After a second of dead silence, Decker lifted his head and frowned. ‘Wait. The glass is broken out. Not in. Crap.’ He leaped to his feet in a graceful movement and held his hand out to pull Ken up. ‘I’m so sorry, sir. Did I hurt you?’
Ken rolled to sit up, too spent from his tantrum to stand. He waved Decker’s helping hand aside. ‘No, Decker. I’m perfectly fine.’ Yep, he thought sourly, I’m perfectly fine, perfectly protected, while my daughter sits in jail.
‘I thought someone was shooting at you. What happened here?’ Decker checked out the window that Ken had smashed to smithereens. A pedestal that used to hold a five-hundred-year-old Chinese vase was empty, pieces of ceramic strewn on the floor. The antique chair his mother had once loved now lay on the ground outside, covered in glass.
‘I threw the chair at the window.’
Decker’s expression became wary. ‘Why?’
Ken rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘Alice was arrested.’ He’d just gotten the news from Sean, who’d been equally devastated.
‘Oh no,’ Decker murmured. ‘How, sir?’
‘I sent her after the employee of Constant Global Surveillance who’d been taken into custody for supplying our ankle trackers. She was supposed to kill Demetrius’s contact before he went into CPD, but they caught her on the roof. Had her surrounded before she could set up her shot. She missed the bastard and got taken into custody.’
‘Oh shit,’ Decker murmured.
Ken turned narrowed eyes on the young man who could have been a model or a football player or anything else he’d wanted to be, yet had come to work for Ken for a paltry salary. ‘It was almost like they knew she would be there ahead of time.’
Decker went still. ‘Are you accusing me of something, sir?’
‘Maybe. All of this started when you called me yesterday morning. You’re new to my company, but you’ve ingratiated yourself into my service very quickly.’
Decker’s jaw was like granite. ‘No, sir. I do not agree. May I respectfully remind you that I’ve worked for you for three years. That I was your bodyguard for all but one month out of those years. That I walked in front of a bullet for you, sir. All of this started when your personal leadership team began to fall apart. Joel drinks like a fish. I was always fixing his mistakes on the legit books. I don’t even want to think about how he’s mucked up the real books. Demetrius snorts coke and generally goofs up anything that doesn’t require his fists, and Reuben, wherever the hell he is, is a sex addict. That’s how all this started.’ He was breathing hard, his nostrils flaring. ‘Sir.’
Ken studied the man dispassionately. Decker had just uttered more words at one time than he’d said in the last three years. ‘You seem to know quite a bit, Decker.’
Decker bristled. ‘I listen at the meetings, sir. I have eyes. I watch what goes on. But I didn’t know that Alice had gone after that employee of the tracker company. Had I known, I would have advised strongly against it. It smells of a trap.’
‘Really?’ Ken said coolly. ‘How so?’
‘What better way to draw out your opponent than with such an important prisoner?’ he said acidly. ‘The tracker supplier would know who he was selling to, so the cops knew you’d want him silenced. He was too tempting a prize. Therefore it was a trap.’
And I should have thought of that. ‘I have to get her out of there.’
‘With all due respect, I don’t think that’s necessary, sir. Certainly not if you’re considering something as drastic as a jailbreak.’
Which is exactly what I was considering. Ken’s silence was answer enough.
‘She won’t break, will she, sir? She won’t give your name?’
‘No.’ Of that Ken was sure. ‘Of course not.’ Unless they offered her a deal she’d be too smart to refuse. His daughter was not stupid.
‘She doesn’t have a record, right? No prints in the system? She’ll experience a bit of discomfort in lockup, but you’ll get her a good lawyer. She’ll be out soon.’
‘Perhaps.’ But he didn’t think so. She’d been caught with her finger on the trigger. Someone had known she was there, of that he was certain. But he was running out of people to suspect. Ken rolled to his feet without Decker’s help. ‘How is Demetrius?’
A quiet exhale. ‘He’s dead, sir. He lost too much blood. A surgeon might have been able to save him, but . . . I’m sorry. I was coming to tell you when I heard the window smash.’
Ken had felt panic and fury when Sean had told him about Alice’s arrest. Now he felt . . . absolutely nothing. Which was preferable.
‘Clean up the mess . . . here and upstairs. Thank you.’
‘Should I dispo— I mean, what should be done with Demetrius’s body?’
‘Same place you put Chip and Marlene Anders. Oh, and kill the Anders girl too. Demetrius was supposed to set up an auction and I don’t want to do that now.’
‘What about the guard who got shot at Anders’s house yesterday morning? He’s still sedated. And what do you want done with Burton?’
‘Whatever you want to do with them. I don’t care. I just don’t want Burton talking. If the other guard is loyal to Burton, dispose of him, too.’ Ken walked to his office and closed the door. He poured himself a stiff drink and dropped into his desk chair. Then he called Sean.
‘Dad . . .’ Sean sounded as numb as Ken felt. ‘What are we going to do now?’
‘What I should have done a long time ago.’ Ken pushed the glass of bourbon aside and opened his gun safe.
I’m buying a one-way ticket to Bora Bora. I’m going to kill Marcus O’Bannion.
Cincinnati, Ohio
Wednesday 5 August, 3.45 P.M.
Scarlett gave Marcus a sideways glance from the driver’s seat of the department unmarked car after leaving her Audi parked in the CPD garage. He was being a little too quiet. ‘Do you want to go see Phillip first?’ she asked him. ‘I understand if you do.’
‘No. We need to answer these questions about Demetrius. Lisette’s with Phillip now, so he’s not alone.’ He looked out the car window. ‘I’ve remembered more of what happened when I was in the hospital. It’s starting to freak me out a little.’
Ah. ‘Tell me.’
‘I realized that I’d actually remembered it before, but I thought it was just a bad dream caused by the morphine.’ He grimaced. ‘That stuff gave me the worst nightmares.’
‘What do you remember, Marcus?’
He sighed. ‘There was another person there. A woman. I didn’t see her face.’
Scarlett had to swallow back her rage. ‘Because your face was covered with a pillow.’
‘There was that,’ he said sarcastically, then paused for a few beats, his forehead furrowed. ‘She told him to hurry, that someone was coming. I think that was why he didn’t finish with the pillow. They must have left because the charge nurse came in. The machine had been beeping like my IV got pulled.’
‘Well it wasn’t like you were almost suffocated or anything,’ she muttered. ‘Thank goodness for the machines.’
‘The nurse fixed my IV and I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t if I’d tried. I think he came back a second time. Had a hypo filled with God knows what and had injected it in the IV bags that were staged to be next in line. I remember needing to tell, but being so out of it that I couldn’t. Like that dream where you’re screaming in your mind but nothing comes out. I think I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming or not. Or even sane,’ he added a lot more quietly.
Scarlett hoped she found Demetrius or whatever his real name was because she wanted to kill him with her bare hands. But that wouldn’t help Marcus, so she kept her voice mild. ‘You were lucid the time I came to see you. He may have found a way to increase your drugs if you were that out of it. Some drugs can make you doubt what you’ve seen. Some can make you trapped in your own body.’