Sidney Sheldon & Tilly Bagshawe 3-Book Collection: After the Darkness, Mistress of the Game, Angel of the Dark

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean why did she escape? She must have known the danger she was putting herself in. Not to mention blowing any chance of an appeal. It just seems so … reckless. So out of character.’

Jack Warner shrugged. ‘Maybe she’s changed. Prison does change people, you know.’

So does politics, thought Honor. She looked at herself in the hall mirror and shivered. She did not recognize the person she’d become.

‘Escaped? Good God.’

Michael Gray had spent the day on his new boat, an anniversary present from Connie. He didn’t hear the news till they sat down to dinner that evening.

‘I know. I wouldn’t have thought she had it in her. Stowed away in a delivery truck, if you can believe that. So much for “maximum security.”’

Michael looked pained. ‘Do you think we should … I don’t know, try to help her in some way?’

Connie’s eyes widened. ‘Help her? Whatever do you mean? How can we possibly help her? More to the point, why should we help her, after what she’s done?’

Michael Gray loved his wife, and deferred to her opinions about her own sister. But he’d never felt comfortable about the collective washing of hands and turning of backs that had followed Grace’s trial. It hadn’t felt right at the time. Now, somehow, it felt less right than ever.

So much had changed since that fateful trip to Nantucket a year and a half ago. Back then, Lenny and Grace had had everything – a perfect marriage, a fortune – and he and Connie had nothing. Michael Gray had not forgotten the darkness of those days. Losing his job at Lehman was like losing a parent. Lehman Brothers had been much more than an employer. It had given Michael his identity, his self-worth. When the company failed, it felt like a death. But Michael had had no time to mourn. He’d been plunged into one crisis after another, watching his savings disappear, then the house. Worst of all was the distance that began to grow between him and Connie. Michael Gray felt he could have borne anything with his wife’s support. But with each blow, Connie withdrew from him further. Even the way she looked at him in those days, so disappointed, so disgusted, almost as if what had happened were his fault, as if she blamed him for their suffering … the memory could still cause him to break out in a cold sweat.

All that was only eighteen months ago, yet it felt like another lifetime. Since then, they’d lived through Quorum’s collapse, Lenny’s death, Grace’s arrest, the trial … and now this. It was surreal. As Grace’s fortunes had declined, so some invisible string seemed to pull Michael and Connie’s lives upward, out of the mire and back into the warmth of the sun. Michael got a job with a boutique advisory firm. The salary wasn’t great but he had equity. More important, he had a reason to get out of bed in the mornings again. You couldn’t put a price on that. Connie became less distant and more loving. The disappointment was gone. In its place was the old familiar look of love, that unique combination of trust, lust and respect that made Michael feel he could move mountains. He loved her so much.

She’s my strength and my weakness. I’d die for her and I’d kill for her. And she knows it.

But the best was yet to come. A few months after Grace began her sentence at Bedford Hills, Connie was called to a meeting by her attorney. Apparently some distant, elderly relative had left her something in her will. Michael was expecting a few shares, or perhaps a piece of jewelry.

In fact, his wife had been left $15 million.

That night she made love to him with a passion Michael hadn’t known in her since before they married. He made a joke. ‘I guess being a woman of means suits you, honey.’

Connie beamed. ‘I guess it does. Let’s buy a new house, Mike. This place holds too many painful memories.’

‘Hey, come on. It holds some good memories, too, doesn’t it? This is where the kids were born. Do you really want to leave?’

Connie didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes. I want a new start. For all of us. No looking back.’

They sold the house.

‘I can’t believe you’d seriously want to help Grace? Where did that spring from?’

They were in the formal sitting room of their new town house. Connie had gone all out for their first Christmas, decorating the entire house in silver and white. A traditionalist, she refused to take down any of the decorations till Twelfth Night. Michael felt like he was coming home to Santa’s grotto.

‘I don’t know. Nowhere specific. We have so much, that’s all.’

‘And Grace doesn’t?’ Connie laughed bitterly. Whenever the conversation turned to Grace or Lenny, her anger seemed to re-emerge, like a caged demon unleashed. ‘That Quorum money is out there somewhere, Mike. The FBI is convinced little Gracie knows where it is. Who are we to say different?’

Mike wanted to say, Her family, but he didn’t. He was too afraid.

Connie saw the fear in his eyes and felt her own fear subside.

Good. He’s not going to force the issue. He loves me too much.

Connie was puzzled by her sister’s escape. The Grace she knew would never have had the chutzpah to plan anything so daring, never mind see it through and outfox the police into the bargain. Deep down Connie knew that Grace had had nothing to do with stealing the Quorum billions.

It’s not the money she’s after. It’s something else.

The truth, perhaps?

Mike still had no idea about Connie’s affair with Lenny Brookstein. Nor had he questioned her mysterious inheritance. He’s so trusting. Just like Grace. Connie wanted it to stay that way.

Wrapping her arms around Michael’s neck, she whispered, ‘I want us to be happy, darling. To put the past behind us. Don’t you?’

‘Of course I do, my darling.’ He hugged her back fiercely.

‘So no more talk about helping Grace. That chapter in our lives is closed forever.’

Chapter Eighteen (#ulink_0fe64b11-54e2-58f5-83c0-81d0ba8e9e3d)

Being in New York again, experiencing the sights and smells, was a homecoming of sorts for Grace. She felt safer in the city. Her new look helped, too: cropped, chocolate-brown hair, dark makeup, baggy, mannish clothes. One of the girls at Bedford had told her that altering one’s walk could dramatically change people’s perceptions. Grace had spent hours perfecting a longer-strided, less girlish gait. It was still unnerving, catching sight of her ‘old’ face whenever she passed a television or a newsstand. But as the days passed, she grew more confident that the combination of her disguise and the crowded anonymity of the city would protect her, for a while at least.

Her second day in the city, she’d braved a hole-in-the-wall Internet café and sent a message to the Hotmail address Karen had given her using the specified code: ‘200011209LW.’ Grace hoped this meant ‘please send $2,000 to zip code 11209 in New York in the name of Lizzie Woolley,’ but she still felt certain that something would go wrong. Was $2,000 too much to ask for or too little? She realized belatedly she had no idea how much money Karen’s friend had, or was willing to send her. On the other hand, she didn’t want to have to risk doing this every other week, not with half the country’s police departments out searching for her.

In fact, the pickup had been as smooth as Cora told her it would be. There was a Western Union outlet in the pharmacy on the corner. A fat, depressed man in his midforties had glanced at Grace’s ID and, not even bothering to make eye contact, still less examine her features, handed her an envelope full of cash and a printed receipt. ‘There you go, Ms. Woolley. Have a nice day.’

Grace began to focus less on being captured and more on her impending meeting with Davey Buccola. Davey had been researching the alibis of everyone she and Lenny had invited to Nantucket that fateful weekend. It still didn’t seem fully real to Grace, the idea that the Prestons or the Merrivales or even one of her own sisters could have done such a terrible thing – stolen all that money, killed Lenny, caused her to be imprisoned and gotten away with it. But what other explanation was there? She hoped that when she saw Davey’s research in black and white, it would make things clearer. Everything depended on that meeting.

Alone in her tiny studio room, Grace pulled a stack of newspaper clippings out of the desk drawer and arranged them on the bed. There they were: Honor and Jack, Connie and Mike, Andrew and Maria and, of course, John and Caroline. Among them, those eight faces held the keys to the truth. Next to them, set slightly apart, Grace placed a ninth picture: Detective Mitchell Connors, the man whose job it was to catch her. He was definitely attractive. Grace found herself wondering if he was married, and if he loved his wife as much as she had loved Lenny.

He would catch her eventually, of course. Her luck wouldn’t hold out forever. But eventually didn’t matter to Grace. What mattered was doing what she had set out to do.

Closing her eyes, she spoke to Lenny, her words half promise, half prayer:

I’ll do it, my darling. I’ll do it for both of us. I’ll find out who took you away from me and I’ll make them pay, I promise.

She slept and grew strong.

‘More tea, Detective? My husband should be back any minute.’

Honor Warner was visibly nervous. Mitch noticed the way her hands shook as she lifted the silver teakettle from its tray. Hot brown liquid spilled all over the white upholstered coffee table.

‘No thank you, Mrs Warner. It was really you I came to see. Has your sister made any attempt to contact you since her escape?’

‘Contact me? No. Absolutely not. If Grace had called, I’d have let the police know immediately.’

Mitch cocked his head to one side and smiled engagingly. ‘Would you? Why’s that?’

He was intrigued by this woman. She was Grace Brookstein’s sister. At one time, by all accounts, the two women had been very close. They even looked alike. Yet when Grace fell from grace, Honor Warner had vanished into the ether.