3 Swift Run (31 page)

“She wanted her own life, you jerk,” Les said. “She was tired of being your puppet.”

Brett smacked Les’s face with the hand holding the gun, and Les yelped. “So I sent
you the clipping about Eustis. I thought it might make you ask some questions. If
you showed it to her, she’d know I’d sent it. She’d have to respond. She did.” Smiling
with satisfaction, he said, “She came straight back here to me.”

As if he couldn’t stand to be still anymore, Brett stood and began pacing, his words
coming faster. “She contacted me. We met. She was difficult. So I told her I’d called
Eustis’s son, that he was on his way down from Wyoming to confront her, to accuse
her of murdering his father. She’d end up in jail, I told her, if she wasn’t gone
before he arrived. I didn’t know if he’d show up or not, but it scared her. She agreed
to give me my share of the money. While I stood over her, she logged on to her computer—she
was going to transfer the money from her account to mine. When she told me there was
no money in her account, that it was gone, I thought she was lying. I—” He broke off
and wiped a hand down his face.

It took me only a moment to realize what he’d almost said. He’d killed Heather-Anne.
Strangled her. My breaths started coming faster, and I felt light-headed.

“It was your fault.” Brett whirled to face Les and spoke between gritted teeth. “I
figured that out when it was too late. You stole that money from my sister, just like
you stole everything from your business partners and your wife here.”

“Ex-wife,” I choked out.

“That’s why Annie hired her”—he nodded toward Gigi—“to find you. She knew you’d stolen
our money. She wouldn’t tell me that because she knew what I’d do to you. I figured
it out too late,” he said again. His eyes narrowed to slits. “You’ve got a nasty habit
of cheating the people who trust you, don’t you, Goldman?”

“I thought she’d left me. I didn’t know,” Les gobbled. “When I woke up after our fight
and she was gone—no note, no explanation—I … I’d found her bank account data months
earlier. Habit. When I realized she was gone, I transferred the money out of hurt
and anger. I was going to give it back!”

“It’s too late for Annie,” Brett said coldly. “And if you don’t transfer exactly three-point-eight
million to my account within the next ten minutes, it’ll be too late for Gigi, too.”
He swung the gun toward me. My eyes widened as I looked down the long, dark barrel,
a tunnel leading nowhere good.

37

Charlie Swift pulled into Gigi’s cul-de-sac near the Broadmoor Hotel shortly before
seven thirty. The sun was long gone, but a half-moon reflected off the snow to give
the city a dim late-dusk glow. Her headlights raked a black car parked on the far
side of the circle. As she beeped the Subaru locked, she gave the black car another
look. Something about it … It was a Saab. The witness outside the movie theater had
said a black sports car ran Les’s BMW off the road, and there’d been a black Saab
in “Alan Brodnax’s” garage. Adam Bart was here. The knowledge froze Charlie momentarily.
She cursed herself for not having insisted the desk officer have Detective Lorrimore
call her. There was no telling when she’d get Charlie’s voice mail about Adam Bart.

Keeping low, she crunched across the melted and refrozen snow to Gigi’s front door.
The blinds were drawn, and she could see nothing through the narrow leaded windows
on either side of the double doors. The snow was still deep against the house, drifted
in places, but she plunged in and slogged around to the back, wishing she had her
H&K with her. If Bart was in there, Gigi was in trouble. Whatever he wanted from her,
he was unlikely to leave her alive after he got it. Not with a track record that included
a half-dozen deaths or accidents across several states and his own sister’s strangulation.

Reaching the rear of the house, she climbed stairs leading to a deck that looked like
it opened off the kitchen and living room. Snow slicked the steps, and she clung to
the rail, her ungloved hands burning with the cold. She bumped a chair protected by
a canvas cover, and it moved with a faint metallic scrape. Charlie stilled, listening
for any indication Bart had heard the noise. After thirty seconds, when no one emerged
on the deck, she crept closer to the French doors. Gauzy curtains obscured her view
somewhat, but she could clearly see a woman who had to be Gigi seated on the sofa,
with Les in a recliner catty-corner to Gigi. A second man stood with his back to the
window, facing Gigi and Les, and his long dark hair convinced Charlie it was Adam
Bart, alias Alan Brodnax and probably a dozen other names. She couldn’t see a gun,
but she knew from the way he stood that he had one.

A moment’s contemplation told her that trying to break through the French doors and
tackle him from behind was a losing proposition. He’d have time to shoot Gigi and
Les and probably compose a sonata before she’d be able to batter the doors in, sprint
the fifteen or twenty feet from the doors to the seating area, and tackle him. There
had to be another way in.

Edging back down the stairs, Charlie pulled out her cell phone as she scanned the
windows on the lower level. Reaching the same desk sergeant at the police department,
she told him she now had an emergency with an armed man holding two people hostage
at Gigi’s address. He promised to send a patrol car immediately and relay the message
to Detective Lorrimore.

“Don’t let the patrol car come screaming up with lights and sirens blazing,” Charlie
cautioned. “This guy’s got nothing to lose, and if he thinks he’s going down, he’s
the type to take the hostages with him.” When the officer asked for more details,
Charlie hung up, having spotted an open window that apparently led to the basement.
Gigi should be more careful about locking up,
she thought, dropping to her stomach and sliding feet first through the opening.

She landed with a barely audible thump, took off her boots, and looked around. A news
show played quietly on a huge-screen TV. Comfy seating surrounded the television,
which was mounted midway down the room’s longest wall. A Ping-Pong table sat nearest
the window, and past the TV area, Charlie could see a pool table positioned crosswise.
Passing the Ping-Pong table and TV, she ignored the hall leading off to her right.
It was unlikely she’d find a weapon in what were probably only guest bedrooms. Instead,
she pulled a pool cue from the rack on the wall behind the table. Not exactly the
weapon she’d choose for going up against a gun, but better than her bare hands.

Easing up the carpeted stairs, she considered her strategy. She’d only been in Gigi’s
house a couple of times and wasn’t that familiar with the layout, but she thought
the basement steps emerged into the kitchen. The kitchen, she was pretty sure, opened
to a dining room on one side and the foyer and living room on the other. Did the dining
room connect to the living room? Almost undoubtedly. Reaching the top step, Charlie
found the door open and nudged it a touch wider. She couldn’t see Gigi and Les and
Bart, but she could hear the rumble of voices. Peering cautiously around the door,
Charlie discovered there was no line of sight from the basement door to the living
room.

Relieved, she made herself as skinny as possible and edged through the door, immediately
taking three steps deeper into the kitchen. It smelled faintly of bacon. Passing the
acres of granite counters and top-of-the-line appliances worth enough to put a dent
in the national debt, Charlie padded in her stocking feet into the dining room. She
could suddenly make out words as Bart said something about it being too late for Annie.

Placing her feet lightly and holding the pool cue upright so it wouldn’t bang against
anything, she edged along the wall until she could peer around it into the living
room. She hoped Bart was still facing Les and Gigi. He was. She saw his back, rigid
with tension, and saw Les sweating in the recliner. He looked awful, his face a clammy
gray, his right arm rubbing his left shoulder. His pained expression could have been
because Bart was aiming his gun steadily at Gigi. Gigi’s eyes slid sideways, as if
she were desperately seeking a way out of the situation, and she spotted Charlie.
Her eyes widened. Charlie hastily put a finger to her lips and was relieved when Gigi
blinked twice and refocused on Bart.

“Time’s running out, Goldman,” Bart said. “Tick-tock, tick-tock.”

“My computer’s in the basement,” Les said. “I need to get it to make the transfer.”

“Bullshit! I saw you dive through the basement window. You weren’t carrying a computer.”

“I left it here yesterday,” Les said.

“He did,” Gigi seconded.

Charlie wondered if Les was telling the truth or if he was planning to escape out
the basement window if Bart let him go downstairs. She wouldn’t put it past him. Apparently,
Bart had the same read on Les.

“We’ll all go down to the basement and get your computer. If it’s not there, if you’re
lying to me…” He waved the gun menacingly. “Get up.”

“I’m not sure I can,” Les said, his voice weaker. Sweat poured off him, and Charlie
thought she saw panic in his eyes. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

He was telling the truth, Charlie realized, and she could see that both Gigi and Bart
realized it as well.

“Then the sooner we get the transfer done, the sooner you can get to a hospital,”
Bart said coldly. He reached his left hand down to pull Les out of the recliner. Either
by accident or on purpose, Les pushed the chair into its recline position and the
footrest popped out, smacking Bart in the shins. He staggered and his finger tightened
on the gun’s trigger, sending a bullet into the ceiling. Gigi jumped at the noise
but then, taking advantage of Bart’s distraction, put her feet against the coffee
table’s edge, braced herself on the sofa, and slammed it toward him.

“Charlie, help!”

Charlie was already moving when the heavy table cracked into Bart’s legs and set him
teetering. Holding the cue like a baseball bat, she swung the fat end at his head.
He had half turned at Gigi’s words, though, and she caught him on the arm as he raised
the gun to fire at her, his lips drawn away from his teeth in pain and fury. The cue
impacted with a crack that sent a jolt up Charlie’s arms. Bart cried out and lost
his grip on the gun. He snagged the trigger as it spun out of his hand. A window shattered.
Charlie ducked instinctively—
like evasive maneuvers helped me dodge a bullet in my last gun battle,
she thought—then lunged toward Bart, raising the cue over her head. She shouted,
“Gigi, the gun!”

Bart flung himself full-length at the gun before Gigi could get there, and she dropped
on top of him with the full weight of her forty-too-many pounds. Bart let out an “Oof!”
but managed to get his hand on the gun. Before he could bring it into firing position,
Charlie drove the cue down onto his hand. The sound of bones snapping was almost drowned
out by the doorbell.

All four of them looked toward the door. Charlie took the opportunity to kick the
gun away from Bart, even though his hand was clearly broken and she didn’t think he
could pick it up or fire it. It skittered under the couch. Les lay gasping like a
landed fish on the recliner.

“Should we answer it?” Gigi asked. Her beigey-blond hair draped over one eye, the
neckline of her sweater was pulled halfway off one shoulder, and her ample bosom heaved.
She struggled into a sitting position so she straddled Bart and leaned forward to
pin his shoulders to the ground. He bucked, and Charlie raised the cue threateningly.

“Police!” came the muffled shout through the door.

At the word, Bart went limp beneath Gigi. Seeing the fight drain out of him, Charlie
hurried to the door and opened it. She knew she looked disreputable, her dark hair
disheveled, her face flushed, breathing heavily. Before she could say anything, the
female officer, a woman about Charlie’s height but half again as broad, said, “We
received a phone call from a man saying he was being kept prisoner in your basement.
May we come in?” Her tone was polite, and she seemed skeptical of the prisoner-in-the-basement
story, but her eyes took in every detail of Charlie’s appearance, and she held herself
as if poised for action.

“Absolutely.” Charlie backed away to let them in. “We need an ambulance,” Charlie
said. “A man’s having a heart attack.”

The cops took one look at Les, and the rangy male cop radioed for an ambulance while
the female officer, whose name tag read
PADGETT
, asked, “Is he the one that was imprisoned in the basement?”

“No one was locked in the basement,” Charlie said impatiently, wondering if maybe
Dexter Goldman or one of his buddies had called the cops as a prank.

“Actually…” Gigi said, a guilty look on her face.

At the sound of her voice, the officer walked toward the living room and looked over
the sofa to see her sitting atop Bart on the floor.

“Actually,” Charlie said, “that man”—she pointed to Bart—“was holding the Goldmans
hostage. I phoned it in ten minutes ago. We disarmed him—his weapon’s under the couch—”

At the word “weapon,” the cops drew their guns and backed away, looking much grimmer.
Through the open door, Charlie saw two more squad cars skid into the cul-de-sac with
the big black SWAT van trundling behind.
Ah, the response to my call about the hostage situation,
she thought, beginning to see some humor in the situation. An ambulance, siren screaming,
pulled up seconds later. Neighbors cracked their doors or opened their blinds, and
chaos reigned as the EMTs raced into the house while cops in full protective gear
jumped out of the SWAT van and fanned out.

All we need now is a news crew or two,
Charlie thought. She groaned as the Channel Five van passed the crowded cul-de-sac
and parked half a block away.

The EMTs prepared to cart Les off to the hospital, hooked up to an IV and a heart
monitor, and Gigi clambered off Bart to go with her ex-husband in the ambulance. “He’s
got to have someone,” she said to Charlie, giving her a beseeching look. “I’m sorry
to leave you with this … this…”