Sinner Read online

  Between the two he’d discovered just how badly one could sweat when truly freaked out.

  “I understand you have a death wish,”Muness said.

  “Is that what you heard? No, sir. I did what I knew you would want me to do given the information I was able to obtain.”

  “Never assume to know my mind.”

  The order struck Billy as a little too direct. Muness knew about his new talent?

  “Then maybe I was mistaken,” he said. “I could leave now if you wish.”

  “Or?”

  “Or I could tell you about the money Anthony Sacks stole from you.”

  “And?”

  “And show you how to retrieve it.”

  “How much?”

  “Five hundred twenty-six thousand. And change.”

  “You missed some.”

  Billy felt his face flush. “What do you mean?”

  “He’s taken five hundred and thirty-seven thousand from me in the last twelve months. Eleven thousand of that was a loan he never paid back. The rest is in a bank in Belize, under my watch.”

  The fact that Sacks probably didn’t consider the eleven thousand as stolen accounted for the disparity. But Muness knew about the money anyway.

  “So you’ve come all this way to return money that is already in my hands?” the man said.

  “Evidently.”

  The man stared at him through the dark glasses. It was almost as if he really did know about Billy’s gift and was playing him.

  “We have a problem, my friend.”

  “We? Or me?”

  “For the moment, we. There are those in my organization that know about our little arrangement. Which means I am obligated to follow through with the promises I made to you. If Tony goes down, so do you, it’s that simple.”

  “That’s my problem,” Billy said. “What’s yours?”

  “The fact that you know about the money. I need to know how you found out.”

  Leverage. But not much.

  “And you expect me to tell you when? After you remove my left arm?”

  The man smiled. “The thought had occurred to me. If you don’t tell me, I’ll assume Sacks told you, in which case I’ll have to kill both of you. The choice is yours. So much power in your hands, Billy boy. To give or take a man’s life. Power.”

  “I tell you, you let me live but take my arms.”

  “Correct.”

  “I think I’d rather take a bullet in the head.”

  The man’s hand came up, snugged around a stainless nine-millimeter pistol. “If you insist.”

  “You have to ask yourself, Ricardo, what else I might know about your organization. And whom I’ve told.”

  It was hard to tell in the dim light, but Billy thought the man’s cheek had twitched, so he pressed on with the slight advantage.

  “Do you really think I would be stupid enough to hang your man out to dry and then waltz into this gamble without an ace up my sleeve? You kill me and you’ll be taken down within the week, my friend.”

  The fact that his voice held a slight tremor didn’t help his cause, but he wasn’t accustomed to looking death in the face.

  “I think you’re bluffing.”

  “I may be a gambling addict, but I’m not a complete idiot.”He stood.

  “The real question is, are you willing to gamble your life on a hunch that I’m bluffing?”

  Muness seemed at a loss for words.

  Billy knew he had the man on his heels, if only for a moment. He moved then, forcing himself to ignore the black hole of the pistol.

  “What I’m about to tell you will determine if you live out the week, Mr.Muness.”

  He slowly leaned forward, reached out his hand, and removed the man’s glasses.

  The room remained quiet. No gunshot.

  He stared into Muness’s eyes and let the man’s thoughts stream into his mind.

  “I hope you don’t mind. It’s important that we see things . . . eye to eye as it were.” He set the glasses down. “You wonder whom I’ve told about the nine million dollars you’ve socked away in the Dominican Republic, don’t you? Or if I’ve left instructions with my attorney to mail a letter to your wife in the event of my death, explaining why Angela has accompanied you on so many business trips.”

  He let the information settle in. Muness hadn’t been wondering anything quite so detailed, naturally, but Billy had lifted enough information to make it clear he knew about both Angela and the money in the West Indies.

  “Should I go on?”

  “You’ve just sealed your fate.”

  “And now your fate is directly tied to mine. If I go, you go. If I get hurt, you get hurt.”

  Muness slammed a fist on the desk. “You have the audacity to even think you can blackmail me?”

  “I do.”

  For a long time, the man just stared at him. And in that time, Billy learned precisely how a man as filthy rich as Ricardo Muness got to be so filthy rich.

  A grin slowly split the man’s mouth. “Well, well, well, I guess I under-estimated you, didn’t I?”

  “So it seems. All I want is a week to prove to you that I will never use this information against you unless you exploit me. Just give me time.”

  “Time.Yes, of course. Isn’t that what we all want? More time. But you’re not the only one who knows things they have no business knowing, Billy.”

  Darcy.

  The man’s thoughts wrapped around the name with disturbing images that stopped Billy cold. He knew about Darcy? What possible connection could a loan secured in New Jersey have to Darcy, wherever she was?

  Apart from scattered details, Billy didn’t even know about Darcy. But now he did, because Muness knew where she lived, what she did for a living, other details that streamed into Billy’s mind.

  Clearly,Muness assumed that Billy cared.

  “Only a fool loans a man three hundred thousand dollars without doing some homework,”Muness said. “Insurance. Not everyone is as concerned about their own arms as they are someone else’s arms.”

  “And you think that’s me.”

  “Does the name Darcy ring a bell?”

  Billy searched the man’s thoughts for a few seconds, finding nothing useful.

  “You’ve dug deep,” he said.

  Muness dipped his head. “You do anything I don’t like, she pays.”

  “Fine.”

  “And your debt?”

  Billy withdrew a slip of paper with the information he’d assembled on Sacks’s theft and handed it to Muness. “My debt was three hundred thousand dollars. Now we’re even.”

  Muness hesitated, then took the paper. His mind was running through ways to eliminate Billy along with the threat as efficiently as a college graduate might run through single-digit addition tables.

  “I don’t like to be blackmailed, Mr. Rediger. I can’t live with the pressure hanging over my head, you understand. You want a week; I’ll give you three days. Then we settle this, one way or another.”

  Billy took a deep breath, nodded once, and turned for the door.

  “Agreed.”

  But nothing could be further from the truth.Muness had already settled on his decision, one that made liberal use of force and torture within the hour of closing arguments in the case against Anthony Sacks.

  Muness had no intention of allowing blackmail to rule his life. And Billy had no intention of allowing Muness to rule his.

  He was going on the run. Tonight.

  * * *

  CHAPTER SIX

  * * *

  WATCHING A cloaked stranger nail her door shut in the middle of the night was enough to stop her lungs from inhaling. Staring into the stranger’s shadowed eyes was enough to freeze her heart.

  Darcy didn’t know if he could see her eyeballs through the gap in the slats, but if he saw movement, he would know she was awake and watching him.

  She had to get to the phone!

  The man abruptly turned and walked along th
e wall, then disappeared around the corner. Going where? To seal the back door too?

  Darcy released the blinds and ran toward the kitchen. White venetian blinds covered all of the windows in the family room adjacent to the kitchen. From her vantage point, the back door looked undisturbed.

  She considered making a run for it now, into the garage, into her Chevy, into the night. But she hesitated—surely there was an explanation for all of this. Who’d ever heard of a woman being sealed in her own home by a man with a hammer? If he wanted in, he would have just shattered the door, not nailed it shut.

  Run, Darcy! Get out now while you still can.

  She ran for the garage door, thinking she should grab a knife just in case. But her urgency to escape, to get out now while she still could, over-powered the desire for a weapon. And she didn’t want to alert the intruder by clattering through a drawer full of knives.

  She slid her keys off the hook on the back wall and tried the door leading to the garage. Locked. She eased the dead bolt back and shoved again.

  No. Locked.

  She checked the dead bolt again, thinking she’d turned it the wrong way, but the bolt was open. And the door handle twisted in her palm. The door was jammed from the outside.

  Gooseflesh rippled on her arms. He’d gotten to the garage door?

  Darcy spun around, breathing hard. Her mind was blank. She turned and slammed into the door, grunting, ignoring the pain in her shoulder.

  It refused to budge.

  The back door! She whirled, took one step, and slipped on the rug in front of the sink. Her arm caught her fall, but not without slapping into the metal sink. Loud.

  She scrambled to her feet. The delay in her progress to the back door gave her time to recall her first impulse to call for help. Moving with less concern about stealth, she crossed the kitchen, snatched the phone off the counter, and pressed it to her ear.

  It was programmed to engage upon contact with her fingers. But the familiar dial tone was gone. Instead, static.

  Darcy punched the manual power button, tried again, and heard the same static.

  Now, true panic collided with her mind. He’d cut her phone line!

  “Darcy . . .”

  His voice came from the direction of her bedroom. Low and long, then again, tasting each syllable.

  “Darcy . . .”

  He was inside!

  She ran for the back door, fumbled with the locks, and discovered exactly what she’d expected to find. A door that would not open.Which left only the windows and the attic.

  All that banging from her dreams filled her ears. How long had he been building her house into a prison?

  She tore for the nearest window, yanked the blinds up, and saw nothing but black. Black boards. He’d boarded up the windows too.

  Darcy whispered frantically under her breath. “No, no, no, no, no!”

  “Darcy, Darcy . . .Wanna play?”

  She clamped a trembling hand over her mouth.

  “There’s no way out, honey. I know how to fix a house.”

  Access to the attic was in the master bath, and from the sound of it the intruder was between her and the bedroom. She had to let him enter the kitchen area and sneak past him if she hoped to make it.

  The attic had a round vent she might be able to squeeze through if she could dislodge it before he found her. She knew this because she’d been up there with a cable repairman, tracking down a cable that a mouse had chewed through. The vent would put her on the roof, but from there she might stand a chance.

  She eased to her knees and crawled toward the couch.

  “You have to ask yourself if after going to all that trouble . . .”

  He was in the kitchen already and she hadn’t even heard him move.

  “. . . I would be stupid enough to give you a way out. Hmmm?”

  Darcy lay flat, shivering. How had he come in? If there was a way in, there had to be a way out.

  “You’re wondering about the attic?”

  Darcy inched forward on her knees again.

  “Forget the attic, honey.”

  She went then, while the sound of his voice came from the garage area.

  Sprinting through the doorway that led to the living room with her five-foot media screen. Scanning the walls for a window he’d left open.

  None.

  She spun into the master bedroom and saw the opened miniblind beyond her bed. He’d crawled in through the window and shut it behind him. But he hadn’t had the time to nail it, right?

  “You want out so soon?”His voice was behind her, only feet, it seemed. She’d never make it!

  Darcy dived forward, rolled across her bed, and came up airborne.

  Behind her the lights came on.

  She crashed against the wall next to the open window and fumbled with the latch. Opened it. Pulled the window open.

  “Shh, shh, shh . . .” A hand grabbed her collar and jerked her back against his body. “Please, I just want to talk.” Hot breath.

  Darcy screamed, but his hand smothered her mouth. She bit into his flesh, felt warm blood rush between her teeth.

  He withdrew his hand and slapped something else in its place. Around her head. Tape.

  Her muffled cry filled her taped mouth, powerless now. She struggled hopelessly against his steel grip. Like a man who’d won his share of hogtying contests, he secured her wrists behind her back, spun her around, and shoved her to the ground.

  The black-clad man strode for the window, shut the blinds, and faced her. His hand was bleeding where she’d bitten him, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Well, well, well. So you would be Darcy, or, as you are so affectionately referred to back in the group, number thirty-five.”

  Her assailant stood over six feet, dressed in dark brown slacks and a black collared shirt, a day’s stubble lining his jaw. Sweat glistened on his face, but otherwise he looked clean for a man who’d spent the night sealing her in her house.

  “Now, just take a deep breath, Thirty-five. I’ve done this more times than I care to remember—gets old after a while. We’ll be here for a while, a day, maybe more, depending on you.”

  He eyed her from head to toe. Grunted. “I really hope you’re not the stubborn kind.”

  She told him what she thought of him in no uncertain terms, but it came out in a long “Uhummmmmmm!”

  “This doesn’t have to be difficult,” he said. “You’re brimming with questions, and I don’t blame you. We’ll get to them. Where do you keep the bandages?”

  She stared him in the eyes, refusing to clue him in.

  “The bathroom, naturally. Just seeing if you were warming up.” He walked to her, grabbed her by her hair, and tugged her to her feet. She stumbled beside him into the living room, where he shoved her onto the love seat.

  Producing a pair of cuffs, he cinched one end to her ankle and the other to the sofa leg.

  “Be right back. Can I get you anything? Coffee, lemonade, mint tea?”

  The man left, banged about in the bathroom for a minute, then returned, hand bandaged in a strip of sterile cotton.

  “Problem with giving you a drink,” he said, “is drinking it. If everything they tell me about your yapper is correct, I don’t think I’ll be taking the tape off any time soon.”

  He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with one of her wooden chairs. Spun it around and straddled it.

  “You can call me Agent Smith. Not my real name, but it has a ring to it. You like old movies?”He pointed at her. “You, we’ll call Darcy. Number thirty-five sounds a bit too clinical. Fair enough?”

  She stared at him.

  “Good. Now, the first thing you have to understand is that whether I kill you or not depends on how cooperative you are. If it were up to me, I would let you live. You’re dangerous, I’m sure, but I think the world needs a bit of danger to make it interesting, and I’m not about to be the only one providing it. Follow?”

  She didn’t. She was about as da
ngerous as a mouse. He was mistaking her for someone else. This whole thing was a mistake! Which gave her some hope. If she could make him understand, he might let her go.

  “But,” he continued, “they disagree and they call the shots.”He stared at the tape around her mouth. “If you really can do all they say you can, maybe it’s best for everyone.”

  What was he talking about? She shook her head hard.

  Agent Smith slowly smiled. “You really don’t know, do you?”

  “Hmmmm!” she shouted. No!

  “We’ll start with me and then move on to you. You’re the prize here, after all.”

  Smith stood, withdrew a toothpick from his breast pocket, and began to pick his teeth. “I work for Rome. The Roman Catholic Church. Not as a priest, obviously, but I’m on the payroll. Evidently you have a history they aren’t crazy about. A certain monastery in which you and thirty-six other children were sequestered for the first thirteen years of your lives. You remember?”

  Long fingers of horror reached around Darcy’s throat. Smith had the right girl, then. The nightmare she’d fled all these years had caught up to her. And this time it would finally kill her. Darcy felt hot tears leak down her cheek and drop onto her lap.

  “One year ago, one of those children, a man now named Johnny Drake, demonstrated a rather remarkable set of powers that could ultimately embarrass the Catholic Church. Evidently, Johnny wasn’t the only one who came into the possession of such powers.”

  Not me! You have the wrong person! But the words refused to form in her frozen throat.

  “My mission is a simple one: find the grown children, find out what they really know, and then decide whether they should die.”

  She felt herself shiver with a deep-seated rage. Not only against this emissary but also at the institution that had reduced her to a shell of what most people were.

  Smith drawled on. “The church is in a bit of a spot as you probably know. Everyone seems to hate her these days. Not without reason, mind you, but there it is. The only group of people more despised than Catholics are Protestants. Used to be Muslims and Hindus and all the Eastern freaks took the cake. Well that’s all changed, and as a good Christian solider I feel compelled to do my part in cleaning things up.”