Day of the Dead - J. A. Jance [138]
He was still shaken by the phone calls to CitationShares, still astonished that she would betray him like that. He had always worried it might happen, though he had never really thought it would, though now it had. Gayle had turned on him, just as she had turned on Erik LaGrange, but with one big difference: Larry had figured out what was up in time to get his own damned plane. Gayle was on her way out of town; so was he.
When he drove into the yard, Gayle’s Lexus was nowhere to be seen. He had half expected that she might have beaten him here and he’d arrive to find the ranch house already reduced to rubble, but it wasn’t. She probably lied to me about that, too, he thought bitterly. She probably never planned to blow it up at all.
That was an appalling possibility. What if somebody stumbled into the basement room with its restraints and shackles and the rest of his equipment? He stopped the car. For a space of time he was too shaken to get out. He had cleaned things up as best he could, but he knew enough about current crime scene investigation to realize that tricky alternate-light sources could locate blood droplets that were invisible to the naked eye.
What should he do? If Gayle wasn’t going to destroy the evidence against him, should he try to do it himself?
No, he decided finally. Get the notebooks and get the hell out. Go wait at the airport. No one will ever think to look for me there…not at Pinal Air Park.
So Larry Stryker hurried into the house and on into the study. He’d had a wall safe installed there, behind one of the big oil paintings. And because Gayle had no idea the safe existed, it had been the right place for him to keep his notebooks.
He was upset enough that his hand shook as he worked the combination. It took three tries before he got it right. Swinging the door open, he grabbed up the notebooks. He shoved them into the open briefcase on his desk and slapped the lid shut. He turned back to the safe to close it and return the painting to its place.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Gayle asked.
He hadn’t heard the car or her. The sound of her voice scared him to death. A chill ran up his spine. The painting fell from his hand, splitting the heavy gilt frame as it smashed onto the Saltillo floor. This couldn’t be happening. Larry led a charmed life. He wasn’t supposed to get caught.
“Nothing,” he said, turning to face her. That’s when he saw the gun—a chrome-plated pistol—that was pointed straight at his chest. It wasn’t a very large weapon, but it seemed to grow in size. He stared at it until the gaping mouth of the pistol was all he could see. “I came to see if you needed any help,” he added lamely.
She smiled and shook her head, but she didn’t move the gun. It stayed pointed at him.
“I never knew about that safe,” she said quietly. “What do you keep in it?”
“Odds and ends. Nothing important. Put down the gun, Gayle. Shouldn’t we get to work?”
“Did you have money in there?” she demanded. “Were you hiding money from me?”
“Of course not!” he declared. Flustered, he felt his face turn red. “Nothing of the kind.”
“Then open the briefcase,” she ordered. “Show me.”
As he carried on his end of the conversation, Larry Stryker was trying to grapple with this new reality. There was no question about whether or not she would pull the trigger. Of the two of them, Gayle was the natural-born killer. He had known that about her for more than thirty years. He had always supposed he was immune. But he wasn’t. His only hope was to fight back.
So he stepped toward the desk and made as if to comply. Instead of opening the briefcase, he picked it up and heaved it at her. She dodged out of the way of the flying briefcase, and her first shot missed him completely. The second one didn’t. The bullet hit him square in the chest and flung him backward. It took forever for him to slide down the wall. He watched her, expecting her to fire again. She simply disappeared