“You’ve got it all figured out, huh, Melanie?” As he spoke, he jabbed his gun hard into Carmen’s head, and she began to whimper.
“Let her go!” Melanie commanded, brandishing the Beretta.
“Why would I do that? She knows too much about me. So do you, for that matter. The smartest thing I could do right now would be to kill you both and get out of this place.” He made a movement toward the door. Carmen’s knees buckled, and Hogan dragged her forward a few inches.
“You’d be foolish to kill us, Bud. That’s just two more bodies to your name that you’ll never get away with! The police know all about you.”
“Bullshit.”
“You don’t believe me? We know you went to Puerto Rico with Whitney and Brianna on the drug run last weekend. A witness puts you eating lunch with Whitney at the hotel. You rode shotgun back to New York with them. Your job was to watch them pass the drugs out of their stomachs and then to hand the heroin-filled balloons over to Expo, am I right?”
He looked surprised.
“I am right,” Melanie continued. “But you ran into a problem with Brianna. By the time she got back to New York, it was apparent that one of the balloons in her stomach was leaking. She got sick. Terribly, horribly sick. And she died. That’s all in the autopsy report.”
Hogan was watching Melanie steadily, still holding a gun to Carmen’s head.
“Brianna’s death came at a very bad time for you. The day before you left for Puerto Rico, Carmen Reyes had come to you in your capacity as”-Melanie raised her eyebrows in sarcasm-“trusted adviser and confided everything she knew about Patricia Andover’s plans to embezzle from the endowment fund. I have that from another witness, a friend of Carmen’s whom she confided in. Ten million dollars was slated to get transferred in tonight at the big gala, and you intended to steal it. Your plan was to use Carmen to skim off the money. Then you’d make a break for it, and Patricia Andover would be left holding the bag. She’d be the one the cops would come after. But the dead body of a Holbrooke girl was a major wrench in the works. You needed to come up with some other explanation for Brianna’s death, to buy time until you got your hands on the ten million. What’s more, you couldn’t rely on Whitney the wild child to keep her mouth shut, so you needed to kill her, too. Overdose was the obvious choice. Reckless young girls, from a school with a druggie reputation. Who wouldn’t believe it?”
“You can’t prove any of this.”
“The overdose plan got you thinking, though. You saw a way to keep Carmen under wraps until the gala while giving everyone a credible explanation for her absence. You’d make it look like Carmen supplied the drugs. You had access to some spare packets from Puerto Rico, and they were unusual, marked in Spanish. You planted some in Whitney’s bedroom and another in Carmen’s locker. People would draw the obvious conclusion when these unusual packets matched, assuming that Carmen had run away to escape the consequences of her crime. They had the extra added benefit of pointing the finger at Jay Esposito. In the meantime you’d gotten Whitney to lure Carmen up to her apartment, and you kidnapped her and held her until tonight.”
“You’ve been working very hard,” Hogan said.
“Naturally, things went wrong, as things often do. There was some unfortunate collateral damage. Deon Green-”
“You’re giving me credit for something Jay did. Jay was a strict disciplinarian when it came to rats.”
“Your use of the past tense is telling, Doctor. You know Esposito is dead, because you killed him. You tried to make it look like a suicide, but you made a critical mistake. You tracked Expo’s blood out into the alley. We took a perfect lift of the footprint. I’m betting it exactly matches the Nikes you’re wearing.”
Hogan looked startled but then recovered quickly. “Bravo, Melanie. I’m impressed. But let’s see if you can nail the extra-credit question. Why kill Jay?”
She thought for a moment. “It was personal. You wanted Whitney. But she wanted him.”
Hogan’s face went so livid that Melanie’s insides lurched. He looked like he wanted to rip her apart with his bare hands. She raised her useless gun to defend herself.
“You think you’re so fucking smart,” Hogan spit. “You don’t know the half of it. I got your boy! That’s right. Trevor Leonard, that fucking freak. I bashed his brains out with Jay’s golf club, so it would look like Jay did the murder. But nobody’s ever gonna know that, because you won’t live to tell about it.”
Trevor! A wave of nausea rushed through her. Just at that instant, Hogan lunged for Melanie, dragging Carmen with him, using her as a human shield. Melanie fumbled frantically at the Beretta’s safety, diving out of Hogan’s way. She hit the floor hard and grunted in pain, rolling back toward the desk, her brain intensely focused on her fingers’ work. The safety finally clicked, and she sat up, finger on the trigger. Hogan and Carmen were at the threshold, shards of glass crunching beneath their feet. If Melanie fired now, she risked killing the girl.
Hogan gave a smile of pure evil. “You make a pretty target,” he said, pointing the gun at Melanie’s head.
64
MELANIE’S HEART was in her throat. She held her breath, waiting for the sharp report of Hogan’s gun.
“If you follow me, she dies,” Hogan said. The next second he and Carmen vanished through the door.
Melanie breathed out. She was shaking uncontrollably. Damn, she’d faced down killers before. You’d think it would get easier.
As their footsteps receded, she leaped to her feet, and the room went black for a second. When her vision cleared, she yanked several tissues from a box on the desk and wrapped her dripping hand. It was tough to fire a gun when your hand was slick with blood.
Melanie rushed to the door. Hogan and Carmen were just disappearing down the main staircase. She ran after them. She’d catch this lunatic before he harmed the girl. You can run, but you can’t hide, scumbag. The route Hogan had chosen would take them all smack through the middle of the gala. That must be his plan-to fade into the crowd. She paused at the top of the stairs to be sure they were out of earshot before starting down after them. The buzz of voices drifted up to her from the floor below. Guests were streaming out of the auditorium toward the main doors of the school. Melanie glimpsed Hogan far ahead, gripping Carmen tightly by the arm and pushing her through the crowd. Nobody seemed to pay them any attention.
Melanie flew down the remaining steps, struggling to keep her prey in sight. But the minute she reached the first floor, the throng engulfed her. Even standing on her toes and craning her neck, she could no longer see Hogan. She fought her way to the exit, earning outraged stares from the power elite. Just as she was about to barrel through the red doors, somebody grabbed her from behind in a powerful grip.
“Hey!” she yelled, whirling.
“Where you going, princess? You don’t like to stay put,” Dan said, looking down into her eyes.
“Where’d you come from?”
“The airport. Lulu Reyes called my cell phone, said to get over here right away.”
“Oh! I told her to hit redial. I thought it would call Detective Leary, but she must’ve done something wrong. You’ll have to do.”
“Gee, thanks a lot.”
“Seriously! We’ve got to catch Hogan. He has Carmen Reyes. He’s using her as a hostage.”
“Any weapons?”
“I have a gun,” she replied, patting her coat pocket.
“Not you-Hogan.”