Kiss of death

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

WHITNEY CLIMBED THE stairs to the white silk bedroom overlooking the ocean. The sun had dropped into the sea, leaving behind a faint glow of tangerine light that would quickly be consumed by darkness. She was dead tired but she didn’t want to go to sleep until she’d spoken to Adam. As soon as she left the vet’s, she’d tried to call him, but his cell phone’s voice mail immediately picked up.

She’d swung by Calvin Hunter’s home, thinking Adam might have shut off his phone and gone to bed early. He had to be even more tired than she was. He’d worked while she’d napped on Miranda’s sofa.

Adam hadn’t been there. She left him notes in several places so he couldn’t miss the message. She’d been afraid to put in writing what she found. The notes said to call her-it was an emergency.

Whitney could have left Jasper there for Adam, but she told him in each note that she had the dog. She doubted anyone else knew the Chinese crested was carrying such valuable information, but she wasn’t taking any chances. Jasper was safer with her.

Earlier she’d deposited two soft-sided suitcases containing her clothes just outside the double walk-in closets in the master bedroom. Jasper and Lexi followed her when she inspected the closets and found one was empty. She placed her suitcases on the floor inside the empty closet, but didn’t have the energy to unpack what little she had.

Whitney thought a dip in the pool might refresh her and keep her awake until Adam called. She put on the swimsuit she’d hurriedly bought to go to Cancún and had never worn. She smiled inwardly, remembering the man from Adam’s security company. Adam had insisted the man should go along to guard her. He’d been more than a little embarrassed to be hanging around Skinny Dip while she tried on suits.

Now that she looked back on it, Whitney decided she was stronger than she sometimes believed. Instinct had launched her at the fence. That quick action had saved her life. She shouldn’t have allowed the incident to cause an emotional meltdown. After the way she’d freaked out, no wonder Adam hadn’t wanted to tell her about his uncle. She could almost forgive him.

Almost.

If only he’d revealed Ashley’s part in Lexi’s disappearance, Whitney might have been more forgiving. But he hadn’t. It said a lot about his character, she reminded herself. It told her even more about their relationship.

“Come on, gang,” she said to Jasper and Lexi. “It’s chow time.”

They scampered behind her as she went down the sweeping staircase. After stopping to leave the notes for Adam, she’d swung by the supermarket and charged some necessities. While the dogs ate, she unpacked the groceries and put them away.

Inside the walk-in pantry, she froze. What was that? It sounded like a thump. The nearest house was too far for her to hear anything. She listened, attempting to detect something else over the crunching sounds of the dogs eating. Her hand shook when she eased the pantry door back so she could have a better look. She peeked out and saw the dogs with their noses in the fancy dishes that she was using for their bowls. Obviously, they hadn’t heard a thing.

What a sniveling display of shredded nerves you are.

Every house had its own special sounds, she assured herself. She would just have to get used to this one. She could put on the alarm, but Adam might drop by without calling. She scribbled a note, saying she was in the pool, and taped it to the front door.

When she returned to the kitchen, the dogs had finished eating. “Come on,” she told them, and they followed her out to the pool. Since the area was new to them, the dogs engaged in a sniff-fest. By the way they were hovering around the low-hanging bushes, Whitney guessed another dog had been out here recently.

“Stay away from the rock,” Whitney told Lexi even though the dog wasn’t anywhere near the obsidian sculpture.

It was dark now and the lights around the pool unexpectedly snapped on. Her limbs locked in place. Fortunately for Whitney, her brain was still functioning. The lights must be on an automatic timer.

Dozens of low-voltage exterior lights now artfully highlighted the plants and the house. Brighter lights on the rafters of the open-air overhang were aimed at the water. Like most pools, this one had a light at the bottom of the deep end. The rest of the yard was dark shadows.

When would she get over being so jumpy? she asked herself. A disturbing chill enveloped her. There was cause for concern. Calvin Hunter had gone to a lot of trouble to hide the information on a microchip and plant it under his dog’s skin. But the people after the info didn’t know Jasper had it-and couldn’t possibly find her if they did.

What she was experiencing was the psychological aftershock of the fire followed by the scare with the car. Get a grip! Taking a deep, calming breath, she tamped down the wave of anxiety. If she didn’t confront her fears, they would get the better of her.

She had a toe in the water when she remembered her cell phone was on the counter in the kitchen. Adam had the number of this house, but he might call her on the cell. She went inside and retrieved it. Returning to the pool area where the dogs were waiting, tails wagging, she again had the eerie sensation someone was watching her.

Get over it.

She put the cell phone down on a small table near the middle of the pool where she could get to it easily no matter where she was in the water. Lexi barked excitedly. Whitney whirled around and saw a big dark shadow blocking the light. A man.

The hulking shape moved and the lights trained on the pool hit her in the eyes, blinding her for a moment. He walked closer and a scream almost ripped from her throat. In the next breath, she realized it was Ryan. Whitney released a pent-up sigh of relief.

Ryan was dressed in a polo shirt, pressed jeans and a lightweight bomber-style jacket. As always he wore loafers that could have passed for new. Lexi scampered up to him, but Jasper scooted under a chaise.

“Ryan, what are you doing here?”

He looked around the dark yard. “Have you seen Ashley?”

“N-no, of course not.” His question surprised her. Why on earth would he think Ashley was here?

Ryan walked closer and Whitney instinctively backed up, but not too far. She was already near the edge of the pool.

“Have you heard from her?”

She’d lived with this man long enough to recognize stress and anxiety in his overwrought voice. “No. Why would she call me?”

“To explain about the clothes.”

She didn’t like what she saw in his eyes. Something had happened with Ashley and he clearly blamed her.

“She’s not here, and I have no idea where she is.” In her toughest voice, she added, “You’d better leave now.”

“I will.” He ground out the words. “But your nine lives are up.”

His unanticipated anger directed at her was like a slap in the face. “What do you mean?”

“You’ll see.”

Now there was a deadly calm about him, in spite of the lethal tone of voice. Whitney suddenly became disturbingly aware of her situation. She was standing-as good as naked-at the edge of the pool without a weapon of any kind. She didn’t need a weapon, Whitney told herself. She was panicking again for no good reason. She’d been married to this man. “Ryan, what’s wrong?”

His eyes narrowed, bore into her. “Get in the pool. Start swimming.”

“What? You’re not making sense.” Was he on something? she wondered.

Unexpectedly, both his hands slammed into her shoulders and shoved her backward. She hit the pool with a startled cry and sucked a mouthful of water into her lungs. She surfaced, gagging and struggling to get her breath in spastic gasps. Treading water and coughing, she looked up at her former husband looming above her.

She’d never seen Ryan this angry, this out of control. Suddenly all the years she’d put up with his antics infuriated her. What had she been thinking? This man was nothing but a self-centered egomaniac. Evidently, the beauty queen had seen the light and left him. It must have sent him over some psychological edge into lunacy.

“Start swimming, Whitney.”

She sputtered, still unable to catch her breath, her throat burning from the chlorine in the pool. Finally she managed to ask, “Why? What’s going on?”

He didn’t answer and that sent a fresh surge of panic through her. She tried to touch bottom with the tips of her toes, but it was too deep. She took a few quick strokes to the edge of the pool near Ryan’s feet. She grasped the rim of the pool with both hands.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

“Nothing you can’t fix.”

Whitney laughed-more of a cackle really. Once she would have walked on water to “fix” any of this man’s problems. “I’m not interested in fixing a damn thing.”

Whitney dipped under the water and swam to the shallow end where she could walk out. She surfaced, stood up, flung her head back and swept her wet hair out of her eyes. Ryan had beaten her to the shallow end. He stood there pointing a gun fitted with a silencer at her.

It took a second to absorb what she was seeing. Where had he gotten the gun? He’d never had one when they’d been together. He didn’t know how to use it, did he? Doubts clouded her thoughts. The gambling. There was a lot about this man she’d never known. Often the craziest people appeared sane, she reminded herself.

“This can go one of two ways,” Ryan said with unexpected savagery. “You can swim until you’re too exhausted to take another stroke…and drown…or I can shoot you.”

This had to be a sick prank, didn’t it? That hope flared, then died when she assessed the hatred gleaming in Ryan’s eyes and noted the deadly weapon in his hand. This was no joke. “Why?” she managed to ask. “I had no idea Ashley had left me those clothes. It was just an accident that I was wearing the dress-”

“Shut up. Leave Ashley out of this.” He waved the gun and the blue metal caught the light. “Start swimming or I’ll shoot.”

“If I’m going to die, I have a right to know the reason.”

For an instant, his eyes squeezed shut, then opened. He gazed at her as if seeing her for the very first time. “My, ah…friends tried to get rid of you. But you weren’t home when you should have been. All the pipe bomb did was start a fire.”

Her lower lip trembled as his words registered. Oh my God! They’d been after her-not Miranda. Whitney hadn’t quite accepted Adam’s explanation that Calvin Hunter had given the terrorists a fake disc. She assumed that believing they had the real one, they’d tried to kill Miranda. Now she knew why that scenario didn’t make sense. And she realized why she’d been so panicky. Her sixth sense kept warning that she was in danger.

“Why would they want to kill me? I never harmed anyone.”

“No, but you can be very clever when necessary. You climbed that fence in the nick of time, didn’t you?”

His attempt at a laugh raised every hair on her body. A thousand thoughts whirlpooled through her brain as she realized that she’d come close to death twice already. This time might be the end-if she didn’t keep her wits and turn the tables somehow. Don’t panic, don’t freeze up. Not now.

Adam’s face appeared in her mind. Suddenly, she felt silly for putting up such a fuss over things he hadn’t told her. He’d believed her, taken so much on faith even though he’d just met her. If she hadn’t suffered through so many lies with Ryan, she might have been more understanding. Now she might never have the chance to tell Adam she loved him.

“I’ll stay out of your life, Ryan. I swear I will.”

“If you’d signed the property agreement, you would have been history and none of this would have happened.”

Was this about the property settlement? He must owe a lot more money than Rod Babcock had told her. “I’ll sign tomorrow when my lawyer returns. He has the papers.”

“No, you won’t. Babcock already called me. He knows the truth.” Ryan shifted the gun from one hand to the other and back. “There’s no toxic landfill. There never was. That land might as well have oil underneath it.”

“What do you mean?” Stay calm, she reminded herself. And think.

“It’s not far from the Indians’ casino. They’re expanding, putting in a bigger hotel and a second casino that will dwarf every other casino in the state. With you gone, the land belongs to me.”

You’re a fool, she silently raged at herself. Why hadn’t she changed her will? How stupid could she be? “I’ll sign it over to you.”

“Too late. At the end of this week, the proposal comes up for approval by the county commission. The Indians need to have all the deeds in order. Your hotshot lawyer will talk you out of signing unless I promise you a bundle of money.” He pointed the gun directly at her head. “This changes everything.”

“You’ll never get away with it. The police will know-”

“An accidental drowning? I don’t think so.”

“Then I’m not swimming. You’ll have to shoot me.”

“Suit yourself. It’ll look like a burglar killed you.”

“No, it won’t.” The soft voice cracked out of the darkness behind Ryan.

He spun around. “Ashley, what are you doing here?”

Well, this beats all, Whitney decided in frantic amazement. The situation could not become weirder. She watched the two of them stare at each other. Whitney couldn’t just stand in waist-deep water. Already her legs were spongy, ready to give out.

Her first instinct was to bolt, to lunge through the water, legs splashing, arms flailing as she prayed for good luck. She’d read somewhere that even the most highly trained sharpshooter had less than a fifty-fifty chance of hitting someone who was running in an erratic zig-zag pattern. She bet guns were new to Ryan. Except at point-blank range, he probably couldn’t hit her.

Ashley hadn’t responded to Ryan’s question. After a moment’s silence, he asked, “Where have you been?”

There was a desperate note in his voice, Whitney decided, almost a pleading tone. She realized he loved this woman in a way that he’d never loved her. Not that she cared, but she might be able to exploit the situation to save herself. She edged closer to the steps out of the pool, taking care not to disturb the water and call attention to her movements.

“I went to Bakersfield to see my father.” A look of pure anguish washed over Ashley’s face, then vanished so quickly that Whitney wondered if she’d imagined it. “He agreed to give me every cent he had to help us get out of debt. I also personally went to Domenic Coriz, but he didn’t want money. He wants the land.”

“Ashley, honey, get back in your car,” Ryan responded in the unemotional tone of a therapist. “I’ll explain it to you later.”

“Don’t treat me like a child! I’ve been following you. I overheard you threaten Whitney. I know what you’re up to.”

“I just want the best for both of us.” His calm tone unnerved Whitney even more. He’d gone ballistic before; now he was psycho.

“Killing an innocent woman won’t end your problems. You’re addicted to gambling.”

Whitney sidled nearer to the steps. Ryan hadn’t turned away from her, but his attention was focused on Ashley. If only she could get out of the pool.

Ryan cleared his throat, then gave Ashley a small, anxious grin. “I’ll get help tomorrow. I promise I will. Just wait in the car for me. Okay?”

“No.”

Ryan blinked and hesitated before saying, “Look, if you’ll just wait in the car for me, I swear I won’t hurt Whitney. We just need to have a little talk.”

Whitney’s toe bumped the first of two-or was it three?-steps out of the pool. Ryan’s smile expired when Ashley didn’t budge.

“Liar! I’m not letting you hurt Whitney.”

Without warning, Ashley lunged for Ryan’s arm in an attempt to knock the gun out of his hand. Ohmygod! At this close range, Ryan might kill her. Not taking a second to think, Whitney hurtled out of the pool and flung herself at them as they struggled over the gun. She saw her own hand lash out in a desperate grab for the weapon.

Face contorted, Ryan fought them with manic savagery. He was taller than both of them and had them outweighed. He still had control of the gun.

Whitney pounced on him, clinging to him with both arms and legs the way a drowning person would. She had a split second to decide what to do so she bit the exposed part of his neck.

Pop!

Something sounded like a firecracker, she realized. Swirling colored stars burst behind her eyes. Then darkness obliterated the bright lights.