“How long since you slept, Chase?”
“Too long, but with this… I can’t sleep knowing we’ve got a traitor in our ranks.”
“What do you want from me?” Luke asked, more kindly.
“I need you to keep your eyes open. That’s one of the reasons I sent you home. When Bobby killed that nurse, she just as easily could have killed Susannah. I’m wondering why she didn’t.”
“Am I the only one who knows?”
“Yeah. And if I die mysteriously, OPS will be on your ass like white on rice.”
“Thank you,” Luke said dryly. “I’ll do my damndest to keep you alive, too.”
Chase dumped the popcorn. “Knock yourselves out,” he muttered to the ducks.
“It’ll be okay,” Luke said. “We’ll figure this out.”
“Yeah, but will I have any agents left when we do?”
Atlanta, Sunday, February 4, 3:55 p.m.
From her carefully chosen place on the standing-room-only sidelines, Bobby counted six of them on the stage. Five women Garth had raped plus sweet Susannah, who sat at the far left of the table, closest to the eaves. Fate had smiled.
But the six women didn’t. They were sober, some visibly nervous. Gretchen French had her arm in a sling. That made Bobby satisfied. But Susannah looked serene and that made Bobby furious. She must have skillfully applied her makeup because she had no dark circles and Bobby knew for a fact the woman had not slept in days.
It didn’t matter, though. Soon she’d be dead, a bullet straight through her heart. The nine-mil in Bobby’s pocket would accomplish the task nicely.
She’d passed through the metal detector with a smile, her press credentials hanging around her neck. Even at a hard glance, the makeup, bra padding, and Marianne’s wig had enabled Bobby to pass for Marianne with the toughest of critics. Still, her stomach churned, thinking of Charles. Damned old man. Why do you care what he thinks?
But half a lifetime of caring was a hard habit to kick. She still wanted to prove herself. She had pride. She had skill. Soon Charles would see it, along with every person watching live and on the endless CNN loop later.
Bobby resisted the temptation to touch the gun in her pocket. It was real. It was loaded. She’d checked it, taking it into a ladies’ room stall minutes after it had been passed to her from behind, wrapped in a jacket and stuffed in a backpack. Her contact had done well. See, I have something, old man. She had a mole in GBI.
That Paul gave you. And Charles gave you Paul. It left a bitter taste. When she thought back, she realized how she’d been played. That she’d met Paul exactly when she’d needed a cop inside APD had seemed like fate at the time. Now, she knew she’d been just like one of the pawns Charles carried around in that ivory box of his.
But for now, she needed to focus. For the next hour she was Marianne Woolf, ace reporter. Marianne wouldn’t be needing the identity for a while, not until she woke up. She wasn’t dead after all, just stunned. There had been no need to kill her. Bobby didn’t kill everyone, no matter what Paul thought. Paul, that sonofabitch.
Don’t think about him or you’ll fail. Think about… She searched for a topic. Marianne. Bobby had always liked Marianne. She’d been the one tight ass at that stuffy private school who had lowered herself to talk to her. Taunted by the rich bitches as “the girl most likely to do everybody,” Marianne had been in dire need of a friend back then.
Their friendship had continued over the years, mostly since Garth had been elected mayor. Since then, a lot of the rich bitches who hadn’t given her the time of day were suddenly more attentive. She’d gone to their charity lunches and smiled, secretly smirking at the knowledge they had welcomed a murderer and a high-priced whore to their Irish-lace-covered tables where they sipped tea from antique silver teapots.
But the day she’d been invited to tea at Judge Vartanian’s house had been very difficult indeed. Sitting amidst the quiet elegance of old money without screaming MINE and grabbing Carol Vartanian by the throat had taken every bit of her self-control. It had taken a meeting with Charles beforehand to calm her. It had taken his assurances that her time would come. That someday she would be sitting in the big house, drinking from her great-grandmother Vartanian’s silver tea set.
That would never happen now. Now that the police knew who she was. Now that Susannah had ruined everything by finding that damn girl in the woods. Now she’d have to leave Dutton, leave Georgia. Leave the fucking country.
Now even Charles had abandoned her.
Don’t think about Charles. Keep your hate sharp. Think about the Vartanians. She’d so wanted, needed to break Carol Vartanian’s scrawny neck. The judge’s wife had been the reason the Styvesons had been forced to move from the well-paying Dutton parsonage before Bobby’s earliest memory. It had been Carol’s interference that had kept her father in low-paying churches in the middle of nowhere. It had been Carol Vartanian who’d ruined her life. Her mother had told her so.
And it was Susannah Vartanian who’d lived her life. Up there in the big house with the fine things. The designer clothes, the pearls handed down six generations. It was Susannah Vartanian who would lose it all today. First her dignity. And then her life.
Bobby resisted the temptation to fiddle with Marianne’s press credentials hanging around her neck. Marianne had responded quickly to her call for help this morning, just as Bobby had known she would. Garth had been arrested and their bank accounts had been frozen and what is to become of me? Marianne had swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. No doubt the promise of an exclusive hadn’t hurt her Good Samaritan zeal.
GBI Agent Talia Scott was walking across the stage, clasping the hand of each woman at the table. Agent Scott lingered over Susannah, her expression concerned, but Susannah nodded resolutely. Scott stepped off to the side and Gretchen French pulled her microphone close.
Gretchen cleared her throat. “Good afternoon. Thank you for coming.” Conversation died quickly and all eyes were on the stage. “We are six of sixteen women raped by the Dutton men you in the media have called the Richie Rich Rapists. Please understand that there is nothing comedic about this for the six of us sitting here before you, or the seven of us who for reasons of their own chose not to appear. Or for the three of us who did not survive. This is not funny. It is not cute. It is real and it happened to us.”
A few reporters actually looked ashamed. Gretchen’s good, Bobby thought.
“We were sixteen,” Gretchen went on, “and we were raped by a gang of young men who used our shame and fear to keep us silent. Not one of us knew that there were others. Had we known, we would have spoken then. We’re speaking now. We will take your questions, but be advised that we may choose not to answer them.”
It’ll be soon, Bobby thought, her pulse beginning to race. An anonymous phone call to a Journal reporter known to skirt the boundaries of good taste was about to cause the uproar she would use to her advantage. Casually she edged through the crowd to where she had a clear shot. She planned three clear shots. The first would finish Gretchen French off and cause a commotion. The second would be for dear little Susannah. The third shot, Bobby thought, is for whichever poor sap is standing closest to me. The resulting stampede was all she’d need to get away. It had worked before and Bobby was a firm believer in not fixing what wasn’t broken. And just as before, Bobby had an escape plan all worked out.
She scanned the crowd. The Journal reporter she’d called with a tip was sitting in the third row, a feral gleam in his eyes, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce.