No Escape

“You think the locals are protecting him?”

“They’re being careful. Gibson is rich. They don’t want to ruffle any feathers until they have a lock.”

“You did mention this guy is a probable serial killer? Probably gonna kill again?”

“Yeah. The cops here I’ve been talking too aren’t big fans of the American justice system, and they’re even less happy about Georgia detectives wandering in off their beats to poke around in their business.”

“That would be a problem. So tell me about Lauren Cooper. Did she look hot to you? ‘Cause from what I’m looking at here, she looks seriously hot.”

“Can I quote you on that to your future second missus?”

“Lord, no. That woman’s jealous enough.”

“What are you looking at?”

“Her file. Since she called in, knew so much about you, I thought it was only fair we know stuff about her. Only expected to get a hit on her from the Chicago DMV. That’s where she told me she’s from. Turns out she’s had a little bit of a record.”

That surprised Heath, but then he thought about how easily she had picked his pocket. Even on his worst day, he wasn’t the easiest guy to pull something like that on. “What record?”

“Breaking and entering and assault. From what I see, she broke into a guy’s apartment and punched him out in Chicago three years ago.”

“For what?”

“Says here she claims the guy stole an illusion she was working on. She’s some kind of magic designer or something. The guy claimed that they came up with this thing together, that there wasn’t a clear title to anything. The judge dropped the hammer on her because it was a home invasion. She ended up doing some community service—magic shows at old folks’ homes and orphanages—and had her record expunged. Are they serious about the magic thing?”

“She does magic.”

“She must be good at it if she can lift your wallet. ‘Course, her looking like she does, I could see how you got distracted.”

Heath ignored that. “Actually, the magic angle is what I want you to look into. Gibson picked up the woman down here. She’d taken her sister to a magic show Gibson put on in Chicago. Check and see if any of the other victims had a connection to magic in any way. Maybe Gibson is culling from a more select group than we thought.”

“Looking for relatives of people who jones on magic?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll have a look.” Jackson hesitated for a moment. “Something you told me when you first started training me to work homicide—stay detached. Look at everything from the outside. The minute you crawl inside of an investigation, you lose all perspective. I’m gonna tell you now, because you’re my friend and I love you like a brother and you’re likely gonna be my best man when I wed my second Missus Portman, that you’re all kinds of up inside of this investigation. The captain came out asking what did I know about you impersonating a coroner. I told him I didn’t know nothing.”

“I can’t be detached from this one. Gibson killed Janet. Look into those cases and let me know what you come up with regarding the magic angle.” Heath broke the connection and tossed the phone onto the rumpled bed. He got a fresh beer from the refrigerator and stood at the window looking out again, trying to figure out what his next move was going to be.

Instead, to his surprise, he couldn’t keep his thoughts away from Lauren Cooper and how she’d felt struggling against him. He closed his eyes and could smell that berry vanilla scent again. Then he forced his eyes open and sipped his beer.

There was a thread here. Nobody killed that clean. He was going to find it, and he was going to use it to strangle Gibson.

“There.” From the backseat of the Jaguar X351, Gibson pointed at the low-rent hotel off the beaten path of the city. “Pull into the parking lot.”

In front of him, behind the steering wheel, Roylston resettled his bulk, looking like a steroid-infused earthquake in motion. Dressed in a black business suit, his skin dark and his head shaved, he could have passed for a native to the island. Only the Boston accent marked him as an outsider. During the three years he’d been with Gibson, Roylston hadn’t ever spoken much, and never mentioned anything personal. As far as Gibson knew, the bodyguard/chauffeur didn’t have a life outside of protecting him.

But all three of the live-in security specialists who tried to manage Gibson were like that. None of them wanted to get to know him, and they didn’t want him to know anything about them. They got paid to watch over him, protect him and try to rein in his “impulses.”

Escaping the watchdogs that had been with him throughout his life had been the initial part of the Game he played now. He’d avoided his protectors when he was a boy, escaped them at times for glorious bits of freedom, but in the end he’d always let them catch him in order to satisfy his father. Even at forty-three, Gibson didn’t want to completely escape his father’s attempts to control him. That was the very best part of the Game.

That particular thrill was even better than the killing, which he relished.

The bodyguards tended to be compliant with him. They didn’t want his father to know when they lost him, so they covered up most of his escapes—except for the ones that were too egregious.

His father covered for him as well, trapped by his desire to keep his corporation protected and to have an offspring to carry on his name. Gibson had robbed the man of that as well by choosing his stage name. Still, his father held out foolish hope of someday controlling him. The man was trapped, simply couldn’t let go of the selfish dream.

That was the very best part.

Roylston glanced up at the hotel. “This is where that Atlanta detective is staying.”

The fact that the man knew so much of his business irritated Gibson. He rested his elbows at his sides, curled his elbows and steepled his fingers under his chin. “I know that.”

With obvious reluctance, Roylston guided the sedan into the parking lot. The headlights flashed against the parked cars in the lot. “This is dangerous.”

“Of course it’s dangerous. I wouldn’t visit if it weren’t dangerous. The circus doesn’t really come alive until the aerialists perform without a net, until the lion tamer sticks his head inside a lion’s mouth. Death hovers there, just a snap away. And the potential of that is what keeps the crowd on the edges of their seats.” Gibson smiled and leaned over to the window so that he could look up.

Atlanta Detective Heath Sawyer still stood at the window. His shadow was a blurry image behind the curtain.

“You know I’m close, don’t you, Detective?” Gibson smiled at that thought, savoring it because he knew that closeness was making the man’s wounds hurt even more. When Gibson had killed the female detective in Atlanta—Janet, her name rolled so invitingly across his tongue—he had known her death would push the man to go the distance. Gibson had considered killing both of them, but in the end he’d decided not to. Having a mortal enemy was a delightful concoction that he’d never thought of.

Heath Sawyer didn’t worry Gibson. He had lawyers and riches that would keep the police far from his door. And if the man got too bothersome, it was never too late to take care of that loose end.

After a couple of minutes, the shadow at the window went away.

Gibson waited for a short time longer, enough to make Roylston uncomfortable. Then he leaned back in his seat again and addressed the driver. “Let’s go.”

Roylston had the sedan rolling within the next heartbeat. “Any particular destination?”

“Downtown, I think. I want to see how the revelers are doing.” Gibson took a California ten dollar gold piece from his pocket and rolled it across his knuckles. The coin leaped and flew like it was a living thing. He closed his hand on the coin, folding the fingers in with his other hand, then opened his hand again to reveal that the coin had vanished.

He smiled at the smoothness with which he worked. He was good and he knew it. The Atlanta detective could disappear just as easily when the time came.

Until then, there was the Game to play.

Back in Lauren’s hotel room, the phone call to her mother didn’t last too long. Chemo wore her out and left her in a fog. Plus, it was so late that Lauren had woken her up when she’d called. Her mother had insisted that she call when she returned to her room. Their conversation had been sad and groggy and disjointed, and had finally trickled off when her mother no longer had the strength to maintain it.

The doctors said she was improving, that this round of drugs was battling the cancer back into submission. She wasn’t supposed to undergo any stress during this time. That wasn’t going to happen.

After leaving Heath Sawyer’s room, Lauren had had to return to the morgue to finish paperwork she’d left undone earlier when getting to know more about Heath Sawyer. She’d worked in a numb state, just plodding through the information, borrowing a computer to get information she didn’t know, and contacting the insurance company as well as the State Department.

All of that had been exhausting.

Now, she couldn’t sleep, and it was two o’clock in the morning. She kept seeing Megan laid out on that table, so impersonal, so still, so cold to the touch. But the memory was confusing because Heath Sawyer was also there. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get the man out of her mind. She could still feel the strength of him when she’d fought him, still see the indomitable will in his green-flaked gold eyes and the set of his stubbled chin.

But she remembered the pain in them, too, when he’d told her about his old partner. Lauren remembered that image of him the most, that vulnerability that she’d seen that she was sure he would deny.

There was something more behind that pain, though. Heath Sawyer had been hurt somewhere else along the way, too. She could sense it in him even though she couldn’t yet put her finger on it. It was the same way she could take apart an illusion. Something was there just behind the curtain. If she spent enough time around him, she would have it.