Lisa nodded, her eyes wide. “Some guy I’d never seen before,” she said, then paused dramatically, “and you’ll never guess who else.”
“Jenny Harding,” Lindsay said, refusing to draw out the suspense. “Can you believe it? That little twit was helping some sleazoid reporter get close to Terry.”
Callie’s heart leaped into her throat. “The sleazoid reporter wasn’t by any chance Bryan Davis, was it?”
Lisa’s head bobbed. “That’s it. Hank told me, right before he took off for the precinct. How did you know? Had he interviewed you or something?”
Callie sighed. In deference to Terry’s desire to keep his marriage a secret, she said simply, “No, I didn’t know him, but Terry knew him from years ago.” All of the rest would come out soon enough.
She was puzzled, though, by how the police had zeroed in on Bryan and Jenny so quickly, especially since Jenny had been in plain sight on the team’s bench when Terry had disappeared. Was there a witness? Or was Hank merely hedging his bets by questioning a man who’d been under suspicion?
“Did they charge this guy and Jenny?” she asked.
Both women regarded her blankly. “They must have. They took both of them to the precinct for questioning,” Lindsay said. “Jenny was crying like the little twit she is and swearing she didn’t know anything about the attack on Terry, that she’d never leaked information to this reporter about that hit-and-run accident. I don’t care what she said, though, the two of them looked awfully cozy to me.”
Callie thought about Jenny’s protests. This job on Within Our Reach was clearly her entry into big-time PR. Would she have put that at risk to help some tabloid reporter, especially with Terry’s promise of dire consequences hanging over her head if she did?
But if Jenny hadn’t been Bryan’s inside source, then someone else had been and Callie suddenly thought she had a pretty good idea who it might be. In fact, realistically, there was only one person it could have been. She should have thought of it sooner, but she’d gotten sidetracked by the discovery that Terry had been married and by the likelihood that his sexual preference was behind the threats.
“When Jason and Neil get back, tell them I had to leave. I’ll be back as soon as I can. A nurse should be coming out any second with news about Terry. She recognized me from the show, so she’s bound to recognize both of you. Find out everything you can, okay?”
Outside, she cursed the fact that she didn’t have a cell phone to call Hank and tell him what she suspected. It might be nice to have backup in case her suspicions proved to be correct, but she convinced herself that if the person really wanted her dead, she would have been killed long before now. This was about Terry. She’d merely gotten in the way.
She was halfway to the taxi stand when someone grabbed her elbow from behind and yanked her to a halt. She whirled around and found herself staring into Jonathan Baines’s eyes. They filled instantly with compassion, but there had been one brief instant when Callie had detected something every bit as hard and cold as the villainous Victor he played on the soap.
That tiny glimpse into Jonathan’s soul told her everything she needed to know, confirming her guess at once. She wondered if she hadn’t sensed it instinctively way back in that very first scene they had done together, the one in which she’d been so frightened of him that she’d impulsively placed her gun on the table between them.
Now, with his hand still clamped firmly around her arm, she simply had to come up with a way to keep him from figuring out that she’d guessed the truth, that he was the one behind the threats, that he’d been witness to a hit-and-run he very likely had arranged and that he had staged today’s vicious attack on Terry.
She also realized belatedly that perhaps she had miscalculated. Judging by the cold gleam in his eyes and the painful tightness of his grip, Jonathan wasn’t nearly as fond of her as he’d convinced everyone on the set he was.
The only thing she hadn’t figured out was why he hated her so much. Admittedly, though, with her life very clearly on the line, Jonathan’s motive probably didn’t matter a whole heck of a lot.
29
Jason thought he’d go out of his mind when he discovered that Callie had taken off alone.
“How could you let her leave?” he demanded of the already shaken Lisa. “Dammit, don’t you know she’s in danger, too? Why the hell do you think Hank’s been on the set every day?”
Apparently Lisa had never thought to question the good fortune that had plunked the cop into her path day after day. She didn’t reply. She just turned those big brown eyes of hers on him and wept. Jason was immune to the tears. He wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled. Lindsay Gentry was not so reticent. Nor was she intimidated by Jason’s fury.
“How were we supposed to stop her?” she demanded indignantly, putting a consoling arm around the younger woman’s shoulders.
“Lay off, Jason,” Neil warned. “I’m as worried about Callie as you are, but they didn’t know. Yelling at them won’t find her.”
Jason didn’t linger to debate the point. He scowled at the whole lot of them and took off for the parking lot, punching in Hank’s beeper number on his cell phone as he ran. By the time Hank returned the page, mere seconds later, Jason had scanned the parking lot in every direction. There was no sign of Callie.
He headed for the taxi stand as he told Hank what had happened. “I’m going to talk to the drivers. Maybe one of them saw a cabbie give her a lift.”
What he learned from the drivers moments later made his heart climb
