Thriller (19 page)

now and fix it later? You’re the fucking surgeon to the stars!”

George slammed his hands against his desk.

“What don’t you understand about forever? Jesus, Maura, if I

do what they want, and I get caught, I’ll be reported to the medical board and never practice again. I’ll be sued and lose everything.”

“You self-centered bastard!”

“I know this is hard for you to understand, but all I’ve ever

wanted since my rotation in med school is to be a plastic surgeon. It goes against everything I believe to intentionally destroy

a person’s face. I think we should go to the police.”

Her eyes flared.

“You do that, and I swear I’ll find a way to ruin you myself.

Don’t worry,” she added, scooping up Audra’s file, “I’ll find David

before you’re forced to put your precious reputation up against

his life.”

She slammed his office door with such force the frosted glass

shattered.

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Maura left George’s office aware that somebody might be

watching to ensure she didn’t involve the police. It was still before rush hour and there were few cars on the street. None

seemed suspicious. Shaking from fear and rage, she drove about

a mile west before pulling over at a red light. There, she rested

her head against the steering wheel and allowed herself to cry.

She was an egghead—a usually gentle scholar, not a woman of

action. Now she would have to change, and change in a hurry.

Composing herself, Maura peered into the rearview mirror and

noticed a gray Cadillac a few cars away. Its lights were on. Hadn’t

she seen the same car outside George’s office just minutes ago?

Her heart started racing. Had George’s call to her been tapped?

Were the kidnappers watching her right now? Maura slowly

eased back into traffic. Seconds later the Cadillac pulled out and

followed just a few cars behind. It was impossible to read the

plates. Fumbling in her purse, she grabbed her cell phone and

dialed.

“Hello,” answered a familiar voice.

“Hack, thank God you’re there.”

Taylor “Hack” Burgess was one of her students at Caltech—a

Ph.D. candidate specializing in nanotechnology, the creation of

submicroscopic electronic sensors with limitless possibilities. A

fellow grad student once claimed that the brilliant, spectral, antisocial Burgess put the “eek!” in geek. His potential was infinite,

assuming he could keep out of jail. His passion was the source

of his nickname, and Maura was constantly chastising him for

hacking into supposedly inaccessible systems. Burgess called it

research.

“Hack, listen carefully,” Maura said urgently. “I can’t explain

why, but I need you to do some research for me.”

“For you, anything.”

She gave him Audra Meadows’s name, address and date of

birth, and added, “I need to know anything and everything you

can find out about her. Has she been arrested? Been in court?

Chaired fund-raisers? Gotten honored? Anything at all. Get into

any system you can think of. It’s urgent.”

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“Aren’t you going to tell me to be careful?”

“Do whatever you have to.”

Maura checked the rearview. The car remained behind her.

The sun, still low in the sky, made it impossible to get a good

look at the driver. She stopped at a red light on Wiltshire. Her

fingers were white on the steering wheel.
I can’t be this close and

not know.

She grabbed her cell phone, took one deep breath and charged

out of her car just as the light turned green. Horns blared as she

raced back toward the Cadillac. She was able to see the silhouette of the driver now, but couldn’t distinguish anything except

a baseball cap and possibly sunglasses. As she approached, the

Cadillac’s tires screeched and the car lunged forward, smashing

into an Acura, which spun forty-five degrees and rammed a VW.

Maura froze as the Cadillac then squealed into reverse and

slammed into the car behind. There was the sickening crunch

of metal and the car’s air bag deployed. The Cadillac then made

a sharp left into oncoming traffic. Cars spun out in all directions.

Moments later the Caddy had disappeared down Wiltshire.

Stunned, Maura reached for her phone. Hack answered on the

third ring.

“Gray Cadillac. License plate California AZ3 something. That’s

all I got. Find a match.”

From a distance she could hear sirens approaching. She used

the time before the cruisers arrived to concoct a story of a stalled

engine in her car, and road rage on the part of the driver of the

Caddy.

Over the hours that followed, Maura was constantly checking to see if she was being followed. Finally, she decided to go

to a hotel rather than to chance that her home phone or the

house, itself, was bugged. She sent a note to George by messenger, instructing him to speak to no one, and to call her on her

hotel-room phone from a pay phone. If she was being overly

paranoid, so be it.

George had nothing new to report. Maura held her breath and

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asked again if he was prepared to honor the kidnappers’ demand

that he disfigure Audra Meadows.

“We can’t let it come to that,” was all he would say. “We just

can’t.”

She slammed down the receiver and called Hack.

“What have you learned?” she asked.

“A few things. It took a while for me to penetrate the DMV. They

must have a new security guy. Their mistake was upgrading their

SQL database to SP4 and that gave me the opening I needed.”

“Hack, I don’t care how you did it, in fact it’s better I don’t

know. Just tell me what you’ve got.”

“Okay. There are over three thousand California license plates

that start with AZ3.”

Maura’s heart sank.

“Damn.”

“Of those, I found less than twenty-five on Cadillacs. Half are

owned by rental-car companies, the other half are residential, and

none in the Los Angeles area.”

“We’re dead.”

“Not so fast. Rather than risk a trace, I used the good ol’ phone

and dialed Avis and Hertz.”

Maura perked up.

“Go on.”

“I pretended to be the police, inquiring about a hit-and-run.

Anyway, it appears we have ourselves a bit of a coincidence. Yesterday the Avis by LAX rented their 2005 gray Cadillac to someone from Meadows Productions. It’s Alec Meadows’s company. I

checked.”

Bingo! Alec Meadows. Infidelity? Audra threatening to leave

him? Whatever the reason, he so badly wanted to hurt his wife

that he was willing to threaten David’s life. But was he willing to

carry out the threat?

Maura crouched behind a row of well-manicured hedges and

scanned the Meadows estate through binoculars. She had arrived

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shortly after sunset and was now wondering if she should just

chance calling the police. The place was vast, set well away from

the main road, and surrounded by dense woods. It was possible

David was inside. If not, she was hoping for some clue as to

where he might be.

The fieldstone house was like a castle, with a three-car garage

that might have once been a carriage house. Hack had given her

a profile of Alec Meadows from data he gleaned off of several

sources. Meadows made his fortune in entertainment, producing schlock teen horror movies and several successful TV shows.

He had no criminal record. The marriage to Audra was his first,

her second. They had no children.

We have your son.

We.
Could that be significant? Who might be working with

Alec Meadows? Had he hired professionals? Maura struggled to

make sense of it all. Alec could have just as easily hired a thug

to cut up his wife. Why risk a kidnapping? Then it hit her again.

Maybe Audra wasn’t the real target after all. Maybe the real target was George.

The glow of approaching headlights pierced the darkness.

Hack was prepared to drive out and sabotage the security system so she could get into the house, but now he might not have

to. Maura darted across the drive and dived into the bushes nearest the garage. Moments later the center door lifted and a large

black Mercedes drove inside. Maura waited until the garage door

was almost closed, then rolled underneath it, continuing until

she was under the rear of the car. The exhaust pipe singed her

arm. She was biting down on her lip to keep from crying out in

pain when the Mercedes’s doors opened and two sets of legs

stepped out.

“Put this on, Audra, you bitch. Come to me when I am ready.”

The voice was unwavering, commanding, and filled with rage.

“Of course, Alec,” she responded in a shallow whisper.

Maura remained motionless until she was certain they had

gone inside. Then she climbed the short staircase and inched

open the door to the house. She was in a dark hallway from

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which she could see into the kitchen. A figure opened the refrigerator door, casting an eerie shadow. Moments later, he left.

His footsteps echoed through the cavernous home as he walked

upstairs. Maura entered the kitchen, her eyes quickly adjusting

to the dark.

She moved stealthily into the dimly lit living room. Her plan

was to hide until they were both asleep, and then to begin her

search in the basement. If there was some sort of motion-sensitive alarm, she would have to improvise.

Suddenly, there were footsteps at the top of the massive staircase. Her pulse hammering, Maura scrambled behind the sofa

and flattened out. Alec entered the living room and turned up

the recessed lighting over the fireplace. He was no more than ten

feet from where she lay. Two paces to his right and he would be

staring right at her.

Maura could now see into the dining room through an open

archway. The huge table was draped almost to the floor in an offwhite tablecloth, and featured a magnificent centerpiece of

freshly cut flowers.

“Audra, get down here!” Alec shouted.

He crossed to the base of the stairs.

Now! Go!
Maura commanded herself.

Soundlessly, she crawled to the table and slid between two

massive chairs and under the cloth. By pressing her cheek against

the plush Oriental rug, she could peer out through a three-inch

gap. She saw Alec’s bare feet enter the room, followed closely by

his wife’s.

“You look like a little whore in that outfit,” Alec snapped. “I

like a slut. I like that a lot.”

There was a sharp slap, and Audra cried out.

“Please, Alec, not tonight. I can’t.”

“You love it, bitch. You know it, and I know it.”

There was another slap, this one harder than the last. Audra

dropped from the force of the blow, landing just a few feet from

where Maura was watching. Their eyes actually could have met,

but didn’t. The woman was clearly shaken.

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“Get up!” Alec demanded. “I’m already hard.”

“Alec, please.”

Every neuron cried out to save Audra from this monster, but

Maura remained in a fetal position underneath the elegant table.

“Get on the table,” he commanded. “I love the way you look

right now. You’re beautiful…so beautiful. Tomorrow, after your

surgery, you’re going to look even better.”

Maura covered her mouth and gasped inwardly. Her calf muscle knotted from the tension and strain of staying in one position. The searing pain felt as though it was being stabbed with

a dull knife. She bit her knuckles to keep still and quiet, and to

blot from her mind the horror of what was transpiring above her.

For an excruciatingly long time there was no letup in the fury

of Alec’s attack. Audra’s simpering cries had no effect. Finally,

there were only the sounds of two people struggling for breath.

Alec Meadows’s rape of his wife was complete.

If Maura could have killed the man without jeopardizing her

son, she well might have. When he was ready, Alec pushed away

from the table, fixed his clothing and ambled upstairs. Audra remained where she was for a time, whimpering and totally spent.

Maura felt deeply connected to her. Both of them were suffering

greatly by Alec Meadows’s design.

It was nearly four-thirty when Audra finally headed upstairs.

Maura remained concealed. After a few minutes, she cautiously

crawled out from under the table and stretched her throbbing

calf. Then she conducted a fruitless search of the downstairs and

located the door to the basement, which was by the kitchen. The

vast, poorly lit space was unfinished concrete, dank and creepy.

There were scattered boxes and old furniture, but no sign of

David, and nothing that tied Alec to his kidnapping.

Disheartened, Maura considered then rejected the notion of

waiting until the house was empty to search the upstairs. She was

heading out when she noticed a door at the far end of the basement. It opened into an unfinished bathroom with a small van-
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ity, sink, mirror and toilet. Inside the vanity she found a blue cosmetics kit containing several plastic vials of pills. Valium, Zoloft,

Prozac, Xanax, Effexor—all prescriptions, and all in the name

of Audra Meadows. Most of them were empty, but there was a

good supply of both Effexor and Xanax. Maura knew those medications well. During and after her divorce, she suffered from depression. Effexor made her feel logy, and highly addictive Xanax