Masquerade (33 page)

“I tried to get them to make you DCI,” she went on, lost in
misery. “Three years ago, the previous administration. I tried. Really I did, Hughes. I went to my cousin, the Vice-President, and he talked to the President.” She wilted back into her chair. Her words slowed. “Don't look so upset, Hughes. Please. You're good. You should be head of Central Intelligence—”

“You fool! You meddling old bitch! That shows how little you know me. I turned them down. I
like
my situation now!”

He stalked away to the front door where his limo waited. He needed no promotion, no star in Langley's foyer, no more visits with the President. The last thing he wanted was visibility.

All he needed was the corpse of the Carnivore. Once that was accomplished, G
RANDEUR
was certain!

He left without a glance back at the imposing home he'd so angrily coveted for nearly forty years.

Bunny Bremner considered running after him. She could apologize, but then, apologies just made him nastier. She stared at her Scotch. She had a feeling he'd have been disappointed to know she hadn't had even a sip. She wondered why he took such pleasure in thinking her weak and stupid.

Restless, she stood. She was shaky, but more from fear of losing him than from yesterday's alcohol. She rang for the butler. She'd liked Marilyn Michaels. Marilyn had been nice to her. Marilyn had bought her lunch and listened with interest. Even respect. She ordered the Mercedes brought around.

She remembered the first time she'd seen Marilyn. It was in the little market in town. Marilyn had mentioned later she'd been sending a fax somewhere. Buddy was a careful young man, and she guessed he might keep records of such things. In any case, it was worth a try. Hughes wasn't going to help, so she'd just have to find Marilyn herself.

Bunny Bremner walked out of Carr's Real Estate Sales and Rentals. She'd had the most amazing time. From Buddy at the market, she'd learned the woman she knew as Marilyn Michaels had sent two faxes to the
Washington Independent
. But the name
the woman had used to sign for them was Leslee Pousho. Then Bunny had found Jimmy Carr in his real estate office, working late. He liked to be called James, but she'd known his family far too long for that. With some prompting Jimmy had told her he'd rented a cabin to Ms. Pousho. Next she'd wormed out of him the address and directions.

Bunny was pleased. She stopped in the village café where she'd lunched with Marilyn. She forced herself to eat a toasted croissant stuffed with sautéed mushrooms and melted Gruyère cheese. She looked longingly at the bar, but something told her she'd better wait.

In the pastoral Virginia mountains, Leslee Pousho endured a world of pain. Colors melded into a vast sea of black. Sound and light were hard-edged acts of violence. She tried to concentrate on her memories of Lucas. She'd summon his image and hold on as if it were a life preserver.

Sometimes she heard herself crying. Sometimes she screamed.

They hadn't hit her in a long time. How long, she wasn't sure. But when she cracked open her eyes, she could see the long shadows of evening. Outdoors, birds sang. She could almost smell another beautiful day coming to a close among the bucolic trees and grasses beyond her personal hell.

Bremner's two men sat at her little wood table, drinking coffee in front of the kitchen window. The aroma drifted over to her, and she ached with every cell for a cup. For innocence. For a few days ago when she was just another reporter whose only problem was a lover who was blindly committed to the CIA.

She closed her eyes and found merciful sleep.

She hit the floor face down with a teeth-loosening thud. Pain radiated through her, echoed in a hundred places that already hurt terribly.

Someone grabbed her feet and dragged her toward the front door. The rough wood floor shot needlelike slivers into her belly and chest. At last she was on the porch. She gasped for air. Her body burned as if it were on fire. They turned her over
and threw a bucket of icy water over her. She coughed and gagged.

More icy water. It burned down her nostrils and into her throat. She couldn't breathe! She sputtered and gagged. They turned her over again. Someone was tearing off her clothes.

And then suddenly they stopped. She lifted her swollen eyelids. A car had arrived. She could hear its powerful engine. The car was small, red, and sporty. One of the men dragged her back toward the cabin door, while the other trotted down the steps toward the figure who was emerging from it.

At the foot of the long driveway Bunny Bremner caught a glimpse of something pale and heavy being dragged from the porch into the rustic cabin. In the dusk, she couldn't see exactly what it was, but as she got out of her Mercedes she saw Marilyn Michaels's—Leslee Pousho's—Ford Taurus parked in the driveway above her. Next to it was a dark green Volvo.

She walked up the steep drive on her high heels, an awkward maneuver. She held her purse in both hands close to her chest, so she could watch her feet. She should have put on her Nikes, but then she couldn't have worn this chic new lavender dress with the wide belt and the cunning Peter Pan collar. Peter Pan collars were back, and she was glad.

A man of medium height with graying hair, an ordinary face, a few days of stubble, and a peculiar vacancy in his eyes came down the path toward her.

“I've come to see Marilyn,” she announced.

“Who?” He looked puzzled. He stopped three feet above her, an obstacle between her and the cabin.

“Marilyn Michaels.” She brushed past him and continued up the drive. “Perhaps you know her as Leslee Pousho.”

“Whoa! Wait a minute, lady!” He held her arm firmly. “There's no one here by that name. This is private property. You'd better get back in that fancy car of yours and split before I call the cops.”

She looked him up and down. There was a faint, unpleasant
odor about him. Body odor, she decided. And his trousers and shirt were badly wrinkled, as if he'd slept in them.

“Young man,” she said severely, “I happen to know that's Leslee Pousho's car. Also, this is the cabin Jimmy Carr rented to her. She and I had a coffee date this afternoon, which she wasn't able to attend. I want to arrange another appointment.”

She tried to pull her arm free.

“You want to have a cup of coffee with her?” The man stared, astonished.

Perhaps he was hard of hearing. She repeated her intention. When he laughed, she suddenly understood. He considered the idea ludicrous. Well, he was ludicrous in his rumpled clothes, untidy stubble, and body odor.

“Release me!” she snapped and yanked on her arm.

He pulled her back down the hill toward her Mercedes. “Go home, lady. You've got the wrong place. There's no one here you want to see.”

“Nonsense.” She smacked her purse in his face and started back up the drive in her high heels.

“Marilyn!” she called to the cabin. “Marilyn! It's Bunny. I've come for a visit!”

Suddenly a small, hard, circular object rammed into her back. Her mind registered the information—Why, it was a pistol! The disgusting man had stuck a gun in her back! Then, before she could protest, he wrenched back her left arm and pinned it against her waist.

She stumbled forward. She managed to catch her purse in her free hand before it fell. He lifted her back up with her pinned left arm. Pain shot red hot into her brain.

“How dare you!” She was shocked. “Do you know who I am!”

“Honey, I don't care if you're the Tooth Fairy.”

His laughter gave her chills. She had misjudged him and the situation. Marilyn must be in grave trouble. Then the unthinkable occurred to Bunny: Her own life could be in danger.

Chapter 37

The sky was dark now, the hot summer air moist and soft. Sarah stood deep in the shadows of the massive stone building of Je Suis Chez Moi across from the brightly lighted Café Justine. The charcoal-colored gauze of the Paris night wrapped around her and sudden uncertainty drenched her with sweat.

She tugged on the straps of her day pack, felt the weight of the Beretta inside, and thought of the blond youth she'd killed in Denver. Had she gone mad? She was setting herself up to kill again, or even to die. She wanted to run away from her past and her future. Leave Paris now, get the help of friends in Europe to redo her face, and disappear until all this about the Carnivore had ended. Blount McCaw would help her. She had many old friends who'd help.

A trickle of sweat slid down the side of her face. The Carnivore was nothing to her. Hughes Bremner, Gordon Taite, and the Carnivore should be stopped by professionals.

She was just a profiler of celebrities, for God's sake, who happened to have had some tradecraft training. She didn't have the heart or the dedication of an Asher Flores or a Gordon Taite.

God forbid she ever enjoyed this awful work.

She should call Asher, tell him about Je Suis Chez Moi, rely on his experience to decide what to do.

She stared along the shadowed driveway to the stately Greco-Roman mansion. It was a solid stone fortress. She was crazy to even think of breaking into such a bastion.

And yet—She breathed deeply. Was retreating what she—Sarah Walker, not Liz Sansborough—always did?

Two years ago she'd walked out on her last lover. They'd lived together only a few months, but already she'd felt imprisoned. Her life with men had been one long series of honeymoons. No relationship ever evolved past that stage, and so she'd come to believe nothing but caged boredom lay beyond for her. Her parents' marriage mystified her. How could anyone stay in love that long? Stay excited and thrilled?

She'd left that last man, as she'd left the others, or she'd forced them to leave her. And as she'd walked out the door, this man, this enemy who'd once been her dear friend and lover, had cursed and blamed her: “The only real freedom is commitment to someone or something. To anything! What you're missing is inside you. Not me. Until you can make a real commitment, you're nothing!”

As if it had just happened, she felt the bite of his accusation and the pain of wondering whether it was true. There were advantages to having no memory—

And then she saw a large, black Cadillac turn into the spa's cobbled drive. She shrank back farther into the shadows. The Cadillac didn't stop at the side door, nor did it return there to wait for a client who was finished and ready to leave. This was the first time a vehicle had remained at the rear of the mansion. A vehicle under the cover of night.

Suddenly she felt impotent. Everything around her, her very life, had turned upside down. In a sense, she'd already died. They'd raped her mind. Stolen her identity. There was no greater crime than the destruction of a human identity. And without knowing who you were, you were dead. She could never be the old Sarah again. And with a sudden burst of clarity she realized she no longer wanted to be the old Sarah, the woman who abandoned relationships before they could grow. Who preferred being the interviewer so she had the illusion of control. A celebrity profiler whose most enduring accomplishment was to present gossip as news. Who had remained an observer because she'd always felt powerless to change the course of events—

With renewed determination, she took her Beretta from her backpack and slipped the small vial of delirium, still wrapped in a paper towel, into a pocket of her jeans. Hugging the mansion's wall so anyone looking out a window above would be less likely to see her, she moved lightly down the cobblestones of the drive. It angled left, and soon she saw the Cadillac again. It was parked near the double doors at the rear: Facing toward her, lights out, engine running, and trunk wide open.

The mansion's huge rear doors were open, spilling out yellow light in a rectangle next to the Cadillac, providing enough illumination for her to detect shadowy flower beds, bushes, trees, and cars parked at the edges of a grand turnaround.

No one was visible in the turnaround or inside the doorway. Sarah dashed toward the Cadillac, squatted at the side farthest from the doorway. She listened, but all she heard was the quiet growl of the idling engine. She lifted her eyes above the hood, still saw no one, and slid around to look inside the trunk.

Nausea swept over her. She swallowed and forced herself to look directly at the body. . . .
To see the blond youth's head explode into the bloody Denver night. . . . To feel the jolt of the Beretta's discharge in her arm and shoulder. . . . To know the pain . . . the awesome power . . . of taking a life
—

She fought down the nausea, shook her head to clear the unwanted, frightening visions. Liz Sansborough would never feel this way, would never allow herself to risk the loss of time, and the danger that could bring.

But Sarah Walker agonized and regretted.

She inhaled sharply, made herself focus on the bloody corpse in the trunk. It was a young woman, a brunette with upswept hair and pleading in her face. She'd been laid on a sheet of black plastic. Ruby blood and tissue formed a thick carpet in the center of her white T-shirt. She must have been an employee, because she wore an all-white uniform and a blood-coated name tag.

She had to be dead, but Sarah rested her fingers against the carotid artery in a kind of blind hope. Death wasn't something she'd ever accept easily. But there was no pulse, no life.

Fury engulfed her, violent and black. What was wrong with the world? How could butchery like this happen? She had no doubt the death of this woman was connected to whatever Bremner, Gordon, and whoever else it was at Langley were doing. And now, somehow, the Prime Minister of France might be involved! Her pulse hammered, and her breath came in rasps—

She heard voices! They were inside the mansion and coming closer. She swiftly unpinned the name tag from the dead woman and melted back into the darkness between two parked cars.

Within seconds two muscular men wearing white T-shirts and trousers appeared, carrying out a small, limp man as bloody as the dead woman. They fitted him into the trunk next to her, careful to keep both corpses on the thick plastic lining. They slammed the trunk shut.