracted for
a second. He felt a sudden unexplained uneasiness, a minute
disturbance in the air around him as subtle as a drop of moisture
falling off a leaf. His acute senses went automatically on alert
and he turned away from Wolfe for a moment to read the shadows and
study the wind.
"What is it, Marco?" Wolfe asked.
Marco moved down the front walk to the edge of
the driveway. The only detectable movements were the guards he had
assigned to patrol the front gates and Dalton searching the trees
on the front lawn. He watched for a moment, satisfied that the ring
of guards were closing in on Clarissa.
Yet Marco was tense. His muscles bunched and
flexed under the black t-shirt and shoulder holster, and he was
inwardly coiled like a cobra ready to strike. He was sure of the
disturbance. Whether it was a sound or movement out of place, he
couldn't tell. He slipped on the goggles, peered down the driveway
toward the garage trying to pierce its darkness. Nothing. He did a
slow scan of the front lawn down to the wall, across the driveway
and toward the garden and gazebo in the side yard.
Nothing.
It was the stillness that triggered Marco's
warning signals and his head snapped around back toward the garage.
There should have been movement there. He should have sensed Alex
searching the garage's interior. Marco took the first running step
almost too late. The Jaguar's engine came to life in a revving
roar, bathing Marco in the red glow of tail lights. He screamed and
tore the goggles off of his blinded eyes, dived sideways as tires
squealed on the smooth cobblestones and the car's rear bumper
slammed toward his head in a swirl of dust and burning rubber. He
scrambled to his feet and dove again as the bumper seemed to chase
him onto the lawn as Clarissa backed the Jag up on the grass into a
sliding turn.
Then the tail lights sped away from him and
Marco rose up on one knee. He managed to empty his revolver into
the Jag. One tail light exploded and the rear window took two
bullets but the Jag never slowed on its torpedo run toward the
gates. The wrought iron yielded under the impact in a showery hail
of sparks.