Come Hell or High Desire (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-one

Cool air wrapped around Zack when he stepped into the hallway outside the mechanical
room. The hall opened into the comfortable lobby of Samuel��s Construction, where
hand-blown glass sculptures by local artists graced marble tables. Tables that usually
held trays of homemade goodies for the constant flow of laborers, architects, subcontractors,
and developers, most of whom were greeted by name by Ann.

Zack skirted around the furniture, staying away from the glass entryway, and ran to
the other side of the building and up the stairwell. He shivered when he entered John’s
spacious office. He’d kept everything intact since the last time his mentor had sat
there eleven months and five days ago. Papers still poked out of the token junk drawer
John had kept; otherwise the office radiated order and simplicity. Like the man himself.

Zack couldn’t help running his hand across the top of the supple chair as he moved
toward the vault at the back of the room, the lingering scents of leather and tobacco
greeting him like a welcome home.
If only you were still here.

His head dipped and he pinched the bridge of his nose.
Money. Get the cash and go.
He dialed the third combination John had made him memorize so many years ago. At
least this one he’d used before, though not as often as he probably should’ve.

The vault door opened soundlessly, and he slipped inside, leaving the door open a
sliver behind him. The darkness was nearly complete, only this time, the proximity
to John’s office made him feel cocooned instead of suffocated.

Stepping forward to reach out for the string that turned on the single hanging light
bulb, he bumped into a large stack of boxes, upending them to the sound of rushing
papers. Cursing, he grasped at air until he found the cord and gave a light tug.

Hell’s bells.
Take the time to shove all the papers back in the box or leave it? How would he want
the cops to find it? It would probably take a cache of dynamite to open the vault,
but maybe they had some other way of opening it.

He knelt and began stuffing the papers back into the box. Invoices. He’d never seen
them before, but then he’d always spent the least amount of time on the back office
side of the business. He enjoyed being in the field with the subcontractors. Couldn’t
stomach too much desk work.

Which was probably why the business was tanking.

He paused, reading one of the papers. The invoicing company was a bodyguard service.
He dug through the pile, discovering security system invoices as well. There had to
be a hundred statements dating back two decades.

His stomach rolled over. Ann had had her twentieth birthday two months ago. She would’ve
been a tiny baby when these invoices were prepared. Why would John hire a bodyguard
and security services for her? He’d always been super protective of her, but
damn
. This bordered on obsessive. Remarkably out of character for John. Why hadn’t he
ever told him?

A blue folder marked “
important
” lay on the bottom of the box. Inside were an unlabeled CD and an old newspaper clipping
of an opera singer who’d been recruited by NDSU to teach in its Fine Arts department
for a year.

Zack scanned the newsprint for a date, but it had been clipped off. The dark-haired
beauty on the page faced the camera as though she knew it loved her. A shudder raced
through him. Wide eyes, narrow nose, a tiny cleft in her chin. This woman was Ann
all over again except for the wide, full lips. Under her picture was the name
Serena Galasso
.

Then he remembered Agnes’s gossip about John and the “high-fallutin’ opera singer.”

He grabbed the vault phone and dialed Archie. No answer. He prayed he hadn’t sent
Twyla into early labor with his visit. He left a message asking Archie to probe the
bodyguard and security companies to see what he could dig up on them.

“What are you doing here?”

Zack jumped, crumpling the newspaper clipping in his hands and pointed outside the
vault. “Turn the lights off!”

Ross quickly moved out of the vault to turn off the lights in John’s office. When
he came back inside his eyebrows slanted downward. “What the hell, Zack?”

His face was pale. “Shit, Ross. It’s after two in the morning. Why are you still here?”
Zack inserted the newspaper, two invoices, and the unlabeled CD into a zippered bank
pouch and pushed to his feet.

“In case you forgot, the amusement park is opening later today. I was just making
sure everything is in order. Then I thought I heard something fall in here. What’s
going on?”

Zack spread his arms wide to scoop up the rest of the invoices, then shoved them back
into the box and replaced the lid. “John ever talk to you about security for Ann?”

“No, never.”

Zack held up the single remaining invoice he clutched. “Twenty years of protection
billed to John’s personal address, not the business. You know anything about that?”

He saw confusion cross Ross’s pale face momentarily before it was replaced by a sort
of stunned awareness. “Oh shit, Ann is really missing?”

Ross looked at him with stricken eyes, and Zack felt a blow of pain more than physical
this time. Something worse.

Failure. Loss.

We’ll find her. Come to me, Zack
.

Sloane again. How did she talk in his head like that? On cue. He didn’t understand
it. But he felt the pull of her, all the same. He wanted to go to her, fill her body
and lose himself in her passion. But that would leave him no closer to finding answers
about Ann.

And would only drag her further into danger.

He turned away from Ross and moved to the cash box in the back shadows of the vault,
mentally picturing a wall to keep Sloane out of his head.

“I’ve worked for you and John for more than four years now, and you won’t trust me?
I care about Ann, too.”

Zack didn’t turn around. “It’s not that. I don’t want to give you any information
that might suck you into this quagmire. I’m
going
to find Ann. And no matter what the media reports, just so you know, I haven’t killed
anyone.”

Both men fell silent. Zack pushed a bundle of bills into the zippered pouch with the
other items, then shut the cash box.

“I wish I knew something—anything—that might help you, but—” Ross stopped suddenly,
and Zack swung around, his entire body on alert.

“But what?”

Ross rumpled his sandy blond hair. His eyes scanned the room as though looking for
a way out. “Last week, Ann was talking on the phone after hours when I was in the
conference room preparing for a meeting. She didn’t know I was there. And she was
upset. She told whomever it was that she loved him and that they could work it out.
She asked him to come over for supper. He apparently declined.”

Zack scrubbed both hands down his face. “Okay, so what did you do?”

“What could I do? Reveal myself to comfort her? She would have been mortified. So
I stayed in the conference room until I knew she’d left for the day. She’s been especially
unhappy ever since.”

“Any idea who she might have been talking to?” Zack asked, though he knew it must
have been O’Neill.

“No. But several times in the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen her in the parking lot
after work talking to a man in a white car. I guess I only noticed because she’s usually
so solitary.”

Clearly Zack wasn’t the only one in the office to realize Ann wasn’t into the dating
scene. “How did she seem to you?”

“Giddy mostly, except for once. The last time, I think, she seemed worried,” Ross
said.

“When was that?”

“Earlier this week. Maybe Tuesday.”

“Were they fighting?” Zack asked.

“Well, she wasn’t smiling. She was gesturing with her hands, like people do when they’re
upset. I couldn’t see the man’s face. He has tinted windows. It looked like a Lexus.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

Ross narrowed his eyes at Zack’s sharp tone. “It was none of my business.”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

He was right, of course. Besides being ultra-professional, Ross was always courteous
to a fault. Which only threw Zack’s gritty edges into sharp relief. He glanced down
one last time at the box of security invoices and knew where he needed to go next.
After clicking off the light, he opened the door to the vault and stepped into John’s
office, holding the door so Ross could pass through.

“I’ll do some research on those invoices,” Ross said.

“No, that’s okay. I’ll handle it. Thanks for everything.” He turned back to slam the
vault door. “Until the authorities confirm that I’m not their prime suspect, I don’t
want you in their crosshairs because of me. I spoke to my lead foreman a few hours
ago and everything is ready to rock on our end, so go get some rest. Looks like you
need it.”

“How nice of you say so,” Ross said wryly.

Zack smiled at his CFO and felt in the zippered pouch to confirm that both the newspaper
clipping featuring Ann’s mother and the two invoices were still there, then moved
around Ross toward the door.

“Are you sure about not cooperating with the police? With your background—”

“With my background, they were ready to lock me in jail and throw away the fucking
key. I didn’t kill the monster who was screwing with Ann, but I’ll die trying to find
out who did—because he’s the one…he’s the one who took her from us.”

Ross nodded. “I hope you have the fortitude to see this through.”

Zack grabbed John’s Red Hawks baseball cap from the desk and left Ross standing there,
a look of concern etched on his face. But Ross’s concern had nothing on the wild spew
of emotions winging through Zack’s veins so fast he was almost dizzy with it. Because
if Sloane ended up in the crosshairs next, he’d need more than fortitude.

He’d need a higher power.

Or Donovan.

When Zack pulled to the corner two blocks from Sloane’s place at Blackhawk Gates,
Morgan was lounging against a local heroin dealer’s red Camaro. Right where she’d
promised she’d be. He’d made a quick call to her before he left the office. A rush
of gratitude warmed him as he cut the engine and raised the binoculars, searching
the strip for the unmarked police car that was surely staking out Sloane’s place.

Waiting for him to show up.

He’d shown up all right, but they weren’t going to know thanks to Morgan and a posse
of her more adventurous friends.

There.
Two men sitting in a generic blue sedan that afforded them views of two sides of
Sloane’s building, including the parking lot.
Time for action.

Zack emerged from the El Camino, adjusted the baseball cap in an exaggerated motion,
and began walking briskly across the street toward the alley and away from Morgan.

At these signals, a man with more tattoos than naked skin walked by the Camaro with
a scantily clad woman on his arm. Morgan pushed away from the car and started screaming
at the pair. The plan was for them to take the scene into the middle of the strip
on Broadway. By the time he reached the alley, Zack heard cars honking and more people
yelling. A few moments later he heard a flash bang—his signal to run.

In the alley behind Sloane’s apartment, he peered around a parked Hummer to see if
the blue sedan had been dispatched to the disturbance.

Bingo. I owe you one, Morgan
.

Chapter Twenty-two

It was coming again. Sloane saw Zack gasping, felt his panic as he ran through some
sort of tunnel. She cried out, but he couldn’t hear her, so embroiled in his own fight
to be free of the darkness. There were sounds all around her, so many at once she
couldn’t make sense of it.

Suddenly it grew so cold her pulse seemed to suffer the effects of hypothermia—the
slow pounding of her blood was hypnotic, drowning out the voices until there was only
deafening silence between each irregular heartbeat. Silence lengthening until…

There was something crawling over her legs.

Rats! Scrambling all over her, their tiny, hooked claws breaking skin, their teeth
sinking deep.
Oh God. Ohgod-ohgod-ohgod.

She screamed and flailed, scratching and tearing with her nails at the phantom rodents
until she finally awoke, pinned to Zack’s chest, her body quaking in residual horror.

Incoherent words of comfort spilled from his lips as he sat on the floor with her
cradled in his lap. She felt the bunching muscles of his arms as he held her upper
body immobile against his solid warmth. She became aware of his heartbeat against
her bare arm. Steady. Strong.

Slowly, her gasps subsided into hiccoughs. He brushed his thumb against her cheek.
She burrowed into his heat and felt him wince. “Oh! I’m sorry!” She leaned away, but
he pulled her back. “How’d you get here? Get
in
here? Cops have gotta be watching my place.”

“They don’t know I’m here.”

“How can you be so sure?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. “An old friend came through for me. She missed
her calling as an actress so I’m sure she enjoyed it.”

“What’s that mean? Wait, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”
I’m seriously jealous.

Another first.
Sucks.

“It’s not what you think. Morgan and I grew up on the same streets. She’s like my
little sister. Tonight, she created a ‘disturbance’ in the area, and I slipped into
your building when the undercover vehicle moved down the block to check it out.”

“You left her alone downtown at three in the morning?”

“Morgan has self-defense down to an art, access to drugs from your worst nightmare,
and a wicked way with a knife, so she would have been fine on her own. But, the disturbance
was only an act with other friends enjoying their parts. And since we’re on the topic
of getting in here, you need to buy more foolproof locks.”

“You’re
not
lecturing me about my locks.”

“I’m qualified, believe me.” His teeth gleamed in the shadows.

“This isn’t funny, Zack.”

“
Shhh
. Let me hold you for a minute.”

She laid her head back down, the rough pads of his fingertips raising goose bumps
as he traced circles down her arms. He was a man on the run, trying to find a missing
woman while falsely accused of murder, yet he was comforting
her.

She’d developed such strong feelings for him in such a short time. It seemed unrealistic,
implausible, and uncontrollable.

Kinda like love.

He just can’t know about Abigail
.

She bit down hard on her lip to keep her drama from erupting. Zack’s fingers slowed
against her skin, a Braille system translating her emotions.

She inhaled deeply to diffuse the tension. The tinkle of water in her aquarium made
a soothing accompaniment to his heartbeat, the glowing tank the only source of light
in the apartment, casting mesmerizing blue-green ripples on the wall.

This was crazy. Getting involved with a man who could blow her cover, unravel her
dreams, and ruin her family name forever. If exposed, her failure to find Abigail
before she was murdered would taint her mother’s career. Her father’s psychiatry practice,
too. She should really box this whole psychic crap up and put it on the shelf. Get
back to her life at Skinny Dipping. Spend time with her friends. Date a new, interesting
guy every week.

That’s what she needed—uncomplicated fun.

More than that, she could move on with her charity foundation now that she had the
crystal rhino—

Oh!
She bolted upright in Zack’s lap. “I found the missing rhino in Colette’s office.
It’s how I know—or feel reasonably certain—that Ann left with Colette Saturday night.”

Zack frowned. “Wait.
What?
”

“After I gave my statement at Ann’s, I went to the church, thinking I would either
try to talk to Colette, or more likely, take something she or Dallan had touched in
the church.
If
I could get in there.”

“That was foolish.”

She was about to place a palm against his chest to rise from his lap when she remembered
his injury. “Let me see your chest.” She scooted off his lap and would’ve ripped the
shirt out of the waistband of his jeans if he hadn’t grabbed her wrists.

“It’s just a bruise.”

She reached for his shirt again. “Let me see.”

He shook his head, fingers tightening around her wrists. “I’m good.” The look in his
eyes told her she could play nurse in another way however.

She wet her lips, her respiration climbing another notch seeing his pupils expand.
“F-fine, suffer, then.”

“I didn’t say I was a martyr. I’ll take some ibuprofen if you have it, but first finish
telling me why you think Ann went with Colette.”

“I didn’t really have a plan, but when I got to the church, they had this—
vigil,
I supposed you’d call it—already in progress. There had to be five dozen people at
the church.
At one in the morning
. Seriously, how did they all find out Dallan was dead so soon? It had only been a
couple of hours.” He shrugged, and she continued. “Anyway, Colette admitted knowing
Dallan was a philanderer, but she stayed with him because he was her ticket to prestige.
She even knew about Ann’s baby.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Nope. And when I asked her how she knew, she said she had a ‘troubleshooter.’”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I asked, but she started crying. When I knew I wouldn’t get any more information
from her I fixated on
that
.” Sloane pointed at the crystal rhino. She saw the surprise on Zack’s face. “It was
on her desk. When I took it, she didn’t even notice.”

“How’d she get it?”

“No freakin’ idea, but it showed me Ann sitting in Colette’s vehicle. They talked
about the Fall Festival and were apparently on their way to a meeting at one of the
committee member’s houses.”

“The meeting wasn’t at the church?”

“No, but Ann didn’t seem to think anything was amiss until they made an unexpected
stop at someone else’s house—someone named Patty. I saw Ann’s momentary confusion,
but when she asked Colette why they were there, Colette said Patty had asked for a
ride to the meeting.”

“Did Ann know her?”

“Certainly seemed like she did, but it was apparent she’d never been to Patty’s house
before.”

“Did they go in?”

“In the car, Colette’s phone rang. She asked Ann if she’d mind letting Patty know
they were there and help her start loading the baskets for the bazaar. Colette said
she’d finish her call and be in shortly. But she didn’t, Zack. Colette
never went into the house
. She didn’t talk on the phone either. She watched Ann go inside, and then she backed
out of the driveway and went home.
Alone.
After that, the crystal didn’t have any other information.”

“How do you know this was even the right time-frame for last Saturday night? It could
have been earlier. Days or weeks earlier, knowing how they like to get an early start
on that kind of stuff.”

“I really don’t think so. In this vision with Colette, Ann was wearing the same outfit
that she wore in my other vision of her—when she’d freshened up after the attack in
her foyer. You know as well as I do that Ann doesn’t wear the same outfit too often.”

She could tell he agreed.

“I
knew
Colette knew something. Whoever’s house that was is her troubleshooter. We can find
out which church members are named Patty as well as their addresses really quickly,
but I doubt that was really her house. It was all a ruse.”

He eased up from the floor to the edge of the sofa. Sloane left to get him some pain
killers. When she came back into the living room, she gave him a bottle of pills and
a glass of water. He took a sip and downed four of them.

“Did you recognize the house Ann went into, or maybe the neighborhood?” he asked.

“It was a newer home, nothing fancy, but nice. Maybe if we drove around—”

“We don’t have time. Unless…could you tell how much time had passed between Ann’s
and Patty’s house? Could you see the directions?”

“A psychometric object only reflects thoughts and feelings of the person touching
the object, and apparently, when Colette touched the crystal in her office, she was
only thinking about keeping Ann talking and getting her to Patty’s, not which streets
she took to get there. She was nervous, but that’s all that was really on her mind.
Can we take this to the cops?”

“And say what? That the pastor was having an affair?”

“Colette’s involved somehow.”

“Of course she is, but we don’t know how until we can identify her accomplice.” She
felt his eyes on her in the distorted shadows from the shifting aquarium water. “I
hope the vision wasn’t too hard on you.”

It had sucked because he hadn’t been there to anchor her. “I’ve had worse. I must’ve
drifted off. When I came home there was a message from the police department. They’ve
sent the blood samples from Ann’s hallway to the lab. Detective Barnaba wants you
to come in for questioning. He said they won’t hold your escape against you if you
cooperate this time.”

He laughed humorlessly. “Right. Barnaba’s more apt to throw me to the piranhas than
take any statement from me.”

“Why?”

“Too much water under the bridge.”

“You can’t go on being a fugitive, Zack. You did nothing wrong.”

“I wounded a suspect who is now AWOL. He either died holed up somewhere from blood
loss or isn’t as hurt as I thought he was, and is plotting his next move… Or worse
yet, he’s the big bad for some other whack job who’s got a sick game in progress.”

“
Big bad.
As in a hired killer?”

He nodded.

Scary and scarier.
She exhaled slowly. “So what’s your gut say?”

“That’s
my
line.”

“Just answer the question. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a bitch when I don’t get
enough sleep.”

Zack smiled for real this time. “You’re hot when you’re mad.” She chucked a sofa pillow
at him. “Fine. I think the person I tangled with at Ann’s is the heavy for someone
else.”

“But why? What does this have to do with Ann or Tori?”

He eased down in a stuffed chair. “I’m guessing the diary plays a role—or what certain
people might have thought would be incriminating in it.”

“Like Ann’s involvement with Dallan.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Tori was the one to tell you about the diary. Who else might
Ann or Tori have told?”

Sloane’s mind spun for a moment. “You went back looking for a second one, didn’t you?”
At his nod, she continued. “Do you think that’s why Dallan was at Ann’s condo? To
look for the diary?”

“Probably. In it she admitted to having an affair with him. That kind of information,
if leaked, would end his pastoral career.”

“How did he found out about it?”

“That’s why I asked you who else Ann might have told besides Tori.”

Sloane racked her brain. “I really don’t think Ann would have told anyone else at
the store. Oh shit, what if Tori was somehow involved with Dallan, too, and that’s
why she was murdered? What if Dallan’s the one who killed her?”

She jumped up and reached for her phone, but Zack was quicker. He grasped her shoulders.

“Easy now. Dallan was definitely involved, but I don’t think he was the major player.
Remember, someone took him out, too. Someone who wanted me to take the fall for killing
him. Only, I got there too early for the bad guy to get away unscathed.”

She froze. “But who would know you were on your way to Ann’s the same time Dallan
would be there?”

“On my way there I called my buddy Archie, and my client, Tim Benjamin.”

Her gut rolled. “Why would you call Benjamin?”

“Based on your vision of him and Ann, I wanted to see how he’d react to talking about
her. So I made up some shit about Ann misfiling documents and other details about
the opening of the amusement park later today.”

“And?”

“He didn’t act contrary to his ordinary pompous self. I don’t get the feeling he was
involved in…all this. But it really wouldn’t matter whether my timing at Ann’s was
perfect or not because my fingerprints were all over her place already. I’d automatically
be a person of interest when the police dusted the scene.”

So clearly this wasn’t connected to Skinny Dipping as he’d originally thought. Instead
it was definitely something about people associated with Samuel’s Construction.

“Wasn’t Benjamin surprised you called him so late?”

“Big projects like the amusement park know nothing of the time clock. My employees
and their families are counting on me to see this through. Ergo, I even take calls
from him in the john. And vice versa.”

“Okay, so what do you think about him as a possible suspect in Ann’s disappearance?
He certainly has the money to hire someone to do his dirty work.”

“It’d offend his ego to hold someone against her will. He wants people to kiss his
ass of their own accord.”

“And if they don’t? Then what? Will he try to coerce them?” Lord knew he was a master
at controlling the stipulations of his sponsorship. Maybe it wasn’t worth putting
up with his bullshit, after all. There had to be someone else in the business community
who’d believe in her project.