Leslie Parrish - Black at Heart

If he got up again before someone came through that door, he would hurt her, badly, then make up any excuse he cared to. If he didn't, and one of his goons burst in and saw him on the floor, they'd take her out, anyway.

"One option," she muttered.

She didn't give it a second thought. Grabbing the purse she had thankfully left on the dresser, which contained a fake ID and plenty of cash, she darted to the window, jumped out, crashed to the lawn one story below, and ran for her life.

"Ms. Vincent? I gotta talk to you!"

The lawyer, who'd apparently lost Jesse's number after she'd gotten him out of jail the other day, sounded really mad to be interrupted from whatever Saturday morning stuff she was doing, probably in her perfect house with her perfect family. "What is it?"

"I need to get in touch with the person who hired you!" Still unable to believe what he'd just witnessed from the front window, he added, "Right this minute."

"Why? What's happening?"

He didn't know that he could trust her. But she was his lawyer, right? Lawyer-client privilege and all that shit?

There was no time to hesitate. "It's Lily Fletcher. She's alive and she just got away from the FBI. I saw the whole thing-she jumped out a window and took off down the street."

"Damn it," the woman snapped, sounding angry. Which was when the truth sank in.

Nobody else had hired Claire Vincent. She'd hired herself. "It's you?"

"Where did she go?"

"She ran a few blocks, then jumped into a cab."

"Tell me you followed."

Incredibly pleased with himself, Jesse said, "Damn straight I did. I'm in a cab not far behind her. Bitch better not go far, though. I don't want to waste my money paying no big fare."

"I'll pay all your expenses," the lawyer said, sounding hard, bitter, and desperate.

Whatever Fletcher had done to Jesse, she seemed to have done more of it to Ms. Vincent.

He suddenly understood. "Jeez, she's after you, too, right? For defending me, getting me off?"

The lawyer hesitated a second, then finally said, "Yes, Jesse. I'm afraid both our lives are in danger. You must stick close to her."

He leaned down in the backseat, craning to peer through the front windshield at the vehicle a couple of car lengths ahead of them. His driver was some foreign dude who hadn't asked why he was being asked to follow another cab, not once he'd seen the wad of bills Jesse had flashed at him.

"We're on the GW Parkway. Looks like she might be headed for Reagan Airport."

"You follow her, tell me exactly where she goes, and I'll see to it that you are paid back for any expenses. If you have to hop on a plane, call me right back and I'll pay for the ticket."

"Well, I dunno…"

"I do know. This has to be done." She hesitated, then said, "Look, I'm in the city myself. If it looks like she's definitely going to Reagan, you call me and I'll come out there. You need to see which flight she gets on."

"What are we gonna do, follow her?"

"If we have to. We can't be on the same flight, so just watch where she's going, and if we have to, we'll go over to Dulles or BWI to get the first one after that."

"This is getting a little crazy…"

"Crazier than waiting around for her to come after us both and kill us? Listen, Jesse, it's kill or be killed now. We're in this together."

"I ain't goin' back to prison."

"I promise you, if you help me take care of her, so we're both safe, you will never have to worry about money for the rest of your days."

He didn't know much about lawyers, about how much money they made. But he suspected it was a lot. Enough to get him far away from this stinking state, anyway. Far from his mother's angry, disgusted eyes. Far enough to start a whole new life.

"Okay, Ms. Vincent, you got a deal."

She was headed for the beach house. Wyatt had no doubt of that. Lily was being hunted, tracked, and in her mind, there was only one safe place in the entire world-the place of Wyatt's darkest nightmares, the place where he'd taken her to recover from her darkest nightmare.

The fact that the Jeep was missing from the long-term parking lot at the Portland airport confirmed it.

"Damn it," he said as he drove his rental car toward the Maine coast. "It's not safe."

Crandall knew Wyatt had been traveling to Maine recently. It wouldn't take long for the deputy director's goon squad to find out Wyatt owned property there. They'd be on her doorstep before Lily managed to gain one moment of peace.

There was but one consolation in this whole mess. Wyatt truly believed he'd identified their unsub, the person who had been trying to finish what Roger Underwood had started.

His stepsister, Claire Vincent.

Wyatt had a lot of questions for the woman, and he'd ask them sooner or later, whether as an official FBI agent or not. He would not rest, would not stop, until he'd found out if she was guilty, and ensured she never got near Lily again.

Thank God the woman had no way of knowing about the beach house. She should be going about her business today, having no idea Wyatt had figured out she might very well be the one who had killed those four men.

It was crazy, far-fetched even, that a woman, a respected attorney, could have done such things. But Wyatt knew from experience that female serial killers existed, and could be just as deadly as male ones.

He had seen Judith's eyes, had seen the hint of recklessness in them, and was certain it had come from her years of marriage to a psychopath such as Roger Underwood. Claire had been wholly within his sphere of influence for decades; she had been his teenage lover, had worshipped the ground he'd walked on. What wouldn't she do?

He knew no details. He didn't need them. That sixth sense told him she was someone he needed to talk to. And he'd do it just as soon as he got Lily to safety, even if that safety was in custody in the Hoover Building.

"Come on, Lily, call me!"

He glanced at his personal cell phone, not the one he used for work, which lay open on the passenger seat. He already knew she didn't have her cell phone with her; it was still at his place in Washington. He'd dialed the beach house several times since landing, getting no answer, but didn't read anything into that. The evening was a windy one, with dark clouds gathering to the east. Phone service on the beach was notoriously unreliable.

It was also possible she wasn't even there yet at all. He had no idea which flight she'd been on out of D.C. Maybe she hadn't beaten him by much. He'd heard about her escape from Brandon more than an hour after it had occurred, but it hadn't taken too long to get to the Richmond airport, and then to get on a flight to Maine. She might not be more than minutes ahead of him.

But it was also possible she had already arrived at the house and walked into an FBI ambush. He had been out of touch with Washington for several hours and had absolutely no way of knowing.

He still couldn't wrap his mind around what had happened this morning. Brandon hadn't known a lot, just the brief details he was able to get from Jackie before they took her away for questioning. Then Brandon and the others had been taken in, too. Anspaugh's doing, no doubt.

"Anspaugh, you son of a bitch," he growled, filled with such rage, he knew he'd do something violent the next time he saw the man. Because he had no doubt Anspaugh had done something to make Lily panic like she had. From what Brandon had told him, she had been cooperating even when Anspaugh had insisted he accompany her while she changed.

When the phone rang, he started, felt his heart race. Grabbing it, he saw a familiar name. Not the call he was waiting for, but a person he trusted. "Hello?"

"It's Christian."

Christian Mendez, one of the new members of the team. One of the only two members not currently being questioned by a raging Deputy Director Crandall, or so Wyatt suspected.