Falling Awake(42)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

“I did for a long time,” he said. “But about eight months ago I decided to move out here to California.”

This was not the time to tell her that he’d made the move because he knew she lived in California and he wanted to feel closer to her. It had all been part of his grand plan to nudge his way gently into her life and see if he could make a place for himself. But that had been before Vincent Scargill.

“I see,” she murmured.

He straightened a little in his chair, refocusing. “Getting back to Scargill, it turned out there was one major flaw in his game-playing routine. To maintain his pose as a hotshot agent, he had to wait until the case hit Lawson’s desk before he could go into his big act. That generally didn’t take too long, of course, especially with kidnappings. But in the McLean case, I was a couple of steps ahead of him.”

“How did you manage that?”

“I’ve been doing this work for eighteen years,” he said dryly. “There are some advantages to age and experience.”

She smiled slightly. “Such as?”

“Such as having good connections with some of Beth’s people. A couple of them owed me favors. Like I said, one of them alerted me to the McLean case because it fit the profile I had given him.”

“What did you do?”

“I enlisted the help of two friends at Mapstone, guys I’d worked with in the past and knew I could trust. We located McLean’s compound. In addition to McLean and his ex, there were a handful of other people on the scene. Future leaders of the new society. We created a major distraction for them.”

“How?”

“Set fire to one of the outlying storage sheds. Most of the men rushed to put it out. When they were occupied, I went in, grabbed Angela McLean and got out.”

“It was that easy?”

“There were a couple of complications.” Namely the two guards who had been left behind, he reflected. But there was no need to go into unnecessary detail. “But no major problems.”

“The wife must have been terrified.”

He smiled, remembering. “Angela turned out to be a real trooper. Gutsy and smart. She realized right away that I was there to rescue her and she didn’t panic. We made it out of the compound together. There was a lot of chaos and noise. People started shooting. I was still in the open at that point. That’s when I took the bullet in my shoulder.”

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that her fingers trembled slightly but she just nodded.

“I went down but I managed to get back on my feet. Beth’s people provided cover and half dragged me back to the SUV. We had just reached it when we heard the explosion. Later we found out that the ammo stored in one of the sheds had somehow ignited. Most of the members of McLean’s group survived but McLean and one of his aides died.”

“What about Vincent Scargill?”

Ellis watched the flash of light on the bay. “That’s where it all gets murky. I spent the days immediately following the incident in a hospital. I was not in good shape. The local police and news media got involved, of course. And Beth and Lawson conducted their own private investigation. You know what they say about too many cooks spoiling the broth. I gather it was mass confusion, a classic snafu.”

“Did Beth and Lawson find anything?”

“Sure,” he muttered. “Among other things they found evidence that Scargill was there at the compound that day.”

“What kind of evidence?”

“One of his shoes. There was a lot of blood on it. Got a hunch he’s the one who fired the shot that hit me.”

“But they didn’t find Scargill?”

“No. However, a few days later Beth’s people learned that a man answering the description of Vincent Scargill staggered into the emergency room of a mid-sized hospital about two hours from the McLean compound. He had suffered serious head trauma and was incoherent. He died that same day.”

“What about the body?”

“That’s the really interesting part,” Ellis said softly. “There was a mix-up in the hospital morgue. The computer records later showed that the body of the man Beth and Lawson think was Vincent Scargill was mistakenly released to a local funeral home. The attendants thought they were picking up someone else. They had instructions to cremate.”

She winced. “I think I know how this is going to end.”

He nodded slowly. “By the time the screwup was straightened out, the body that had been identified as Scargill was ashes. Scattered ashes, at that.”

There was a long silence from the other side of the table. He waited it out with a sense of stoic resignation. There was nothing more he could do. He had no proof to offer her that he had not dreamed up the entire story.

“So, no body,” Isabel said quietly.

“No body.”

She nodded once, very crisply. “Okay, I can see why you’re somewhat skeptical about the fate of Vincent Scargill.”

Ellis peeled off his sunglasses with a slow, measured motion and looked at her. He felt as if he were standing in front of her stark naked.

“You can?” he said carefully.

“Definitely.”

“In the three months since that explosion at the McLean compound there has been absolutely no indication at all that Vincent Scargill is still alive. Not unless you count the death of a woman named Katherine Ralston. Beth and Lawson don’t count it because the police are convinced that she was the victim of a burglar she happened to surprise in her apartment.”

“No convenient arrest in that case?”

He was impressed with the quick observation. “No. I have to admit that the Ralston murder doesn’t fit Scargill’s usual pattern.”

“Why are Beth and Lawson so sure Scargill is dead?”

“DNA evidence from some blood that was taken at the hospital where the records showed he died. It was a match for Scargill. The emergency room admission records made it clear that his condition was extremely grave when he arrived and it was no surprise to any of the doctors who reviewed the records later that he didn’t make it.”

“Beth and Lawson do believe that he staged the McLean kidnapping, though, right?”

“Yes. But they think I’m experiencing some sort of post-traumatic stress and that I have become obsessed with the deluded belief that Scargill plotted the entire incident at the compound to get rid of me. My theory is that I was supposed to die that day, not Scargill, and that when the investigation was complete, it would appear that I was the one who had set up the kidnapping.”