The Fifth Avenue Series Boxed Set (84 page)

He seemed to slip further into the past, sinking straight into a time and a place in which she sensed he wasn’t comfortable.
 
He closed his eyes.
 
“And then the police called,” he said.
 
“They told me that Anne’s car went off the road and over the bridge that was down the road from our house.”

He removed his finger from the glowing button and the elevator lurched into motion.
 
Leana watched him pull his hand away.
 
All of this was a set-up.
 
She’d played right into it.
 
She looked at the elevator doors and wondered what would be beyond them when they opened.

“It was awful,” Louis said.
 
“Leaving the house, running through the snow to the bridge, seeing her car like that in the river, knowing there was no way she could have survived that fall, knowing that my Anne was dead.”
 
Anger shot into his voice.
 
“Do you know what that did to me?
 
Do you know how long I’ve waited for this moment?”

What moment?

Leana pressed her back against the elevator doors. Somewhere, far in the dark corners of her mind, she knew where this was leading, knew what he was saying, but she refused to believe it, because it couldn’t be true.

Louis closed the distance between them, the rage suddenly there on his face, heated and alive.
 
It was as dark as her fear, as black as her dress and it filled the elevator to capacity.
 
In a low voice, he said, “Even before I learned her tires were flattened by a shotgun, I knew this was no accident.
 
Your father and I had been battling in court for years.
  
When I won that final appeal, he got his revenge two days later by killing one of the few people who ever mattered to me.”
 
His eyes became hard stones of hate.
 
“And now I’m taking everything away from him.”

She shrank away from him, her eyes growing wide with disbelief.
 
She felt her knees start to give as realization washed over her.
 
Her world began to blur as all of the pieces of the past several weeks clicked into place.
 
“You!” she gasped.

Louis reached out and grabbed her by the arm.
 
“That’s right,” he said. “Me.”

The elevator stopped.

The shiny chrome doors slid open, revealing a long, elegantly appointed corridor that stretched before them in varying degrees of light and darkness.

Leana’s office was at the end of the hall.
 
Louis pushed her so hard through the doors that she hit the wall opposite the elevator.
 
A table was there.
 
She reached out to grasp it in an effort to stop the momentum, but she missed.
 
She fell on the table and went down with it.

“Get up.”

But the table wasn’t bare.
 
On it was a lamp, which now was at her side.
 
Leana clutched it and turned to throw it at him, but Louis was there.
 
He grabbed the lamp as she swung it at his face and flung it across the room, where it smashed on the floor.

“You’ll need to be quicker than that,” he said.
 
“Get up.”

She did what she was told.
 
He took her by the arm and they started walking toward her office, their footsteps echoing like drum taps on the polished marble floor.

Leana was numb.
 
Louis Ryan’s words beat in her head.
 
He killed her sister.
 
It was him all along.
 
“You won’t get away with this,” she said.
 
“Everyone knows I’m here.”

“That’s right,” Louis said.
 
“Everyone knows you’re here.
 
But what you’re forgetting is this, Leana.
 
Everybody also knows what happened to your sister.
 
The whole world knows that somebody is out to harm your family.
 
If you’re found shot dead tonight, no one’s going to be surprised by it.”
 
He thought of the two barmen that had been found in the lobby.
 
“Security already has been breached.”

Leana looked furiously at him.
 
“You planted those men at the bar.”

“Actually, I didn’t,” he said.
 
“I don’t know who they are or why they were here.
 
But I am glad they came.
 
Their presence just made things a lot easier for me.”

They were nearing the end of the hall.
 
Leana could faintly hear voices coming from her office.
 
She turned and looked back down the length of the corridor, toward the elevator.
 
She had to escape.
 
She had to get help.
 
But how?
 
She could feel Louis looking at her.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said.
 
“And I have to tell you that you’d be wasting your time.
 
This entire floor has been sealed off.
 
Every door is locked, every exit is barred.
 
Your only way out is through that elevator and in a moment, Vincent Spocatti is going to take care of that.
 
You run and I promise you’ll get shot in the back.”

They were at her office.
 
He opened the door and said, “By the way—your husband’s last name isn’t Archer.
 
That’s just a pen name he used to escape from me.
 
His legal name is Michael Ryan.”

Leana looked at him in disgust.
 
“Bullshit,” she said.

“Hardly.”
 
He pushed the door open and they came face to face with her father and Michael.
 

Time and space drew in on themselves.
 

They were seated across the room in matching red velvet chairs.
 
The city blazed behind them.
 
Pale as ghosts, they looked up at her when she walked inside.
 
Seeing them here, realizing just how carefully Louis Ryan had orchestrated this, Leana could no longer still the panic rising up in her.
 
He’s going to kill us.

“Stand up, Michael,” Louis said.

Michael did as he was told.

“Michael isn’t my son, Leana,” Louis said in an oddly detached voice.
 
“There was a time when I thought he was, a time when he meant the world to me, but when I found Anne’s journal and read that final entry, I knew what George Redman did to her.
 
I knew how he manipulated my wife.”

He looked across the room at George, who was unmoving.
 
“Michael’s not my son,” he said.
 
“He’s your father’s son.
 
You married your brother.”

*
  
*
  
*

Forty floors below, The Hotel Fifth was quietly being surrounded by members of the New York City Police Department, while inside, a special task force led by Lieutenant Vic Greenfield was rapidly combing each room on each floor.

Jack Douglas already had been debriefed by Greenfield, but for security reasons, he wasn’t allowed inside the building.
 
He stood across the street on the sidewalk, watching yet another trio of police cars turn onto 53rd Street and drive without lights to the hotel’s east entrance.

All eighteen hundred guests had been evacuated.
 
Crowds of people were along the sidewalks.
 
The press was there, recording it for the world.
 
Jack heard a faint chopping sound and turned to see a sleek police helicopter moving up Fifth Avenue, toward the swirling lights of The Hotel Fifth.

He felt his stomach tense and his head pound in time with the rapid beating of his heart.
 
It was happening, he thought, but was it happening fast enough?

*
  
*
  
*

In Leana’s office, the silence expanded like a balloon.

Spocatti stood at the rear of the room, watching the color drain from Leana Redman’s face.
 
George Redman didn’t deny Ryan’s claim.
  
Neither did Michael.
 
Spocatti watched her lips part and felt a kind of thrill.

George stepped forward.
 
Spocatti gripped his gun and longed to use it.
 

“This is between you and me, Louis.
 
Nobody else.
 
Why don’t you be a man and let them go?”

Louis pushed Leana forward.
 
He shut the door behind them and started moving across the room, toward Spocatti.
 
“Be a man?” he said.
 
“Is that what you were when you fucked my wife?
 
Is that what you were when you got her pregnant?
 
Were you a man when you loaded that shotgun and killed her?”

“I never touched your wife.”

Incredulous, Louis stopped mid-stride.
 
“Never touched her?”
 
He shoved a finger at Michael.
 
“Then explain him.
 
Explain your goddamn son.
 
You read the portion of Anne’s journal I sent to you.
 
In her own words, she wrote about how you got her pregnant only weeks after I terminated our partnership and bought Pine Gardens on my own.”
 
He looked at Leana.
 
“He was fucking her while he was engaged to your mother.”

Spocatti glanced at his watch.
 
He wanted to be out of there in five.
 
He looked across the room at Amparo Gragera, who was standing beneath one of the illumined Sisley paintings, watching it all go down with interest.
 
He told her to take care of the elevator. He waited for her to leave the room before coming around Leana Redman’s desk and moving in front of the windows that overlooked 53rd Street.
 

He gazed across to the neighboring building he’d visited with the Realtor earlier that day, raised a hand and then looked down at his chest as a swarm of tiny pinpoints of red light spiraled over his heart.

He nodded at men he couldn’t see and the red lasers winked off.

Spocatti knew the risks he’d taken by meeting here tonight.
 
He knew the hotel was crawling with security.
 
But he also never finished any deal without having secured a safety net.
 
The one he had tonight was airtight.

He turned away from the window and waited for someone to speak.
 
If things didn’t happen soon, he would take matters into his own hands.

“So, this is it, Ryan?” George said.
 
“You’re going to kill us with a lobby full of people?
 
Is that the plan?”

Louis shot him a fierce, warning look.
 
He went to Leana’s desk, opened a side drawer and removed the gun he placed there earlier.
 
He pointed it at George.
 
“Yes,” he said.
 
“That’s the plan.”

“And what do you suppose that will solve?”

“Everything,” Louis said.
 
“You ruined my life.
 
You murdered Anne.
 
Did you really think I’d let you get away with it forever?
 
I’ve waited years for this.”

“Anne’s death was an accident,” George said levelly.
 
“You know that as well as I do.
 
I did nothing to Anne.
 
I loved her more than you ever did.
 
Your problem is that you’ve never been able to accept the fact that Anne fell out of love with you and in love with me.”