CHAPTER 57

Sunday, March 20, 2005

2:00 a.m.

Stacy awakened with a start. She realized she was uncomfortably hot. That she was sweating. She moved her gaze over the dark room, focused on the illuminated dial of her bedside clock.

As she registered the hour, a floorboard creaked.

She wasn’t alone.

Stacy rolled, reaching for her gun.

It wasn’t there.

“Hello, Stacy.” Clark stepped out of the shadows, her Glock in his hand. Pointed at her. “Surprised to see me?”

She scrambled into a sitting position, heart thundering. “You could say that. Someone as smart as you, I thought you’d be long gone by now.”

“Really? And where would I go?” He sucked in an angry sounding breath. “Everything was going so well until you stuck your nose into it. My business. Mine!”

She worked to keep her head, keep the panic at bay. To maintain regular breathing and heartbeat. She did a mental inventory of her position, the situation. No one to hear her scream. No weapon.

Only her wits.

She couldn’t lose them.

He crossed to stand beside the bed, gun trained on the point directly between her eyes.

Between the eyes. That’s where Spencer said he’d put the bullet that killed Leo.

“Why’d you do it?” she asked. “Why throw your whole life away?”

“What life?” He all but spit the words at her. “I was in debt up to my eyeballs. The cops circling like vultures to pick at my carcass. And Leo, living like royalty. I deserved to live like that. He stole my ideas! He refused to give me my due!”

“And Kay, did he steal her, too?”

He laughed. “You can’t imagine the satisfaction it gave me, knowing I was screwing his wife, right under his nose.”

She stared at him a moment, looking for some resemblance to the young man pictured in Leo’s yearbook. She found none. “Ex-wife,” she corrected. “I think that would have dimmed your satisfaction a bit.”

Color flooded his face. He meant to make his move.

She rolled to the right, reaching for the bedside clock, intent on smashing it into his face. She didn’t move fast enough. His hand closed over hers, wrenching the device away.

He flung it aside; it hit the wall and shattered. In the next instant, he was on top of her, the gun’s barrel pressed to her temple. He brought his free hand to her throat. “I could kill you now. So easily. Hand to your throat, gun to your head. So many choices.”

“What’s stopping you?”

She asked, though she knew. He wanted to brag. Wanted to relive his actions through her reactions to them.

He didn’t let her down. “It was fun. Watching them squirm. Poisoning Alice’s mind. Turning her, little by little, away from her parents. They treated her like a baby. I pointed that out constantly. I reminded her that she was smarter than both of them. That they only thought of themselves, their needs.”

She watched his face, the light in his eyes as he spoke. The man was a maniac.

She told him so.

He laughed. “That day, when Kay and I walked in on you and Leo,” he said, “we laughed about it later. Leo still loved Kay. In his own perverse way. But he thought of her as his property. He’d have had a fit if he’d known about us. She told me. She told me everything.”

“When exactly was that? Before you killed her? Or while you were doing it?”

“You think you’re so smart. But you don’t know shit.” He smirked at her. “Maybe I should show you what a real man can do? Kay told me I was better in bed than Leo. That he never satisfied her the way I did.” His weight pressed her into the soft mattress. Trapping her. Smothering her. “I could do the same for you.”

She struggled for a breath and against the urge to fight. Fighting would do nothing but force him to act. She silently counted each breath to ten, then tried another tack.

“You were angry,” she said quietly, tone nonjudgmental. “Furious with Leo. And Kay. You decided to use the very game Leo stole as a way to make him pay. A way to get away with killing him.”

He laughed, the sound derisive. “Stupid, stupid bitch. I’m not the White Rabbit.”

Considering the circumstances, his declaration took her by surprise. He saw that and leered at her. “Your precious Leo is. He came up with the whole White Rabbit thing to get away with killing Kay. Because she gets half of everything. The half that should have been mine. Greedy bastard wanted more, so he decided to get rid of her.

“She told me she was afraid of him,” he continued. “She told me she feared he was behind the notes. That he might do something to hurt her. Because of the money.”

“That’d be a neat explanation, Mr. Danson. Except for one small problem. Leo’s dead. You killed him this afternoon.”

For an instant, his expression went slack. With surprise. Disbelief. His hand shook. She felt the gun tremble against her temple.

He intended to pull the trigger.

Stacy thought of her sister, Jane, her baby; she thought of all the things she had never done.

She didn’t want to die.

“You’re going to jail for a long time,” she said, hearing the desperation in her voice. “Killing me isn’t going to change that. They know who you are. You have nowhere to go. If you think-”

“If you think I’m going to jail, think again, bitch.”

Before she could react, he turned the weapon on himself and pulled the trigger.

Her scream mingled with the sound of the blast.

His brains decorated the delicate floral wallpaper with gore.

CHAPTER 58

Sunday, March 20, 2005

3:12 a.m.

“We have to stop meeting like this.”

Stacy lifted her head and looked at Spencer, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. He wore soft-looking blue jeans, a House of Blues T-shirt and the windbreaker from the night at the library. She wondered if he had a Snickers bar tucked into the pocket.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Define okay.”

He crossed to her, bent and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. The gesture brought tears to her eyes. She fought them.

She hadn’t cried earlier. She wouldn’t now.

He pulled a chair out, turned it to face her and sat. “Can you talk about it?”

She nodded and ran a trembling hand through her hair, still damp from the shower. After the officers stationed out front had found her and helped her get out from under Danson’s dead weight, she’d run to the bathroom to wash-to try to cleanse herself of the experience.

She explained about waking, about Danson confronting her with her own gun.

“He hated Leo. Blamed him for everything that had gone wrong with his life. He admitted his affair with Kay. Claimed he was poisoning Alice’s mind against her parents. Getting sick kicks out of it.”

She looked away, then back. “He wasn’t the White Rabbit.”

“Come again?”

“He claimed Leo was. That Leo had created an elaborate plan to get rid of Kay. For financial gain. He claimed Kay was afraid of Leo. That she believed he might hurt her, because of their financial agreement.”

“As I’m sure you’re aware, there’s a big problem with that theory.”

“No joke. He realized it, too, when he learned Leo was dead.” She pressed her point. “He didn’t know Leo was dead. When I told him…he got this look. He knew he was screwed. That he was going to jail. So he blew his brains out.”

He frowned. “I don’t know, Stacy. Maybe you should sleep on this.”

“You still think Danson’s our guy?”

“Sorry.”

She supposed she didn’t blame him-he hadn’t been there, he hadn’t seen Danson’s face when he learned about Leo.

Stacy stood, shocked to realize her legs shook. More shocked to realize she had no idea what to do. Of her next move. She felt numb and uncertain.