The Scarlet Pepper (35 page)

Taking small, shallow breaths seemed to spare me from the worst of the pain…and panic. Who knew how long I’d be stuck in this sweltering storage shed tucked away from anything else on the White House grounds? Those tiny little breaths also had the added benefit of making my head feel light, as if it might float all the way up to the ceiling.

I closed my eyes and decided not to count the seconds. Someone would come looking for me and for Frank, if for no other reason than the fact that unaccounted staff members posed a serious security risk.

“Casey?” Francesca’s voice never sounded so good. I heard her moving around outside the shed. The metal door scraped as Francesca slid it open. “Casey? I thought you said you saw her come this way.”

“I did,” Bruce growled. “She must have left already.”

“But she told me she’d look for Annie.”

“Well, apparently she didn’t.”

“
Help
!” I wheezed. Ohhh! That hurt!

Not only that, the plea came out about as loud as one of Pearle’s or Mable’s whispers. Considering my shallow breaths, I considered that quite an accomplishment. Both the half-deaf but wholly dear matrons had quite loud whispers. As I breathed through the pain shooting up and down my chest from the effort, I prayed it had been loud enough for Francesca or Bruce to have heard.

“Come with me back to the West Wing. I have work to do. I’ll call for a car to take you home,” Bruce said. The shed’s metal door scraped closed.

“I suppose,” Francesca agreed, her voice fading as they passed the storage room.

“
Help
!” I called again. “
Ple-ease
.”

I groaned as pain bloomed in my chest. If I could wiggle a little to my left, perhaps I could take some of the weight off that one rib that really seemed to hurt.

I wiggled. Groaned. Wiggled.

And didn’t move an inch.

“Stop kicking about,” Frank grumbled from beneath me. “Oh, my head. What the hell happened? Why are you on top of me?”

I was still reeling from my attempt to move. My chest muscles weren’t too happy with me at the moment.

“Casey?” Frank groaned. “What happened?”

“I found you”—shallow breath—“lying on the ground. You”—shallow breath—“were unconscious. Passed out from”—shallow breath—“the heat.”

“It wasn’t the heat.” He sounded irritated about it. “Someone hit me. With a shovel.”

“Why? Were you trying to hurt Annie?” I managed to shift to where, if I whispered, it didn’t hurt too much to talk. “Did she fend you off?” If that was the case, help would be on its way.

“Annie? What? I don’t know anything about what’s going on with Annie. I have nothing to do with her. I don’t know why anyone would hit me. I turned and saw the shovel coming at the back of my head just before—” He groaned. “My head’s splitting. Is help coming soon?”

“No one knows we’re in here,” I said.

“Oh.” I didn’t like how that sounded. I was pinned to the ground with a man who had already killed twice that I knew of and had nearly killed Kelly. And I’d just told him that he had all the time in the world to knock me off the mortal coil.

He’s going to snap my neck and blame it on the shelving collapse
.

“Don’t even think about it,” I told him.

“What don’t you want me to think about?” he grumbled.
“Getting out of here? Because all I’m thinking about right now is how to get off this dirty floor. Don’t you gardeners ever sweep in here?” He smacked his lips. “What’s that foul taste in my mouth?”

“Fertilizer. It’s in my mouth, too.”

“It’s not going to kill me, is it?”

“Depends on how much you swallow,” I said.

That reminded me…“If I die in here, Jack will know you killed me.”

“What? Who?”

“Special Agent Jack Turner,” I said too vehemently. Needles of pain stabbed me in my chest. I closed my eyes and took several shallow breaths. When I could talk again, I whispered, “I told Jack all about your cover-up. So if you kill me, he’ll know.”

“You’re crazy. Not just a little crazy, but certifiable. You think I want to kill you? I suppose you think I killed Parker, don’t you?”

“I know you did. I heard you admit it to Bruce Dearing. You were going to handle me like you’d handled Parker.”

“With the media, doll cakes. I already told you that it’s my job. Spin the story. Why else would I be parading you in front of the media like that?”

“To ruin my reputation. To discredit me. You promised to stand by me at the Q&A, and yet when it started you were nowhere to be found. You left me to be trampled by the press.”

“I did no such thing. The garden isn’t the only political fire burning around here. I was called back to the West Wing to deal with the budget crisis, but I sent Penny.”

“She didn’t show up until it was all over,” I said. “I think you planned it that way to ruin me.”

“I didn’t plan anything.”

“And then you rushed down here to silence Annie.”

Frank groaned. “You’re crazy. None of that would help this administration one whit. If I wanted you gone, there’s much quieter ways to get rid of you.”

“Like murder?” I knew it! I knew he was guilty.

“No! Not murder. To be honest with you, I came back to the garden hoping to get a moment alone with Annie. I wanted to make sure she understood that I was doing all I could to help Francesca and Bruce and that she didn’t need to…”

“Need to what?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Frank grumbled. “I don’t know why I bother explaining anything. You’re like a broken record. Talking to you makes my head hurt. So let’s stop.”

“Fine.”

His back, which was pressed against mine, felt like an oven. Sweat stung my eyes and dripped down my neck. When would this heat wave break?

After several minutes of baking in the shed’s heat, I said, “At least you have the cool concrete under you.”

“I’d be happy to trade places.”

A long silence followed.

“Move your elbow,” he said. “It’s jamming into my back.”

“Maybe your back is jamming into my elbow. Is that better?”

“Not really.”

Jack would come looking for me soon. I had to trust that he’d wonder why I hadn’t called to badger him about what Manny found out when he questioned Jerry, Bower, and Gillis. I had to trust that he’d worry.

I simply had to trust.

To pass the time, I started to count the seconds after all. I was getting close to two thousand when the shed’s metal door scraped open.

I screwed my eyes shut tightly and sucked in a lungful of needle-sharp air.

“We’re in here!” I shouted. “Ohhh!”

“Casey?” Gordon called. “What happened in here? How did these shelves fall over?”

“
Here
,” I whispered, panting desperately as my chest paid a steep price for that deep breath I’d taken.

“Back here,” Frank shouted.

“Don’t move,” Jack said, as if that was a choice.

Jack! He came!

I knew he would.

Jack and Gordon lifted one shelving unit. Then another. Finally the last one was lifted from my chest.

Gordon grabbed the fertilizer bag.

“I thought Lorenzo was going to get rid of these,” I wheezed.

Jack gingerly lifted me into his arms just long enough to get me off Frank’s back. With great care, he placed me beside Frank on the cool concrete floor. Finally, my head could rest at a natural angle.

“Are you okay?” Jack asked.

I lightly touched my chest. “I think I bruised a rib or two.”

Jack nodded. “Don’t move,” he said again.

I turned my head and watched as he and Gordon helped Frank roll onto his back. Frank managed to sit up, but ended up cradling his head in his hands. Gordon had found a clean cloth and wiped the spilled fertilizer from Frank’s nose and mouth. He then came over and did the same for me.

“How could this happen?” he demanded. “Those shelves are heavy. I’ve never known them to tip over. Never mind. We’re getting you to the hospital.”

I nodded and closed my eyes. It was over. I was safe.

I listened as Jack spoke quietly with Frank. Slowly, blissfully, my mind started churning again. The shelves wouldn’t have tipped over by themselves. Someone had to have pushed them over. Besides, I’d left the door to the shed open, but Francesca had opened the shed door when she’d come looking for me.

Frank couldn’t have done it. He was unconscious on the floor at the time.

Gillis had been in police custody.

Bruce?

Francesca?

Who else had been around? Who else needed to keep
Parker’s investigative report from ever seeing the light of day?

“Jack?” I opened my eyes. “Jack?”

He was immediately at my side.

“I need to talk to Manny.”

When I tried to sit up, Jack gently put his hand on my shoulder and pinned me to the concrete floor with very little effort.

“You need to be still,” he said.

“I can’t. Someone just tried to kill me,” I said. “And it wasn’t Frank.”

“You think?” Frank quipped. “At least no one conked you in the head with the flat end of a shovel. Why would someone do that?”

I stared at Frank. His dark skin. His winsome good looks. His height.

The sticky note left on my desk with Frank’s name on it hadn’t been a warning. It had been a clue of where I needed to look.

“My God,” I said as I turned toward Frank. “You’re Kelly’s father.”

“
D
ON’T
waste your time with me. Go on.” Frank waved his large hand, shooing away the three-team medical staff who’d rushed to the shed. “Casey is in desperate need. Check her for head injuries. She’s saying crazy things. I’m not anyone’s father.”

My heart twisted when I heard him say that.

“Kelly nearly lost her life searching for you.” A surge of adrenaline propelled me into a sitting position. “You just don’t get it. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. Parker is dead because he got his hands on the research Kelly had gathered in her search for her birth father…
you.
Kelly had been getting threatening phone calls, telling her to back off or the killer would come after you. And now he has.”

“Proof positive that she hit her head. What a fiction she’s dreamed up. First I was a killer. Now this. I’m not anyone’s father,” Frank repeated.

“When Kelly wakes up, talk with her.” I fended off the nurse who tried to get me to lie down. She asked me a question,
perhaps many questions. I was too focused on getting Frank to listen. “Find out if her information and your history match. Can you do that much?”

“No, I can’t. It’d be a waste of time. I’m not anyone’s father.”

“Why are you being so stubborn?” I demanded.

Would
my
father reject me as soundly if I were to go looking for him? No need to wonder. I had no plans to find the murderous coward.

“What harm could come from talking to Kelly, from comparing notes?” I asked.

“You’re delusional. It’d be a waste of time.”

A doctor wearing a white coat and a kind smile knelt down beside me. He introduced himself and asked what had happened. I pointed to the shelving and quickly explained how it had fallen on me. He nodded.

“This might hurt a bit.” He lightly touched my ribs. I dropped to the floor as if he’d punched me.

“Watch it,” I wheezed.

As I lay on the concrete floor, I struggled to breathe. Not from the pain, which was quite intense now that I felt it again, but from Frank’s disinterest in the woman who could be his child. What kind of man ran from fatherhood? It wasn’t as if I were handing him a baby to raise. She was an adult, an accomplished one at that. “Can’t you keep an open mind about this? Kelly is in the hospital because of you.”

“First she thinks I killed Parker and Matthews. Now she’s saying I fathered one of the White House reporters. There has to be some kind of neurological damage causing those wild thoughts. Or mental illness. Either way, get her some help!”

Gordon paced as he wrung his hands. “These shelves should have been bolted to the floor. I can’t imagine what could have made them tip over like that.”

Jack had stepped out of the way. His gaze hardened as he scanned the shed’s interior.

Everything that followed passed in a blur. The doctor
and the nurse tossed around scary diagnoses like broken ribs, internal bleeding, and collapsed lungs. Nothing was certain. It could just be a bruise. (I’d added that last diagnosis.)

I was told not to move while they examined Frank. He objected vehemently at first, but in the end he let them lead him to the ambulance.

Poor Kelly. Her father would be at the same hospital as she, and he wouldn’t even visit her. She could die never knowing that he existed.

Perhaps it was for the best. Frank didn’t deserve Kelly. She was too good for him. She deserved to be loved, cherished—things Frank obviously didn’t know how to give.

“Please, don’t cry, Casey.” Jack squeezed my hand before two EMTs lifted me onto a stretcher. “I can’t come to the hospital with you. I’m still on duty. But I promise I’ll come by as soon as I’m able. You’re going to be okay.”