AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She tried to run to them, to embrace them, to tell them she was sorry.
“Get back now!” Jock’s gun and gaze were trained on her, regardless of what else was happening in the room. Jock with his suspenders and ponytail, who’d sat at the bar as she and Dan wrote, who’d pointed Mary Cowell in her direction.
She backed up against the balcony rail. She knew there were snipers in the buildings around them.
Veronica Cole glanced coldly at the two men held at gunpoint. If their presence concerned her, she gave no sign of it.
Theo noticed the glance and new dread surged. She now knew what Veronica was capable of doing, of directing, of living with.
“I’ll jump,” Theo said. “Just let them go.”
“I’m afraid that option’s off the table, Theo.” She looked both men up and down, contemplating, plotting the next chapter. She turned to Bellhop. “Were they armed?”
He produced both guns.
“Excellent.” She shook her head. “I hope you clowns know what you’ve done. We’ve done everything to protect Theo and you! Invested fucking millions! And now we have no choice but to clean up and move on.”
Bellhop aimed at Gus.
“No,” Veronica said. “Let’s tie this up now. It must look like Gus Benton shot his sister… She ruined his life, after all. Then he and Mr. Etheridge, who arrives too late to stop him from killing Theo, manage to shoot each other.” Her head tilted to one side as she considered the sequence. “Yes, we can sell that. We’ll get James or Lee to write it into the Minotaur storyline.
Mac replied with equal calm. “Except that Shaw and Wells are tied up in my brothers’ barn…if they haven’t been handed to the police already.”
Gus kept his eyes on Theo. She was thinner than when he’d last seen her, and less girlish, but it was definitely her. “We’ve already told the detective in charge what we suspect about Day Delos and Associates, Ms. Cole. He didn’t believe us then, but once Shaw and Wells are taken in, the police will know everything, whatever you do to us. Your only chance is to go now while they still think there may be a bomb in the building.”
Veronica Cole was unmoved. “You will find that Alexander Wilson already has the abduction of Mr. Shaw and Mr. Wells by Mr. Etheridge’s criminal relatives in hand, Mr. Benton.”
She held out one of the confiscated guns to Jock. “Take care of Theodosia Benton. I am sorry, Theo, you are a real talent, and I tried to save you, but you won’t cooperate.”
Jock lowered his own gun to take the one that Mac had given Gus. Gus moved before the man realized it was unloaded, hoping, praying, that Mac would be able to handle Bellhop and the other man. He threw himself at Jock, grabbing hold of the ponytail as he dragged him down.
Simultaneously, Mac charged Bellhop. Someone got off a shot, and for a moment no one was quite sure where the bullet had gone. And then a searing pain, which started at a point in Mac’s side, seemed to spread with the blood. Even so, he could twist away from the dying grip of Bellhop into whose chest the bullet had finally lodged.
Theo ran in off the balcony. “Mac!” she screamed as the third man took aim again, while Gus struggled with Jock.
Already bent double, Mac bowled into the shooter and the shot went wild, ricocheting off the faux marble fittings and shattering the chandelier, which sprayed splinters of glass across the room. Gus swore as a larger shard embedded in his upper back and, as he weakened, Jock threw him off. Then Jock moved for the gun that had fallen from his grip when Gus had brought him down. Theo scrambled into the path, kicking the weapon out of his reach onto the balcony. Furious, he struck her on the back with a force that almost rendered her senseless before he turned to retrieve the gun. The sniper shot him as he picked it up.
Now Mac and Gus surged against the last man, who had begun to panic as his comrades fell away. He tried to run, but he opened the door to armed police. And it was over. Only then did they notice that Veronica Cole was gone.
CHAPTER 41
Despite having declared that beyond three hours, they were on their own, Patsy McKenny stayed to apply her legal skills on their behalf. Jacqui Steven arrived the next day.
It was established that there was no bomb, and that the phone call claiming there was had not been made by Theodosia Benton.
Jock’s body was identified as that of Nenad Dojic, who had written historical epics until he’d been accused of committing war crimes in his youth. Bellhop had been dishonorably discharged from the army and had a manuscript under consideration by Day Delos and Associates. The third man, Joe Meagher, who survived the battle on the twenty-third floor, seemed to be no one in particular, until the police searched his apartment and found his mother decomposing in the bathtub and a manuscript on his computer.
Theodosia Benton was arrested, but in light of new information, those charges were eventually dropped. Under interrogation she explained that she had made a false confession thinking it would be the only way to help her brother, to save him from what she had been led to believe was an orchestrated campaign by a deranged group of fans looking to punish her for her relationship with Dan Murdoch. It seemed ridiculous as she said it, but at the time nothing else had made sense and she had trusted Veronica Cole. She described how Day Delos and Associates had smuggled her out of the country, moving her from one remote location to the next. How her first manuscript had been discarded just in case anyone recognized it.
The detectives had listened impassively. Maguire might have dismissed it as a self-serving fantasy if Mac and Gus had not brought him their suspicions before it all unfolded, if the young man with the moldering mother had not broken down when the detective had threatened to simply delete his manuscript, and confessed his own relationship to Day Delos and Associates.
Joe Meagher insisted he’d not killed anyone, aside from his mother. He claimed that Nenad Dojic, otherwise known as Jock, had killed both Burt Winslow and Mary Cowell. Winslow because he’d been Dan Murdoch’s gardener and had stolen the manuscript that his employer had asked him to post to Theo Benton with his letter. Day Delos and Associates had purchased the manuscript back from Winslow, who might have gotten away with the extortion if he had not, in a fit of sentimentality, passed on the love letter that had been with it. Gus’s house was by then being watched by the agency, and when Winslow was seen talking to Theo, it was decided that he was too great a risk and action was taken immediately. According to Meagher, Mary had been eliminated simply because she had continued to dig into the story they’d initially fed her in order to put pressure on Theo and give her a reason to run from the life she had into the arms of Day Delos and Associates Management.
Meagher claimed to be uncertain who exactly had “done Murdoch.” Day Delos and Associates, after all, represented a lot of fugitive writers, many of whom had come by their status because they knew how to kill.
“Just how many writers are beholden to Day Delos and Associates?” Maguire demanded.
A shrug. “All of them maybe. Day Delos and Associates deals in secrets and ghosts—you’ll never find them all.”
