Falling Awake(78)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

“Cutler.” Scargill breathed deeply and tried to straighten his trembling shoulders. “The doc said he was jealous of me.”

“He wasn’t jealous, but he also wasn’t buying your brilliant dream sleuthing. Amelia knew he was suspicious, and after a year at Lawson’s agency, she also knew that he wasn’t going to give up and go away. She realized that she had to get rid of him before he discovered that she had orchestrated the kidnappings and murdered a few people in the process.”

“No,” Scargill muttered. “No, damnit.”

“It wasn’t going to be easy. She was well aware that Lawson and Ellis had been friends for a long time. If anything happened to Ellis, Lawson was sure to conduct an investigation. She decided to have Ellis die in the line of duty.”

“If you’re talking about that day at the survivalists’ compound when everything went to hell . . .”

“She staged that whole event knowing that Ellis would recognize another suspicious kidnapping and try to intervene,” Isabel said quickly. “She intended for him to die in a firefight with the people at the compound, even if she had to pull the trigger, herself. Who would know the difference afterward?”

Scargill was shivering more violently now. He huddled in on himself, gun clutched in his hand. “I don’t understand. Damnit, I can’t think. There’s something wrong with me. I’ve got a splitting headache. I can’t even think straight.”

“Things went wrong that day at the compound when the ammo shed exploded. Amelia tried to kill Ellis but failed. You, her only major asset at that point, were badly injured.”

“The explosion,” Scargill whispered. He rubbed his temples with one hand.

“Amelia grabbed you and got you to the hospital. Later she changed all the computer records to make it appear that you had died. Then she took you, along with plenty of stolen CZ-149 to control you, and split for California. There she seduced Randolph Belvedere and plotted his father’s death.”

“Stop it.” Scargill raised the nose of the pistol. “I don’t want to hear any more. You’re trying to confuse me.”

She had nothing to lose, Isabel thought. All she could do was keep talking and hope that some of what she was saying penetrated the haze that the CZ-149 had created in Scargill’s brain.

“Amelia achieved her second goal, more or less. Through Randolph Belvedere, she got control of the Belvedere Center for Sleep Research,” she said. “But things went wrong again when Randolph fired me. That’s Amelia’s big problem, you see. She’s brilliant but she keeps miscalculating because she doesn’t understand other people’s motivations. She assumes everyone is driven by the same things that drive her, but she’s wrong. I think that’s probably making her crazy.”

Scargill looked at her with a strange expression on his face. “Maybe you’re the one who’s crazy.”

“Always a possibility, of course.”

amelia checked the screen of her phone. The tiny moving dot that was the Maserati was slowing. Angrily, she hit the redial button.

“You’d better keep your speed up, Cutler. You’ve only got an hour and twenty minutes left. At the rate you’re going now, you’ll be late, and you know what that means.”

“The fog is getting worse,” Ellis said evenly. “I can’t see five feet in front of the car. I’m using a back road to avoid traffic. That means occasional stop signs. In fact, there’s one coming up and I just passed a police cruiser. I’ve got to stop. Can’t afford to get pulled over for a ticket.”

“It’s your choice, of course,” she said sweetly, watching the blip on the screen halt. “But if you’re late, you know the penalty.”

“I won’t be late.” Ellis cut the connection.

She hated that he felt in a position to treat her so rudely. Nobody gave her the respect she deserved. She started to punch redial but paused when she saw that the dot was moving again, faster than it had been a moment ago. That was a good sign. Cutler was running scared. She liked that. It was very satisfying.

But not nearly as satisfying as watching Lawson go down.

ellis parked in the trees, collected the gym bag and went the rest of the way on foot. He had thirty minutes until the deadline. There was still a little light left but the Roxanna Beach Amusement World was enclosed in an impenetrable gray fog. The only sound was the steady pounding of the unseen surf. It echoed eerily in the mist, creating a disorienting sensation. With luck it would mask any noise he was forced to make.

He approached the amusement park from a point that was farthest from the main entrance, chose a spot that was concealed by the wall of an aged restroom and went to work with the wire cutters.

amelia checked the dot on the phone screen again and hit the redial.

“What do you want now?” Cutler asked in low tones.

“You’re pushing the envelope,” she said, her anger building again. “You’re at least thirty minutes away from town. If I were you, I’d worry.”

“I told you, the fog—”

This time she cut the connection before he did, taking a great deal of fierce pleasure in the small, savage punch of the end button.

She had made the right decision, she thought. They were all badly flawed. It had become obvious in the past few weeks that Scargill’s basic temperament wasn’t going to change. He still wanted to be a hero, another Ellis Cutler, for crying out loud. She couldn’t work with such a major personality defect.

Isabel Wright was another mistake. She hadn’t turned out to be a meek, dithery little dreamer who would do as she was told.

As for Cutler, well, she had known all along that he wasn’t going to stop being a problem until he was dead.

The only answer was to get rid of all of them and start from scratch. With the resources of the Belvedere Center for Sleep Research, she would be able to find her own dream talent.

Meanwhile, if everything went as planned, tonight she would not only get rid of her mistakes, she would start the first smoldering embers that would eventually burn down Jack Lawson’s precious empire.

at the far end of the park, Ellis dropped the phone back into the pocket of his windbreaker, making sure it was still set to vibrate, not ring, and continued working his way through the eerie landscape. The hulking shapes of the long-silent rides loomed like the ruins of an alien civilization in the mist.

He was fairly sure that Amelia had called him from somewhere near the cliff side of the park. He had heard the surf quite clearly in the background. In addition, although he had listened closely, he had not heard her voice except through the phone. That meant she was not in the immediate vicinity. He had been careful to keep his voice low and to muffle his phone with the thick canvas of the gym bag.