“No, I never got inside. Falco caught me first. I was too cocky. On the other hand, why would I ever imagine there’d be someone waiting there for me? I had other things to worry about.”
“What were you afeared of?” From time to time, you could tell Lemuel had been born in another age.
“That there might be security measures I didn’t know about, or that the jerk who now lives there would catch me and I’d have to do him in… which wouldn’t have been such a bad thing.”
“But instead, someone you never expected was there waiting for you.”
She nodded.
“You have no idea why?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t had time to think. I was too… intent on getting away from the area before the body was found. I had to get to a safe place.”
“You’re safe now,” he said, his cold lips brushing her cheek.
Suddenly she wanted the familiarity of him, the touch of him, more than anything else in the world. She turned to him, put her hands on each side of his face, brought his lips to hers.
For the first time that night, something went exactly like she’d expected. Maybe even better.
12
Manfred was rejoicing in the lifting of the siege the next day. He didn’t know what had happened in Dallas to make most of his watchers withdraw, but there were only two lone reporters outside the next day. He immediately checked the Internet. His search parameter was “Goldthorpe Bonnet Park,” and he got information immediately.
“Hmmm,” he said. “So Lewis found a body.” Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, he thought. “No identification. Well, well, well.”
There was a quiet knock on his back door, so he was glad he was dressed and had brushed his teeth. He was sure who his caller must be. He opened the door and Olivia came in. It would be an exaggeration to say she looked like hell, but it would be accurate to say she’d looked better every other time he’d seen her.
“You just get in from Dallas?”
“Yeah.” She stood facing him, her mouth tight with reluctance. “Okay, thanks for calling Lemuel. As it turned out, I didn’t need him. I got away by myself. But it was nice to have backup. Don’t ever do that again.”
“Sure, don’t babble on and on about it,” Manfred said in a friendly voice. “I didn’t worry at all after getting a picture of you in danger, and I wasn’t halfway to Dallas when I heard from Lemuel telling me all was well, so I only wasted half a tank of gas and some sleep. That’s fine! I don’t mind. Anything to help a friend.”
Olivia looked more and more angry as he spoke. Just when he began to believe she might hit him, she smiled, though reluctantly. “I do thank you,” she said. “But most situations, I can handle myself. I was really, really glad to see Lemuel. It was a stroke of luck that he was in Dallas, by the way. He’s not there any longer.”
Manfred didn’t ask where Lemuel had gone. “So, are you hurt?” he asked.
“Not to speak of. Definitely not as badly as the other guy.”
“I never intended anything like this.” Manfred looked at her directly. “If I’d known the Rev was going to ask you for help, I would never have consented. Maybe this is a day for us being ungrateful with each other. Because I feel pretty bad that the guy is dead, Olivia.”
“I feel pretty bad that he was trying to capture me to turn me over to my enemy,” she retorted.
“Who is the enemy? And how does that relate to the problem with Lewis Goldthorpe?”
“I’ll try to explain.”
“Please do.” Manfred suddenly realized he felt a little silly arguing in the middle of his kitchen, and he gestured toward the little table. A bit to his surprise, she sat. He pointed at his Keurig, and she nodded. He made her a cup of coffee, and then one for himself. There was creamer and sugar on the table, and she used both.
“I’ve thought about it most of the night, and this is what I think happened,” she said after she’d taken a sip. “I’ve looked back over the news coverage of the deaths at Vespers, including Rachel’s. Of course I stayed out of sight when the police and press arrived at first about the Devlins. But I think I was in the background of one of the news stories about Rachel’s death, because there were several reporters there already to cover the double murder.” She said this without the least trace of self-consciousness, as if she had nothing to do with the deaths of the man and his wife. “I think that I was spotted — maybe by facial recognition software. Since the story was about the huge coincidence that the same hotel had had a murder/suicide and a sudden death in the same twenty-four hours, the people looking for me covered all the bases.”
“You think they’re somehow hanging around the Devlin house, too?” Manfred said. He didn’t know what to think. Maybe Olivia had worried herself into a mental corner.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” she said. “I wondered if they’d staked out the Goldthorpe house, but after I thought about it, I decided the man, Falco, asked Lewis, or the maid, some questions about anyone who’d come by the house lately. Lewis would definitely have blabbed about the stranger who’d been there that day, the blonde who’d been asking about Rachel’s application for home health care. So I think this guy was posted there just in case, and he got lucky.” She smiled. “Or so he thought.”
“I kind of followed that,” Manfred said, after working it through. “So you have a long-standing enemy who has a lot, a lot, of money and persistence.”
“Yeah. My dad. And most specifically, my dad’s shadow, Ellery McGuire.”
“Didn’t see that coming,” Manfred said after a moment’s silence. He knew that Olivia would be angry when she realized how much she had told him; he could only blame her talkative bout on the lack of sleep and the shock.
He had no idea who his own father had been, but that had left him at liberty to imagine his father loved him and had had to be absent for some fabulous reason. At least his father had never sent a henchman to capture him. “And you told me this because?”
“Because you were able to tell I was in trouble last night. You somehow knew. How’d you do that?”
“The piece of paper with the phone number on it. You told me not to enter it in my phone. And you’d written on the paper yourself, which made it a personal object. When I held it, I knew you were in trouble.”
She nodded, just a quick jerk of her head. “Okay. I won’t doubt you again.”
“I only get a true reading now and then,” he admitted. “But I got one for you. So treasure it.”
Manfred had a hundred questions he would have liked to ask Olivia, but now was not the time. There might never be a time. Somehow, he felt weirdly fonder of Olivia now, though he knew she was a killer. It was an unsettling feeling, somewhat like wanting to scratch a Bengal tiger behind the ears.
“Here’s what happened at the house,” Olivia said abruptly. “And by the way, good job on the floor plan.”
Manfred felt absurdly pleased at the compliment. He nodded. “I have a pretty good memory,” he said. “So you made it up to the second floor?”
Olivia told him about her first venture into the Goldthorpe mansion and her return trip that night.
“The guy was there to bring you to your dad? Or this McGuire?”
“He called Ellery McGuire, not my dad. It’s possible my dad said something like, ‘Find my daughter and bring her to me.’ My dad is the man who causes things to be done. He’s not picky about the method. Everyone takes cues from that. So I guess those were Ellery’s orders. Otherwise, the guy could have killed me right off, and no one would have known. Being dead would be better than going back to my father.”
“To you, being captured is the equivalent of being killed?”