Intimate Betrayal (32 page)

“Cool,” Darcy said. “Breaking and entering and electronic invasion—you two are really on a roll. My friends, the white-collar
criminals. I’m impressed.”

Within seconds Matt had the cathedral CAD file on the screen. They studied it carefully. “That’s the original one,” Darcy
said. “The officially approved version.”

“But not the one they’re building from?”

“Well, it’s the one they claim to be building from. But no, this is a legitimate file. What we need to find is an amended
version.”

“There are a lot of files on the hard drive,” said Matt. “This could take a while.”

“There aren’t that many CAD files,” said Darcy.

“Okay, we’ll try sorting the files by type. Meanwhile, someone ought to be checking floppies and tape backups, not to mention
having a look at the other computers in the office.”

“How do we know he saved it?” Annie asked. “Wouldn’t
it have been more sensible to erase it and not risk leaving any evidence?”

“Even if he deleted it, I might be able to get it back,” said Matt. “The hard drive looks pretty fragmented, which means he
hasn’t performed any maintenance on it for a long time. There’s all sorts of junk on here, but much of it’s old. I don’t see
many new files, either. Doesn’t look as if he really uses this computer all that much.”

“Is that good?”

“If he deleted the file we’re looking for and nothing’s been written over it, I can probably get it back. So, yes, that’s
potentially very good. But it’s still going to take a while to go through all this stuff.”

“I’ll make us some coffee,” Darcy said.

That night, Fletcher went again to the construction site. He’d waited long enough. The time had come to figure out exactly
how to lure Annie to the cathedral in the middle of the night. He couldn’t wait any longer.

He decided not to park in his usual spot in the lot with the trailers. The murder of Giuseppe Brindesi was an open file, and
there were bound to be cops cruising by on patrol. He didn’t want to alert them to his presence. Not tonight.

Cops or no cops, he could get quietly into the place from the underground passage that connected the cathedral basement to
the youth center next door.

The passage had been there before the construction had begun. It had linked the old church on the site with what had been
the main residence of the convent. The tunnel, dug through firm bedrock and reinforced several times over the
years because of earthquake concerns, had remained after the demolition of the old church.

Fletcher wasn’t sure whether Annie knew about the passage. Most of the workmen didn’t. The ones who were used to climbing
high on the structure and doing their intricate work dozens of feet off the ground, buffeted by wind and seeming incredibly
brave, were the same guys who wouldn’t be caught dead underground. Foundation men were a helluva lot different from roofers.
And the foundation guys had finished up and left the site many long months ago.

There was no sign of cops on the far side of the dark hulk of the cathedral. It should be an easy matter to break in to the
youth center building. He was quiet, though, because he knew that the Reverend Acker often spent the night. She had a room
up on the second floor.

He raised a window on the dark side of the first floor and entered.
Smart,
he thought.
Lock the doors and leave the windows unlatched.

With the aid of a narrow-beam flashlight, he found the stairs to the basement. When he reached the bottom, he stopped short,
sniffing the air. His nose was very sensitive. He got a whiff of what he was certain was Annie’s perfume. He shook his head
in confusion. Wasn’t it the same scent he thought he’d faintly detected in his trailer last night?

Had she been down here tonight? Had she been in his trailer last night?

The thought transfixed him. The door to the trailer had been unlocked. Anybody could have wandered in.

Fletcher followed the elusive smell to a small, dark room at the rear of the basement. There was a bed in the room and a dresser
and a small table lamp. The bed was neatly made.
The scent was definitely there, combined with the scents of several other people. Someone had been in this room. Recently.

He stared at the bed and thought,
I could bring Annie here. Annie. I’ll capture her in the cathedral, then bring her back through the tunnel to this room, this
bed. It’ll be more comfortable for both of us.

He briefly imagined what he would do to her on that bed. He felt himself harden and his mouth go dry.

He turned and left the room, flexing his muscles as he walked. He opened the cracked wooden door to the cold passageway and
shone the flashlight ahead of him. He thought he saw a quick movement at the far end and beamed his light on the spot. Nothing.
Probably just rats.

The tunnel was old and crumbling. Probably not very safe. On the other hand, it had lasted through several earthquakes. There
was a smell in here too, and not a pleasant one—it was dank and musty. He was glad when he reached the other end.

He entered the cathedral through its northeast foundation. He wasn’t being particularly quiet, but over the noise he made
as he climbed over the construction rubble, he heard a choked-off sound. A voice. A female voice.

Annie? The perfume? Was she here already, waiting for him? Had she come to his trailer because she wanted him?

He followed the sound into the semicircular apse that would soon be transformed to the Lady Chapel. There was a pile of bricks
by the opening to the area and, in the dark, he stumbled on them.

“Who’s there?” a woman’s voice asked sharply, sounding both weepy and frightened.

Annie? His blood beat in sudden excitement.

He jerked his flashlight up. As he peered into the chapel, the dim beam revealed a woman—a girl, really. Her hair was fair
and so long that it nearly brushed her hips. She was clad in something dark and flowing, a cloak perhaps, and her face as
she turned toward the light was lovely. He felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. She was in the Lady Chapel, and she
looked almost like the Lady Herself….

Then she moved and a soft sob issued from her throat. Silvery tears glistened as they rolled down the girl’s perfect cheeks.

“Mi amore?”
she whispered. “Is that you?”

Mi amorel?
“Hey, who are you?” Fletcher said.

At the unfamiliar voice, the look in the girl’s eyes changed to one of panic. She gave him a firm shove—which momentarily
surprised him. Then she whipped by him, leaping over the bricks at the entrance to The Lady Chapel and fled.

He rushed out after her, but the girl was fast. He saw a swirl of her blue cloak whip around the corner. Shit! She was getting
away!

And yet he felt almost reluctant to follow her. As if she might not be real, but a spirit. Jeez. Working in this place was
making him superstitious.

She had to be that girl Annie had been talking about. The one who had been in the cathedral the night after the murder. The
one Annie had neglected to tell the cops about.

Paolina.

He could hear her scurrying ahead of him. There was all sorts of construction debris on the floor, and the cathedral was dark.
He heard a crash and the girl cried out. Yes! She had stumbled over something and fallen.

She was scrambling to her feet when he grabbed her. She clawed at him, her eyes wild. He twisted her arm up behind her until
she gasped and went limp.

“You Paolina?” he asked roughly.

She nodded, blinking up at him, terrified.

Fletcher felt the power rush through him. That was the way Annie would look up at him.

But—something weird was going on here. What the hell was a young girl, a teenager, doing in the construction site late at
night? And not just once but twice?

“Mi amore,”
she’d said. Were she and her lover using the unfinished cathedral as a trysting place? But her lover was on the run from
the cops. It was her lover they suspected of murdering Giuseppe Brindesi. What kind of fool would come back to the place where
he’d committed a murder in order to meet his lover?

Unless he’d never left…

Shit!

The cops were searching all over the fucking city for the kid. But Vico was here, hiding in the foundation, somewhere in the
basements or the crawl space.

The kid had worked construction here, so he knew the place. He must have explored around until he’d found a nice little hidey-hole
for himself. And the girlfriend probably sneaked in every night—just the same way Fletcher had—bringing him food and water
and her pert little ass and breasts.

He’d found the kid Annie was looking for. Or at least he was about to find him. The girl would lead him to Vico, and pretty
damn fast, if she knew what was good for her.

It was the way, Fletcher suddenly realized. The way to get Annie to come down to the cathedral at night. She believed
that Vico was innocent. She wanted to help him. If he convinced her that Vico was here, she would come. Tonight.

He’d have her right where he wanted her.

At last.

In the meantime, he had the girl, who was moaning softly and trembling with terror. Fletcher’s heart was pounding. His cock
was hard. He was going to enjoy questioning her.

“I think I’ve got something.”

Matt had been at it for over two hours, while Annie and Darcy took turns guarding the door. They were working in darkness
to avoid attracting attention from the security guards. The only light came from the flickering computer screen. “It’s a deleted
file. I’m going to try to view it. It’ll look a little different from what you’re used to. Those are CAD formatting commands.
Okay, ladies, what do you think?”

Annie and Darcy leaned over and squinted at the screen. “That’s it,” Annie said as the graphics came up. “It’s the cathedral
CAD file.”

“But which version?” Matt asked.

“Jesus,” Darcy said. She sat down and stared at the structural specifications. “That son of a bitch.”

Matt looked at her. “Okay, tell us. We’re out of the area of my expertise.”

“He’s arranged for the construction of a cheaper and much
lower-designed building than the one we all agreed on. The changes are in the structural framing. He’s specified far fewer
connections and spaced them much farther apart. He’s changed the spacing of the columns and beams, the number of bolts, the
quality of the seismic connections, everything.” She looked at Matt and Annie. “Paul McEnerney must be in on this. No way
the contractor could build this without realizing what was going on. Sam and he must be in it together. They’re probably splitting
the money they’re skimming… and if this is the design and specifications they’re using, they’re skimming a lot.”

“Let’s get a copy of this,” Matt said, sticking a fresh disk into the floppy drive.

“Let’s print it out, too,” said Annie. She turned on the plotter, and soon the blueprints came rolling out.

“What we have here,” Darcy explained, “is a cathedral that on the outside looks to be everything it was originally designed
to be. But what we’re seeing is that the inner structure has been greatly weakened. Possibly to the extent that the building
isn’t even safe. I’d hate to think what would happen in a major earthquake. The cathedral was originally designed to withstand
a magnitude of 8.5 on the Richter scale. But this building—the one we actually have on our construction site—would probably
sustain major damage with anything over 6.0.”

Annie was stunned. Not only had it happened, it had happened on her watch. She suddenly understood why Sam Brody had appointed
her project manager. It wasn’t that he thought she was competent, it was that he thought she was
incompetent.
She wasn’t an architect. She had no direct on-site construction
experience. He had expected her not to notice, and she hadn’t.

“Outward beauty and a rotten inner core,” mused Darcy. “Tell me, folks, does that sound like anybody we know?”

“But is it proof?” Matt asked.

“We’ve got copies of both files,” said Annie. “Of course, we still have to prove that the amended one is the one McEnerney’s
been using. I wonder if there’s any correspondence between them about it.”

They all jumped when Annie’s cellular phone rang. She’d brought it in from the car.

She took the phone into a corner where her conversation wouldn’t disturb Matt. It’s Fletcher,” she said a few moments later.
“He says he’s knows where Vico is.”

Matt looked up from the computer screen. “If that’s true, it’s damn important.”

Annie got the details quickly, then hung up and explained them to Matt: “He thinks he’s been in the cathedral all along. Hiding
out there, probably in the basement or somewhere in the crawl space under the nave. It makes sense, Matt. Fletcher says he
found Paolina in there again a little while ago.”

“Jesus.” Matt pulled up a new page on the screen to get a look at the basement area of the cathedral. “It’s possible. Why
didn’t we think of that?”

“It would also account for his having witnessed the murder. The cathedral wasn’t just a meeting place for the teenagers—it
was Vico’s refuge.”

“So has Fletcher actually got the kid?”

“No, but he’s got Paolina. She refuses to talk to him, he says.”

Matt raised his eyebrows. “Figures.”

“I’m going over there,” Annie said.

“I’m coming with you.”

“We can’t go yet,” Darcy broke in. “What if there’s something more here? As Annie said, what we need now is some kind of correspondence
that proves that Sam was in on this with the contractor.”

“You keep working on it, Darcy. This kid is an eyewitness, and I want to talk to him before the cops throw his ass in jail.”

“Matt, maybe you shouldn’t come,” Annie said. “The police might be looking to throw your ass in jail, too.”

“Hell, if they get too close, I’ll just hunker down with Vico in the crawl space. That kid is smarter than I thought.”