“Oh God,” she whimpered. “He killed them. All of them.”
“You’re getting something about Linden. What is it?”
“He’s killed so many people with this gun. I saw them, six of them. One was just a boy.”
“We already know he’s a killer, that he’s a professional hit man. I need for you to move on from that and try to tell me something we don’t know. Try to focus on finding the son of a bitch, not taking a gruesome walk down memory lane.”
“Don’t . . . please . . .”
She wrapped her fingers over the butt of the gun and clutched it tightly.
“He has a good job and he likes it. He likes it a lot,” Meredith said. “The money he earns affords him a lifestyle he enjoys. He tells himself that he kills for the money, but . . . he kills for the pleasure, too.”
Although she felt Luke’s hands on her shoulders, felt the non-too-gentle shake he gave her, only her body was in the room with him. She tried harder to concentrate on the man who had owned the gun, on his present location. Where was he right now?
The face that appeared to her kept changing. Dark hair, light hair, red hair, bald. Blue eyes, brown eyes, hazel eyes. Mustache, beard, clean shaven, sideburns. Glasses. No glasses. The image of his features wasn’t clear. It kept changing too quickly for her to describe him.
“He wears disguises.”
“Meredith, concentrate completely on where he is right now, this very minute,” Luke told her as he ran his hands down her arms and then released her. “Any other information is useless to us.”
Suddenly she felt weightless. She floated above the earth as if she had wings. Clouds surrounded her, white and fluffy. She loved the sensation of flying and had had visions, for as long as she could remember, of leaving her body and soaring into the heavens.
And then all of her feelings of joy disappeared and a dark, foreboding fear claimed her. The hum of an engine grew louder and louder, and louder still, until it drowned out every other sound, every thought, every feeling.
She gasped for air, trying to escape from the onslaught of the roaring engine, and fought her way back to rejoin her mind with her body. Her head ached. Her stomach lurched with nausea.
As she slowly opened her eyes, the gun she had been clutching dropped from her weak hand and hit the floor. “He’s on an airplane.”
“Right now?” Luke asked. “Is he on an airplane right now?”
She stared at Luke. “Either now or very recently. He’s coming toward me.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“He’s coming toward me,” she repeated half a second before she collapsed in a heap at Luke’s feet.
When Maleah and Derek had arrived at Griffin’s Rest late yesterday, they had found a high level of anxiety that spread from the very top and filtered its way down through every employee. If they thought security had been tight when they left there the last time, they found out as they drove through the security gates just how much tighter it could be. Barbara Jean had met them at the front door, and Maleah had noticed Brendan Richter hovering in the background.
“My God, you’d think we were being invaded,” Maleah had said as she entered the foyer. “Is all of this because of Saxon Chappelle’s niece?”
“Partly,” Barbara Jean had replied as she’d glanced from Maleah to Derek. “Sanders is waiting for you in the office. He needs to speak to you now.” She had looked up at Maleah. “Nicole wants to talk to you. She’s upstairs in her sitting room.”
After that, Maleah hadn’t seen Derek again last night. How long he spent in the auxiliary Powell office headquarters there at Griffin’s Rest, she didn’t know. Nor did she have any idea where he’d slept or if he had slept. She had spent more than two hours with Nic, after being allowed entrance into Nic’s bedroom suite by her private guard dog, Shaughnessy Hood. One look at her best friend and she had realized just how bad things were with her and Griff. Nic had looked like death warmed over.
“If you think I look bad, you should see Griff,” Nic had said. “He was in rough shape before Poppy Chappelle was killed, but now . . . Oh, Maleah, I’m worried sick about him. I haven’t seen him all day. He hasn’t ventured out of his den and my guess is that by now he’s drunk himself into a stupor and passed out.”
Unlike the other Powell agents who were assigned a bedroom in the house when they rotated shifts at Griffin’s Rest, Maleah had her own room, a perk of being Nic’s best friend. Since she spent almost as much time here as she did in her Knoxville apartment, she kept several changes of clothes in the closet and an assortment of toiletries in her private bathroom.
When she had finally gotten in bed well past midnight, she had tossed and turned for nearly an hour before dozing off to sleep. And she had awakened at a little after six, feeling a bit groggy and sleep-deprived. Her first thought had been about Derek. She had wondered if he was awake and if he was, had he already gone downstairs for breakfast. Odd that she should have had such an overwhelming desire to see him, talk to him, be with him.
Now less than an hour later, freshly showered, dressed for the day in tan twill slacks and a black, short- sleeved cotton sweater set, she found herself taking more time than usual to apply her makeup and fix her hair.
She stared at herself in the vanity mirror, her long hair framing her face as it fell in layers down to her shoulders. She had even taken great pains to use a curling iron to style her hair.
She couldn’t deny it. Not to herself and not to the reflection staring back at her from the mirror. “All right, so what’s the big deal? Why shouldn’t I want to look my best this morning?”
While in the midst of having an in-depth conversation with herself, Maleah heard a repetitive rapping at her bedroom door. It might be Nic, even though she hoped her friend was in bed with her husband, the two of them getting some much needed rest. But more than likely Griff was still in his study and Nic had lain awake half the night worrying herself sick about him.
When she opened the door, she halfway expected to see either Nic or Barbara Jean, but instead Derek stood there, a dead serious expression on his handsome face.
“Good morning,” she said.
“How are you today?” he asked.
“I’m fine, all things considered. How about you?”
“I’ve been better,” he admitted. “May I come in?”
“Sure.” She moved back so that he could enter, and then she closed the door before asking, “What’s wrong?”
“I was up until after one this morning,” Derek said. “Helping Sanders with Griff. He . . . uh . . . he drank a little too much. We managed to walk him into the bathroom connected to his study, put him in the shower and finally got him into a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Sanders sent me on to bed around one-fifteen. I think he sat up all night while Griff slept it off on the sofa.”
“I was with Nic until well after midnight. She wasn’t drinking, but she wasn’t in much better shape. She’s worried about Griff and she figured he was drinking.” She stared at Derek. “Tell me why a man who professes to worship the ground his wife walks on shuts her out the way Griff does Nic when he needs her the most. The way he’s acting is killing her.”
“I’ve told you that big strong men don’t like to appear weak in front of their women. No matter how misguided his actions, Griff’s intention is to protect Nic. He didn’t want her to see him the way he was last night.”
“Men! I don’t understand any of you.”
“That works both ways, Blondie. We men don’t understand you women either.” He looked her over and smiled. “You sure do look pretty this morning.”
