He did as Everett asked.
Everett moved closer to Alex’s gun. He was doing something with the handcuffs. Alex heard them released.
Alex did all he could to keep the smile off his face. Everett was underestimating Ciara.
“Pick it up, Ciara,” Everett ordered.
She bent, picked up the gun, and aimed it at Alex.
“Should I shoot you now,” she asked, “and see if Kit Logan comes running?”
51
Malibu, California
Thursday, May 22, 8:37 P.M.
He felt the color drain from his face. He couldn’t hide his shock. But he pulled himself together and said, “Kit’s dead.”
“No!” she shouted, and kicked over a chair. “No!” Just as quickly, she calmed down. “I don’t believe you.”
“You’ve met up with Cameron,” Everett said. “Look at his neck, Ciara.”
Everett had called her by name twice now. Alex felt his stomach knot. There would be no backup, no SWAT team, no hostage negotiators. Just another hostage, unless he was convincing. Everything depended on that, and on Kit. “Kit wasn’t so lucky,” he said, letting his anger at Ciara find its way into his voice. He took a chance, and indicated the front of his suit. “I tried to stop the bleeding, but I was too late. At least I had the pleasure of evening the score.”
Everett held his head to one side. “Cameron is dead?”
“I thought you’d be all broken up about it.” So, he thought, Everett didn’t know about Hamilton. Maybe Hamilton was telling the truth after all.
“Cameron and I had a bit of a falling-out,” Everett said. “He told me he was going to deny me my long-awaited revenge, that he could set a trap for you and Kit in the woods that would be just as effective as my invention.”
Invention? Alex looked at Ciara, but she only frowned at him.
“Obviously,” Everett went on, “it was an inferior plan. Poor Cameron. Far too emotional when it came to hurting children. He was upset about what I’ve done to your nephew and-as I found out far too late-the female Kit adopted.”
Alex’s fists clenched, even as he fought a wave of nausea. What I’ve done to your nephew…
Everett laughed and said, “In any case, Cameron was intent on spoiling my fun. And I must say he did spoil it-most of it, anyway. But just in case you aren’t telling the truth, I think we’ll bring you along to the office. Handcuff him, Ciara-no, in front.”
She had started to pull Alex’s wrists behind him, and at this command, gave Everett a look of annoyance. But she did as he asked. Alex began to wonder why Everett had insisted on it.
“Take the daypack and any weapons from him,” Everett said, “and give them to me. Be quick about it.”
“Look here, Everett-” she began angrily.
He raised a brow. “Yes?”
She subsided and did as he asked.
“I take it your cell phone works fine?” Alex said as she searched his pockets.
“It was easy to put a dead battery in it after I had checked in with Everett,” she said. “I would have asked for yours if you hadn’t offered it.”
“Hurry up,” Everett said.
She shoved Alex forward, steering him toward the administration building.
“I’m just trying to figure out what I ever did to you,” he said to her, unable to keep the rage from his voice.
She didn’t answer.
He thought back to her reaction to his saying that Kit was dead. Her anger was toward Kit, then. But what could she have against Kit? That first night in Lakewood, she had obviously coaxed Alex into talking more about the similarities between the way Adrianos was left and the Naughton cases.
He suddenly recalled something she said on the day they visited Shay Wilder. She said it had been overkill when Kit attacked Naughton-and that she had read the files. But how could she have read the files on him? Those were sealed because Kit was a minor then, and there had never been an arrest. Those details had not been in the papers or in court records. She must have investigated Kit Logan on her own, at some earlier time.
He watched for an opportunity to escape, but they made sure he didn’t have one. He hoped for a while that Kit might take a shot at one of them. But he saw no sign of Kit.
He was shoved into a room with a long counter in it. It was a typical school office. He could see a small infirmary through one door, a room with filing cabinets through another. Against one wall was a public address system. A microphone sat on a desk near it.
“I take it you provided all the screams?” he asked Ciara.
“I began to wonder if you heard them.”
“I imagine everyone living up above this canyon heard them,” he said. “Including the guards at Kit’s house.”
“He has a point,” Everett said, glancing at his gold Rolex. He moved to a metal storage cabinet and locked up Alex’s pack and weapons. “I’m not sure I should listen to any more of your ideas.”
“Watch out, Ciara,” Alex said. “Che Guevara Junior here has a rapidly shrinking number of partners-or haven’t you noticed?”
“The old divide-and-conquer routine?” Ciara asked, pushing him toward a door marked PRINCIPAL.
The room was a large, carpeted one. Heavy curtains were drawn across the windows. Meghan Taggert sat bound and gagged in a chair turned to one corner.
“Alex, we’ll have you sit here,” Everett said, pulling out a second chair.
Ciara shoved him hard into it.
“Ciara,” Everett said, turning Meghan around, “I know my darling resisted you, but did you have to strike her face?” Meghan’s left cheek and eye were a little swollen, Alex saw. It would have taken more than one blow. However many had landed, it hadn’t knocked the defiance out of her.
Everett caressed her cheek. She pulled as far away from him as her bonds would allow.
“Doesn’t look as if you’re satisfying him in bed, Ciara,” Alex said. “But then, it doesn’t look as if his new courtship is going all that well, either.”
Everett smiled. “Things will go better now that Kit is dead.”
Meghan shot a look of despair at Alex, then she seemed to notice the blood.
“I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it.
She shook her head, but tears were welling up in her eyes.
“You know, you have a point, Meghan. I think I’ll bring his body in here. It will give you closure. And then maybe you’ll feel like telling me where your brother the loser is.” Everett turned his attention back to Alex. “And for the record, Ciara and I have a strictly professional relationship.”
“The story of her life,” Alex said, and Ciara slapped him. He smiled. She struck him again, harder. That time he laughed. “This is obviously hurting you more than it does me.”
She folded her arms, visibly resisting the urge to hit him again.
“Ciara owes much of her career as a detective to me,” Everett said, as if nothing had happened. “Didn’t you ever wonder how she solved so many cases?”
“Actually, Internal Affairs is investigating her,” Alex lied. “She would have been fired long ago, but we wanted to catch those who were helping her. No one believed she was capable of that on her own.”
“You’re full of shit,” Ciara said.
“He’s envious,” Everett said. “They all are. Do you know what we’ve done? The best law enforcement agencies in the country couldn’t do what my small, select team could do. You see, Alex, your partner had an intelligent,
