Sandra Brown - Smoke Screen

George was much heavier than Raley, but Raley’s coordination wasn’t affected by bourbon. He wrested the pistol from George’s hand, but George got in a punch, his meaty fist connecting solidly with Raley’s eye. Inside Raley’s skull, new suns were born in blasts of light, but he held on to the pistol.

“Let me do it! Goddamn you!” the man sobbed. “Let me do it.”

“You said the four of you worked Jones over. But then you said Fordyce wasn’t there.”

“Give me the pistol.” George was blubbering, stretching and flexing his fingers toward the gun that Raley held well beyond his reach.

“Who else was in that room, George?”

“Please,” he whimpered. “I’m tired of it all. I just want to die.”

With his free hand, Raley grabbed him by his collar and jerked him up until their faces were no more than an inch apart. “Who was the fourth person, George?” He shook him hard, causing his burly head to wobble. “Who?”

“Candy, of course.”

Raley’s breath came out in a gust. He stared at George’s ruddy, contorted face, but didn’t see any deceit in his sagging expression, only abject misery. He let go of him as though the fabric of George’s shirt had stung his hands. When George’s head hit the floor, there was a crunch of glass, but he seemed impervious to the shards that pierced his scalp. He rolled onto his side, assumed the fetal position, and continued to cry like a baby.

Candy. Of course.

Tightly gripping George’s pistol, Raley surged to his feet and turned, ready to dash for the door. Instead he drew up short and froze.

Standing just inside the room, cradling pistols in their hands and in firing stances, were the two men he’d last seen partially dressed, racing back into their hotel rooms. Butch and Sundance. Both had their pants on now, and their expressions were taut with angry resolve.

“Drop the pistol, Gannon! Drop it now!”

Raley thought of Britt, whom he’d sent to the enemy, to Candy, his supposed friend, the one person in the world he’d trusted with his life. With Britt’s life. He’d sent Britt to Candy for protection, not knowing until now that it was from Candy that Britt needed protection. It was too late to save her. Too late to save himself. Too late for every damn thing. He had absolutely nothing to lose by trying to shoot his way out of this.

These thoughts whizzed through Raley’s mind with the speed of a comet as his finger tightened on the trigger.

Butch shouted, “Drop it! Don’t do it! FBI!”

The man Candy had introduced as Mr. Smith had entered the room with the same silence and aura of hauteur and menace with which he’d walked into Jay’s town house. Making a choking noise, Britt shot to her feet.

Candy laughed softly. “I see you do recognize him. He was ordered not to touch you that night, yet you say he did some fiddling down there. Which of you am I to believe, hmm?” Her cell phone rang. “Would you two please excuse me while I take this call?” The judge removed the cell phone from the pocket of her suit jacket and flipped it open.

As she did, Britt screamed bloody murder, hoping that whoever was on the other end of the call would hear her and come to her rescue, or that someone in a neighboring building might, miraculously, pick up the sound.

Smith responded immediately. He rushed forward and clapped his hand over her mouth and nose, pinning her arms against her body, making them useless.

The judge, frowning at her, calmly returned to her call. “Yes, that was Ms. Shelley, trying to make her presence known. She’s taken care of. Your job is to get Gannon.”

Britt listened with dismay and rising fear as Candy assigned the caller to find Raley and George McGowan and eliminate them both. “Don’t leave any witnesses. Do whatever you have to, but make it look like Raley was responsible. And don’t disappoint me. You’ve fucked up once already this morning.”

She closed her phone with a decisive snap and returned it to her pocket. Britt’s lungs were burning for air. At a small nod from the judge, Smith relaxed his hand, allowing her to breathe but holding her chin. She knew he could break her neck in an instant if he wished. She rasped, “I don’t understand.”

“No? What don’t you get?” Candy asked.

“You were in on it all along?”

“From ‘all along,’ do you mean from the day of the fire?”

Britt nodded.

“Yes. From that day, when Jay called and asked me to come to the police station. He, McGowan, and Wickham were interrogating a skinhead, and they needed someone from the DA’s office to help scare a confession out of him. Fordyce wasn’t available, so I grabbed my briefcase and trotted over.”

“You were there when Cleveland Jones…”

“Had his skull bashed in, yes. We never were clear on who struck the deathblow.”

The scene that this respected judge calmly described left Britt temporarily speechless.

“We managed to keep the secret,” Candy continued, “but for the past five years I’ve kept close tabs on the men. Women are stronger, you know. Much stronger. Anyway, I paid careful attention to my-”

“Coconspirators,” Britt supplied.

Candy smiled. “For lack of a better word. I monitored their lives, looking for any signs of change or weakness. When Jay was given his grim prognosis, that was a serious heads-up. I put a tap on his phone. Good thing, too, because I knew immediately when he called you for a date. Red alert. He was dying and got afraid of going to Hell. I knew what he wanted to confess.

“So I quickly put together a plan to make sure he didn’t tell our secret, or if he did, you wouldn’t remember it. I should have had you killed, too. I realize that now. But at the time, I thought you’d be of better use to me alive. You would appear to be one of Jay’s many jilted lovers who’d finally had enough of his shenanigans and smothered him in his sleep. The plan was to make you the prime suspect, so the police wouldn’t be investigating anyone else. Everything went according to plan.” Her insidious smile faded. “Then you pulled your disappearing act.”

“Raley kidnapped me from my house.”

Taken aback by that, Candy stared at her, then laughed. “You’re kidding. By-the-book Raley Gannon? He kidnapped you?”

Britt nodded.

“What do you know? Those years spent in the woods must have brought out some dormant primitive instincts,” the judge said with amusement. Winking at Britt, she asked, “Do those animalistic urges take over in bed, too? We know about Jay’s sexual talents, because he boasted of them. But I always wondered about Raley’s. He doesn’t kiss and tell the way Jay did. He’s the strong, silent type.”

Shaking her index finger teasingly, she said, “I’ve long suspected there were some strong undercurrents beneath the surface. Am I right?” Britt just stared at her, trying to keep her face expressionless while her mind was scrambling to devise a way out, a means to survive.

“Not gonna share?” the judge said. “Oh, well. Doesn’t matter.” She glanced at her wristwatch. “I’ve got to hurry this along. Where was I?”

“Raley’s primitive instincts,” Britt said. “Which served him well when he dived into the river and saved me from drowning.”

“Ah. The rescuer. Now that sounds like the Raley I know. How did he know you went into the river?”

“I-”

“Never mind. I don’t have time for a long story.”

“I apologize for putting a crimp in your busy schedule.”

“Don’t resort to sarcasm, Britt. It doesn’t flatter you.” The judge paused a moment, then said, “I wasn’t surprised to hear that Raley came out of hiding to attend Jay’s funeral. Considering their lifelong friendship. I wasn’t too bothered to learn that he was there, except that he had singled out George, and some of what he insinuated made George very nervous. Then your resurrection came as a shock. I thought I was finished with you.”