The Golden Girl (5 page)

“Drinks would be great.”
Finally,
she thought. Okay the timing wasn’t perfect, but she’d felt something between them for months.

He broke out into an easy grin. “I know the best Tex-Mex place about five blocks from here. Margaritas sound okay?”

“They sound better than okay.” Hell, she needed a respite from this last week.

“I was hoping you’d say yes,” he said sheepishly, pulling a spare helmet out of his storage closet. “I didn’t want to assume, but I brought a helmet. Mind if we take my ride?”

She shook her head and reached up into her hair and pulled out the bobby pins holding her chignon in place. Her hair fell to about three inches below her shoulders. She ran her fingers through it and thought she heard him sigh—a good kind of sigh.

They walked out to the faculty parking lot, climbed on his bike and headed the few blocks to the Tex-Mex place called Tequila Sunrise. Riding there, her teeth chattered a bit, but she wasn’t sure if it was from the cold, the vibrations of the Harley, or from gripping him tightly, her hands on his taut stomach, her thighs against his thighs.

She could tell he was a bit of a daredevil—and he liked speed as much as she did. The motorcycle weaved in and out of traffic, the wind whipping her face, and she quickly learned to lean when he leaned, and to become one with the bike—and the driver.

Over drinks, she was amazed at how easily they laughed and talked. She was able to keep steering the conversation to the world at large and away from anything too personal. If he asked her something, like, “What are your parents like?” she didn’t lie, but she did commit the sin of omission.

“Oh…they divorced when I was about twelve. It was very bitter. I shuttled between their apartments.”

Of course, she left out, “You might have read all the gory details on the front page of the papers. Including how my monthly child support was more than the average teacher’s yearly salary.” She wasn’t ashamed of her wealth—heaven knows she now worked hard enough for it—as did her father—and gave enough of it away. But she feared John would be intimidated by her background, and until he got to know her better, she felt it best to keep him a little in the dark. The photo the newspapers sometimes used was so formal, it barely looked like her—and she didn’t tell him her last name was Pruitt. She was simply Madison Taylor.

After drinks, he asked if he could drive her all the way home.

“Oh…no. That’s all right, really. I was going to take the subway home.”

“At this hour? Not safe, Maddie.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“At least let me hail you a cab and give you cab fare.”

“No…really. I ride the subways all the time.”

John had signaled the waitress for the bill and paid it.

“I won’t take no for an answer.”

“How about a compromise? I’ll take a cab, but I’ll pay for it. You already got drinks.”

He hesitated but finally nodded.

Outside the restaurant, they walked back to his Harley.

“It’s a beautiful motorcycle.” It was—black and lots of chrome.

“It’s impractical in the city in a lot of ways, but I love to take it upstate, riding in the mountains. Maybe I can take you some Sunday.”

“I’d like that.”

“Maddie?”

“Hmm?”

“What would you say to dinner on Friday?”

Friday was actually a board meeting, and she knew she’d be working even later than usual at the office. Plus, she wasn’t quite sure how to juggle undercover work with regular work—with volunteering and now a date.

“Um…I have to work late. How about Saturday?”

“Great.”

They looked at each other, an awkward moment passing between them. Then John leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. Next thing Maddie knew, she was kissing him back, hungrily. The months and months of exchanged glances and brushing up against each other culminated like an explosion. He had his hands in her hair, gripping her to him, almost making her wince—she was still so bruised from her ordeal.

She bit at his lip sexily, eliciting a moan from him.

“Maddie…” he breathed. “I’ve thought about this for a long time.”

“Me, too,” she murmured.

“I’ve been through so much in my life…and I’ve kept to myself for so long. I live like a hermit, just…keeping to my mission with the kids, telling myself the right girl is out there somewhere, but not to focus on it. But man…I ache for you.”

Maddie felt her legs buckle a tiny bit.
Great,
she mused.
I can take down a two-hundred-twenty-five-pound CIA agent but this guy gets me knock-kneed and tongue-tied.

“I haven’t been with anyone in a long time either, John. I’m married to my job.”

This was true. God, Maddie thought, it had been eight months since her last lover, and that had been a disaster. The guy had been too competitive and her greater success was more than he could handle.

“I don’t even know what you do exactly.”

“Real estate. I try to put together land and development deals. It’s really boring, John.”

Okay, so it was a little white lie.

“Can I pick you up Saturday? You can’t come all the way here. We’ll go out in your neck of the woods. Give me your address, and I’ll come get you.”

“My apartment is undergoing renovation. Why don’t we meet here? I liked it. And it looked like a nice dinner menu.”

“You sure? It’s not too fancy.”

“I’m more interested in you than being taken to some ridiculously overpriced place.”
Where I might run into Rubi Cho anyway!

“All right, angel eyes.” He kissed her again, and they stood on the street holding each other for a few minutes. Then he hailed her a cab.

After he had shut the door and the cab pulled away, Maddie gave the driver her address. She was still out of breath and turned on. Then her cooler head prevailed. She pulled out her cell phone. She’d had seventeen calls. She started returning them, and then, rather than going home after all, she told the driver to drop her off at the office. It was time for a pot of coffee and a very late night.

T
he office was quiet. Of course, there was plenty of security to get inside the building, let alone the elevator. Still though ordinarily she loved the quiet, tonight it gave her the creeps. She walked silent halls, only the distant whirring of the cleaning crews vacuuming providing any noise.

A few lights in cubicles told her some staff remained. Madison sort of wished chatty Mike Kelly was still at work—he was the department’s one-man entertainment unit. But he was in L.A. on business. She’d feel a lot better when Troy officially started on Wednesday.

Maddie settled into her office. She picked up her telephone. Forty-nine voice mails. Forty-nine! She decided voice-and e-mail were the bane of her existence. She began listening. There was a sweet message from Ryan Greene extending his condolences on Claire. Two messages from Claire’s mother saying she wanted Madison to have a few of Claire’s things. And a message from Charlie checking on her. One from Marcus—same thing. Knowing them, they’d keep calling until she checked in, so she called each of them and said she was working late and would be fine.

She worked for an hour, barely glancing up. Then, after a while, she felt this nagging idea. Who was going to clean out Claire’s office?

She rose from her desk and crept down the hall. Feeling guilty for sneaking around, she then berated herself internally.
You head this company, Madison. Get a grip. You owe it to your shareholders to go look around.

Madison walked more purposefully through the empty hallways to the elevators and took an elevator two flights down to the legal department. She walked to Claire’s office, trembling for a minute at the sight of her friend’s name on the brass plaque. Maddie still couldn’t believe she was gone.

She opened the door and turned on the lights. Claire’s office was a reflection of who she’d been. She collected Steuben-glass pieces, which she displayed in a glass cabinet in the corner of her office. On the walls hung reproductions of Degas paintings—Claire had been a ballerina, training for years until a knee injury forced her to rethink her plans for college and life.

Madison felt as if she was walking into a shrine. She walked around the office, remembering lunches when they sat at Claire’s conference table and ate delivered sushi or delectable pastas from one of their favorite restaurants. Whether poring over real-estate contracts or laughing over a rare night together on the town, they could read each other’s thoughts—more like sisters than friends.

She strode over to Claire’s file cabinets. They were locked, of course. She knew the police had poked around and tried to seize Claire’s laptop—but Pruitt’s lawyers had given them a tough time and sent them packing with instructions to return with warrants. Moving to Claire’s desk, it was also locked, but Maddie knew she kept the key in a Steuben bowl in the cabinet. She found it, opened the desk, and in turn found the key to the filing cabinets. Everything looked in order—and in truth, Maddie had no idea what she was really looking for.

In the second-to-last file cabinet, though, she found something peculiar. Every other cabinet was stuffed to the brim with papers. This one was fairly full, but one file marked “WATERSIDE TOWERS/FINANCING” was empty. Not so much as a shred of paper.

Maddie looked at the file folder in back of the empty one, and the one in front of it, in case the paperwork was just misfiled, but there was no sign of it. Maddie decided to ask Claire’s paralegal about it the next day—Waterside Towers would one day stand on the site of the old warehouse where Claire’s body had been found.

Shutting the file-cabinet drawer, Maddie heard someone in the hallway, heavy footfalls. Heart beating wildly, she looked around and quickly stepped into Claire’s private bathroom, shutting the door except for a sliver.

From the darkened bathroom, Maddie watched in horror as her father strode into the room. He had a look of irritation on his face and made a beeline for the cabinet with the missing file. When he discovered the Waterfront Towers file missing, he cursed under his breath. And when he stood, he kicked the drawer for good measure, and then strode out of the office, turning off the lights as he left.

Madison shrunk back from the door and sat down on the ceramic-tiled steps leading into the tub. Putting her head down onto her knees, she squeezed her eyes shut. Now what? She had told Troy and Renee that she was absolutely convinced of her father’s innocence. Yet Renee had told her, the day she arrived to enlist in the undercover agency, that her allegiance had to be to the truth, first and foremost. Maddie had told her that she understood—that she was committed to finding out the truth, not just on this case, but on future cases as well.

But what if the truth all led to one conclusion? And what if that conclusion destroyed not only the corporation she was dedicated to, but her relationship with her father? She was starting to wonder if being an undercover agent would carry with it a price tag, for all her wealth, that she was unable or unwilling to pay.

After seeing her father in Claire’s office, Madison decided a trip to Waterside Towers was in order. Tonight—even if it was eleven o’clock.

Because everything about her undercover work had been expedited, and because she had always had a conceal-and-carry permit, she had been issued a Glock, which she hadn’t felt necessary to wear. When she arrived at work that morning, she had locked it in her lower-desk drawer. Now she retrieved it and then left the high-rise offices of Pruitt & Pruitt via the elevator to the parking garage. That was one of the perks of being an executive there. Though there wasn’t enough parking for all the employees, those from Senior VP on up got a reserved parking space. Because Madison was, after all, a Pruitt, she got two. She used one to house her second car, an adorable Aston Martin V12 Vanquish painted metallic blue. She climbed behind the wheel, revved up the engine and pulled out of the garage and onto the streets of Manhattan, heading over to the West Side Highway.

She had always loved the West Side Highway. Yes, it had some potholes, but it snaked along the Hudson River, affording a view of the New Jersey side of the water, then, the George Washington Bridge stretched across the Hudson connecting New York City to the other side of New York and, to the south, New Jersey. Maddie loved the sight of the bridge. It was simply majestic at night.

She sped along the highway, and then cut across the GWB, looking often in her rearview mirror. The Aston Martin was fast—and it was small enough that she zipped in and out of lanes. What bothered her was about thirty cars back, so did another car, but because she hadn’t seen anyone in the garage, she tried to tell herself it was coincidence.

After she got to the Jersey side, she ended up heading south to the waterfront property. What was going to make the tower site spectacular was not only the view of Manhattan, but its easy accessibility to a high-speed ferry to the city and back again, making the towers a commuter’s dream.

She didn’t see anyone following her, and about fifteen minutes later, she pulled up to the warehouse. The site was locked with heavy padlocks and chains binding together a chain-link fence. Security lights would come on automatically as she stepped foot on the ground. However, since the warehouse was condemned to be destroyed, and it was abandoned, it was not guarded by an alarm system. The former attack dogs used by the owners Pruitt & Pruitt were purchasing the land from were also now gone.

Maddie took a deep breath. Troy had told her not to go off on her own, but if her father knew something about the Towers and Claire’s death, better to find out by herself.

Maddie opened her car door and stepped out. She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for. She took off her blazer, checked that her weapon was loaded and stuck it into the holster she had put on. She took her cell phone from her purse, put it on vibrate and walked over to the chain-link fence. It rose up around eight feet, but Madison didn’t have a fear of heights. She stuck the toe of her right boot into one of the holes in the fence and began climbing. When she got to the top, she swung a leg over and then carefully climbed down the other side. As she started walking to the warehouse, a German shepherd came out of seemingly nowhere, baring its teeth at her and barking like crazy. So much for the attack dogs being gone.

Maddie knew if she ran, she’d be bitten. And she didn’t want to shoot a dog that was just doing its job. Slowly reaching down, she grabbed a two-by-four that was on the ground near her. She moved slowly, calmly, looking the dog in the eye.
Sure,
she thought,
I’d like to see what Jimmy Valentine would say to do here.
Who was she kidding? A real agent would shoot the dog, but the place was abandoned, so she hoped to avoid that unless it became absolutely necessary.

Madison had once read a newspaper story about a woman attacked by a pit bull. In the article, she vaguely recalled something about advice during a dog attack. She kept backing away from the dog.

“Easy there, buddy. Easy…”

When she got to the warehouse, she climbed backward up the fire-escape steps. The dog was still barking and snarling. Then it started lunging at her. Madison thrust the two-by-four forward, wedging it in the dog’s jaws. She prayed she could hold the guard dog off until she found an unlocked window or door.

On the second-floor landing, the door was locked, but a window next to it wasn’t. In fact, it was shattered.

“It’s now or never,” Madison said aloud to herself—and the dog.

With all her strength, she shoved downward with the plank, sending the dog careening backward down the metal stairwell, his paws slippery on the metal. Quickly, she climbed through the broken window, careful not to touch a few remaining shards of glass on the sill.

Once inside, she allowed her eyes to adjust to the darkness. She tried to imagine the elegant Claire coming here and navigating all that Maddie had just gone through. That made Maddie wonder—perhaps she hadn’t. Maybe whomever Claire was meeting had made sure the gate was unlocked, the dog gone, the doors unlocked. The more Maddie thought about it, the more she was certain that Claire knew who she was meeting and was greeted in a more hospitable fashion.

Maddie wandered the second floor, trying to avoid letting the cold fear in her gut take over. This was where Claire had been killed. Down on the first floor, peering over a metal railing, she could see yellow police tape still strung around a spot on the floor with a dark stain. Maddie felt queasy.

However, any thoughts of queasiness were soon replaced because she could hear the sound of a car’s tires crunching on gravel, and the dog began its fevered barking again.

Maddie looked around. Whoever it was would know she was here. They would search the warehouse until they found her. She decided if that was the case, she’d at least be in a good vantage point to take a shot or two at her enemy. And if that enemy turned out to be her father? She’d have to see what the heck he wanted and tell him to come clean. That worry—what she’d find about her father if she came here—had kept her from alerting anyone to her plans. Now she realized how rash she’d acted.

Moving quickly, Maddie opted to hide behind a shipping container. She could peer around the side of it, and she was protected from any returned gunfire.

Whoever was after her, they had the key. From her vantage point, she saw the downstairs door open—a big, wide door, wide enough for a small truck to drive through. Two men came in—neither of whom she had ever seen before.

One made hand gestures, indicating he was going upstairs, and his partner was to look downstairs. They separated, and Maddie readied herself in a shooting stance. Not that she was prepared to kill anyone now or ever.

The guy who was coming upstairs started taunting her in an accent that sounded vaguely Eastern European.

“Come out, Blondie. Come out, come out, wherever you are. We won’t hurt you. Much.” Then he cackled.

When he reached the upstairs landing he started creeping from side to side in the hall. Moving target, in the dark. Maddie knew as soon as she fired, her position would be revealed. Her heart racing, now her conscience was hoping she could hit him. He had a gun drawn—she had no idea what type it was, but it had a silencer on it, and it looked big. Then she saw a red dot on the wall.
Great,
she thought.
He’s got infrared, the better to see me in the dark.

Maddie lined up a shot as best she could, not wanting to kill, just stop him.

She gently squeezed the trigger, aiming for his thigh—she hit him.

“Son of a fucking bitch! I’m hit!”

Whoever he was, he had stood about six foot three, and now he crumpled like a sack of potatoes, falling to the ground, his gun clattering across the metal floor.

From downstairs, his partner in crime called up to him. “You okay?”

“Shit! I’m bleeding like a stuck pig. Get up here.”

Maddie listened, but the guy’s partner sure didn’t sound as if he was rushing up to his aid. Eventually, the other guy did appear on the landing. He had his gun drawn, too, and then went and stood over his partner. Taking aim, he shot him casually in the head.

Maddie’s eyes widened, her adrenaline already pumping after shooing the first guy. Christ, she thought, if he’ll do that to his partner, what the hell is he going to do to me?

“Come out, bitch. And I won’t kill you.”

He started toward her, and she fired off two rounds, both missing wildly. “I’ve called 911!” she shouted.

He seemed to buy her bluff. He retreated, kicking his partner’s body on the way out and muttering something in Russian. She was fluent in French, German and Spanish, but she had a smattering of Russian and Greek. Then she heard the second man running down the metal staircase. She heard another shot and the whimper of the dog. God, who were these guys?

She came out from her hiding spot and then ran outside, avoiding looking at the dead body on the way. She had never been close to a dead body before except at a couple of funerals. Seeing the taillights of their car, she squinted but was unable to get a plate number. She walked across the parking lot and prepared to climb over the fence again.