Key West (57 page)

“You mean you lost consciousness?”

“Maybe. I must have.”

He mustn’t push too hard. “You’re doing just fine. Great. You don’t have to worry about it now. I don’t suppose you recall what you hit your head on.”

When she bowed her face and looked up at him, her deep blue eyes held sorrow, confusion.

He said, “Forget I asked. We’ve still got some rocky times to get through tonight. The hospital isn’t going to put up with being used as an interrogation center for long. They’ll want all of us out of here.”

“Not you,” she said, still far away. “They’ll make you stay.”

This wasn’t a good time for argument, so he grunted.

“I didn’t hit anything,” she said. “He hit me. He shouted at me, and hit me until it was all black.”

Keeping his hands relaxed on the sheet took a whole lot of willpower. “Unconsciousness feels like that. I surely know how it feels. What did he shout?”

“I don’t remember.”

“No.” Damn, so close but so far away. “And you still can’t think who he was?”

Her expression cleared. “No, I can’t. But I got a feeling just then. And I’ve already started to bring it back, haven’t I?”

“You surely have. Now quit worrying about it. You’ve got as long as it takes.”
And will you take it with me, Sonnie? Will you decide in favor of me? Please, will you stay with me for the rest of our lives? I’m trying to he so reasonable here, but I don’t know how I’ll be if you leave me.

She surprised him by standing up. “I don’t regret being with you
—with
you.”
Faint brushes of red stained her cheeks. “I wanted you from the moment I met you. You’re steady and strong, and although I knew you couldn’t be interested in me, I wanted your strength and certainty for myself. You never pushed yourself on me.”

Hardly trusting himself to exhibit any of that legendary strength, he said, “I didn’t have to fall for you. I couldn’t seem to help myself, though. And I’d do it all over again, and again. Only I don’t have to, because I’ll never stop loving you.”

Moving close enough to trace the damn tattoo he’d acquired to help complete his biker image, she inclined her head and smiled faintly. “I’ve got to work on learning to like myself. Find out if I
do
like myself. I like you, Chris. There is nothing about you that doesn’t turn me on.” The smile became broad. “Look what you’ve done to me. I never used to say things like that. Now I hope I don’t ever have to go back to being prissy.”

His own grin faded fast. “What are we going to do? You have to call it.”

Being careful to avoid wounds, she smoothed his hair away from his face, watching her own fingers as she did so. “We’re going to believe we’ll be together again. If that’s what you want.”

The word
believe
grated, but he said, “It’s what I want. When?” He had to hear her tell him it wouldn’t be long.

“I don’t know. Not long. But there are things I have to do.”

The door opened without a prior knock and Detective Whittle came in. He held Cory Bledsoe by the elbow. “Excuse me,” the detective said, “but we won’t take long with this. Would you mind waiting outside, miss?”

“She’ll be fine here,” Chris said. “She needs to stay.”

Whittle, a blond man with sharp gray eyes, raised his brows but nodded. Sonnie felt his authority. He wore it low-key but comfortably. In charge. Whittle.

“We’ve been talking to Mr. Bledsoe about how he came to be in possession of a dead man’s passport and papers. We’ve been talking a lot, but he can’t seem to come up with an answer. What I’d like from you, Mr. Talon, is your permission to mention the information you shared with me about Mr. Bledsoe.”

Bledsoe showed none of the congenial assurance Sonnie expected from him. “You were in my house,” she said, never intending to say anything. “You tried to frighten me by pretending to be dead in the foyer. And you went back there again. Ena saw you.”

“I don’t know any Ena,” Bledsoe said, not looking at her. “I’ve never been in your house.”

“You must have worn a wig.”

“Sonnie,” Chris said gently, and shook his head.

Detective Whittle flexed his shoulders. “Sure you know Ena. Annette Roberts, really. You were looking for a way to get out of the country, so you paid Annette for her dead husband’s papers.”

Bledsoe raised his face. He wore the expression of a horse confronted with flames. “I didn’t.”

“Okay if I say something?” Chris asked, and the detective gave a short nod. “You didn’t pay Annette for her husband’s papers?”

“No.’

“What did you pay her for?”

“Nothing. I need to sit down.”

“Was it Romano you were paying? Paying off by terrorizing Sonnie? He and Billy wanted to drive her mad—or make it seem as if she might be mad.”

“No.”

“I found a list of women’s names in Annette Roberts’s attic. Didn’t mean a thing till I found the same names written in a notebook that belongs to Billy Keith.”

Cory’s eyes flickered rapidly between Chris and Detective Whittle. Sonnie could smell his fear.

“Your ex–tennis pro left because you wanted him to perform sex acts in front of you, didn’t he?” Chris said.

“Who told you that?” Cory panted and bared his teeth. “You don’t have any proof.”

“Remember Ginger-Pearl? She moved on. But you had plenty of other victims. You shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get Romano to work for the club. What did you do to make him go digging for dirt on you?”

“Nothing.”

Chris laughed and said, “That’s not what he says. He says the whole plan was yours. All of it.”

“It’s a damn lie,” Cory said. His face contorted. “I can’t stand it.”

Whittle eased the man onto the chair Sonnie had vacated. “Sit a minute. We’ll go and see what Romano says when the two of you are face-to-face.”

Ashen, Cory closed his eyes and shook his head no. “I don’t ever want to look at that bastard again. He did this to me. With help from her.”

“Her?” Chris said mildly.

“Billy Keith. She isn’t human. She lit her own cigarette so she could help him. All I did was tell him I knew he was getting it on with her and that”—he glanced at Sonnie--”that if he didn’t share the goods with me, I’d see if someone would pay to know about the two of them. They seemed okay with it. But when I’d finished—”

“Finished?” Whittle asked.

Cory swallowed. “She egged me on. She wanted me. But afterward they said it wouldn’t be a good time for me to start spreading rumors. I said I wouldn’t, but they worked me over anyway. Then they took me to the attic at Sonnie’s house. They said if I did what they wanted, they’d let me go and no one would ever find out about—about the stuff at the club. You know the rest. I made a mistake and got away without the passport. I’d found it in the attic. I had to go back for it. Can I lie down?”

Whittle pulled Cory to his feet and walked him slowly from the room.

“They’re going to arrest Billy, aren’t they?” Sonnie said. She also needed to lie down. “And Romano.”

“After what they did on that road, they were already headed in that direction. But I think we can now be certain who tried to make everyone—including you—question your sanity. Cruel SOBs. I told Whittle what I found in that attic. And at Ena’s. He’s smart enough to ask KWPD to deal with that end. They’ll secure everything.”

“My sister hates me,” Sonnie said. Bitterness didn’t make good company. “I wonder why—the deep reason?”

“Because she’s jealous of anyone or anything wonderful.”

“Chris, I’d like to turn some sort of key and switch it all off. Send it away but leave you and me together.”

“The key will turn in time, sweetheart.”

Whittle stuck his head into the room again. “Nurse says it’s time for your beauty sleep,” he told Chris. “Your husband’s here now, Mrs. Giacano. He’d like to talk to you.”

“No way,” Chris said. He made a move and dropped back on his pillows. “She’s not to be alone with that man. You understand, Whittle?”

“I understand what you just said, Mr. Talon.”

“Then leave her here.”

“We need you,” Detective Whittle said to Sonnie. “You can refuse to come, but we’d appreciate it if you did.”

“Don’t—”

“I have to,” Sonnie said. “There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll be kept safe.” She knew she would, but she also knew Chris was suffering both mentally and physically, and all because she’d forced him to notice her. She went to the door with the detective. “See you.”

“When?” she heard Chris mutter, but she left without answering him.

Thirty-seνen

He hadn’t gone through so much only to lose to someone else in the end. Frank ignored the plainclothes policeman who sat just inside the door twiddling his thumbs—literally.

“This place is disgusting,” he said. “I want my wife; then I want to get us both out of here.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where is she?’’ He knew the answer, and the cop knew he did. “In that man’s room. I’m not even sure she’s safe with him.” He was damn sure she wasn’t.

“She’s safe.” The guy reversed the direction of his thumbs. “Boss’s going to bring her. You heard him say he would.” Sonnie walked in ahead of Whittle.

“You might have been killed,” Frank said, and strode to pull her against him. “They planned to have you committed so they could get their hands on your money. Well, it isn’t going to happen. These guys will lock them up and throw away the key.”

Sonnie pushed him away. “You told me to go with Billy,” she said. “You insisted, and you insisted I did what she told me to do.”

He spread his hands. “I just got back from hell,
cara.
How was I to know what was going on?”

Someone tapped the door, and Whittle stepped out. The preoccupied cop got fresh interest in his job. He stood up, braced his feet apart, ands put his hands behind his back.

“Let’s go,” Frank said. “They have no right to keep us here. Let’s just leave.”

Sonnie wanted Frank to leave—alone. She wished she need never see or speak to him again.

He said, “Sonnie?” in the voice he used when he really wanted something. “That man’s no good for you. A man who came from nothing and still cannot go anywhere? What good is he? He has no job. He’s what they call a bum. And his brother is homosexual.”

Whittle came in again, this time with a policeman Sonnie hadn’t seen before. Between them, struggling and kicking, was Ena.

They deposited her on a chair and pushed her back down when she tried to get up. “You don’t have any right to touch me,” she told the police. “I haven’t done anything.” She noticed Sonnie and actually gave a weak smile.

“If you haven’t done anything, you’ll be okay, won’t you, Annette?” Whittle said. “But you do have priors, and we did tell you why we were bringing you in. And you did say you didn’t mind coming to the hospital to identify someone.”

“A stiff,” she said, and pushed at Whittle. “I thought it was a stiff. She’s Sonnie Giacano. Now can I go?”

“Sonnie’s not the one we were wondering about.”

Sonnie realized Frank was obscured from Ena by one of the policemen. It was Frank they’d brought her to see.

Frank wasn’t saying anything. He wasn’t moving.

“Do you know this gentleman?” Whittle asked Ena, indicating Frank.

She turned on the chair and her facial contortion weakened Sonnie’s already tired legs. “You,” Ena said. “I saw the latest news, Frankie.”

He turned his back on her.

It took all three policemen to stop Ena from leaping at that back. “You lied to me, you bastard. You said you’d never actually go near her again. You said the other three would do all the dirty work. All I had to do was make sure you knew what was going on. Calling Chris about Roy was going to be the last of it. Then it was going to be you and me. But you told them about me. You told them where I live so they could come and get me. If you hadn’t, at least I’d be safe.”

“Shut up, Annette,” Frank said.

“I’m not shutting tip until it suits me. Hey, you”—she poked Whittle again—”listen up. His brother and her sister pulled off all the tricks. But he was behind it. He knew what they did because Billy told him. The two of them used Romano. And Frank lied to me. He told me we’d be together if I helped. So I did. I gave up sleep to help. Making sure they only did stuff to her when she was alone. Delivering things. Putting a doll in a crib when I should already have been on the run. Made me late, that did.
And
I had to deal with her turning up with the guy she’s been sleeping with.”

Frank turned around.

“That’s right. I figured you deserved to know the truth, so I watched them with my own eyes.”

Through a hole in the ceiling, Sonnie thought.

Vaguely, she heard Whittle reading Ena her rights. She fought, but handcuffs put an end to that. Her parting words to Frank were, “I’d have stopped you from using Mitch like that if I’d known you’d leave me on my own. He didn’t even know why he was there. But I asked him to be there, so he went. I shouldn’t have done that to Mitch. I shouldn’t have.”

Ena was taken into the corridor, and Sonnie went out, too. She couldn’t stay with Frank.

The spectacle that confronted her was Chris in a wheelchair being pushed by a very pretty nurse. A hospital gown, open in the front rather than the back, was secured in place by a sheet tucked around him.

Ena glared at him as she was taken past.

“Good to see you, Ena,” Chris said. “Make sure they look after you.”

The only reaction was a snort from one of the cops. Sonnie swung away and took several steps back into the room where Frank stood. A policeman rested a restraining hand on his shoulder.

“You,” Sοnnie said. “How did you know all about Chris? How long ago did you really escape from those people?”

Chris’s casted foot drew level with Sοnnie. The nurse said, “Five minutes, Mr. Talon. That’s all you said you needed. I have to take you back.”

Sonnie said, “Thanks for bringing him, nurse. I’ll take him back.”

The nurse didn’t seem sure, but she did as Sοnnie suggested. Whittle joined them almost silently and made sure the door was closed.

Being helpless was foreign to Chris. “What’s with Ena?” he said.