The mansion on La Gracia in Rancho Santa Fe was empty. The housekeeping staff was gone for the night; Garrett detested strangers, even servants, living under his roof. The caterers had cleaned and packed up after the last guest left. Tristan’s art was still displayed, to be picked up Monday morning by the new Art Center that was to benefit from this fund-raiser.
But it was more than his need to be alone. Tomorrow was special.
Monica. She died eight years ago tomorrow-no, today. Twenty-six minutes from now marked the true anniversary of her death.
Shaking his head, Garrett strode to the library and poured himself a drink. He knocked it back. It had not been murder. Monica had already been dead inside, her body black with cancer.
Garrett, please don’t let me suffer anymore.
She would have been dead in months-or weeks. There was no hope for her.
The thick tumbler shattered in his hand. Garrett startled, stared at the blood dripping from his palm onto the white carpet.
He hadn’t lost his temper once since that last time years and years ago. Before the cancer, before the murder.
Dr. Garrett Bowen taught people control because he was in control. That he hadn’t felt his hand squeeze the glass to breaking point unnerved him.
He cleaned up the glass, then wrapped his hand in a small towel he’d found in the bar area and stared at the blood drying into his carpet.
Thump.
The sound came directly above him. He frowned. Could there be an intruder? Maybe a drunken guest who had gone to sleep in one of the bedrooms. He couldn’t think of anyone off the top of his head, but over two hundred people had come in and out of his house this evening.
He walked upstairs and looked in all the bedrooms. Empty. The house was far too big for him, but it was an architectural masterpiece, an exquisite minimalist structure that had been written up and photographed in numerous magazines.
His wife had designed and decorated the house. It was a tribute to his long-dead wife Janine that he never moved. To their timeless love.
His den.
He’d seen Connor Kincaid earlier that evening. That Kincaid wasn’t on the guest list, and he left before everyone else, but Garrett was certain he must have come in with Dillon Kincaid and Julia Chandler. Now, he wondered, how long had Connor been in the house?
Garrett opened the door to his office.
Nothing appeared to have been disturbed, but he smelled something…perfume. Marisa? No, it wasn’t her scent and she would have no reason to come up to his office. Still, a lingering female presence hung about the room.
He booted up his computer. He wasn’t savvy enough to be able to tell if someone had looked through his files or e-mail, but he could at least make sure he had in fact removed all hints of Wishlist on his system.
Everything was in order. He was okay. Not that he wouldn’t be okay if everything came out. True, Bowen’s approach to anger management wasn’t yet accepted among his colleagues, but it worked. He’d been tracking the success of the program for over three years, and was documenting his findings to obtain needed funding and support to reproduce the program in a controlled university setting. He’d already been talking to the head of psychiatry at one of the most prestigious universities in the country, which was also affiliated with a top-ranked accredited hospital that specialized in mental health. Wishlist would catapult Garrett Bowen to the top of his field. Those who called him foolish and derided his theories would bow down to his brilliance. He’d turn every anger management program in the country into his model and finally receive the acknowledgment he richly deserved.
He needed to better assess prospective members, but he was working on the few glitches in the system. That’s why he was doing this in the first place, to fix any potential problems before he took his theories to the industry.
He wasn’t about to allow holier-than-thou Dillon Kincaid or his PI brother to stop him.
Except for the scent of perfume, Garrett was confident no one had gone through his office. Perhaps one of the guests had come in to powder her nose, or was just nosy.
Garrett left his office and walked into his former patient Faye Kessler, who was standing just outside his door.
“Faye?” Faye shouldn’t be here. He hadn’t been counseling her for months, and she’d always unnerved him just a bit. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”
“Cami let me in,” she said, her voice oddly flat.
“Camilla?” Why? He stepped back. A tickle of fear crept up his spine. Call the police. “Where’s Camilla?”
“She left with her mother, of course,” Faye said. “You saw her leave.”
Faye’s monotone troubled him, but it was her eyes-flat, emotionless, old-that increased Garrett’s trepidation.
He tried to smile as he walked along the upper balcony overlooking the foyer below. Except for dim lighting in wall sconces perfectly placed twelve feet apart along the rounded hall, no lights were on in the house. Hadn’t he left the foyer lights on? He generally did. Now everything was cast in odd shadows, and the foyer looked like a bottomless pit. “How have you been?”
She touched his sleeve. “Look.”
He reluctantly stopped walking. He couldn’t let her sense his fear. He was a trained psychiatrist, he told himself, if she planned on doing something, he could talk her out of it.
As he watched, she turned around and pulled up her shirt. Her back was covered with scars, old and new. Her back. Someone was cutting her. She was allowing it. He had thought she stopped. For the last year, he’d believed she was clean.
How could he have been so wrong?
She turned around and he caught a glimpse of her braless breasts, also defiled. Who had done it to her? Why had she allowed it?
“Who hurt you?”
Her laugh was borderline insane. “You never understood. You pretended to, and I let you think you got it, but you never realized the power.” She pulled down her shirt, took a step toward him. Unconsciously, he took a step back and found himself backed against the balcony railing.
A door opened to his left, at the top of the staircase he was trying to reach. Skip Richardson emerged.
Panic hit Garrett Bowen head-on. Why were these two former patients in his house?
Now he didn’t care whether they saw he was scared. He needed to get to his bedroom and lock the door. There he could hit the panic button that would bring the police and alert his private security company.
He ran down the hall, away from Faye and Skip. Ahead, his bedroom door opened.
Robert Haxton held a gun, its muzzle aimed at Garrett’s chest.
“What’s up, Doc?” Robert grinned at his poor joke.
“What do you want? Money for your drugs? You’re still on drugs, aren’t you?”
“You should know. You got me hooked on them.”
“I did no such thing,” Garrett said, a newfound fury breaking through his fear.
“Oh, yeah. You’re a fuckin’ pusher. Ritalin. Then Wellburtin when I turned thirteen. And the downers and the uppers and everything in between.”
“You were depressed and ADHD,” Garrett said. “You attacked your father.”
“You never believed me!” Robert screamed, his voice echoing in the dark foyer below. “You believed that bastard when he said I’d thrown the first punch. Bull-fucking-shit.”
“You were delusional when first brought to me, and-” but a tickle of doubt niggled in Garrett’s mind. Robert’s anger had been attributed to ADHD coupled by losing his mother at the age of eight. And George Haxton was a pillar of the community. He was mild-mannered and had defended himself when his son attacked him.
Hadn’t he?
“Robert, we can talk about this.”
“No talking. You didn’t believe me then, you’ll only lie to me now because I have the gun.” He raised it and put his finger on the trigger.
“Stop!” He didn’t want to die. “What do you want? Money?” That was ridiculous. Skip, Faye, Robert-they were all from wealthy families. “Drugs? I don’t keep drugs here, but we can go to my office-” Anything to buy time until he could alert someone he was in danger. There were panic buttons in key parts of the house. His garage. The front door. His den…
“Drugs? Money?” Robert laughed. “And I used to be afraid that you could read my mind. The only thing that will make us happy is to jump up and down on your grave.”
Garrett turned to run, away from the gun, heading for the stairs.
Skip was right behind him, his hand outstretched. He had a gun, too.
Not a gun. A Taser. Garrett ran right into it.
Deep electric pain radiated throughout his body as a powerful energy pulsed through his clothing, into his body, causing him to lose control of his limbs. Five seconds might as well have been five hours. Skip pulled the device away and Garrett collapsed against Faye. She was surprisingly strong and held him up. No. Not just Faye. Robert was there, too.
His body frozen, the pain made Garrett’s teeth clench, his muscles tighten. He couldn’t move. Move, Garrett, move! But he was paralyzed.
Faye whispered in his ear, her voice low and warm. “Cami cut me. And she sucked my blood.”
“No,” he tried to say, but he couldn’t make his voice work.
The boys pulled something rough over his neck. The lights came on, too bright, and Garrett squeezed his eyes closed. Something scraped his neck, but the pain was minimal compared to the throbbing that radiated through his body. He was beginning to feel again.
He opened his eyes. The chandelier swayed in front of him. A rope was attached to the base.
He reached for his neck. Noose.
“No, please, no!” His voice was weak.
“Get his legs, Robbie,” Skip said. “We need to do this fast, the shock is wearing off.”
Garrett felt himself lifted up onto the railing. He flailed, kicked at the teenagers trying to kill him. He got Faye in the chest as he tried to grab on to the railing to steady himself.
“Bastard!” Robbie gave him a shove.
Then Garrett was falling, down, down, down. Flashes of light. He barely made out the three silhouetted figures at the railing above him. He tried to reach the noose around his neck, take it off, but everything happened too fast.
He couldn’t scream.
He heard the snap of his neck breaking as his body jerked the noose tight. His vision faded, and his body swung back and forth, back and forth as his lungs fought for air that did not come.
“An eye for an eye, Garrett.”
That voice! He was dying, he couldn’t have heard her voice.
“Good-bye.”
He’d wanted to be there when Garrett Bowen swung from the chandelier, but he needed an alibi, just in case, so he’d asked Faye to bring him back a visual.
She brought him four Polaroids.
“Excellent.” Glee flooded through him as he stared at each subsequent picture. Garrett falling. Swinging like a pendulum. Dying.
He stared at the last picture. “You took a picture of her? She wasn’t even supposed to be there. What happened?”
Faye became defensive. “She showed up just as we were throwing him over the railing. Turned on the lights and we saw her. I didn’t mean to take her picture.”
He didn’t believe Faye. She wasn’t stupid. “These are the only pictures you took?”
Faye nodded. He didn’t know if she was lying.
“Are you sure?”
Her face reddened. “You don’t believe me?”
“Yes, of course, but-”
“You don’t believe me.” She turned away from him, hurt.
“Faye, I believe you. Come here.”
Reluctantly, she came to him. “You did excellent work,” he said. “But we have to protect her, if only to protect us. We can’t do anything like this again. Garrett Bowen was the last. Now we let things die down. Skip planted the note on his desk, right?”
She nodded, still pouting.
“Then we have nothing to worry about. Come here. Closer.”
She walked into his open arms and he kissed her. He didn’t want Faye to leave, but the bitch wanted everyone to split up for now. It was smart, but about this he didn’t want to be smart. “One last time.”
“What do you mean, last time?” Her voice cracked.
“We need to take a break until the police stop looking at Garrett’s patients. I don’t want you to end up in prison. I don’t want any of you to get hurt.”
“But-”
“Shhh.” He kissed her again. Even though he had places all over the world where he could hide, he couldn’t leave town now. Too many questions would come up. “Later, wherever I go, I’ll take you with me, but for now we have to be apart. It won’t be forever.”
“Promise?”
He kissed her. “I promise. Come to bed.” He handed her his favorite knife. “You’re the only one I trust. You know that, right?”
Her confidence returned and he finally relaxed. “I know.” She took the knife, stared at it. “Are you sure? Have you recovered?”
He nodded. “In your hands, I’m always sure.”
When Faye left, he called the stupid bitch who was going to blow everything.
“How dare you show your face!”
“I had to see for myself.”
“We agreed you’d be miles away. With an alibi.”
She laughed humorlessly. “I have an alibi, darling. I’m no fool.”
“We’re so close.”
“We’re done.”
“No, we’re not. You’re playing a dangerous game. You went to the party. What if someone recognized you?”
“I didn’t get into any of the media photos. No one recognized me. I’ve changed a lot.”
“Don’t be so sure,” he grumbled. He’d planned this for too long. Now he realized that he should never have brought her into the plan in the first place. What had seemed like a brilliant idea two years ago now was crumbling around him.
Maybe he should have let her kill Bowen back then and go to prison. Garrett Bowen would be dead either way.
But his game was perfect. It was the players who were flawed. Not him, not his idea.
“You worry too much,” she was saying. “Payback is sweet. Now you can sit back and have everything you wanted.”
She didn’t know what he wanted. Sometimes he didn’t even know.
“Can you be sure no one saw you at the party?”
She didn’t say anything for a long minute. “Julia Chandler was there.”
“Dammit! Julia Chandler! What were you thinking? You should never have gone-”
“She doesn’t know who I am. I chatted with her very briefly, barely a word. Don’t ruin this night. This was the best night of my life. Garrett Bowen is dead. An eye for an eye. I watched him die and enjoyed every minute of it. I had to be there. You don’t understand. Sometimes I think you’re just like him-”
“No. Stop.” He squeezed his temples. “Okay, I’ll take care of it.”
“There’s no need. Julia Chandler doesn’t know…”
“But you can’t know that. She’s connected and smart. She’s looking into Wishlist. If she makes the connection to Jason Ridge, then she might-”
“Don’t say his name.” Her voice was almost a growl.
“I’m sorry.” She had become a liability, he realized.
Maybe he’d always known it would have to end up like this.
He might have to dispatch his team one more time, to tie up loose ends.
But first, Julia Chandler.
He called Cami. “I need another job done. Call Robbie. If he balks, kill him.”