The P.U.R.E. (33 page)

“This is just not my night,” I muttered.

I searched the lobby, looking for any other signs of life but, finding none, opted to return to the third floor.

The elevator stood with its door open in welcome, right where I’d left it. After hopping on, I pressed three, but the button wouldn’t light up. I tried four, but no go, and the same for two. That’s when I noticed the sign above the buttons that said, ‘Code required after 8 PM and Weekends’. Had Jon punched in a code and I hadn’t noticed? He must have.

I grumbled and headed to the front door to peer outside, thinking maybe the guard was simply having a smoke break he might interrupt for me.

Traffic at that hour, in that part of town, and on a Sunday was nearly non-existent. The downtown restaurants and nightlife lay many blocks away.

I scanned up and down the streets, wondering who owned the handful of cars parallel parked against the curb in the expired meter spots.

One caught my eye—a white Mini Cooper with the vanity tag ‘LS-CPR’—parked on a side street but still visible from my vantage point.

Hold the phone!

I ran out of the building and tore down the street toward my employer’s building. Thank goodness the guard recognized me and let me in despite my not having my ID badge.

In the elevator, I punched fifty-five, Bob’s and Jeff’s floor. I’d stay out of sight and see if I could find Jon.

When the elevator doors opened, he was at the keypad near the suite door.

“Gayle! What the hell are you doing here? Dammit! I told you to stay put. You shouldn’t be—”

I waved off his barrage of well-intentioned but futile scoldings. “Alice! Marilyn’s friend! Her car! Parked outside! On the street!” My words came like quick bites of air as I tried to catch my breath from having run the entire distance to the office.

He frowned. “Near the lawyers offices?”

I placed my hand on my chest, my racing heart slowing to its normal speed. “It’s on a side street in between there and here but closer to the Lawless office. I remembered it from Ron Fein’s fact sheet because she has a vanity plate on a Mini Cooper—LS-CPR, Alice Cooper! Get it?” I paused, but Jon offered no insight. “Why would Alice be here?”

Jon shook his head, his lips pressed together. “I have no idea. I just talked to her, and she said she’d neither seen nor heard from Marilyn.”

“Huh. Okay, well I just thought you needed to know.” He returned to the keypad that I noticed was missing its cover and appeared to be tethered to some gadget he held in his hand. “Have you been trying all this time to get in?”

“I had to help hack into Anderson’s computer system on fifty-one first. The FBI is seizing computer records and equipment from the server room.” Lights from a readout flickered on the device he held in his hand. “They changed the code.”

“Oh! What are you doing then?” I leaned in to get a closer look, but Jon held me back.

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m breaking in.” He put his body between me and the keypad.

“Do you have a search warrant?”

“Yes.” Jon smirked at me when seconds later, the door lock clicked.

“You did it!” I patted him on the back. Smart was so sexy on him.

He drew his gun from his shoulder holster and pushed me behind him as we crept down the hall. Darkness cloaked the floor except for the exit lights until we turned the corner near Jeff’s office. A glow emanated from the vicinity.

“Wait in here.” Jon nudged me inside a conference room. I frowned and prepared to protest, but he kissed my objections into silence. He held a finger to my lips and mouthed “shh.” I bit back my protests, nodding.

Jon hugged the wall, and after leaning into Jeff’s office first, he slipped inside. I scanned the hallways, watching and listening for any signs we weren’t alone but found none. I had almost concluded our trip to the office had been another dead end when Jon came running back. His face wore the ashen shade and wide-eye blinks of shock.

“Jeff’s dead! He’s sitting in his chair with gunshot wounds to his head and chest. He couldn’t have been killed more than a few minutes before I got off the elevator, or I’d have heard the shots.”

Jon had his cell phone out to call when the service elevator bell rang in the distance. He snapped the phone shut and sprinted toward the sound with me in pursuit. We arrived as the doors closed their last few inches.

“Come on!” He grabbed my hand, and we ran to the main elevators. Fortunately, my elevator car hadn’t been called away since I’d stepped off; the doors opened immediately.

Jon pushed the button for the lobby. “The other elevator opens to the loading dock in the parking garage. I’m taking a chance that’s where he’s headed.”

“Where who’s headed? Bob? You think Bob did this?” I asked as we descended. The evidence pointed to Bob, but I didn’t believe he’d committed any of the murders. I couldn’t say why exactly other than he just didn’t seem the type. That, and why was Alice’s car downtown? What did we even know about Marilyn’s friend?

“Bob or Doug or someone else we’ve overlooked or missed entirely.”

When we arrived at street level, we bolted past the security guard and ran to the loading dock. The service elevator waited, doors open, but its last occupant had escaped.

“Shit!” Jon paced in a circle and rubbed his hand on the back of his neck.

The doors to the service elevator began to close, but I jumped on and pulled Jon with me. “Don’t push any buttons,” I said. “Let’s see where it goes.”

We didn’t have to wait long because we started moving as soon as the doors closed. The car rose, and the floor indicator flashed through the numbers. I yawned to pop my ears. We slowed at fifty-three and stopped right back at fifty-five.

“Duck down tight against this wall,” he whispered, his gun drawn and pointed.

The doors opened.

After a slight pause, she stepped on.

Jon leaped forward and pinned Marilyn to the wall of the elevator. He slammed her arm against the hand railing, and she dropped the gun she carried. I scrambled to pick it up, but Jon yelled, “Don’t touch the gun, Gayle! We want only her prints on it.”

I kicked her weapon to the corner instead and stood guard as Jon recited her rights.

“Marilyn?” I shook my head. “Why?“

She stared ahead in stony silence. The bad guys only spilled their guts in cartoons, rarely in real life without an attorney present.

“For Libby?” I asked her.

She clenched her jaw, but that tiny muscle movement was enough to betray her—to me anyway.

“Leslie and Jeff plundered Aphrodite from the inside out and hurt Libby in the process. Kenneth was even worse. You were fine playing informant for months when Jeff betrayed and looted other companies, but when he went after Aphrodite, you got tired of waiting for the FBI to spring its trap, right?”

Jon kept his gaze on me as I spoke, amusement reflected in the lift of his brows and the slight part of his lips. He either found my theory preposterous, or he thought my attempt to prod a confession from Marilyn ridiculous.

The doors opened to the lobby.

As I stepped off, he said to Marilyn, “Thank goodness she was on my team and not yours or Jeff’s.”

44

My stomach growled around eleven when we finally finished with the police and other FBI-related interrogations.

Jon pulled me into his arms and gave me a comforting hug. “It’s been another hell of a day. Let’s go get something to eat.”

“What about Bob?”

“He’s helpless without Jeff. Plus he’s got his daughters to anchor him here. We know where they are and have their location under surveillance if he tries to kidnap them and make a run for it.”

“What about Alice? Where’s she at, and do you think she’s an accomplice?”

“She was at home with Marilyn’s car parked in her driveway. Said she had no idea Marilyn had swapped cars with her. I tend to believe she had nothing to do with any of this.”

Jon pulled into the parking lot of a brewpub a few minutes later and treated me to a late dinner fit for the working class mistresses of Dallas. After enough wine to unlock my tongue altogether, I said, “I need you to be honest with me about something that’s been bothering me.”

“I guess I owe you that much.”

“While on your computer the other day, I opened up the browser you claimed was corrupted, you liar, and saw where you had been doing a search on my brother, Henry. Why did you investigate him? What were you looking for?”

He screwed up his face for a second. “Honestly, that was nothing more than my obsessive curiosity about you and anyone associated with you. Nothing sinister, I promise. I did a search on all of your family members.” He laughed and gave me his trademark sheepish grin. “Hell, I even found that jerk, Jason Kirkpatrick, who jilted you in college. I found Henry the most interesting because I ran into several dead ends with him, probably because of security blocks.”

“Maybe because he works for the government and has security clearance? Which reminds me. He left me a message saying they had done a routine security update on him and found something unusual concerning me. You know anything about that?”

Jon dropped his head. “You’re probably going to be angry or weirded out when I explain.” He raised up high enough to reveal a guilty half smile.

“Am I now? Let’s hear it then.”

“I put a security block on you.”

“What’s a security block?”

“Shit, I could get in a lot of trouble for this. My all-consuming obsession with you is going to be the death of me one day. It means anyone requesting background check information on you has to submit their paperwork through the FBI first, which tends to stall things. I suspect your brother’s upgrade included low level checks of his family members. They must have run into your block and experienced a delay. I’m sorry. I’ll take it off.”

“Why did you put a block on me?”

“To protect you.”

“Okay. I can sort of understand why in light of what we’ve been through lately, but what’s the weird part?”

“Uh … well, the only way I can put a block on someone without their authorization is if they are a dependent family member.”

“Like a child?”

“Or a spouse.” He squinted as if bracing for protestations of outrage.

“Oh.”

“I only did what I thought necessary to protect you and to plan for our future. Please don’t let this freak you out. I’m not trying to pressure you or anything.”

“The FBI thinks we’re married?”

“No. They think we’re engaged. It was no big deal to swap your name for Thalia’s.”

I held my tongue for a bit and avoided eye contact as I thought over what he’d said. With the same immediacy as a lightning strike, I had my epiphany.

Jon had snuck in a centimeter at a time and inexorably taken root in me, exactly like he said he would. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when I crossed the line from friendship to love any more than I knew when we’d moved from colleagues to friends. We’d been on a continuum since the first day we met. That he’d realized we’d end up in a romantic relationship sooner than me meant absolutely nothing because our heads and hearts had finally converged.

His gaze stayed locked on my face.

“Believe it or not, I’m not freaked out. I think you’re a very wise and discerning man, Mr. Cripps.”

He drew his lips back into a slow Texan smile and clinked wine glasses with me. “To the future Mrs. Cripps.”

“May she be me …
someday
.” I wiggled my brows at him and downed the remainder of my wine in a single gulp.

45

I pressed close to the bedroom door, trying to make out Jon’s words. He was talking to his buddy—the same guy who cuffed Ron Fein after I beat the snot out of him almost a year earlier—the latest news from Dallas their subject matter. Jon had declared the call official business I wasn’t supposed to hear and shut me out, keeping his voice far too low and muffled during the good parts.

The door shot away from my ear as it opened with a whoosh. Jon stood with his cell phone pressed to his ear, shaking his head at me. “I gotta go now, Charlie. Someone’s being very bad.”

“I was just—”

“I know what you were ‘just’, Gayle, but if you can squelch your Nancy Drew curiosity for a second, I’ll let you read Charlie’s email.”

Jon walked toward his computer.

I whispered, “Yay!” and did a happy dance. Of course, he turned and caught me. One of his killer smiles preceded a chuckle, reminding me again why I loved him so much.

“Looks like Marilyn is going to take the plea bargain the DA offered her in exchange for a full confession.” Jon finished printing the email for me to read.

“Oh, yeah? Charlie shared the whole poop with you, did he?”

“Here, read for yourself.” He handed me the note.

Hey buddy! How’s DC? Has Gayle said ‘yes’ yet?

I paused to wink at Jon. “If he only knew, eh?”

I hope you haven’t forgotten about us poor slobs slaving out in the field here in the trenches now that you’re back at Quantico.

I knew you’d be interested in hearing the latest intel about the Anderson-Blakely ring and Marilyn Driver’s trial. Turns out there won’t be one because she signed a confession in exchange for the DA not seeking the death penalty. I got a copy of it, and I hate to tell you, but you’ve lost your bet with Gayle. Marilyn was a lovesick fool for Libby Jameson. She popped Leslie Turner because Leslie somehow discovered that Marilyn killed Kenneth Petrovich. Leslie had been threatening to tell Libby and go to the police unless Marilyn sabotaged the FBI’s investigation. Leslie knew about the ring, and didn’t want her gravy train derailed. Hubby Bob had no idea she knew and was shocked to learn she’d been blackmailing Marilyn. This guy was a partner?

We recovered a cool mill in Jeff Hardinger’s Swiss bank accounts. Good work cracking those open, Jon. Bob had another quarter of a mill he voluntarily turned over. Quite the cooperative guy, your Bob.

Tell Gayle that in exchange for his testimony against Bob, Ron Fein admitted he’d trashed her apartment. We had to drop Doug Martin’s vandalism charges, however. Although he was a DNA match, Ron gave us an interesting account how and why the DNA ended up on Gayle’s skirt. I’ll tell you over drinks sometime cause it’s kind of disgusting.