On the deck beside the tub lay Nate’s blankie.
“Nate!” she cried, shooting bolt upright in her bed. She was breathless, her face cold and clammy with sweat as she looked around the room. It was her bedroom, she realized, which came as a relief. She was home. It had been that nightmare again, or more precisely the memory that came back to haunt her in dreams. Nate had been just two years old at the time. He didn’t know how to swim, but thankfully the tub had been only half full.
Kelsey slid out of bed and walked silently to the kitchen. The light was still on, and the photocopies were still on the table, exactly where she’d left them. Since her own attack, she’d gathered additional information about the death of Sally’s daughter. She’d studied her findings before bedtime, which had proved to be a terrible mistake.
Or maybe a very timely warning.
She took a seat at the table and thumbed through the collection of old articles. She stopped at the last one, the one reporting the medical examiner’s account of how Sally’s daughter had died. “Suffocation caused by drowning.” Kelsey skimmed the article one more time, though she couldn’t bring herself to focus too intently. The very idea was too painful for any mother, for any normal human being.
This psycho-whoever he was-had rinsed his hands and knife in the bathtub, and then drowned a little girl in water made red by her own mother’s blood.
Kelsey shuddered at the thought, and once again the words of her own attacker outside the law school library echoed in her mind: “Tatum Knight drops out, or your little boy, Nate, goes the way of Sally’s daughter.”
The dream had left her so exhausted that she practically had to prop her head up to think clearly. She was still adamant about not calling the cops. If the man had wanted to rape her or hurt Nate, he could have done that easily. He wanted Tatum out of the game-and that was all he wanted. She had to believe him when he said that Nate would pay if she involved the cops. Still, someone, somewhere, was trying to warn her that she needed to do something. Why else would she have had the dream?
Unless the message was that she was already too late.
The thought chilled her. She rose quickly and grabbed the telephone. Her mother lived in a high-rise condominium with twenty-four-hour security, the safest place Kelsey knew of. She’d decided not to go with him, however, not wanting him or her mother to see the worry in her eyes. She dialed the number and spoke at the sound of her mother’s sleepy Hello.
“Mom, hi, it’s me”…“I know it’s late, I’m sorry. But I just had to check on Nate. Is he okay?”…“Thank God.” She took a breath, her voice shaking as she added, “I really think it’s best if he stays with you for a while.”
Forty-one
Deirdre Meadows was staring at a blank computer screen. Not even the buzz of the busy Tribune newsroom could get her crime reporting juices flowing. She couldn’t blame it on lack of material-there was a dead hooker on Biscayne Boulevard, a circuit court judge caught taking a bribe, and it wasn’t even lunchtime-but her mind was elsewhere.
“What’s cooking?” her editor asked as he breezed past her messy cubicle.
“Oh, the usual Miami spice,” she said weakly.
She’d been moping around for the last twenty-four hours, ever since she’d left Vivien Grasso’s office with a titanic knot in her stomach. It was all Jack Swyteck’s fault. He returned from Africa and promptly warned everyone they might be in danger because of “Alan Sirap.” She’d been attacked by dogs and threatened by a madman who’d vowed that he would either kill her or kill one of the other beneficiaries-and she’d told no one about it. She didn’t like to think she was motivated by money. It was a matter of her own personal safety.
But was silence really the only way?
To hell with it, she thought. It wasn’t her responsibility to save the others. If they stayed in Sally’s game now-after the note from Alan Sirap, after Swyteck’s warning that Sirap was Sally’s stalker, after Tatum Knight beat up Gerry Colletti, after Gerry offered to buy them all out for a quarter million dollars apiece-then whatever happened to them was their own damn fault.
Her phone rang, and she snatched it up. “Meadows,” she said.
“How’s my favorite reporter this morning?”
Her grip tightened. It was that same mechanical voice-her source. “I’m not your favorite anything, pal.”
“That’s not true. I’m a man of my word, and your two weeks of silence makes you my partner. Hard to believe it’s been almost that long since we talked last, isn’t it?”
“What do you want from me?” she asked.
“Once again, I have to congratulate you. I understand you had another chance to tell the group about our partnership yesterday, and you did the right thing. You kept your big mouth shut.”
“How do you know about that?”
“I have my sources. Just like you.”
“Who?”
“Get real.”
“How do you know they’re reliable?”
“They’re reliable. The kind you’d love to have.”
She reached for a pen and notepad. “How much would I love it?”
“Enough to write this down.”
She froze. Could he see her, or did he just know her well enough to guess that she’d gone for her pad?
He said, “I’ve decided to reward you. Consider it a little bone in your direction for good behavior.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m sure you haven’t forgotten our little understanding-be the first to die, or be the one to inherit forty-six million dollars.”
Her voice tightened. “How could I forget that?”
“Good. Because I don’t want you to think I’ve gone soft. I just want you to understand that if you do as you’re told, it’s in everyone’s best interest.”
“How do you mean?”
“Not everyone has to die.”
“No one has to die.”
“That’s up to you, isn’t it?”
“No,” she said sharply. “Don’t put this on me.”
“Don’t use that tone with me,” he said, his voice rising. “Or I might change my mind.”
She reeled in her anger, taking the edge off her voice. “Change your mind about what?”
“I have a story for you.”
She fumbled again for her pad, her hand shaking as she put pen to paper. “What kind of story?”
“It’s about Tatum Knight.”
“That’s a good start.”
“Here’s what I want you to write. Tatum met with Sally Fenning two weeks before she died. She drove to a bar owned by Tatum’s brother, Theo, called Sparky’s.”
“What did they talk about?”
“She hired him to kill her.”
For a moment she couldn’t speak. “She what?”
“You hard of hearing?”
“No. That’s quite a story. But I can’t write something like that without corroboration.”
“You can, and you will.”
“But I need two sources before the Tribune will print-”
“Shut up and fucking listen! I didn’t tell you to run the story. I told you to write it.”
She paused, confused. “Why write it if I can’t print it?”
“You take the story to Jack Swyteck and you threaten to publish it.”
“What’s the threat?”
“Tell him that the story is going to run on page one tomorrow-unless his client instructs Sally’s estate lawyer to strike his name from the list of beneficiaries.”
Deirdre had heard every word, but she’d written nothing on her pad. It was almost too bizarre to register. “What’s this all about?”
“Like I said, not everyone has to die. If we can get some of the other beneficiaries to drop out, that’s as good as dead, right?”