OVER HER DEAD BODY: The Bliss Legacy - Book 2 (22 page)

“Son?”

Gus turned back. Being called
son
was a new experience.

“Keeley may not be a nun anymore, but she’s an exceptional woman,” Barton said, his voice low but firm. “I believe she thinks highly of you—or at the very least trusts you. As I said, a fine woman. One who has earned and deserves every respect.” There was the slightest pause. “It would be wise to remember that and to treat her accordingly. Which means none of this modern-day sleep-and-run stuff.”

“By sleep you mean—” Gus was getting a lecture. Along with being called son, it was flat out weird. He had no idea how to react.

“Sex,” he said without missing a beat. “And now, my fatherly admonishment done, it’s bedtime for me. Come over sometime. I serve a remarkable brandy.” With the last he was gone, leaving Gus in the graveyard to think on an exceptional woman and the alternatives to sleep-and-run.

By the time Gus got back to the house, it sat in darkness. He cursed when he noticed Keeley had left the back door open for him. She knew he had keys. Damn it, the woman refused to take the security of Mayday seriously.

Back in his room he took a quick shower, then pulled on some sweats. His plan was to head back down to the paper trove in the cellar and restack a few more boxes. His mistake was stretching out on the bed after his shower, because when he next looked at his watch, it was after two. He debated going back to sleep, leaving the cellar until the morning, but his body refused to cooperate. It was awake and edgy.

Ignoring his shoes and not owning slippers, he pulled on some white sport socks and let himself out his bedroom door and into the darkened hall as quietly as possible. He paused outside Keeley’s bedroom, then moved on.

There’d be no more fantasies tonight. The sooner he got what he wanted, the sooner he’d get out of here. Best for both of them if he hit the road sooner, rather than later. Like the priest said, the woman was exceptional—definitely the commitment type.

He was a few steps from the cellar door when he heard it—a shuffling, scraping sound. Something being shoved across a hard floor.

Gus stopped, stood, and listened. If it were Keeley, there’d be constant light spilling from under the cellar door. Instead there was only the occasional slash of yellow. A flashlight.

He considered his advantage. Whoever was down there was trapped. Maybe armed. Trapped and armed did not make a winning combination.

He padded back to his room, got what he needed.

A minute later he was at the cellar door, easing it open. He heard someone crying.

He flipped on the light, and the ancient cellar came into the whitewashed view provided by the new and much brighter light bulb he’d put in a couple of days ago.

“What the hell …” He sheathed the knife, felt it slide safely home over his wrist.

Erica Stark was sitting on a box, clutching her stomach and weeping like a child. Her eyes, when they shot to his, were red rimmed, hot but dead looking, like zombie eyes in a horror movie. She got to her feet, scrambling upward awkwardly, one hand pushing from behind.

She looked terrified.

“What are you doing down here?” he asked, keeping his voice low. He put his hands on his hips.

“I, uh, couldn’t sleep.” She brushed at her cheeks, her eyes. “I was just looking around.” She was in silk pajamas and wearing a dark blue velvet robe, tied high over her belly.

“It’s two in the morning. Hell of a time to be ‘looking around’ a crappy old basement.”

She didn’t answer, but her rapid, harsh breathing was clearly audible in the silence of the cellar. When she straightened as if to confront him, he spied the mess of papers she’d obviously been sorting through strewn across the top of the boxes.

He looked at the files. “What are you looking for?”

“Good question.” Keeley’s voice came from behind him. He turned to see her take the last step, then come to stand beside him.

She wore exactly the kind of nightgown he’d expect her to wear, flowered pink flannel, on the big side of large, and ugly as hell. A man could make a life’s work out of figuring out what was under it. It maddened him that it wouldn’t be his job. His eyes dropped to her feet. Bare. With killer pink nail polish. That jolted him. He felt like a kid who’d found a silver dollar surprise in a birthday cake.

Dollar or not, she shouldn’t be here; for what it was worth, Mayday Security was his job. Annoyed now—or maybe frustrated—he glared down at her. “Don’t you ever nod off?”

She ignored him. Her attention fixed on Erica, she took some steps to get closer. “What
are
you doing down here, Erica?” she said, tilting her head. “Are you all right? Are the babies all right?”

Stark was right as rain as far as Gus could see, and nosing around for a reason. At Keeley’s question, the woman’s eyes darted to the stairway, gauging the possibility of escape. Her face was drained, rigid with confused tension.

Gus took a step back and sat on the stairs, making flight impossible. Might as well get to the bottom of this now, rather than later.

Keeley touched Erica’s hair, then stroked it. “It’s all right. Whatever it is, you can tell us.” She stroked again.

Erica shook her head and stepped away from Keeley. When the tears started flowing again, she reached into her robe pocket—and pulled out a gun.

Keeley stumbled backward.

Gus shot to his feet.

“Stay away from me. Both of you.” She ran the back of her free hand over her cheek, her mouth. “I didn’t want this to happen, but I don’t—I don’t have a choice.”

Keeley, whose face had gone gray the second the gun came out, looked at her openmouthed for a moment. “You’ve got a gun,” she said, stating the obvious.

Erica swallowed. “And I’ll use it. Don’t think I won’t.”

Gus stepped forward and pulled Keeley away from the muzzle of the gun. She moved awkwardly as if mesmerized by the cold steel in Erica’s hand. When he had her tucked at least halfway behind him, he put out his hand. “Give me the gun before you hurt someone—and that includes yourself.” He didn’t expect she’d hand it over. No one ever did. But he needed think time. How the hell did a man defend himself and the woman he lov—

Gus’s blood surged. Everything stopped. For a lifelong split second his brain was more paralyzed by the word forming in his mind than by the Glock pointed at his chest. His thinking stumbled.

He righted it, called back his current problem; how to defend himself and Keeley against a pregnant woman—without hurting her. He had no fucking idea. Erica’s condition might be delicate, but the 9mm in her hand wasn’t. He had to do something and he had to do it fast.

“I’ll give you the gun when she”—she wagged the gun in Keeley’s direction and Gus’s heart stopped a second time—“tells me what I need to know.” Her voice had steadied somewhat, as had the gun she now held with both hands.

Gus felt the brush of Keeley’s shoulder against his arm when she stepped from behind him to face Stark.

Her face might be gray as smoke, but her back was straight, and her eyes possessed a serene calm when she rested them on Stark. Drummed-up courage. He recognized it. “Give Gus the gun, and do it now. There’s no place for violence in Mayday House. Do you understand?”

The cool authority in Keeley’s voice seemed to get Erica’s attention; then she laughed. “Now who’s lying, sister?” she said. “Mary Weaver killed my father in this fucking house. That’s as violent as it gets.” Gus stared at her. This was sure as hell breaking news, because either two men were killed in Mayday House, or this flash meant Erica and Christiana were sisters.

“And you know this how?” Gus asked, even though he’d guessed the answer.

“The old bat called my brother.” Her lips twisted. “She wanted our father’s
abandoned children
to forgive her. Said she didn’t want to die with us thinking he’d deserted us. I guess she thought it was better we know she killed the bastard.”

Keeley’s face went even whiter, but she let the shock pass, didn’t falter. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you just say so when you came here? Why didn’t you call the police?”

“Because the police don’t pay. Our father did squat for us while he was alive, so if there’s a silver lining in his death, we intend to find it” She looked distressed when she added, “I intend to find it.”

“So, you want someone to pay you. For your father’s death?” Keeley said, sounding confused. Not getting it.

Gus got it—loud and clear—but then he was more familiar with greed than Keeley. More familiar with sin.

Erica focused on Gus. “Weaver said we had a sister born here, at Mayday. And where there’s a sister, there’s a mother—a mother who likely was involved in the murder. Someone who’ll pay to keep that ugly little fact from anyone who might give a damn. Like the cops.”

Keeley glared at her. “You’re talking about blackmail.”

“And who is this mysterious mother?” Gus asked.

“The million-dollar question and the one you”— she swung the gun toward Keeley, desperate again— “are going to answer. I want the 1980 records, and I want them now.”

Gus’s stomach clenched, and he released the blade back into his hand, palmed it, his gut a hard coil.

Keeley looked down at the gun, then up into Erica’s face. “Death doesn’t scare me, Erica, so threatening me with it won’t do you any good. I won’t be party to blackmail.” She stopped. “So put the gun away and we’ll talk things out.”

“Talk things out?” She looked wild now, as if she were the one trapped, the one staring down the muzzle of a loaded gun.”You don’t understand—”

Keeley took a step forward. “I understand you’re not a killer, that you’re a pregnant woman with lives other than her own at stake. I understand you’re not going to fire that gun. That if you do, whatever plans you’ve made for your life and”—she looked pointedly at Erica’s distended stomach—“for your children’s lives will end when you pull the trigger.”

Erica rested one hand on her stomach, and the tears started again. Gus knew she couldn’t see clearly, that this was his moment.

“You don’t understand,” she said again. “He has my brother. He has Paul! I can’t let him hurt Paul. I can’t!”

“What are you talking about? Who has Paul?” Gus asked, aware of her rising panic, a panic making her dangerously volatile.

“Mace. Some guy named Mace. He knows about the sister, told me to get the information on the mother or he’d kill him. Two days”—she swallowed hard—“he said two days, or he’ll kill Paul.” Her voice turned shrill, her eyes darting and frantic; then she leveled them on Keeley. Wide, crazed eyes. “You have to tell me. You have to.” She raised the gun, aimed it at Keeley’s face.

Gus threw the knife.

The sounds …

The whir of steel slicing through air, the sharp clink of metal on metal, the even sharper intake of Erica’s breath.

The soundless …

The splatter of blood against a rounded tummy, the movement of bare feet over cement floor, flannel shifting against her legs as Keeley rushed toward Erica.

“My God! What did you do?” Her gaze shot to Gus as she reached for Erica’s hand.

“What I had to.” He walked to where his knife had fallen and picked it up—the gun, too. The six-inch throwing blade he slipped back into his wrist grip. Wearing sweats, he had no place to put the Glock, so he dangled it at his side.

Erica looked at him, her eyes stunned wide. “You could have killed me. Killed my babies.”

“No. I couldn’t.”

Keeley shot him an unreadable glance, then turned her attention to Erica’s bleeding hand. He heard her exhale loudly. “It’s a shallow cut. Some antiseptic and a Band-Aid should take care of it.”

Erica continued to stare at Gus with a look of utter incomprehension.

Keeley touched her face, then tugged her chin, forcing their eyes to meet. “Are you all right? No pains?” She rested her hand on Erica’s stomach. “Quiet?”

Erica closed her eyes, nodded.

Through Gus’s eyes, she didn’t look fine. She looked as though she’d keel over any minute. He looked warily at her stomach. He knew nothing about pregnant women, but he did know a shock might bring on labor. Hell!

“Let’s get you upstairs, take care of that cut.” Keeley urged her toward the stairs, while looking at Gus as if he were an axe murderer.

“No.” Erica shook her head. “I can’t. Paul needs me. You don’t understand, he’s all I have.” She pulled away from Keeley, damn near toppled over.

Gus steadied her until Keeley could get a better hold. “If you want to help your brother,” he said. “Best you do what the lady says.”

“Paul will be okay,” Keeley said, shooting another glance toward Gus, this one less hostile. “We’ll figure something out, won’t we, Gus?”

Gus didn’t give a rat’s ass about Erica’s brother, but he agreed anyway.

With one arm around a trembling Erica, Keeley gestured angrily toward the Glock dangling from his hand. “Get rid of that filthy thing.”

He’d get rid of it, all right, when this mess around Mayday House was over—a mess with the pattern of a dropped egg. He’d thought the Dinah, Christiana, Hagan trio was bad enough, but now, according to Erica, there was a new player in the game, another vulture circling Mayday House, some thug named Mace. Gus intended to make his acquaintance at the first opportunity.

For now, all he could do was follow Keeley’s pink toenailed feet up the basement stairs.

Keeley’s mouth was dry and she was cold, shivering as though she were naked in the January Arctic. Half an hour of listening to Erica, crazed with worry about her brother and the “family business,” while trying to keep her own nerves from jumping out of her skin, had exhausted her.

God, Erica Stark was a pornographer! A hardcore pornographer.

Keeley didn’t want to judge, but—

Knowing that
but
would lead to the judgment she wanted to avoid, she shut it down. She’d think about Erica later, tomorrow when her head was clear, when she could make sense of things. Right now she had to get out of here.

She looked at the sleeping woman. Her brow was deeply furrowed; one arm rested outside the covers, its hand bandaged and fisted. Keeley hoped she hadn’t made a mistake, assuring her again and again that she—and Gus—would keep her brother safe.