“Is this scuttlebutt reliable or the usual half-baked bull?”
She seesawed her hand. “It came from my Uncle Dan- Fitz’s dad. He wasn’t overly clear, and I couldn’t push without frightening him, which I don’t want to do at this point.”
Jacob regarded her for a long moment, then shocked her with a kiss that sizzled her blood and zapped almost every thought from her head.
“Let’s go.” Turning her by the shoulders, he propelled her toward the door.
She fingered her still-tingling lips, had to give her mind a shake. “Where?”
“Where I’m assuming your cousin should have been today but wasn’t.”
“Jacob, stop pushing. I went by the hospital earlier. She didn’t come in for work this morning.” Panic clawed at her insides. She refused to let it win, but swung around. “If Critch has her, what can we do? We can’t even find him.”
With his hands still on her shoulders, he stared into her eyes. “We’ll do what we have to do, and we will get her back.”
“And you know that because…”
“If Critch took your cousin, Romana, he did it for a reason. I think he’d be more than willing to return her in exchange for the person he really wants. Me.”
NO MATTER HOW HARD SHE FOUGHT, Fitz couldn’t stop her teeth from chattering.
What would happen to her? She wanted to ask, but really didn’t want to know.
What an idiot she’d been. She had no experience in these matters and no business launching her own half- baked investigation. True, she’d stumbled in unknowing, but she should have taken her suspicions straight to her cousin. She’d be home right now, safe, warm and wrapping Christmas presents rather than scared, frostbitten and shaking in a damp cellar.
She shrank against the wall as footsteps approached. When the door creaked open, she avoided the beam of light that illuminated the person outside.
“Not the brightest bulb in the package, are you, Anna Fitzgerald?” She registered annoyance and amusement in equal proportions. “You’ve given me a problem, and I thought, I’d hoped, I was done with those long ago.”
“You killed Belinda.” The statement fell from her mouth unbidden. It made her jailor laugh and her insides coil into greasy knots.
“Well, now, that is a brilliant deduction. Maybe you should have been the cop instead of Romana. Except she isn’t a cop anymore, is she? And her attention these days, when not fixated on Jacob Knight, is pretty much centered on finding Warren Critch. But what about the person who murdered his wife? Why isn’t she focused on that task as well? Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, if your cousin might not be a little unsure about her not-so-white Detective Knight. Oh, dear, no, mustn’t think like that. Locate Critch, apprehend him, then worry about that other niggle. Or let it go. Stick Critch back in prison, and we all return to square one. We’ve been there for six years with no more harm done. Maybe that’s where we should stay.”
“I never thought it was you…” Fitz began, but her voice died away when a finger reached out to tap her chin.
“I realize that now. But when I saw you attempting to play detective, I thought you had it all worked out. What could I do but react as if you had? End result? Here we are, you and me, in a place where I’m very much afraid no one will ever think to look for you.”
Tears burned Fitz’s eyes. Her wrists and feet were bound. She couldn’t even try to escape.
“Please don’t…” she began.
The eyes in front of her rolled. “Oh, God, spare me the spiel. ‘Don’t hurt me. I won’t talk. Secret to the grave.’ The lines are old and tired. And you’re forgetting one vital detail.” The face she didn’t want to see at close range dipped to her level and smiled. “I’m a murderer. Did it once, won’t have a problem doing it again. But just so you know, I don’t make a habit of this. Now Critch, he’s hungry for the kill. Whereas I only killed because I had to. Sort of.” The eyes in that face clouded slightly. “Had to. Wanted to… So long ago in some ways, yesterday in others.”
To Fitz’s horror, the mouth began to twist. She didn’t need Romana to tell her that was bad.
“I don’t blame you for wanting her gone,” she managed to whisper. “I mean, she deserved to die, right?”
“In spades, Anna Fitzgerald. You don’t treat people the way she did and simply walk away. Have I told you the Belinda Critch story as it relates to me?”
What would Romana do? a frantic Fitz wondered. She swallowed her tears, shot for a tremulous smile. “You haven’t, no,” she replied. “But I’d like to know.”
The eyes watching her narrowed. “Maybe I wouldn’t mind telling someone about it at that. It’s not like you’ll be going anywhere with the news. Do you like chili?”
Another nod.
Her jailor’s head cocked. “Can you cook it?”
“Any way you want it.”
“Chili and a story.” The thought appeared to sit well. “I could handle that. But you do realize you’re going to die.”
“I know.” Fear flopped like a fish in Fitz’s stomach, but this was the way, the only way. Her only chance. “One last meal,” she said. “I mean, if it has to be the last, it should be good, right?”
“Oh, it’ll be good.” The finger that had been on her chin snaked out to stab the ribs above her heart. “Then it’ll be over.” A hideous smile formed. “Isn’t life a bitch?”
FITZ’S ATTIC APARTMENT was compact, colorful and bursting with character-just like her.
Romana ducked under a trio of red hanging balls and peered into the tiny bathroom.
“Her hair dryer’s not on the counter,” she called back to Jacob. “Neither’s her favorite coffee mug. She wasn’t here this morning.”
“Wouldn’t her father have noticed that?”
“I don’t imagine he noticed anyone or anything until at least noon.” Romana recalled her uncle’s red whiskey eyes and the breath he’d attempted to disguise with cinnamon mouthwash. “Anyway, Fitz leaves for work two hours before he does on Thursdays.”
She returned to the living area, pivoted on her heel and wished just once that a clue would jump out at her.
“No tree yet,” she noted while Jacob poked through the kitchenette. “She wants a live one, but there’s not much room up here.”
“Did you check her messages?”
Romana tossed her coat on the sofa. “Her supervisor called twice. I’m numbers three, four and five, and my brother Noah wants to know if she thinks I’d like a gift card or a Hermes handbag for Christmas.”
Jacob smiled as he opened a cupboard. “I’d go with the handbag.”
“Cigar’s yours, Detective.” On her third scan of the room, Romana spied a jar of silver polish and a blackened cloth. “What’s that?”
He opened another cupboard. “Let me guess. You don’t polish your Christmas silverware?”
“I don’t have Christmas silverware. Neither does Fitz.” But her cousin did have a black metal box with a combination lock sitting on the shelf above the desk. Interesting.
She glanced at Jacob. “You any good at cracking safes, Detective?”
“I’ve done a B and E or two in my time.”
He was a man of mystery on both sides of the law.
“Job’s yours.” Because she wanted to rock him as he’d rocked her earlier, Romana strode into the kitchen and gave him a hard, smacking kiss. “You open Pandora’s box. I’ll try James and Patrick again.”
She’d called James Barret’s home twice already, but Fitz swore third times were lucky. Not in this case, however. According to a slightly winded and decidedly out of sorts Shera, her husband wouldn’t be returning from Cleveland until Friday. Which told Romana nothing. Except that her cocker spaniel hubby likely wasn’t as faithful as Shera wanted to believe.
An unpleasant thought wound its way through her head. Fitz had always liked James, lusted after him in fact. If Barret had flown to Cleveland, he hadn’t done so under his own name. And Fitz, who adored him, was missing.
“Okay, that’s just plain unworthy,” she decided and punched Patrick’s number with more vigor than necessary.
