He swore. “Dammit, yes, get back to me as soon as possible!”
He pocketed his phone with a growing sense of danger.
Shannon hadn’t meant to do anything other than drive straight to her house. She knew that Quinn was worried about her, and that he’d probably come close to insisting that she hang around on the boat until he returned. And he seemed so down on Gordon. She couldn’t believe that Gordon could be responsible for the things that had happened, even though she’d had her own brief flights of fear regarding the man. No. Not Gordon.
She hadn’t even mentioned the incident in the storeroom to Quinn. In retrospect, the whole thing seemed ridiculous, an instance when panic had caused her problems, so she’d kept quiet.
It took her only minutes to reach the beach. It was getting a little chilly these days for the locals, and they weren’t into tourist season yet. But when she reached the turnoff for her house, she found herself driving to the studio.
Sunday. The place would be empty. Katarina wouldn’t be working, and there wouldn’t be a soul around the studio. No music, no noise. She would only stay a second.
And maybe figure out what the strange sound she kept hearing was.
She parked in back and hurried up the stairs to the outer hall and balcony. She slipped her key into the lock and entered, carefully locking the door behind her, then walked around the space.
Nothing had changed since they had left yesterday.
Feeling a little foolish, she stood in the center of the dance floor.
Then she heard it again.
The grating sound.
It was coming from the direction of the men’s room.
She turned and went into the men’s room, checking it out stall by stall. Nothing. And yet, clearer than ever before, she could hear the noise.
She paused, hurried back to her purse and found her key chain with the little container of pepper spray she kept there. So armed, she went out back and stared at the door to the storage room. She should wait. Call someone and tell them about the noise.
But hell, every time she wanted someone to hear it, the noise didn’t come. It was undoubtedly nothing.
Maybe they just had a resident rat, or an army of cockroaches.
She slipped the key into the lock and entered, wedging the door open. If there was something in there, she wanted to be ready to run.
Turning the light on, Shannon went in.
Shelves held their multitude of boxes. Katarina’s dressmaker’s dummy was back up, standing sentinel again. Shannon slowly walked to the back, tiptoeing, listening.
And then she heard it. It was coming from the back wall.
She walked back determinedly, stood and listened. She looked back to the door and then again to the rear of the room.
The room wasn’t as deep as it should have been, she realized suddenly.
She went to the shelves and started moving boxes.
Quinn made it to the house but didn’t see Shannon’s car.
When she heard him drive up, Marnie came running out, followed by Sam.
“She’s not here, I take it?” he said.
Marnie shook her head, leaning in his window, frowning.
“What?”
“Why is that woman’s picture on your front seat?” she asked.
“What?” he asked, distracted. She pointed. A sketch of Sonya Miller was on top of the file folders stacked on the passenger seat.
“You know her?” he demanded.
“No, I don’t know her. But I’ve seen her go up the back stairs at the studio.”
Quinn glared at Sam.
Sam put his hands up. “I’ve never seen her before. She wasn’t a student, Quinn. I swear it! Maybe she went to Suede.”
“You’re certain you’ve seen this woman?” Quinn asked Marnie.
“Yes. And she didn’t go to the club, she went up the back stairs,” Marnie said stubbornly.
He jerked the car into reverse with Marnie still leaning in the window. “I’m going over there. Call the cops.”
Marnie moved back just in time.
He shot back out onto the street. He didn’t know what the hell it meant, exactly, that Marnie had seen Sonya Miller.
He only knew he felt a sense of urgency unlike any he had ever known before.
Finally she had all the boxes removed from the area of the back wall.
She stepped closer, noticing what looked like either a crack in the wall or a structural juncture. She pressed it and felt nothing.
She tapped it, and the sound was hollow.
She pressed again, putting weight behind the effort. The wall began to give. She realized she hadn’t needed to move the boxes—the shelving was part of a false door.
The door opened. That had been the creaking sound. But opened to what? Maybe she didn’t need to know—not now, anyway. It was time to get the hell out. She started to back away, ready to reclose the false door and put the boxes back.
“Ah, Shannon. I knew it was just a matter of time before you got here. Actually, I’ve been waiting for you.”
She opened her mouth to scream and prepared to flee. But before she could do either one, fingers of steel wound around her wrist, jerking her forward.
Quinn raced up the back steps and saw the door to the storage room standing open. He raced to it and looked in just in time to see Shannon heading through the false wall.
For a moment he was stunned into stillness.
Shannon was hiding something at the studio. A sense of illness pervaded him. No, it couldn’t be.
But there she was, at the studio, when she had said she was heading straight for the house. No other cars in the lot. No one around, no sound…
Just Shannon, disappearing as he stood.
He hardened himself and flew into action. Behind the false door was a long hallway.
He followed.
She was being jerked along so fast she could barely breathe, much less scream. The pepper spray was in her pocket, but she couldn’t get to it because her wrists were being held in such a vise. The hall was narrow. The only light came weakly from the secret doorway back into the storage room.
The hallway ended. She thought she was going to be slammed through a wall, but, like the other, it gave when pressed.
She burst into a room. A narrow room, four feet at best in width, eight feet in length. It was tight and only dimly lit, but when her eyes adjusted, she was able to make out details. At one end were shelves filled with plastic bags that held a white powder. At the other end was a narrow circular stairway that led up.
To Gabriel Lopez’s apartment.
Gabriel thrust her away from him, and she saw that he had pulled a gun.
She was terrified into speechlessness at first. Then something kicked in. She stared at the gun, self-preservation telling her to talk, to do anything, say anything, to keep him from shooting her.
“You son of a bitch! Why?”
He shook his head. “Money, chica, money. And the life, of course.” He gave her a disdainful look. “Dancers! You were the best cover in the world. All your silly little people, awed by the club, always waiting to catch sight of a celebrity. And this building…perfect. Everyone was so pleased with the renovations. When the cops would come by, they met a dressmaker and dancers, and they could check me out and check me out and search the place…and find nothing. Nothing but boxes of costumes and student records.”
She had to get out, and she knew it. Taking a chance, she pulled out her key chain.
He lifted the gun, playing with his thumb and finger, showing her how quickly he could cock the weapon. “Drop it.”
She didn’t dare. She hit the plunger. He ducked, swearing, coughing, choking, wheezing.
But she’d missed his eyes. The gagging fumes of the spray filled the area, and she was trapped, too. Then he was flying toward her. They struggled, but in the end, he had her.
“Let her go. Now.”
The voice stunned both of them. Shannon found
herself thrust in front of Lopez, coughing from the spray herself, his gun against her temple. Her eyes watered. She blinked and saw that Quinn had come, that he had followed the hallway and found the two of them.
“Let her go, Lopez. Now. I don’t want to shoot you. The cops are on the way, and I want you to go to trial. I don’t know why you killed Nell Durken, but her husband doesn’t deserve a death sentence for what you did.”
“You don’t know the half of it, buddy. You don’t know the half. But the cops aren’t here yet. And you’re not a cop, just a fuck-up P.I. Get out of the way. I get out of here, and I throw her back to you. That’s the way it goes.”
Quinn stood his ground, his gun level on Lopez. “Nice little place you’ve got here, but you’ll never get her up the stairs, so it’s kind of a trap, isn’t it?”
“Not when you get out of the way.”
“You’ll hear the sirens any minute.”
“That’s why you’d better move. I’ll kill her. And she’s such a pretty little thing, huh? I could have taken her for a nice ride. You know, she turned me down all the time. Since she was such a good cover, I had to just smile and take it. But then she went off and slept with a prick like you. Now move!”
Quinn shifted a little.
“Funny thing is, Lopez, I almost thought she was in on it. You know, I came here, saw that false door…you should have thought to close it. Might have taken me and the cops ages to find it. Too bad you didn’t think of that.”
“Put the gun down and let me out of here.”
Shannon was afraid she was going to drop, whether he let her go or not. Her knees were rubber and the pepper spray was burning her eyes. On top of that, she couldn’t breathe.
And still, Quinn was standing there.
“I’ll shoot her right now!”
“All right, all right, I’m going to put it down.”
He started to lower his weapon. Shannon felt the slightest easing of Lopez’s hold, but the barrel of the gun was still against her skull.
“Asshole!” Lopez said. “You both have to die.”
He was going to pull the trigger. This was it. Not even time for her life to flash before her eyes.
The sound of the gunshot was deafening in the small space.
She felt nothing….
Behind her, Lopez crumpled, dragging her to the ground. Only then did she begin to scream when she saw the gaping bullet hole in his head.
She vaguely heard the sirens. Then she felt Quinn’s arms around her, heard his voice as if from far, far away.
“Come on, it’s over. The cops are here. They’ll take it from here.”
She couldn’t rise on her own; her knees were too wobbly.
But his arms were around her.
And he was going to lead her from the shadows into the light.
CHAPTER 24
“But why did he kill Lara?” Ben demanded.
They were down in Key Largo, guests at Quinn’s place, a beautiful home with a pool, right on the water, where he could dock the Twisted Time.
There was nothing ostentatious about it, and Shannon loved it. There were three bedrooms; one converted into an office, but it still had a futon that could sleep two. Since the police had requested that the entire studio building be closed for a few days, Gordon had decided that Ella could leave all messages for their students—in case they didn’t quite get the concept of crime tape—and since they weren’t working, and the entire situation was so traumatic, they should bond together. Thus, these days in the Keys.
Sunday had become something of a blur, with police pouring through the building, Shannon answering the same questions over and over again, Marnie and Sam appearing, first distraught, then relieved, Doug showing up with a pale Jane, freshly out of the hospital, in tow. Shannon had accepted drops for her eyes from the emergency personnel who had arrived but refused the suggestion she be looked at in a hospital. She had insisted she was fine.
Quinn was actually in worse shape. He’d said something about being sorry he’d had to kill Lopez, because there would be so many questions to be answered. She had remembered that he had followed her, suspected her, and even though he had saved her life, something had come over her when he bemoaned the death of the man who had been about to kill her, and she had hit him. She had rued the instinctive reaction immediately, but she had done it, and apparently she had a fairly decent hook, because even on Monday, he was still rubbing his jaw. That hadn’t, however, interfered with Sunday night, when she had once again slept on the Twisted Time, while Sam stayed with Marnie at Shannon’s house. That night, more than ever, she had needed to feel alive, and he had been pleased to help her explore every sensation. And, of course, they had talked and talked, before being awakened early the next morning, when Gordon had called with his idea of a studio-group getaway. Quinn had politely suggested his place in the Keys, not the least bit worried about fraternization, and now there they all were.
They headed south and all went out on the boat together. Doug, Ben and Quinn went diving, while Gordon, Sam, Marnie and Rhianna did some fishing, and Shannon mainly lounged around, with Justin, Ella and Jane joining her. Justin worked on his tan and Jane just tried to relax and follow doctor’s orders.
On Monday night, they sat around in Quinn’s living room, eating dinner. Drapes in the back opened to the pool area, the dock and the bay, a breeze drifted in, along with the smell of the barbecue, and it really did feel like a vacation. Until they started talking and Ben voiced his confusion.
Quinn glanced at Shannon. “Maybe she got too close to him, or maybe she knew too much.”
“But…somehow he managed to drug her at the competition. I mean, he got a hold of prescription drugs to do in two of his victims, and he shot the other two women up with heroin. And,” he added, gazing at Doug, “if I’ve got this right, he also shot Manuel Taylor. Why Taylor?”
“He definitely killed Taylor,” Doug said, looking at Quinn.
“Ballistics came back with a positive match. They found the gun that killed Manuel Taylor when they searched Lopez’s apartment, and his prints were all over it,” he told them. “I imagine Gabriel was afraid Manuel would remember that Gabe had tipped him to make sure Lara got the drink he’d prepared especially for her.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry as hell I didn’t examine the whole night more thoroughly with Manuel when I talked to him. I was so into the concept that he had told Shannon she was next that it didn’t occur to me that he might know more. Anyway, I think Gabe panicked when it came to Manuel, so he shot him.”
“And he killed Nell Durken, too?” Ben said, and shook his head, giving Quinn a questioning stare.
“So it seems. At least, Art Durken’s attorney is counting on the evidence to get him out of jail,” Doug told them.
“But what if Art Durken did kill her? What if the murders weren’t related? It all seems kind of…I don’t know. Weird,” Ben persisted.
“Ben,” Sam said. “It’s over. Let it be.”
“I’ll bet Lara was having an affair with Gabe Lopez,” Gordon said, looking around the room.”
“She hadn’t been around in months,” Ella protested.
“Okay, then maybe…he wanted to start something with her, so he talked to her about it, but she turned him down. He didn’t like being turned down. He played the charmer, but he hated Shannon for turning him down, right?” Jane said.
“So he said,” Quinn agreed.
“We’re supposed to be bonding, not rehashing this whole thing,” Gordon moaned.
“I’m not rehashing,” Ben said. “I’m making sure I’ve got it all straight in my mind. Okay, so maybe that poor little hooker, Sally Grant, scored drugs off Lopez and somehow saw the secret room, so she had to die. Sonya, he probably met in another club, or on the beach, or somewhere, but she, too, was into getting high, found out too much and had to die. Lara wasn’t a likely candidate for an overdose of heroin, but…he already knew what he was doing because of Nell Durken. He was probably ha
ving an affair with her, then got tired of her or something and decided to kill her. He’d gotten away with killing her by prescription and seeing it nailed on the husband, so he figured he’d do the same thing with Lara. And since she was wearing gloves…it was logical that there were no prints on the bottle. She’d die in front of hundreds of people. No murder, no crime.”
“As much as we can figure,” Quinn said, “that’s about the picture.”
“And Manuel,” Gordon added dryly. “Manuel was executed purely for purposes of insurance.”
“So it appears,” Doug said.
Gordon groaned. “My business is going to be in the toilet.”
“Gordon, he owned the club, not the studio,” Shannon protested.
“Yes, but the club will go right to hell now,” Gordon argued.
“Maybe not. Someone else will want to own it—it will have a real reputation now,” Sam said. “You know how people love a little bit of the illicit in life.”
“It all remains to be seen,” Shannon said.
Ben stared across the room at her moodily. “He almost killed you, Shannon.” He shook his head. “In retrospect…he was always watching you. I think he was worried for a while that you thought something was going on.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t think anything at all—until Lara died, and then…there was the noise. When he was coming and going through the secret door. Too bad for him that he didn’t come and go more often from his apartment. I’d never have known.”
“The point,” Doug said, “was that his apartment and the club itself were free of drugs, just as clean as most of his employees believed with their whole hearts.”
“Most? You think other people were in on it?” Rhianna said worriedly.
“Maybe,” Doug said. “But both homicide and narcotics are on it. They’ll find whatever contacts he had.”
“Okay, okay, we’re bonding here,” Gordon said. “Please, let’s watch a movie or something. Quinn, you got any good movies?”
Dinner was cleaned up, popcorn was made, and they settled on The Lord of the Rings on the wide-screen TV in the living room.