Deceptive Practices Page 29

  She walked back to her car. The adrenaline coursing through her body suddenly turned off its tap. Her neck was stiff. Her left elbow and knee ached. She got behind the wheel and maneuvered her car onto the turnout at the edge of the road, then called Andrew.

  “Roy just tried to have me killed.” Her voice sounded a million miles away.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Olivia was a mess once she got back behind the wheel. Somehow she’d lost the ability to drive. Her feet were clumsy on the pedals, and her arms were weak on the steering wheel. She guessed she was going into shock.

  “I can’t drive.”

  “You can,” Andrew said and talked her down Skyline. He told her to find somewhere to park and he’d come for her. When she reached the bottom of the hill, she hauled up in a church parking lot to wait for him.

  The Audi was trashed. The rear was completely caved in, the trunk half its size. With no lights and the license plate unreadable, there was no way she could drive it without a cop stopping her. She couldn’t afford that. They didn’t have time for questions.

  Andrew held her when he saw the wrecked car. “It’s okay. You’re safe. Are you okay?”

  “I think so.”

  Andrew spent five minutes checking her out for broken bones or a concussion.

  “He’s getting away,” she protested.

  “He’s not. We know his location. We can catch up with him anytime.” He eyed her Audi. “We need another car. The Audi’s out, and he’s seen my truck.”

  “Richard’s car.”

  Andrew paused for a beat. “You okay using it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. We have to get your car out of here though. It’s too much of a red flag to leave it here, and we don’t want anyone putting two and two together when they find Roy’s guy.”

  He pulled out his phone. “Manny, it’s me. You know anyone with a tow truck? I need to get a car off the road for a couple of days. Tell your guy he can find it at that Greek Orthodox Church on Lincoln. It’s a black Audi A4. You can’t miss it. The rear end is totally caved in. I’ll leave the keys under the driver’s seat.”

  They cleared out the car and left the keys under the seat. Andrew drove her home, where they switched cars for Richard’s Mercedes. She hadn’t touched it since she’d driven it home from the impound yard after Finz’s people had cleared it from their investigation.

  Andrew drove. She couldn’t. The image of her would-be killer flying off the edge of the road filled her mind. It shouldn’t have surprised her that Roy wanted her dead. Killing was his business, so why would he treat her any differently? She’d outlived her usefulness.

  Olivia’s gaze was on her phone in its holder. Roy’s name appeared in a digitized thumbtack on a map display. Every few seconds, the map under the thumbtack jumped a fraction. Their cell phone homing beacon was working.

  The “Find My Sweetie” phone-finding app made tailing Roy simple, but having to switch cars had cost them precious time. Roy had a forty-minute head start on them by the time they hit the road in Richard’s Mercedes. That was a big deficit to make up. The Bay Area rush hour helped reduce Roy’s escape velocity. Andrew had been chipping away at the gap, but Roy still had a twenty-minute lead. It was a decent margin. If Dolores or anyone was watching Roy’s back, he or she would give him the all clear. Still, those twenty minutes equated to a fifteen-mile head start. A lot could happen in that distance. Roy could switch cars. He could discover the phone. The phone’s battery could go flat. They could hit a black spot and lose the signal. She knew it was the paranoia screaming at her, but it didn’t mean any of these outcomes were less real. All she could do was succumb to the fact that her future was in fate’s hands.

  While her gaze might have been on Roy’s progress, the man himself filled her thoughts. He had put a bounty on her head. She couldn’t get past that notion. She tried to come to terms with the concept of Roy wanting her dead. Bounties were for outlaws and government officials in banana republics. Hits weren’t put out on wives and Realtors. It showed her how far she’d fallen off life’s tightrope.

  “Do you think he’s going home?” Olivia asked.

  “He got what he wanted out of you. There’s no reason for him to stick around,” Andrew said.

  “Do you think he knows I’m still alive?”

  Andrew shook his head. “Hard to say. His guy should have contacted him by now, so he must know something went awry. He’ll likely send someone to check.”

  Since Roy’s attempt on her life had failed, would he send someone else to kill her? If they didn’t get him now, he would get her. It was weird to imagine there was a bullet out there for her, lurking around the corner. She couldn’t live like that. Roy was a terminal disease, lurking in her system, biding his time before turning malignant. The cure was simple. This had to work. She had to take him down tonight.

  She had the advantage for once. He thought he’d won, so his guard would be down. He wasn’t expecting her to learn his secrets. That thought warmed her. She was about to crack Roy wide open—his true identity, where he lived, and where he stashed his blackmail evidence. He couldn’t hide from her now.

  She looked at where Roy was on the moving map and estimated where they were in relation to him. She guessed they were four miles behind.

  “I think we need to be closer,” she said.

  They were traveling south on I-680, closing in on San Jose. According to the app, Roy had already passed by the city.

  “Where do you think he’s heading?” Olivia asked.

  Andrew shook his head. “I think we still have a ways to go. If I was Roy, I wouldn’t be working out of my backyard.”

  That answer ignited a flame of fear in her. “What if he takes a flight? The phone is in the car, not on him.”

  “I don’t think he’s flying anywhere. He’s just bypassed three airports. Also, he won’t want a record of him going through airport security. Wherever he’s going, he’s going by car. All we can do is follow and see where he leads us.”

  Olivia frowned.

  “I know this is scary, but try not to worry. He doesn’t know we’re coming for him. We have the element of surprise. We’re in good shape.”

  Roy checked his dashboard clock. He’d been on the road a couple of hours. Olivia was dead by now.

  “Rest in peace, Olivia.”

  It had been a tough call to order the hit on Olivia, but she was trouble. Her tenacity was the problem. He could see her going public if the cops busted her. Not that the cops were a concern. They could never track him down. Olivia had the potential for being bad for business. Infidelity Limited worked because it was a secret. It wouldn’t if Olivia spread rumors about how it operated. Now that she’d paid him off, there was no more to gain and quite a bit to lose.

  Lou Carrington was supposed to check in after it was done, and he hadn’t, so Roy called Carrington’s cell. The call went through to voice mail, which surprised him.

  “How did things go, Lou? Call me.”

  After an hour, Carrington still hadn’t called. It wasn’t like him not to report in. Roy called him again and still got voice mail.

  Carrington wasn’t ducking his calls. Something was wrong. Even if he’d failed to take out Olivia, he would have reported in. Had Carrington gotten hurt in the wreck with Olivia?

  He called Dolores. She answered on the second ring. At least someone was taking his calls tonight.

  “What’s up?” she asked, above the noise of what sounded like a rowdy bar.

  “I need you to work. You available?”

  “Sure.”

  “Lou was meant to take out Olivia Shaw after she paid me off, but he isn’t answering his phone. Will you check it out?”

  “It’ll take me a couple of hours to get over there. That okay?”

  “No problem.”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  There was nothing else for him to do, so he focused on driving. As he racked up the miles, he ran through the p
ossible scenarios. None of them would really have an impact on him, even if Olivia was alive. Whatever the outcome, he just needed to cross the t’s and dot the i’s with Olivia Shaw before moving on to the next client. If she wasn’t dead yet, she soon would be.

  He pulled up in front of the house and smiled. Coming home always felt good.

  Luis, attentive as usual, came out to greet him. “What happened to the car?”

  “Just a fender bender.”

  “How’d everything go?”

  Roy popped the trunk and held up Olivia’s grocery bag filled with cash. “We got paid.”

  Luis took Roy’s overnight bag, and they both entered the house.

  “How’s Beth?”

  Luis said “okay” in a way that meant she was just shy of that. Before Roy could ask for a better explanation, his cell rang. It was Dolores.

  “Carrington’s dead,” she informed him. “He wiped out on Skyline Boulevard.”

  “And Olivia?”

  “Don’t know. News reports are saying Carrington went off the road after colliding with another car. The cops are considering it a hit-and-run. I went by Olivia’s house and her sister’s place. Neither of them is there. I think she’s alive.”

  Roy didn’t know what he felt. It was a mix of admiration and irritation.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Go home. I’ll take care of this,” he said and hung up.

  “What’s wrong?” Luis asked.

  “Carrington’s dead, and Olivia is alive.”

  “Shit. What are you going to do?”

  “See what she does next.”

  “I think this is it,” Olivia said.

  Roy had pulled off Highway 101. They’d been on it since San Jose, following his progress south for hours. He’d passed through Salinas and Paso Robles. For one frightening minute, Olivia thought he was returning to Morro Bay, but he kept going south. He’d stopped for gas in Santa Maria, and they did the same, in case Roy kept going into Mexico, but Santa Barbara was his final destination.

  They were a mile behind Roy when he left Highway 101, so Andrew ramped up his speed. He narrowed the gap to only a few hundred yards once they hit the surface streets. He closed the gap to the point they no longer needed the tracking app. Roy’s Chrysler appeared in the distance, its brake lights glowing in the night.

  “Don’t get too close,” Olivia said.

  “I won’t.”

  Roy cut through the city, toward the mountains. On the unfamiliar streets, they lost visual contact with Roy, but the dot on Olivia’s phone kept moving. She called out the turns as Roy made them.

  As they left the city for the foothills, the properties thinned out, leaving them exposed as the lone car following Roy. Andrew dropped back, making sure he was out of sight.

  “He’s stopped,” she said with a note of panic.

  “That’s okay.”

  They closed in on the dot’s location. Andrew stopped the Mercedes when they caught up with Roy’s signal. This was it. They stared across at the house.

  Here’s what inflicting misery buys, Olivia thought. Roy’s home was a two-story mansion with a view of the Pacific. It was pretty. The architecture reminded her of an Italian villa. High walls and an electric gate hemmed in the large estate. Through the wrought iron gates, they could see Roy’s Chrysler sitting at the end of the driveway. They’d found the bogeyman.

  “He’s been at this for a long time to be able to afford this,” Andrew said.

  How many dead people? How many ruined lives, Roy? Olivia wondered.

  Andrew pulled away.

  “Where are you going?”

  “We can’t stick around here. Besides, I need a better lay of the land.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Olivia’s phone pinged. It was another text from Andrew. On my way back, it said.

  She’d been sitting in the car for over half an hour while Andrew scouted out Roy’s property. Neighbors were sparse on the narrow road. There were several blocks between homes, and the road dead-ended half a mile after his house. Roy lived on the uphill side of the street and didn’t have any neighbors to spoil his view of the ocean on the downhill side. That meant they had all the privacy they needed to break into his house.

  But the remoteness and seclusion also worked against them. This was a ritzy neighborhood, so strangers stuck out. This wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where people parked on the street, not that anyone could. It was narrow, barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other without trading door paint. Cops would likely get called for a suspicious vehicle.

  Luckily, they’d found parking a quarter mile down the street. There were turnoffs dotted up and down these mountain roads, paved for only a few feet before turning to dirt. Olivia didn’t know if they were fire roads or private access roads to someone’s property. Whatever they were, Andrew found one and parked as far off the road as he could before the Mercedes lost traction. It was good enough. A stand of trees hid them from the roadside.

  Andrew opened the passenger door and slid in. “It looks good. This perimeter wall only covers the front and the sides. There are no other homes above this street, so there’s no one to see us. On the uphill side, there’s nothing other than a chain-link fence, and there’s a ton of tree cover hemming the back side in. We can get in without being seen.”

  The anxiety in her chest lessened. “Did you get close to the house?”

  He nodded. “I don’t see any security systems or muscle patrolling the place. I only saw Roy talking to a young guy.”

  “Roy said he has a ‘woman.’”

  “So that’s three.”

  She thought of the guy who’d tried to kill her on Skyline and of Dolores. “There could be more. He does have people working for him.”

  “Possibly, but I don’t think so. I only saw two vehicles other than Roy’s Chrysler. We won’t know until we get in there, but I don’t think the place is teeming with people.”

  It made sense. Until now, Roy had ensured an impenetrable buffer between himself and his victims. No one knew where he lived, so there was no need for a heavy security presence.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Andrew grabbed his tool bag off the backseat. They walked together on the road. She slipped her arm around Andrew’s.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Keeping up appearances. We’re two people on a night walk, not two burglars casing multimillion-dollar homes.”

  “Good idea.”

  They followed a trail up into the mountains. It was a steep enough calf workout that Olivia would feel it in the morning, but it was manageable. The night gave them plenty of cover, and the moon provided enough light to see where they were going without tripping. It took them about twenty minutes to loop around behind Roy’s property. When they reached the chain-link fence, Andrew asked her about her climbing skills.

  “It’s been a while.”

  He smiled and gave her a boost. With his guidance, she managed to make it over the side without breaking her neck. He tossed his tool bag over before climbing over himself.

  “This way,” Andrew said.

  She followed him through the trees until they reached an opening. He dropped to a knee, and she did likewise.

  There were two hundred feet between the tree line and the house. The back side of the house seemed to consist of a living room and a kitchen, which opened out onto a large covered patio. The patio connected to an ornate swimming pool, complete with cabana. Then it was all lawn between that and the tree line.

  The lights were off in the living room but not the kitchen, although no one seemed to be in there. The lights were also off on the second floor. The only other illumination came from the pool.

  Andrew pointed to the corner of the house to the right of the living room. “We’re heading for there. That side of the house is in total darkness. We’re aiming for a set of French doors. Stay directly behind me. If those security lights on this side of the house have m
otion sensors, we need to stay clear of them.”

  “Got it.”

  And she did. In the last few weeks, she’d lied to the police, helped two people go into hiding, fled a murder scene, stood up to interrogation, and fought for her life. Compared to all that, what was a bit of housebreaking?

  They darted across the lawn. Olivia mimicked Andrew’s every move. She kept low and took the same arcing curve around to the side of the house, all without being seen. She pressed herself against the wall next to the French doors.

  Andrew pulled out a small penlight and flashed it into the darkened room. It was a den or office. Then he ran the light around the French doors. Each door was made up of individual panes of glass.

  “Single pane. Nice,” he said.

  He handed Olivia the light and pulled out a glass cutter, which he used to cut one of the sectional panes next to the door handle. He carefully removed the glass and laid it on the ground before reaching through the hole and opening the door.

  They spent a couple of minutes going through the room. The contents belonged to someone named Luis. It didn’t surprise her. Everything Roy had on Infidelity Limited’s victims would be in a far more secure place.

  It was time to go through the rest of the house.

  “We go room by room,” Andrew whispered. “Find anything, text me, and I’ll do the same. First sign of trouble, run. Get out through this door. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Upstairs or downstairs?”

  “Upstairs.”

  Andrew cracked the door to the hall. No one was outside, so they slipped out.

  Standing in the hallway, Olivia’s anxiety skyrocketed. What they were doing was insane. They were totally exposed, with nowhere to hide. If Roy walked around the corner, it was over. He was a killer. They’d never leave this place alive. They’d been lucky to get this far without being caught. The smart thing would be to turn around and get the hell out. But the smart thing wasn’t available to her. Roy had a kill order out on her, and Finz was closing in. It was only a matter of time before one of them caught up to her. “You okay?” Andrew mouthed.