Circle of Bones, стр. 70
She took a deep breath and continued in a monotone. “Dig said awful things. He talked about taking over and something about Operation Magic. The way he looked at my dad – it was awful. And he kept saying crazy things. About Michael. He claimed he did it, and Dad knew all about it.” She grasped Hazel’s arm and bit her lower lip. “That’s not possible, is it?” she asked.
Cole wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but he couldn’t bear watching her suffer like that. He stood, took a step toward the bed and called out her name.
Hazel waved him back. He clenched his fists, stepped back and perched on the edge of the chair again.
Riley shuddered and her eyes focused on something in the distance as though she were reliving the afternoon’s horror. “Dig told my dad he seduced me in Lima. Fucked me to get back at him. Said he was going to kill me and make my dad watch.” Her hands went to her throat and touched the bruises. “But I fought back. And he –” One tear rolled down her cheek. She closed her eyes. “Dig killed my father.” The last three words came out without emotion.
Cole jumped to his feet. “I knew I should have killed that son of a bitch.”
Hazel’s eyes flashed him a warning. She turned back to Riley. “Shhh, baby,” she said, pulling Riley’s head to her chest and rocking her back and forth.
Cole strode to the window and looked out at the empty pool. He put his hand over his mouth and pulled it down across his chin feeling the rough stubble of his day-old beard. The trees on the grounds beyond the pool were black and barren against the gray sky. He turned back around to look at her. He had never felt so helpless in his life. He swore he would make this guy pay.
Riley’s eyes were wide open, staring, but unseeing.
“Shhh,” Hazel repeated. “There was nothing you could do.” He read her lips when she mouthed to Kayla, “She’s in shock.” Cole could see Riley’s body trembling, see the built-up tension in the taut tendons of her neck.
He was wondering how much longer he could just stand there, watching these women, doing nothing. He saw Kayla hand Hazel a couple of pills and a glass of water. “Now, honey,” Hazel said placing the pills in Riley’s palm. “Go on and take these. It’ll help you sleep.”
Riley shook her head and turned away from Hazel.
“You need to get some rest. Kayla will stay with you.”
Cole saw her shoulders lift and then fall. “All right,” she said and then she tossed the pills into her mouth.
The two women stretched Riley out on the bed, removed her shoes and covered her with a blanket. At first, she lay there eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling, but within less than a minute, her breathing slowed and her eyes closed.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Washington, DC
March 28, 2008
1:25 p.m.
Dig groaned when he brought his right hand up and touched the knot on the right side of his skull. What? He opened his eyes, but all he saw was a white ceiling. He rolled his head to the side and tried to focus his blurry vision on the stairs and a doorway beyond.
Pain stabbed at the back of his eyes when he tried to sit up. He screwed up his face and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyelids, then he looked up and shook his head trying to clear it. He remembered where he was: the Riley house. He spread the fingers of his right hand, then squeezed them into a fist. Yorick. He flexed his hand again. Dig remembered the satisfactory loud crack the old man’s neck made when it broke — and the intense pleasure that had flowed through him from his head to his groin. He stared at his fist. He had felt the power pass into him. Then he’d seen Riley, and he had never wanted a woman as much.
But she ran — and he chased and nearly caught her. Then it was a blank.
He should have finished her in Lima. That was how he had planned it. Then, he was going to squeeze the life from her as Yorick watched. And again, she had thwarted his plans.
There was another noise in the house. Pounding. Cries. He was not alone.
When he stood, the dizziness made him wobble, and he reached for the banister to steady himself. The nausea was so strong he thought he was going to vomit.
“Help! Somebody get me out of here!” He could understand the words when he stood in the kitchen doorway. He recognized the voice. It wasn’t Riley.
She was gone. Again. He would find her and finish this now.
He walked to the front door, opened it a crack and looked out into the front yard. The bright light seared his eyeballs. It had stopped snowing. He looked both ways. No sign of her. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious.
Back inside the house, the shouting was louder.
“Hold on,” he said.
Inside the kitchen, he found a door with a hasp with an unlocked padlock hanging loose. He lifted the lock and the door swung into him hard. He stepped aside and Mrs. Wright tumbled out. She caught herself and lifted a hand to push back the gray hairs that had fallen loose on either side of her head.
“What happened to you?” he said.
“Where is he?”
“Who?”
“That fella. You were upstairs and I went down to see who was at the door. Fella came barging in asking to see Riley. I tried to stop him —”
“Describe him.”
“Shorter than you. Brown hair, stocky build. Wearing a yellow and blue rain slicker. Like to broke my arm before he locked me in there.” She pointed to the pantry. “Had to put a lock on that door to keep old Mr. Riley from eating all the cookies. I found him drinking maple syrup from the bottle once. Crazy as a loon, that one.” She pulled at the tails of her shirt and straightened her sleeves. “Never expected I’d be the one shoved in there.”
“Shut up,” he said. The woman was getting on his nerves.
It had to be Thatcher. In Washington. He was more resourceful than Dig had expected. So, they were together now, Riley and Thatcher. The son was turning out to be even more of an irritant than the father had been. He would see to both of them.
“You’ve got no reason to talk to me that way,” the housekeeper said. “Not after all I’ve done for you. That fella’s gone, then? Is the daughter up there with her father? I’m surprised the old man’s not hollering down here for his lunch.”
This woman talked too much. Then, in another one of those serendipitous moments, his mind flitted to the elder Thatcher, then back to Yorick. Dig smiled.
“Follow me upstairs,” he said.
Just over an hour later, Dig pulled off his gloves and surveyed the scene in Yorick’s bedroom, imagining the ideas that would be running through the minds of the rescue workers who would be called to the scene — by the smell if nothing else. He flexed the fingers of his right hand and nodded, pleased with his work. This was getting to be a theme for this whole affair. A signature. But he was so much more adept at staging than those yokels in Cornwall. Yorick was thin enough, he’d almost fit in Riley’s underwear. It didn’t matter, though, that the panties and bra had ripped when he’d dragged them on the old man’s corpse. It was all part of the scenario. And Dig had been surprised — and not a little disgusted — to find that the Wright woman had drawers full of black lacy things and various electric apparatus. He hoped it would make the press. He could see the headlines now. Murder-suicide death pact between former ambassador and housekeeper.
At the bottom of the stairs, he looked around, thought back over his entry. No, he hadn’t touched anything else. Before going outside, he pulled his gloves back on and checked the coat closet for a hat. He found a black cap with a short bill that he pulled down over his eyebrows, and he turned up the collar on his jacket.
He exited the house at a fast steady pace and turned right, following the street to the end of the block, where he turned right again. There idling at the curb where he’d told him to wait was the black Lincoln with his driver reading a newspaper behind the wheel. Dig opened the back door, slid inside, and leaned his aching head back against the warm leather.