Which reminded Michael of something. How he’d said almost the same thing to Peter Farley in LA.
When he was stalking him.
CHAPTER 50
Wade Poole was disappointed that Michael DeKoven hadn’t taken his first offer seriously, but it didn’t surprise him much. Negotiations often started on a negative note.
Time to go back to Jaimie’s. He needed a place to go to ground with her, so why not to her house?
Besides, it was past time for him to get the DVD.
He’d checked on it once—right under the woman cop’s nose—but it was possible that Jaimie might have hidden it someplace else.
Doubtful. Jaimie probably wouldn’t even think about moving it—her mind didn’t work that way. She was lazy and overconfident, and he was sure she believed her home was her castle and inviolable.
Still, when it came to that family, you couldn’t trust anybody.
He put her in the truck and bumped down the lane—a backside loop that bypassed Harshaw road. It was little more than a cow track, but it got him to a ranch road that came out pretty close to the highway to Patagonia. His right front bumper was smashed up some, but he took the chance. No one was on the road for most of the way—it was only a mile or two—and on the one occasion when headlights did appear, he pulled off the road at a diagonal and turned off his engine and lights. He doubted anyone would see the crimp in the bumper by the way he parked.
He watched as the vehicle went by—a search and rescue truck. What were the odds they were looking for Jaimie?
It was going on midnight when he turned in under the WOLFE MANOR sign. He stopped about a quarter mile down the road and checked the place out. Aside from a snort or two from the horses, no one was there. The place was dark. There were no vehicles. Still, he reconnoitered. Looked in all the places where he’d have set up surveillance if he’d been the one watching. It was easy to think like a cop because he was one.
Finally, he drove in and parked behind the dark house. A couple of dogs barked and then they all got up from the porch and the yard and came toward them. He dragged Jaimie into the house. He’d given her a couple of Xanax to take the edge off, so she stumbled a little as they walked in. He was a little shaky on his feet as well. His feet numb, probably from sitting cross-legged all that time. At least that was what he chose to think. The dogs funneled in after them. He herded them back outside by pouring dry dog food on the porch. The good thing was, they’d alert him to anyone coming.
After securing her in the bathtub, hooking her collar to a chain wrapped around a water pipe, he went back outside and drove his new truck into the center aisle of the horse barn and closed the doors. Back in the house, he donned latex gloves and went straight to the TV set.
It didn’t take long to hit the Mother Lode. Jaimie kept it right by the TV set—in a stack of DVDs. There were six DVDs—various movies and a workout video—and at the bottom, a Maxell Gold DVD, unmarked. The DVDs had been stuck in the back of a small cabinet, made to look like an afterthought.
He was pretty sure this was what he was looking for.
He pulled out the DVD on the bottom—the only one that wasn’t marked—put it in the player, and cued it up.
He wasn’t disappointed.
These kids were amazing. They thought they were invincible. They thought they could get away with anything. They honestly thought they were entitled to anything. Just crook a finger or give an order, and some poor peasant leaped up to please them.
Assholes.
The video (it was poor quality—she must have burned it from a video she took off her cell phone) had gone all the way to just short of the end. He cued to the beginning and played it. There was some footage that looked as if it had been tacked on. A sullen gray sky. Tall cliffs, green bushes and trees, and dark jagged rocks, slick with water from eddies around them. The video panned down to the dark water, where a yellow inflatable boat sat, two people looking up. The camera panned around to the inside of a roofed platform with bench seats and pulleys—tight quarters. Athletic-looking kid, couldn’t be more than twenty, clipping some kind of harness to another kid’s leg. The camera panned down to the water and the people in the boat. There was a break in the video and then a close-up of a woman smiling. She looked both nervous and excited. There were the pulleys and ropes and the athletic-looking kid.
Another break.
He got the idea that the video had been patched together from different sources.
Now the camera panned to the sky, the cliff.
Screaming.
Jerky video. Something hurtling down, a figure, landing hard on the bank.
“Pow!” someone yelled.
A woman’s voice.
A smile, a tanned face, upturned nose, dark hair, ribboned with yellow streaks, sunglasses. Just one jerky moment—the expensive lipstick, the broad smile.
Jaimie.
But that wasn’t the best thing on the homemade DVD. The best was something even older. Maybe four or five years ago. Michael younger, Jaimie younger. Taking turns with the camera.
They were all either shit-faced, or drugged. And they were laughing. Hysterical. Michael was on something, that was obvious, and he was sprawled on a bed in what Wade assumed was his ancestral mansion. Lying there like a pasha, in a striped button-down shirt, open and loose on his chest. Pushing on the head of some woman giving him head, looked like a bleached blonde. Jerky movements. Another scene, out by the pool, tottering around drunk, talking into the camera. Waving his finger at whoever was videotaping him.
“We did it, Dad, you fucking son of a bitch!”
Jaimie holding on to his shoulder, laughing. “We survived you, and now
Jaimie pretending to hold a microphone. “How many have you killed, Michael? Just give me an estimate!”
He looked sleepy, a sweet smile on his face. Sprawled on a chaise by the pool. Started counting on his fingers. “One, two, three…?”
Jaimie homing in on him with her fake microphone. “What was your favorite? Who did you like killing most?”
He grinned. “That’s easy. Dear old Dad.”
Thought about it for a second. “Putting Mom out of her misery, that was pretty good, too.”
They both dissolved into laughter. Shared hits off a bottle of champagne. Got celebratory and opened another bottle, which Michael sprayed all over Jaimie. Brayden was there, too, and they took turns teasing her, encouraging her to talk into the camera, but she just folded her arms and hopped back.
There was a lot more of it, but that was enough.
Wade had enough to get his payday.
CHAPTER 51
When Michael’s phone rang (his ringtone was, appropriately, “When the Bullet Hits the Bone”) and he saw Jaimie’s name on the readout again, his first inclination was to ignore her, as he usually did. But he knew it was the rancher guy, and that the rancher guy meant business. He wanted to ignore the call, but he couldn’t.
He’d make it clear. There would be no two million dollars. The rancher guy could kill Jaimie. It didn’t matter to him.
“Guess where I am?” the rancher guy said.
