“Here we go. Ready? One, two, three-”
She could feel the kick of the gun in the way his body jerked into hers as he fired. Ears ringing from the deafening reports, she ran, crouching as low as her legs would allow, and dove headlong onto the floor of the backseat. None of the rough chunks of glass she landed on had edges sharp enough to cut her. She knew that Dan had made it into the driver’s seat only because the car lurched forward. That was when she realized that the shots whizzing past the remaining windows were not from his gun. A bullet buried itself with a clang in the side of the car. The acceleration kicked in, and they shot down the driveway. She lifted her head enough to see out the side window. They careened off the gravel and bounced over grass and flower beds, sideswiping a picket fence before righting themselves. They made it to the main road, and Melanie grabbed the front seat, vaulting over the gearshift to settle in beside Dan. One side of his yellow polo shirt was streaked with blood.
“My God, are you hit?” she cried.
He looked down in surprise, nearly swerving off the road before righting the steering wheel.
“I didn’t feel anything.”
“Keep driving!”
She turned sideways in her seat and tugged on his shirt with both hands, pulling it up to expose his abdomen, slightly sticky with blood, but smooth and unmarred. She ran her hand around his belly, and he drew his breath in sharply.
“I think the blood must be from the dog. You’re fine.”
After a few minutes, he pulled off the road into the parking lot of an old metal-sided diner.
“Here we are.” He nodded toward the diner. “I hear the blue plate special is good. Get me one to go.”
As he leaned across her and pushed open her door, the inch of space between their bodies seemed to vibrate like a magnetic field. She wondered if she would ever see him again. Her suspicions about him temporarily forgotten, she stepped down, her legs shaky as her feet touched solid ground, and looked back up at him for a long second.
“Please. Be careful,” she said.
“It’s nice to know somebody cares.” He flashed a gorgeous smile and winked at her, then slammed the door and backed up. She watched until the now battered Hummer disappeared from sight.
41
DOLAN REED WAS NO STRANGER TO THE CONCEPT of suicide. He was one of those oversize personalities who couldn’t tolerate defeat. And while his lack of scruples meant he rarely lost in business, in his personal life he hadn’t been so lucky. Rejection sent him spiraling into paroxysms of self-pity, which in turn provoked thoughts of sucking on a tailpipe or rigging up a noose. When life slapped him, rather than accepting the insult, he preferred the thought of telling life itself to fuck off. Especially if he could go out in a way that would hurt the one who spurned him. Hurting Sarah. That was the main thing on his mind right now, as he sat at his desk contemplating death. His and hers.
Sarah deserved to die. There was something wrong with her, some black hole in her heart that shocked the conscience. Even he could see that. What she’d done to him was but one small success in a long and distinguished career of shattering lives. He wasn’t the first, but he could make himself the last. Wouldn’t be difficult to arrange. He had a shotgun in the country that would do the job nicely. If you planned to kill yourself, the logistics of taking someone else with you were tremendously simplified. No need for tiresome details like escape routes and alibis.
So that was the plan. Two loud blasts in the middle of the office in the middle of the afternoon. Lots of ugly publicity. He only wished he had copies of the videos Sarah had made of them. He’d leave them playing silently on a large monitor facing the door, the first thing people would see as they entered. Oh, his wife would love that. Hah, the bitch! She’d be so humiliated in front of her society friends. The tapes would bother her much more than his death. The more he thought about it, the more the videotapes seemed essential to the plan, a sort of fabulous, graphic suicide note. The absence of that one special touch would spoil the whole effect. And not only because of his wife either, but because he wanted Sarah exposed for the two-faced, low-life whore she was.
When he couldn’t think of a way to get his hands on the tapes, though, he considered whether there might not be another path to revenge. He would regret giving up the sensual pleasure of blasting a hole in Sarah’s chest wide enough to rip her heart out through. Yet wasn’t that approach a bit garish, a bit lacking in finesse? Surely he, with his first-rate mind, could come up with something cleverer, more devious. Something designed to make her suffer more exquisitely, and for longer.
Then he remembered. Of course. Yes. How perfect. He chuckled to himself. He had tapes of his own he could use. Sarah wasn’t the only one skilled in the discreet art of electronic surveillance. Dolan’s office was rigged with a recording system Richard Nixon would have envied.
Extracting a small gold key from the pocket of his suit jacket, he knelt in the well under his desk and pulled up a piece of the custom-dyed Stark carpeting, exposing a small trapdoor. He unlocked it and reached his arm in, pulling out a manila envelope, then covered everything back up. A moment later he was seated at his desk, having selected and cued up a particular tape on the elaborate sound system concealed within his credenza.
He had to fast-forward a bit to get to the spot he wanted.
“…never do anything of the sort!” he heard his own voice saying. Why did he always sound so fucking nasal?
His blood pressure shot up at the memory of this argument. God, he’d hated Jed. Hated him, and found his murder gratifying in the extreme. Dolan had been sitting in his big leather chair, just as he was now. Jed sat across from him, smug in a perfectly tailored, five-thousand-dollar Brioni suit. Dolan remembered just itching to take a crowbar and bash Jed’s handsome face to a bloody pulp.
“Unfortunately, Dolan, you’ll find it’s necessary to protect your interests,” Jed’s recorded voice had said.
“Twenty percent for nothing? That’s outrageous. Go fuck yourself! Get out of my office!”
“My silence is not nothing. It’s highly valuable, a bargain at twice the price,” Jed had said smoothly. That phony-baloney baritone of his. So fucking full of himself. “With what I know about the transaction and my contacts in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, you’d be risking a nice long jail term, Dolan.”
“You’re bluffing. I don’t think you have a fucking clue what went on with Securilex.”
“Oh, really? I understand how the stock was manipulated better than you do. Would you like a summary?”
Dolan punched “stop,” his chest heaving with fury. To his chagrin, Jed had proceeded to outline the transaction in minute detail. Looking back, of course, he realized Sarah had double-crossed him, had divulged everything to Jed. At the time he’d been positively flummoxed about that. Had no idea how Jed had found out. Never suspected her for an instant. He had to hand it to her-the girl was a truly gifted double agent. She put Mata Hari to shame. And, if he had anything to say about it, she’d meet the same fate as the famous spy. Death, ultimately, but only after a long and harrowing prison sentence. He’d get her convicted for Jed’s murder. This tape was the means to accomplish that. He fast-forwarded and hit “play.”
“Of course,” Dolan had protested to Jed, “what you’re suggesting puts Sarah van der Vere at terrible risk. You realize that? She’ll be the innocent victim in all this.”
“Hardly innocent. Sarah’s getting caught would be regrettable. She’s a charming young woman. But I always say, don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”